David McGuinty: Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague on her speech and pick up on the theme that was raised by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance.
If indeed the government has been working on these changes for years, I am wondering if the member could help us understand why it is that just recently the government dispatched 10 senior cabinet ministers around the country to try to convince Canadians that the environmental assessment process would be capped to two years, only to then have to admit that in fact, when a project proponent delays, the two-year timeline no longer applies.
Maybe the member could help us understand, for example, how that applied in the case of Imperial Oil in the Northwest Territories.
Elizabeth May: Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has put the case very well. I will just say that most of the delays we have seen take place in the past, for instance, on large projects such as the review of the Mackenzie gas pipeline, were directly due to the proponent not being ready, and that has created delays.
A lot of us would like to see certainty around reviews, but we want to make sure the proponent cannot rag the puck so long that the process gets delayed and then those interested parties, and in a different category particularly, the first nations interested parties, have to rush to catch up with their analyses when the proponent is responsible for the delay.