Finance committee  Correct.

Finance committee  Because the moment you have it in legislative form, if you need to add to it, you can't. There is no more authority. You lose a certain flexibility if you do it that way. This is about an implementation. The core reporting obligation is clear; it is about the threshold you see. The types of payments, the types of payees, and the breakdown is what you see addressed administratively.

Finance committee  Is the competitive disadvantage concern related to them having to report in Canada but not elsewhere? That would not be a proper reading of the EU rules or the U.S. rules as we had them, because they take a neutral approach to what a payment to a government is. They make no exclusions.

Finance committee  Thank you for your question. The act speaks to the authority of the minister to just set up a framework and then be aligned with international G-7 partners and their approach. The fact that you don't see it expressly in the act does not mean that this is not how it's going to flow, even if you look for coherence, because we are always talking about commercial development of oil, natural gas, or minerals.

Finance committee  It becomes a requirement that is legally enforceable the moment that the minister will specify these requirements. That's why we're working...because the international standard is also emerging. They have general references in the regulations but it doesn't go beyond that. In any event, we've organized it in a way so that the moment that it is specified by the minister, again recognizing that we need alignment, then it becomes legally binding.