Thanks, Mr. Chair. I think, through the questions that I had of the Minister and his staff, I was trying to get to a point where we would better understand how this nomination process is really supposed to work.

I don't want to relive what was written in the dissenting opinion that we read into the House yesterday, but as I understood, the nomination process is supposed to happen quickly and is basically like a checklist. If the supplied information is provided, it should be just a straight conformity check that, once the supplied information is put together, a decision is made on forwarding that area into the candidate review phase. That is where the Minister has discretion, at the end of the day, to decide whether to establish an area, but also give it some interim protection and that the public can have a say in that, in how the boundaries might be set, in who might manage it, and all of that stuff would be negotiated through an establishment agreement.

The nomination phase is really meant to happen quickly, confidentially, and as long as the basic information is submitted, the Minister is supposed to make a decision. I don't understand why there is this unfettered discretion, in my view, in section 10(6), where the Minister may, at the Minister's discretion, reject a nomination area under this section.

In working with the Minister on the committee, we were provided a list of circumstances under which the Minister might decide to reject a nomination. That is what this list is in the amendment, the list that we were provided by the Minister and his staff. These were the reasons why the Minister might not want to accept a nomination. What I have done here is just to incorporate the list that the Minister gave us as the reasons why the Minister could still reject an area for nomination, so it becomes like a conformity check.

I also think of this as like somebody applying for a job. Do you meet the basic requirements? If you do, you get screened in, and you get an interview. That interview is what the candidate area process is all about. That is where everybody has a chance to look at it, decide whether the candidate is good or not, and you have a chance to talk to them, interact with them, you can double-check references, and so on. If everything checks out, they get the job; the area gets established as a protected area.

I think of this nomination process as sort of the basic requirements of something moving forward, a simple conformity check, and if it meets those basic things, it just gets forwarded on to the candidate review process. That is the way that I have understood this to work and its intention, and I think that my effort here is to try to clarify the Minister's authority over that process, to make for an efficient process and make for a fair process. That is what the intention is here. That is all I am trying to do, Mr. Chair, and I look forward to the discussion and debate. Thank you.