Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for being here.
I'm not sure I'm going to be able to ask the right questions, so just bear with me. I think the committee is attempting to understand two parallel parts of the process. We have the cumulative process that is going on, which has resulted in concerns being raised by the Pembina Institute and others with respect to tailings; groundwater, shallow and deep; and the entire ecosystem, if you will. We have a process that is cumulative in terms of identifying the degree of those effects on the environment. On the other hand, while you have the cumulative analysis, you also have another regulatory regime that is an ongoing approach, which has been described as environmental assessment. You have a joint review panel that looks at it application by application. You also have CONRAD, which is looking at a consolidated tailings development scheme, if you will. And you also have new technologies coming in that deal with cumulative problems. But we fear they're not being implemented quickly enough; Pembina says they won't be implemented until 2050.
I guess the question I would like to posit on behalf of the committee is, where are the crossovers? When we had the National Energy Board, the question was, what regulatory regime or levers do you have to intervene with respect to getting particular action? So you have a cumulative regulatory process, out of which, obviously, there are certain recommendations that will come out, for example, perhaps in a bilateral agreement. Where is the crossover where that information is then fed into the environmental assessment, which determines whether there is going to be a precautionary process that will then click in? That's what the public wants to know, and that's what we're charged with in this committee. That's why we're going up to have a look at what's going on up there. But I think the committee would also like to have a sense of what that comprehensive regulatory framework is, both cumulative and ongoing.
I know that's a long way to go to get an answer.
Mr. Vollmershausen, is there perhaps any sort of ORP chart that shows how those crossovers happen, if they do, and if they don't, who's going to recommend they should be?