Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  No, that's impossible. The environmental assessment process is a planning document. There are a lot of other licensing and permitting activities that are ongoing after an environmental assessment is done. There is no lessening of standards, because you would be non-compliant with your licence and would have your licence revoked.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I can't recall the exact details. I don't know whether I would classify it as a cleanup, but certainly it was a tailings facility licensed by the provincial government. If there had been a breach, they would have wanted to remedy it, but because it was fish habitat, they actually—

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I don't know that I would agree it was leaking into the environment, but....

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  There are probably two areas: making sure that time is spent on the designated projects list—

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  The designated projects list, so that you're looking at the highest risk projects and are able to dedicate the resources that are required by them, rather than at some small projects. We've had examples of projects that were actually of environmental benefit to an operation, but they still had to go through an environmental assessment process, at great cost.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I am generally, yes.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I think it's a very common-sense approach to responsible resource development, which this is all about.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  Yes, we'd agree that it does definitely assist in predictability for the industry in terms of knowing what their timeframe will be for their investment. It also, I think, ensures that the outcomes are well understood as you go into an environmental assessment process.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  Certainly with respect to the fish habitat alteration agreements, there are many partnerships already between industry and community groups, which of course are stewarded by the government. There already are many different types of conservation agreements that occur right now in development stages.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  In terms of duplication, one example I can bring forward is a licensed tailings facility that ended up undergoing.... It was licensed by the provincial government, and it ended up going through at least a two-year delay on the federal process. It was deemed as a fish habitat because there was a fish in it, even though it was a licensed tailings pond.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  Bonjour, Mr. Chairman, members of the public and committee members. I'm here today to speak on behalf of the Saskatchewan Mining Association. First, thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before the committee in consideration of part 3, “Responsible Resource Development”, in Bill C-38.

Human Resources committee  Mr. Chair, may I contribute something to this?

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much for this question, because it's one I'd like to address specifically. The government has recently taken some very positive steps with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to put some timeframe parameters on the review of projects. However, when those changes to CEAA were made, they excluded projects under the review of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and the Energy Board.

Human Resources committee  If I might draw a comparison, for example, the Australian environmental assessment process just approved the world's largest uranium mine in less than one year. If we look at an environmental assessment process for a uranium project in Canada, we're looking at well over six years.

Human Resources committee  Chair, I'm going to skip ahead to a slide that talks about best-practice programs. It would have been the 11th slide in the program.