Yes, I am, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much, and thank you for the invitation.
Good afternoon, Members of the Committee.
I am joined by John Reed, Principal at the Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development. He has played a major role over the last few years in our work on toxic substances.
The purpose of my presentation today is to support your evaluation of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act by recapitulating for you some of our past work that has a bearing on the Act. Specifically, we will highlight some key findings as well as ongoing concerns about the government's assessment and management of toxic substances.
I am not going to read the entire text of my presentation, which you have in front of you, since I would like to leave as much time as possible to Mr. Reed. Allow me simply to mention that up to now we have done two audits and one follow-up. The first two took place in 1999.
At the time, we released two chapters, one of which was entitled “Understanding the Risks from Toxic Substances: Cracks in the Foundation of the Federal House“. In this chapter, we focused on the way federal departments provide scientific information to support decision making.
The fourth chapter in the 1999 report was called “Managing the Risks of Toxic Substances: Obstacles to Progress”. It focused on federal departments' management of the risks created by substances identified as toxic.
Finally, in the 2002 report we did a follow-up called “Toxic Substances Revisited”, where we examined the departments we had initially audited to assess their progress in implementing our 27 recommendations.
Although our work on toxic substances included aspects of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, it was much broader than the act alone. While our findings are somewhat dated, we hope they can support the committee's evaluation.
John Reed, the principal who led our 1999 and 2002 work on toxic substances, will now lead you through a brief slide deck presentation, of which you have a copy. After that we will be more than happy to answer any of your questions.
Thank you very much.
John.