ENVI Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE L'ENVIRONNEMENT ET DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DURABLE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, April 4, 2001

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[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills (Red Deer, Canadian Alliance)): Ladies and gentlemen, I call the session to order.

My name is Bob Mills. I'm the vice-chair of the committee and will be chairing it today in the absence of our chairman.

We have a couple of housekeeping tasks. First, Ms. Redman has asked to only speak to the first motion with the intent of postponing the vote until tomorrow. There will have to have nine people here for the budget. We need a quorum of nine, so once we have nine people here, we'll present the budget for approval.

If everyone's in agreement, we'll quickly go to Ms. Redman.

Mrs. Karen Redman (Kitchener Centre, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.

I wanted to give a few comments of clarification.

The motion I put on the table yesterday was intended to provide for review of an ambitious but reasonable work plan according to which this committee might wish to do its work. This committee has already undertaken additional work time, which is why I put the plan forward. It was in no way meant to be anything other than a demonstration of how witnesses would fit into that time period if the committee was willing to have some extra meetings.

Over the three and a half weeks before we begin clause-by-clause on May 14, with the consensus of the committee we could do such things as managing additional meetings, or splitting meeting times to two or three panels, or have perhaps a day-long session. These things have actually been raised by members in the past.

There also was a concern that the regular chairperson wasn't here. I spoke with him on Monday and he encouraged us to go forward and let the committee be master of its own destiny. That's why it was brought forward. If there's discomfort with this, I'm more than willing to wait and have this discussion and feedback tomorrow when he's back.

Through the first three weeks we've seen witnesses focusing their attention on specific areas of the proposed legislation. Messages are consistent with many of the things we've heard throughout this process. Many of the submitted materials and recommendations are on the same kinds of issues, and actually even the same briefs that were brought forward during Bill C-33.

We've had several productive sessions in recent weeks, and we have all agreed with the necessity and the value of protecting Canada's species at risk. We all agree this proposed legislation presents opportunities—

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Ms. Redman, may I interrupt?

Mrs. Karen Redman: Yes.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): I'd like to know the will of the committee here.

We do have a vote today; I believe the bells are at 5:15. We have three witnesses who have come quite a distance. Because of these considerations I wonder if you could postpone this until tomorrow.

I know there will be other members wanting to speak to this, and I can see us literally taking half an hour to discuss it. Therefore my suggestion would be it would be better to go to the witnesses and the budget, and save this for tomorrow.

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Mrs. Karen Redman: I do appreciate that.

I'm almost done, and the only reason I would like this on the record is for those members not in attendance who will read the blues for the next meeting. Members who aren't here today but may be here tomorrow may be interested in this clarification. I have had conversations outside of the committee, because I didn't take the time to do this yesterday. I wanted us all to understand.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): I wasn't sure how long you were—

Mrs. Karen Redman: I'm trying to be brief, Mr. Chairperson.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Great.

Mrs. Karen Redman: I believe the committee has an opportunity and a responsibility to move forward with this important piece of legislation. For this reason I would ask the committee to consider whatever kind of configuration it might, but also to have a fruitful discussion of the timelines tomorrow.

I thank the witnesses for their indulgence.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Thank you very much.

We do have a quorum. Regarding the budget, everyone has had a copy of it for the last 24 hours at least. Is there anyone...? Oh, some people don't have a copy.

Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, Canadian Alliance): It wasn't provided, Mr. Chair.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): It was sent to our offices.

We will get copies distributed. If it's going to take us time, I suggest we deal with our witnesses.

Welcome to the witnesses, and we will attempt to move forward. Because of the time problems we're going to have, please be as brief as you possibly can, so the members have a chance to ask the maximum number of questions. Let's proceed, and the order doesn't really matter.

Mr. DeMarco, would you like to start?

Mr. Jerry DeMarco (Member, Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee): I'd be happy to start, Mr. Chair.

[Translation]

I'll make my presentation in English today. English is my mother tongue and I feel more comfortable in English. But you will see that the solution proposed in our report is as valid in French as in English.

[English]

I understand this committee has been provided with the ADR committee's final report, so I'll keep my comments brief and to the point.

As was well documented in this standing committee's Enforcing Canada's Pollution Laws report from 1998, proper levels of environmental law enforcement have been lacking in Canada. Our ADR report proposes a solution that keeps matters out of the courts, in terms of citizen enforcement, but still encourages government accountability and better enforcement of environmental legislation.

As you know, Bill C-65 expressly incorporated citizen suits in the legislation. Subsequently, there were significant expressions of concern over such citizen suits, and multi-stakeholder workshops were then hosted by Environment Canada to determine whether or not a broadly supported alternative could be found. These 1998 workshops led to a broad consensus on the key elements of such an alternative: fairness, government accountability, public involvement, effectiveness, efficiency, and flexibility.

Several dispute resolution options were discussed by the multi-stakeholder groups, and as a result of that an ADR committee was appointed by the former minister to find a specific alternative to citizen suits. This committee presented its consensus proposal in 1999, following several months of negotiation, compromise, and discussion with government officials.

The report was distributed for comment by Environment Canada. Very few opposing submissions were received. Following this, Minister Anderson's December 1999 plain-language proposal entitled “Canada's Plan for Protecting Species at Risk” endorsed the substance of the ADR committee's approach in a section entitled “How would the Species at Risk Act Work?”, on dispute avoidance and resolution.

The terminology used in Minister Anderson's December 1999 proposal was very similar to that used by the ADR committee in its report. It was expected that the bill stemming from this ministerial proposal would implement the ADR committee's proposal, or something akin to it.

For inexplicable reasons, the present bill does not include any of the recommendations put forward by the ADR committee, nor does it include any alternative dispute resolution process, other dispute resolution processes, or citizen suits at all. Thus the bill, as presently drafted, fails to achieve the minister's identified goals of effectiveness, efficiency, accountability, and enforcement and does not employ a process that emphasizes timeliness, transparency, and cooperation.

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This is a serious omission, which not only flies in the face of government commitments, but ignores a multi-stakeholder consensus that is much more attractive than the other two alternatives open to the government, each of which will generate significant opposition from certain stakeholders, those other alternatives being inclusion of a citizen suit, which would be opposed by many stakeholders, and not including any dispute resolution provision at all, which would be opposed by other stakeholders.

The ADRC's report is aimed at resolving disputes arising from the act's prohibitions, that is clauses 32 to 36 of the bill, and is not meant to apply to other decision-making points in the legislation, such as listing. As noted by Professor Paul Emond, who was the facilitor of the ADRC, the committee's report presents an innovative solution that is workable and broadly acceptable to a wide range of stakeholders, and I, as a member of that committee, advocate it as an alternative to citizen suits.

Those are my comments.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Thank you very much.

I go to either one of you gentlemen from Saskatchewan. Welcome.

Mr. Merle Hewison (Secretary, Saskatchewan Commercial Fishermen's Co-operative Federation Limited): Thank you.

Mr. John Carrière (President, Saskatchewan Commercial Fishermen's Co-operative Federation Limited): Thank you. As you said you're in a hurry, I guess we'll go right to it also.

My name is John Carrière. It's in French, but that's one of the languages we lost in Cumberland, besides our native language—French and Cree—when they were trying to force us to speak in English. I remember those days. I did bring the presentation in English and I will read it that way. This is from the Saskatchewan Commercial Fishermen's Co-operative Federation Limited, and we're here for Bill C-5, an act respecting the protection of wildlife species at risk in Canada.

Mr. Chairman and members of the standing committee, as officers of the Saskatchewan Commercial Fishermen's Co-operative Federation Limited, we are pleased to have this opportunity to appear as witnesses on the above legislation. We represent the commercial fishers of Saskatchewan, of whom there are over 500, and they are members of 27 local co-operatives. Compared to what it used to be, 500 is a small number. Our members are widely distributed over all of Saskatchewan, with most located in the northern half of the province. We produce about three million kilograms of fish from some 530 lakes. However, we have the potential to double the catch, subject to market conditions.

Most of our members do not have access to daily newspapers, and often they do not have access to television that provides news from the House of Commons. Many of our members, most of whom are of aboriginal ancestry, do not have Internet access. For many literacy skills are limited. Most of our members up north were taken out of their communities to go working with their parents. That's how they made their living. So eventually they were taken away from school. They didn't learn to read or write, because their parents didn't know how to read or write either. So that's why in most of the north we still have that—a lot of people can't read.

Commercial fishers are stewards of the lakes. They have vast traditional knowledge and have worked in their trade from childhood. Many of these people are also trappers and work on a seasonal basis as guides in recreation fishery for wildlife adventure. We want you to know that these are very knowledgeable people and they are among the first to protect their environment and ecosystems and all species from harmful changes.

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Our regions have experienced many changes and impacts from progress, and most of it has not been positive for our ecosystem or our industry. Events, both local and very far from our homes and lakes, affect us. These include agriculture, drainage, irrigation, water storage, water diversion—from one river system to another—chemicals, weed and insect control, intensive and extensive livestock operations, transportation, and so on.

Hydroelectric development has affected our ecosystems and created change that is extremely disruptive and devastating to our rivers and marshes, completely changing the natural flows of water on which species have relied for millions of years to achieve reproduction and find nourishment. Added to this, in some cases, are works created by organizations such as Ducks Unlimited. Altogether, we have real devastation of our marshlands and watercourses.

Forestry practices of clear-cutting, building roads across rivers and creeks, and even the reforestation process, by ripping up large tracts of land in which to plant seedlings of one species only—monoculture—are not natural and will create very long term changes, all negative to species that are sensitive to this change.

We are currently experiencing land use planning processes as a system to clear the way for allocation of forest resources for the re-establishment of new harvesting and related mills and infrastructures. In these plans there is a public consultation process, but our people have neither the resources nor the time to engage advisers and attend these lengthy, drawn-out meetings.

In these LUP processes, RANs, representative area networks, are defined and recommended as a requirement to engage in forest harvesting. These, we believe, will neither preserve species at risk nor achieve any other real objectives unless they are more extensive and have the support of existing users. Further, we do not trust the system, as we expect that these can be withdrawn from development today and, if it is expedient, delivered into the hands of future developers for mining, forestry, or whatever is going that day.

The point of all the above is that we and the species we manage experience a cumulative effect. Any one action may not by itself be devastating, but the combination of rural and urban settlement, agriculture, forestry, mining, hydroelectric development, recreational development, and transportation development in total puts enormous pressure on the ecosystem and species therein.

We live in a land of broken promises. From the time the first treaties were signed to the present we have given over our resources for the greater good, or the greater evil, and have been consulted and insulted until it can no longer be tolerated. We are the recipients of crumbs, and in many cases our youth have little hope for the future without some major corrective actions being taken by industry and government.

We are supportive of the proposed legislation and look forward to working closely with the federal, provincial, and first nations governments, and industry towards avoiding further negative impacts on our ecosystems and species and the preparation of recovery strategies where indicated.

Water is the lifeblood of everything, the manner in which it flows, in seasonal natural patterns, uninterrupted, to nurture the plants, animals, birds, fish, and the human population. To safeguard our water and ensure that it is not carrying either chemical contaminants or foreign organisms is the beginning of ecosystem health. Likewise, air quality is essential to ecosystem and species health. Air and water keep the soil and its organisms pure—or otherwise, if they are contaminated.

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Water control structures for impoundment and drainage change the natural habitat. We have several examples of devastation by control structures, diversions, withdrawals, and other manipulation of water that, while appearing to benefit one group or another, are never complementary to the natural species or the original stewards of the land and water. In most cases, environmental impact assessments were never conducted, and there has been neither mitigation of the effects nor compensation that is satisfactory.

The Saskatchewan River system is the prime example; however, the Churchill River was restricted in 1928 by a subsidiary of Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting. In both cases, the culturally and economically important species of the river sturgeon is now vulnerable, if not endangered.

A well-known conservation organization, Ducks Unlimited, has spent millions in the Cumberland Delta and marshes, and for the most part, even though they write glowing reports, have not significantly increased bird populations, and in many areas, have caused devastation of the natural habitat and populations of furbearers and fish.

Steps need to be taken to develop a recovery strategy, which could include fish ladders, hatcheries, and habitat restoration, and in some cases, removal of the man-made structures.

In regard to technology, we are not opposed to technological improvements; however, we believe there are ways to utilize our hydro resources more appropriately and with greater sensitivity towards other industries. Even forest harvesting, while being conducted in large-scale operations supporting huge mills, could better be done with less capital investment and in a manner that preserves ecological integrity. Our planners and bureaucrats speak of integrated resource management, but we have never seen it put into practice, only exploitation of one resource at the expense of the others. These practices lead to degradation of habitat and eventually to the loss of species.

We are looking for methods of harvesting our fish that are more selective and respect the species that are at risk and those that are primarily targeted by other users such as the recreational fisher. This is a long-term development process and requires support from your sister agencies and departments.

On public consultation and participation, we applaud the intent within the act to provide for public involvement and citizen action. We would point out, however, that this is easier said than done, and our experience says it will not happen unless there are better mechanisms and greater resources placed in the hands of everyday citizens and those who are near to the scene such as the commercial fishers.

We encourage and urge you to ensure that sufficient research resources and support are provided to groups such as ours to enable us to participate in deliberations and make representation on a consistent basis.

Concerning educational programs and youth, it is essential that appropriate materials related to species at risk be made available to all sectors of society and included in the curricula of schools and universities. Where possible, elders should be utilized to deliver the message of sustainable development and respect for all species in God's creation.

In regard to renewable resource management, as commercial fishers, we would like to move to a situation where we have greater tenure and defined allocation of the resources that we utilize for our livelihood.

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We think in terms of a fisheries management licence and would interact with many agencies of the government to develop reliable population data and allowable harvest. These agreements or licences must be based in the aquatic ecosystem and where necessary, to be effective, cross provincial boundaries. These management practices would be positive for all species and would contribute to preventing them from reaching the position of being vulnerable or threatened.

We believe that prevention through conservation is important or more important than trying to devise recovery programs after the fact.

One thing I wanted to explain was the term “prevention”. Sometimes the term is being used to say, “Close off any harvesting that you're doing over there”. But that's not what we're saying. We're saying, Prevent them from doing damage while they're doing it or whoever is doing damage through other uses of the rivers or lakes in our country.

I do have a summary of major points here that is available. Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Thank you very much.

Mr. Forseth.

Mr. Paul Forseth: My first comment to John Carrière is to thank you very much for your brief.

First of all, in looking at your notes here, who wrote this brief?

Mr. John Carrière: It's a collaboration between Merle and one of our workers.

Mr. Paul Forseth: Okay. I particularly want to look at recommendations four, five, and six on the last page, especially recommendations five and six.

Recommendation five looks at the whole need for education, and that has been mentioned at committee before. Recommendation six really brings to my mind the need for a communication plan; that has also been mentioned by others. But recommendation four, where you urge sufficient research resources and support be provided to groups such as yours, involves the term we've heard before at committee called “capacity building”. I just want you to outline a little bit—because we get this same recommendation from aboriginal groups repeatedly—whether you are asking for your own environmental officers and your own scientists. Just give us the scope of what you're looking for in recommendation number four.

Mr. John Carrière: Number four, specifically, if I wanted to go to the other one for aboriginal people, it would be like you commented about all the aboriginals asking you this question. I would say they should be able to go to the government that signed an agreement with the United Nations on Agenda 21, where it states that they should get sufficient funding from the government to deal with the question. You asked me what managers and others think. If that were done, that would be a big help in our area. But what we're saying—the commercial fishermen that I represent are a body of aboriginal fishermen and non-aboriginal fishermen—is that we work together in Saskatchewan to try to do things.

There are things that we're doing, like the sturgeon study. We've a sturgeon study going on now for five years, based on some of the things that were written down or talked about, possibly endangered species. The commercial fishermen in our communities have been trying to work with the environmental resources in Saskatchewan but we haven't been able to go to the federal government. That's why we're bringing this now.

Mr. Paul Forseth: Okay. So I would take, in summary, that your main message is one of inclusiveness, to be included in the overall game. With this big piece of legislation, we've got all kinds of levels of government and bureaucracy going again and yet people at the ground level may again be cut out.

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I think you kind of alluded to, especially in your point one, a cumulative effect—to recognize the overall ground we're looking at and that you are consulted and you are in the overall operations of things that often tend to be very bureaucratic and operated at a distance. So you're looking for inclusiveness?

Mr. John Carrière: Yes. That's right.

One other area I did pick on are the words that have been used also like “may”, or “shall”.

Mr. Paul Forseth: Yes.

Mr. John Carrière: We've not been able to read much on this in the last two days. I did look at some of the stuff, but the aboriginal communities are just talking about the reserves. The aboriginal communities are also travelling—in my community, there were supposed to be five areas where the reserve was and the only way we would have been able to travel was by river. But since the dam and also with the way things have been working, there are hardly any rivers left to travel on, so there's no way to get to the other areas of the reserve. There are hardly any people in those old settlements.

Mr. Paul Forseth: Chair, do I have time for another question of a minute?

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Half a minute.

Mr. Paul Forseth: Okay. I think I'll leave it to the next round then.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Mr. Comartin.

Mr. Joe Comartin (Windsor—St. Clair, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Carrière, I was a bit intrigued with your comments about Ducks Unlimited. You said that it hasn't significantly increased the bird populations and in many areas has caused devastation. Could you be more specific about that and what's actually happened?

Mr. John Carrière: I guess in my area specifically—also in the river system where I make my living and also where we've been at—for most lakes all to the port of Cumberland, Ducks Unlimited spent $13 million in the first five years and filled a development area. They talked about getting an area where ducks would come out and also the fur population would come to.

From 50,000 to 75,000 muskrats that were harvested at one time, then there were none. So that's the kind of devastation when there are no muskrats in an area where there's a marsh; that's the kind of area. Also, in some years there were no ducks in that area to reproduce because of the drawdowns they were doing.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Could you indicate what they did to cause the muskrats to disappear and the bird population to be reduced?

Mr. John Carrière: What they did was put in some dikes and some control structures and they were able to draw down the river—the lake systems in that area—right down to nothing.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Have the populations come back since then?

Mr. John Carrière: No.

Mr. Merle Hewison: That would run all the way from Nipawin, Saskatchewan to Lake Winnipeg.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Has any work been done by Ducks Unlimited to go back and try to correct what they did in the first round?

Mr. John Carrière: No.

There's another area they did work on and another $4 million that they put in. And now they've changed the river system, and now the river system on this old Saskatchewan is changing. Wherever they were involved, the water is down to where there are no fish, no muskrats, no other animals; even the moose have moved out of there.

Mr. Joe Comartin: You also made reference to a specific fish and I didn't catch it.

Mr. John Carrière: Sturgeon.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Do I understand from the comments you made here that you lost those because of damming of rivers?

Mr. John Carrière: Yes.

Mr. Merle Hewison: That's because of the dam at Nipawin.

Mr. Joe Comartin: And was that because of Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting?

Mr. John Carrière: No.

Mr. Merle Hewison: No.

Mr. John Carrière: The Saskatchewan government put in a dam, the E.B. Campbell Dam, and those on Nipawin. There's also Manitoba Hydro. The Manitoba government put one in Grand Rapids. So we're in between dams—and there's also the Nelson River dam on the Nelson River and the Churchill River dam.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Those dams are all still functioning?

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Mr. John Carrière: They are still working, and they're stopping all sturgeon from travelling. There was nothing done; there are no fish ladders in there.

Mr. Paul Forseth: Is it flood control?

Mr. Joe Comartin: Was it flood control? Was it designed for flood control or hydroelectric?

Mr. John Carrière: No, hydro.

Mr. Merle Hewison: Just for hydro.

Mr. Joe Comartin: This is a new process we're going through at this point, as I understand; I haven't been here before. But we appreciate your coming and giving this particular perspective because we're not getting it from the experts. So we're quite pleased to have you here. We appreciate the comments.

Mr. John Carrière: I guess I would like to make a comment on Ducks Unlimited.

When we say that Ducks Unlimited's work is not working in the Cumberland area, it's not only there. The Moose Lake chief is also saying that, and The Pas chief. But what I'd like to say is that, on the 75th year, there is a story of myself and somebody else from The Pas Reserve. We did work with Ducks Unlimited before, trying to achieve something in some areas. But when they tried to deal with the things, I believe that's where they were wrong by not listening to the people again.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Thank you.

Mr. Laliberte.

Mr. Rick Laliberte (Churchill River, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just to move on to the fisherman aspect, the act itself deals with a lot of cooperation with the provinces. Because of the mere fact of the natural resources transfer agreement, the provinces hold a lot of responsibility. I think in your case with the research and the biologists that the province has, for the benefit of the committee, maybe you can explain where these researchers are based or what activities they have been engaging in to give you the information as resource producers in the north. What kind of research were you asking for, not only for your group, or should there be a northern research facility? I just wasn't aware of that.

Mr. Merle Hewison: If I could interrupt here for a second.... I would like to see, when we talk about that funding for the assistants and putting together studies and help, us have someone at our fingertips, like Ducks Unlimited has. They had a biologist out of the Saskatchewan government some time ago, a quite well-known activist in the Wildlife Federation, Allan Appleby. We need a guy like that who looks at our side of what we want them to do and gives an educated proposal to guys like you. When this type of thing comes up, then we can have good input and not just take the views that we see travelling around the country.

I travel around northern Saskatchewan, right from northern Alberta, right into northern Manitoba. I can see the impact that all of it has on the fishing because I work for the commercial fishermen. So I notice all those very strong impacts that Ducks Unlimited doesn't look at or any other specialty group that has a high lobbying profile for putting proposals in.

Mr. John Carrière: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to answer Rick.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Sure, go ahead.

Mr. John Carrière: About your question if we asked if we could have any areas for this kind of training for the people in the north, we did look at the marshlands in our area. The Cumberland area happened to be one of the deltas that's probably number three for marsh habitat and other fisheries structures. It would be something like the Mackenzie River delta. What we did ask for is an institute there for training conservation people in fisheries, habitat, and also wildlife management. If we could put a training area there.... We tried to put some in the north, but what happened was they put the building in Prince Albert. I think you were aware of that one, the adult training area.

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Mr. Rick Laliberte: The Woodlands campus?

Mr. John Carrière: I think that's what they put in there. They didn't put it in the country itself.

They did take that concept and try to put some of it into Atomic Marsh in Manitoba, if anybody is aware of that one. Ducks Unlimited are trying to to do that work with government. But we are now training biologists, having been able to get some students into the biology. Hopefully they'll start getting hired someplace where they could work and teach some other people, and provide advisory models for that resource training.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Mr. Laliberte, do you have any other questions?

Mr. Rick Laliberte: I can come back later.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Mr. Herron, are you okay?

Mr. Savoy, a question?

Mr. Andy Savoy (Tobique—Mactaquac, Lib.): No, I'm fine.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): I have a couple of questions and I'll take the prerogative.

First of all, when you talk about the river area and you talk about Ducks Unlimited dams, just to be clear, there are a lot of major dams that are not by Ducks Unlimited. The impact you're talking about, can that be broken down to those smaller dams, and it's not the big dams that are causing all the problems?

Mr. John Carrière: There are other dams, the recreational dams, that we talk about. They've stopped rivers for recreation activities. But they've stopped trout from travelling back and forth and they've stopped the sturgeon from going to their natural spawning areas. In some places the water is too low in the summertime and springtime and the water gets too hot. When it gets over 28 Celsius in the water then no fish is going to survive in those waters.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Can you tell me what the reaction will be of people like yourself when a scientific group says there is an endangered species in that river, in that area, and that its habitat needs to be preserved and it needs to be preserved, and that is going to have an impact on your livelihood? What would be the response, and what should government's response be? How would you respond to that?

Mr. John Carrière: I would gladly applaud that, say, if you preserve it for that species but don't close it for everybody, or don't close it for all the other species. Because all you're doing is targeting one species and you're saying close this area and nobody can go in there. But who's going to learn anything if you're not going to do anything? What we were saying is we will.... What we have done in our communities, say if there were no moose in our communities, which we lived on for many years, is we'd stop hunting in some areas. If there were no muskrats in our area what we did is we put in dams and then we didn't go in there for many years, and they came back.

I believe in 1946 the veterans came back from the war and they'd seen the effects of the work the Dutch did. In the First World War Saskatchewan veterans planted some trees, and in the Second World War the loggers from Saskatchewan went and cut those trees—that many years. From learning that and seeing that, they were able to say we have to start planting trees after people have cut in our areas. That's what the veterans talked about.

What did they do? They started making conservation areas on their traplines and they started developing marshes for the beaver and other animals.

Basically what we say about our marshes is if you can look after the marsh you will be able to look after the moose and the mouse. That's the biggest of the animals in our country and the smallest, which is a mouse. If they could have them survive in that environment by building up the marsh, then you were using conservation. And that's what the old-timers did.

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Basically what we've done in the river system is try to use some kind of a waterway like a dam, but not one that would restrict the water when the floods come. Our little dams are not like what Ducks Unlimited does, build a dam and then try to use big dikes, long dikes or ditches, just like they did in the Florida Everglades, which is also a swamp. But now the U.S. government is talking about having it go back to what it was in the old days. They're going to take away the dikes and the ditches in that area. That's what I'd like to see happening in my country.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): I'd like to ask Mr. DeMarco one more question. If you took the reverse of this, because it's not in the bill, I wonder what are the reasons it's not there and what would be the drawbacks. What would be the perspectives of government, the public, of industry to not have that in there?

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: That's an excellent question, Mr. Chair. Why it isn't in the bill is something that's beyond me and others who sat on the committee. That would be a proper question for Ms. Wherry or other representatives of Environment Canada or the minister's office.

We were led to believe that if we put together a consensus proposal it would be looked at positively and would have a good chance of being included in the bill. And indeed Minister Anderson's December 1999 plain-language proposal seemed to indicate that it was forthcoming. Why it didn't make it in, I simply do not know. It is quite disappointing in that regard.

In terms of the various perspectives, our committee was spawned by the very large gatherings, the national accord stakeholder gatherings, that Environment Canada convened in 1998. There were several hundred participant stakeholders in those gatherings, and that process came up with key principles about effectiveness and so on. They're set out in my brief. The report of that 1998 workshop and so on is set out in my brief at tab 3. If I could just turn to that, tab 3, page VI, at the end of that paragraph, I've sidebarred the right-hand column. It says the participants of that large workshop

...agreed to a three-step process that begins with a request for an investigation of an alleged offence and if necessary proceeds to mediation followed (if necessary) by third party review.

Third party review is the alternative dispute resolution model.

In order to consider the many outstanding questions a working group was struck and asked to keep participants informed of their deliberations.

Our working group, our ADR committee, came out of that with a broad consensus on the three steps necessary to provide the government accountability in enforcement. Our group met and came up with a draft report that was presented back to the large stakeholder groups in October 1998 for further input and then there were subsequent meetings with the Prime Minister's Office, Environment Canada, and Justice Canada officials before we finalized our report.

Each of the members of the committee, myself in the environmental law sector, others in the environment forestry, fisheries, and oil sectors, went to their own constituents and they kept people apprised of what we were coming up with. And we found that our approach, because it maintained the government accountability but removed the prospect of costly court actions, was very well accepted by the public, and indeed was based entirely on the consensus that had been reached in the multi-stakeholder committee meetings in 1998.

So in my view this proposal is a good reflection of what the public would find to be an acceptable solution that responds to landowner concerns about being dragged into court, which would be the prospect of a civil suit. It avoids that, but it removes a situation where there's complete government discussion in enforcement and in place of that adds one element of accountability that in our view would help ensure that proper enforcement is taking place.

I'm speaking on my own behalf today as a member of that committee, and I would encourage you to also solicit the input of the other committee members to hear their specific views on this.

We were quite proud of the consensus we reached and we're still hopeful that this bill could still be amended to include it.

• 1620

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Thank you very much.

Mr. Forseth.

Mr. Paul Forseth: Following that, if we look at subclause 93(1) in the bill, this is where an investigation can be asked for. It's not quite parallel, I guess, to the old citizen suits, but it does say this:

A person who is a resident of Canada and at least 18 years of age may apply to the competent minister for an investigation of whether an alleged offence has been committed or whether anything directed towards its commission has been done.

Then it goes through the whole process.

According to this section, once the minister reports, that's it, it's final, game over. If an individual or a group was really unhappy, I suppose they could go to the general provisions of judicial review, which would be probably quite expensive to launch, and probably in the Federal Court of Canada.

Can you again outline for us why your alternative was not accepted? For instance, have you directly asked Karen Brown, the assistant deputy minister, what happened to the process? Have you made direct approaches to the ministry to see what happened to all your work?

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: I would encourage this committee to ask those questions of both the minister's office and Environment Canada officials, because there really isn't any defensible reason for rejecting this approach.

As Professor Emond mentioned in his letter, which is appended to my brief at tab 5, it is a workable approach. It has the advantage of having stakeholder buy-in already engaged.

It's somewhat surprising that in this bill we've seen deviations from not only the consensus in our ADR committee but also the consensus reached by the endangered species task force of several years ago and the new SARWG group that came up with its own solution. We're seeing groups—sometimes like ours, with an Environment Canada mandate, and sometimes like the SARWG group, on their own—taking it upon themselves to come up with these consensus proposals and do the political manoeuvring that should be the job of government. Yet we're still not seeing the government implement those decisions.

This can be contrasted with the story, for instance, on the cover of today's Globe, where the forest industry and environmentalists and first nations on B.C.'s west coast came to the government with a consensus proposal on protecting the habitat of the rare kermode bear. The government there implemented the consensus that was brought to them.

In our case, not only have we witnessed our proposal not being implemented but we actually haven't heard back as to why it hasn't been implemented. What the obstacle is I do not know, but we're hoping to avoid the prospect of having to resort to such inefficient means as judicial reviews when there are problems with an investigation. We'd like to keep the alternative model we've proposed of mediation and alternative dispute resolution, which is much more costly and effective.

Mr. Paul Forseth: Okay, I'll put it to you directly: Have you written the department? Have you made some phone calls? Have you asked specifically why this wasn't included?

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: With respect to the last bill, the only answer I got was that a handful of public submissions quarrelled with it, but out of the several hundred that were coming in through the stakeholder group, that wouldn't be sufficient to turn it down.

So, no, I do not know why.

Mr. Paul Forseth: You're saying you don't know, but I'm asking you, what efforts have you made to actually ask the ministry to give you an answer?

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: We were appointed by the ministry to provide them with a report, and our work ended there. The committee no longer functions as a group, and hasn't since 1999, when it submitted its report. We weren't tasked with following up on that. I'm just as curious as you are as to why it's not been followed up on.

Mr. Paul Forseth: Well, it's just kind of interesting—

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Very briefly.

Mr. Paul Forseth: —because that whole process is almost parallel to what we're talking about in the bill, that someone is going to do something, the minister then behaves, and it's game over. If this is a portent of how the ministry is going to operate in the future about the bill, then maybe we're a little bit worried.

I'll leave it at that.

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: Perhaps we should have put in a dispute resolution process for the dispute resolution committee's report.

• 1625

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Ms. Carroll.

Ms. Aileen Carroll (Barrie—Simcoe—Bradford, Lib.): I think Mr. Forseth has taken my line of questioning, and he's hitting his head against a brick wall, so I'm not sure it's going to help for me to do the same. But, just to tell you, Mr. DeMarco, we're getting to the point where we want to say, who are those masked riders anyway? Because we have a witness who came in—and I can see him sitting there, but I've forgotten.... He said there has been internal disagreement within departments, not particularly on the ADR or the potential of an independent review mechanism, but on other things. So when we question him, he doesn't know who those masked riders are either.

So I think what you're saying is that the onus now comes to the committee—that's our job as legislators to determine if we had, as we have said before, this broadly based agreement from such a disparate group of stakeholders, and these are the recommendations. Who has felt that they were not valid, and what was the reason for thinking so? We've got to get those answers; we really do. You suggest we ask Ms. Brown. To be fair to Ms. Brown, I would say that I, for one, did not ask her about the independent review mechanism, I don't think, but I certainly asked her about some of the other recommendations, again, that were broadly based as a result of all of this consultation. I didn't get an answer.

At some point we have got to find out whom to bring back to get the answers, because it's obvious that this just seemed to have so much agreement before it came into the form of the legislation. I'm sorry I'm being redundant, but let me join you in our redundancy. Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Thank you, Ms. Carroll.

I'm just going to interrupt—Mr. Comartin, you're next—to see if we could just take a quick look at the budget while we still have our quorum and while we still have a minute. If our witnesses would just excuse us for one second—stay right there, and we'll just do our thing here.

Basically what we need is a motion, Mr. Forseth.

Mr. Paul Forseth: Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm moving that the committee adopt the budget in the amount of $211,836 for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2002.

(Motion agreed to)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Good. Back to Mr. Comartin.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Thank you. When Ms. Brown was here, we did get some indication on the compensation points that the regulations were being.... I'm sorry; this is for Mr. DeMarco, Mr. Chair.

They were working through the regulations on compensation, and ADR would obviously be one of the major areas where it may come up around compensation. Have you had any indication that they're considering building some kind of an ADR system into the regulations, as opposed to into the legislation?

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: That would be a solution, in fact, if we had seen a provision, perhaps a bit more mandatory-sounding but still similar to clause 64 on compensation, where the minister is to set up by regulation a compensation system. If there was a similar provision saying the minister shall within one or two years set up a dispute resolution system to deal with enforcement and compliance issues under the act, then we would be happy to work out the details in the regulation. But there is no provision that even enables that in this bill.

So it's not a case where we're just simply waiting to see what comes out of the regulations on this point because there's no enabling clause to even promulgate those types of regulations.

Mr. Joe Comartin: I have a follow-up question, Mr. Chair.

I would like your reaction if that is proposed—that is, the recommendations we have and just the enabling clause—at some point, either immediately or in the future. What would your group's response be? Would you be satisfied that it was in regulations as opposed to being detailed in the legislation?

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: There would be the need for one enabling clause in the act to ensure that these regulations would come to pass—a mandatory clause in the act that set out perhaps five or ten points that are in our report that say the regulations shall provide for a review body that deals with subject matters A, B, and C; has the power to issue orders A, B, C, and D; and will deal with disputes of the following nature, and the regulations will provide those details. That would be the way to deal with it as a short-form amendment.

• 1630

If the government were predisposed to fixing the bill in a more substantive way, the lawyer, Ms. Kairys, from the firm of Gowlings has presented to this committee a detailed report on the actual specifics and legislation that could be put forward as a government amendment to deal with this right in the bill rather than in the regulations. So it depends on whether it needs to go in in short form or in long form. It's possible either way, and I would encourage this committee when it does get further along in its deliberations to call people like Ms. Kairys and Professor Emond for detailed advice on how to actually structure those particular provisions in order to make sure that a dispute resolution process like ours is in fact put in place.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Thank you.

Mrs. Redman.

Mrs. Karen Redman: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. DeMarco, some members of the ADR committee who have appeared in front of the standing committee on Bill C-5 did not express the concerns you're presenting with the fact that there's no ADR mechanism defined in the act. Can you clarify for us why that's so?

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: Why what is so?

Mrs. Karen Redman: Some members of the ADR committee have appeared before us and have not expressed concern that there's no ADR mechanism in this act.

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: I believe that two members that have gone before me are Mr. Rotherham and Mr. Miller, and they're speaking to the entire act. Certainly their priorities are compensation, property rights, and forestry issues; and I'm not surprised that in their brief presentations they weren't able to cover all aspects of it.

Ms. Aileen Carroll: Can I have a point of information here?

Is the Mr. Miller to whom you're referring the Mr. Miller who was before us this week from Imperial Oil, barrister and solicitor?

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: I believe I saw him on this list. I'm not sure if he actually was here.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Yes.

Ms. Aileen Carroll: I can help you understand why he doesn't agree with this, but thank you. I just wanted to know.

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: As the clerk indicated to me, Mr. Rotherham had a question as to whether I was speaking on his behalf or on behalf of every member of the committee. Certainly I'm speaking on my own behalf and using the report as my speaking point, but Mr. Rotherham, Mr. Miller, Ms. Wherry, Professor Emond, and all the others on the committee can speak for themselves as to their views on it now, two years later, since we finished our work.

Mrs. Karen Redman: Bill C-5 contains many provisions that provide for transparency, openness, and accountability, and the additional accountability is also provided through a judicial review process. Is this not sufficient? Are you really suggesting to the committee that ministerial discretion should be overruled by putting the final decisions in the hands of a review panel, and that elected representatives of government are ultimately accountable for decision-making in the implementation of legislation?

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: I'm absolutely of the view that if a minister exercises his discretion in a manner that is not in accord with the act, then that should be subject to review. If you wish it to be through the federal court, through the unwieldy process of judicial review, then that's your prerogative. I think the reason that our committee was forged was to try to get it out of the courts to put in a fairer, more timely, and less costly approach to dealing with these sorts of disputes.

We did, on page 11 of our report, indicate that this was not simply a second kick at the can at ministerial discretion, asking a review panel to simply substitute its discretion for the minister's discretion or the enforcement official's discretion. The conduct of the review, as noted on page 11, would be on the basis of whether the action taken was, is, or will be in accord with the act. So it isn't a carte blanche for opening up all matters of discretion. It's a targeted review process for enforcement inaction or enforcement action that was taken that was not in accordance with the act.

Mrs. Karen Redman: Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Does anyone else have a question? Mr. Comartin.

Mr. Joe Comartin: I have a question for either Mr. Carrière or Mr. Hewison.

• 1635

You make some points in your brief around prevention. Again, are there any specifics in your respective areas that could be done to avoid getting species onto the at-risk list, any specific things you want to see done?

Mr. John Carrière: The hydrology is one area we'd like them to look at. They could control the water levels below the dam with a more manageable water system, not go lower than what would be there. That would be favourable for the fish in those areas. What we're looking at is the lifeline of the fish in that area, and also the animals around there that are living off the insects and other stuff in the swamp area. If you take that swamp away, then nobody survives in there. That's one of the preventions we'd like to see—stop that practice from going too far down. Up where our streams are they're flooding too much. There are four dams there, and in some places they're flooding, putting in more water so they can restore water for their power.

Mr. Merle Hewison: The changes are too drastic, as when they decide to let water go.... I can recall one, and I imagine Rick can too—he was up in there. They lowered the Reindeer Lake four feet in late November, after the trout had spawned and all the trout spawn was up in the rocks. Granted, they're not an endangered species, because they're pretty healthy there and pretty strong. But that's the type of thing we have to watch.

These things, as we say, seem to all go hand-in-hand, including the spraying in the farm country and all that washout, the PCBs coming out of the oil fields in Alberta right through the water system into Saskatchewan, into Manitoba. It hits the ocean before it gets to Ontario, but again, that's the type of thing, from province to province—there are no boundaries for that type of stuff.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Mr. Laliberte.

Mr. Rick Laliberte: Mr. DeMarco, you talk about the ADR, the alternative dispute resolution. Could you give me some idea of what you expect could be sorted out? Have you cased out some scenarios that this would be applied to in the act?

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: Yes. We went through some fact scenarios. For me to speak to and answer that question, it's probably best to go the charts. In tab 1, following page 13 of the English text, and following page 15 of the French text, there are charts.

We envisage three steps. I should preface this answer with the fact that we felt the inclusion of steps one and two would mean that very few disputes would ever have to even get to a tribunal. By putting in this feedback loop, giving the minister a second opportunity to do a proper investigation, which is step two, you would never have to get to the third party review process, except in very rare circumstances. That's certainly the case in Ontario's environmental bill of rights, where you ask for an investigation, and you can go to a citizen's suit after that. That applies to every environmental law in Ontario. I think there have been two cases in the eight years of that act, so it's not something that will be resorted to very often. Even knowing that, we added a second step that's not in the environmental bill of rights in Ontario, one which gives the minister a second opportunity to do a proper investigation.

Following this chart, step one is dispute avoidance, all the various stewardship, educational, recovery efforts that would reduce the number of disputes that would arise. There are many of those mechanisms in the act, and they will weed out the vast majority of disputes.

Step two would be initiated through the application for investigation provisions in this act. So someone would see the habitat of a species that was destroyed through a development, submit an application saying “I'd like you to investigate this, Environment Canada official, I think that habitat was destroyed”.

• 1640

Now follow step two across to the right-hand side of the page, on the top right: if it was a successful investigation and the action solved the problem, that's the end of it. If there is an improper investigation—i.e., it wasn't in accordance with the act—or if the request was rejected on the ground that it frivolous or vexatious and the applicant had proof that was not the case, then they could ask for a new investigation. So they would ask the review body to order the Environment Canada official to do a new investigation in accordance with the act. Our expectation was that this would resolve almost all of the disputes at that stage—ask for the investigation, give them a second kick at the investigation if they did it improperly.

Turning over the page to step three, you find the last resort option. If the investigation was still not conducted properly and the action did not solve the problem of achieving accordance with the act, then the third party review would take place. The square box talks about mediating a solution, and that is certainly something many of the members of the committee advocated, rather than going directly to an administrative tribunal or a civil suit at court—try to mediate the solution. If there is still a minor outstanding matter, you'd have a one-person, low-cost review process. And if there was a significant matter that still existed, you could have perhaps a three-person review panel look at the issue of whether the ministerial action was in accordance with the act.

So going back to my example of the destroyed habitat, if the enforcement action was not taken against that violation of the act and the facts bore it out, this review panel could then step in and issue the restoration order needed to protect or restore that habitat, in the absence of any government action to ensure that.

Our view is that this provision that a tribunal could, at the end of the day, require the government to do the right thing in accordance with the act would actually not be needed, because it would provide the incentive for the government to do the right thing in the first place. It's that last resort mechanism's mere existence that creates the incentive for doing the right thing early on.

That's why, as we set out in our report, we foresaw very few things ever getting to this final step three issue, and that has proven to be historically correct in Ontario, which actually has an even briefer process that goes to the third party review even faster. But even with that faster process in Ontario, we're still seeing very few cases where it has to get to the third party review—in Ontario that's a civil suit.

Mr. Rick Laliberte: Step one is in the act now, right?

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: That's right.

Mr. Rick Laliberte: Step two is in the act as well, right?

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: Just the first part of step two, the request for investigation, but not the—

Mr. Rick Laliberte: Not the reviews.

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: Yes.

Mr. Rick Laliberte: And then step three is totally missing?

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: Yes.

Mr. Rick Laliberte: Going to some of the concerns the fishermen have, a lack of communication in the communities, in the regions, this process could serve in that sense too. The mediation and the review could create a dialogue at the community level to bring about awareness.

Mr. Jerry DeMarco: Absolutely. Using the examples put forward by Mr. Carrière, there will be lots of situations where an improved communication vehicle, like mediation or review, will bring together the solution that's necessary without having to choose between giving up with ministerial discretion or going to a court. Those are two very different ends of the spectrum. This puts in a process that would be affordable and accessible to people, so they could get a better forum for having their say if they find that the individuals they're typically dealing with within the government—whether its a bureaucracy or another group—are not understanding their perspective or their traditional knowledge of the area. This will provide an opportunity to have an objective party look at those things through either a mediation or a review process. In my view, that's infinitely more attractive than having to force individuals and citizens to choose between giving up or going to court. Having a middle-of-the-road approach would be much more appropriate.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Mrs. Redman.

Mrs. Karen Redman: Thank you, Mr. Chairperson. I'd like to direct a question, if I could, to Mr. Hewison and Mr. Carrière.

• 1645

One of the acknowledged strengths in this bill, according to a lot of people, is the fact that it takes into account aboriginal traditional knowledge. We've talked a lot about communication, and I think there's certainly a consensus that we'd like to do a better job. From your experience, what's the best way to be inclusive and to communicate government policy as it evolves and how this bill could impact on the people in your community? How can the government do a better job of this?

Mr. John Carrière: Our communities in the north are mostly aboriginal and have their own languages. In northern Saskatchewan different dialects and languages are used. Rick Laliberte couldn't talk to those people because he would not know Dene or probably wouldn't be able to speak some of the other dialects. We would like to see a group of people with different languages work with the committee or somebody who has been recommended or even have it in law. If we could use our languages in talking to the persons.... I could talk to Rick in my language and he'd understand some of the things I'm saying better than if I spoke English.

I believe there are some other gentlemen who speak specifically Cree or just their languages. I do believe that some of the MPs on different committees have heard some of these gentlemen speak in their languages, and an interpreter is able to articulate some of their ways into English. But it makes it sound like this guy has gone to school someplace, but he didn't. So we would like to have some kind of mechanism whereby we could communicate these things.

Right now we don't have that. We have to pick these up someplace or take the liberty of bringing them to some of the gatherings that are around. I would like to talk about seepseek, which is Beaver River, where Rick comes from. Those elders will be talking about their ways and what they did and what they want to see happening.

I'm a fourth generation commercial fisherman, but I don't think I'll see the fifth generation fishing. One of them is going to be graduating in biology, the other one is going to be going into veterinary medicine for wildlife, and I don't know what the other one is going to be. He wants to be some kind of machine man. So they're talking about different livelihoods. Those are my kids. So after I quit fishing, that's the end of it for my line. For commercial fishing as a livelihood, I don't know how many generations back I would be talking about. That would be way before Canada or any of the other things we would be talking about.

That kind of communication didn't happen. Look at the animals that were around before any other industries or things were happening. They were able to preserve and keep animals intact for themselves. Those are the same people there. It's the other things that are coming around and destroying it. Even the human beings that were living there were destroyed at one time.

Mrs. Karen Redman: Thank you.

Mr. John Carrière: Merle.

Mr. Merle Hewison: I think you covered it pretty well.

Mrs. Karen Redman: He didn't leave anything out. It sounds like he has high praise for Mr. Laliberte.

Mr. Merle Hewison: We've all known each other for a long, long time. We worked with education and everything in the north. We're dedicated to making a safer place for people to survive, as our ancestors did generations back. We hope we can see some betterment in it before it's too late. We don't want to see another loss of a fishery on the east and west coasts.

We have a lot of good fish in northern Saskatchewan, northern Manitoba, and northern Alberta, but there are too many allocations that are not taking into consideration some of the people who really depend on it and allocate it to somebody to have fun. We think a livelihood should have a little preference over fun.

• 1650

We always work, Rick, I can assure you, on a sustainable yield basis. A few years back there was one little piece of Saskatchewan that went to the government, and political favours were offered and an extra limit given. Rick knows the area pretty well. They ran out of fish. For a long time all they could fish for was rough fish. But it's now coming back up because a lot of effort has been put into the rehabilitation of it.

Sometimes fishermen would come up and say “We want to catch more fish. Let us go out there and keep doing it.” I would say “No, you're just going to do the same thing. Take it on a sustainable yield basis, what that lake can hold every year, to have it a hundred years down the road for your kids and your grandchildren.” Then they start thinking more that way.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): I'd like to thank you for being here. I think a message that all of us have heard is that farmers, ranchers, and fishermen are sometimes the best environmentalists and conservationists out there, and we do have to trust them to do a lot of that work.

On behalf of the committee, I thank the three of you for being here.

I remind the committee that tomorrow's meeting is at nine o'clock.

Mr. Laliberte.

Mr. Rick Laliberte: I just wanted to mention, through you, Mr. Chair, that if they have any afterthoughts to their presentation, they could send them in writing to the clerk.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Certainly.

Mr. Rick Laliberte: That way, if there's anything in the bill or you hear on the news that certain things are developing from our committee and you want to comment, there's an opportunity for you to provide input to us by directing it to the clerk.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): You can do so through the clerk, and then all members will get it.

Mr. Merle Hewison: One of the points we put in there is to have close contact. I got that first draft report from Anderson. I couldn't find too many people who could understand what it was talking about, even though I tried.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): We do have problems with too much legal jargon.

Mr. Merle Hewison: That's right.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Mr. John Carrière: Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Bob Mills): The meeting is adjourned.