We have said in the past with respect to the environment, and I guess I have said this too many times before this committee, that we need leadership at all levels.
In the case of CEPA, it's clearly federal jurisdiction, and we are hoping that some progress will be made. We will be able to report on that next year. I would caution you not to use our 2002 conclusions too much, because things have evolved since then, and we cannot tell you how much progress has been made—and, in some cases, neither can the department.
What Mr. Reed was suggesting, and I will just re-emphasize this, is that the best way to see how CEPA is working is to go substance by substance and to look at what the status was a couple of years ago, before the CEPA review, and what has been accomplished since then. Then you will be able to draw your own conclusions on how much CEPA has been able to achieve.
If I may just expand a little bit, Mr. Chairman, on what we have said in the past and on what CEPA is all about.... Mr. Moffet has talked about the PSL1 and PSL2 substances. We have talked about assessment here; assessment is the first step in moving on and managing.... You still need to have a very good understanding of the status of the management of those substances.
Also, don't forget that collectively, as a country, we have to deal with the 22,000 substances on the domestic list, and some of those substances will get on the PSL2 list, so we will have to manage those too. When you raise questions related to the resourcing, you have to be forward looking and ask yourself if we will be able to manage those substances too. At the time of the 2002 follow-up, we said that if 1% of the substances were to make the CEPA list, it would take decades to deal with those substances. So always keep in mind the forward-looking aspect; there's not only the CEPA toxic list as we know it already, but we have the backlog and the upcoming substances that may end up on that list.
I haven't talked much, and I will stop here, because Mr. Reed can give you all the appropriate answers.