Natural Resources committee  If you recall, when I was talking about what CEMA was doing, I was saying that we were answering some of the 72 issues that were raised under the regional sustainable development strategy. And when you look at the 72 issues, greenhouse gases and CO2 are one of the issues documented within that strategy.

Natural Resources committee  We have the 47 organizations. Those organizations have at least one member, but when you look at our working groups, they actually have multiple members. Many of those individuals are on the ground working. In other words, when industry sends people there, they're experienced people, either on the effects or on the technologies.

Natural Resources committee  Absolutely. In fact, one of the issues we have is adequate resourcing, and one of the recommendations we are making is that we need high-level representatives, decision-makers, coming to CEMA and we need them to spend their time participating and developing these management systems, which we believe will help protect the environment in the region.

Natural Resources committee  Are they part of the industry group or part of CEMA?

Natural Resources committee  Yes, all the major oil sands players, as well as members of the government, and so on, sit there. But yes, the industry players do sit there, and in fact, some of the provincial legislation approvals require that they sit on the various regional committees.

Natural Resources committee  It is. In fact, when I was talking about reclamation guidelines, those are the best-practice manuals that industry is required to prepare. We started those manuals back probably 10 years ago, and now we're going through iterations of those best-practice manuals and we're improving them as research comes to the table.

Natural Resources committee  Indeed, many of the members of CEMA sit on many of the panels and vice versa. So there is an integration of the same people. That's one of the difficulties. The people who work with industry, the people who work with the federal and provincial governments, and the people who work with the first nations are also the same people who attend the hearing and participate in the review of EIA, so people have multiple tasks on their agendas.

Natural Resources committee  Some monitoring stations have been set up in Saskatchewan, across the border. Saskatchewan actually sits on some of our committees.

Natural Resources committee  Right. And we did that because that came directly from our experts and we didn't want to second-guess what it should be.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, if I could add to that, when we're developing the regional management systems on air, water, or land disturbance, or whatever it is, we have to determine what the cumulative effects will be. In there, we take into account the effects of existing projects, the ones that have just been approved, and we take into account future projects and their footprints as well.

Natural Resources committee  That is a very controversial question. In some of the more recent working groups that I actually worked very closely on, we just went through that very debate. We went to the experts in our region. So we went to the regional infrastructure working group, where all the industry sits, and they provided all their best estimates of what their various footprints are.

Natural Resources committee  We have what we call the Wood Buffalo Environmental Association, which was established, I believe, back in 1995 when the first companies were mandated or required under Alberta Environment to set up a regional monitoring program. The program covers the entire regional municipality of Wood Buffalo, and we have a number of air stations that are scattered throughout the region, all the way up to Fort Chipewyan, and certainly around Fort McMurray itself, and around each of the facilities.

Natural Resources committee  I can answer those separately. We do not have decision-making authority. We make recommendations and those recommendations go to the government. The government then has the choice to take those recommendations and implement them as they are, which they actually have for the six recommendations that we've given them, or they can take the recommendations and revise the recommendations before they implement them.

Natural Resources committee  Certainly, thank you. There were a lot of questions asked in that one series of questions at the beginning, but I will say this. I think there's very much a general consensus among our members that on the air, water, and land side we're actually not near the levels or thresholds where emissions or water withdrawals, for example, would damage the environment.

Natural Resources committee  I will, thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for inviting us to share with you the important work that the Cumulative Environmental Management Association is doing in the Wood Buffalo area. My name is Judy Smith. I am currently the vice-president of CEMA, and I'm one of the original founders of the organization, which started back in 1997.