Hello David, Thank you for your response. Unfortunately, your statement is not accurate. As described in detail in our Report ‘Haste Makes Waste’ (pages 21 to 27), once a lease is purchased, oil sands companies are required to conduct substantial on site exploration including cutting of geophysical seismic lines and drilling of exploration wells. This results in significant land fragmentation and disturbance prior to any environmental assessment being conducted. So, for example, the leasing process is contributing to continued loss of habitat for threatened woodland caribou. This exploration is completed before the environmental assessment and before the project is approved. In fact, as this disturbance occurs before the environmental assessment, it is not even considered during the application process. Additionally, in Alberta we have never seen an oil sands project turned down at the application stage. For this reason, prior to granting of leases is really the only viable opportunity to consider whether a project should or should not be developed. From this perspective, it would make much more sense to incorporate the environmental assessment and public involvement in these earlier stages prior to companies sinking millions of dollars into exploration and project planning. -Marc