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OTTAWA — The federal government “could be doing more” to protect the environment, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver said Sunday.

Oliver was responding to last week’s report from the government’s environment watchdog — a report that highlighted numerous weaknesses and confusion in federal efforts to protect water and monitor activities such as fracking and offshore oil and gas exploration.

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Oliver told CTV’s Question Period that the federal government was determined to address the concerns outlined by Scott Vaughan, the federal commissioner of the environment and sustainable development.

“There are a number of areas that he identified that we have to do more about,” Oliver said. “Yes, we could be doing more, and that’s precisely the value of a report like the report from the commissioner for the environment and sustainable development.”

The Fall 2012 report, tabled last week, called on the government to ensure that companies were prepared to clean up multibillion-dollar environmental disasters, expressed concerns about recently adopted changes to the federal Fisheries Act that remove protection for some bodies of water, and noted that the federal government still couldn’t identify potentially harmful substances used by companies in gas extraction through hydraulic fracturing of shale rock.