Let me respond quickly to your first point about participant funding. There is no question that there are more asks on the program than there is money. Of course we do our best to allocate the budget that has been made available to us, but there is no question that many applicants would appreciate having a richer program.
On the issue of scoping, you've absolutely hit on a fundamental issue. It clearly is critical. For those who have been less involved in this, scoping is really determining what the boundaries are, what project it is that will be assessed through the environmental assessment process.
The federal government scopes its involvement, and the provincial government scopes its involvement. Sometimes the scope of project to be assessed is the same, and that can sometimes facilitate a harmonized process between the two jurisdictions. Sometimes it's different, because the specific federal interest may be more limited. There may be, for example, a situation where a federal department is issuing a permit for one specific aspect of a much larger project, and because the province is looking at the larger project, the federal department may decide that it is going to scope only to the smaller element or component of the project.
So it varies from project to project. Then the determination ultimately lies with the federal departments, the responsible authorities who have to make a decision.
But certainly the scale and the depth of the environmental assessment are shaped by the scoping decisions that are made by government.
