It's not a problem. I probably will not need four minutes.
I'm going to talk to the deck entitled “Environmental Stewardship Branch”. The environmental stewardship branch is essentially the regulatory and key program branch in the department. All the regulations and most of the programs are in my area.
I'll walk you very quickly through the deck.
Wildlife is obviously a key part of what we do. The Canadian Wildlife Service is in my branch. The Canadian Wildlife Service has various aspects to it. We administer migratory bird sanctuaries and protected areas. We administer the Migratory Birds Convention Act. We administer the Species at Risk Act, as well as WAPPRIITA, the Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act, which is the act that essentially administers CITES, the international convention on trade in endangered species. A lot of our work is driven by the international context—the Convention on Biological Diversity and CITES.
I'm just going to look at page 5. The Species at Risk Act is a large part of what we do. There are various stages set out in SARA for assessment and eventually protection of species at risk. There's an independent committee that provides assessments, a listing that is done by the Governor in Council, and we oversee recovery documents and protection measures. We're well under way to eliminating a backlog that we inherited on recovery documents. We expect that in a year from now, that backlog will be eliminated.
On page 6 I talk about CEPA, which is one of the two other major pieces of legislation that we administer. CEPA is the basis for a lot of our regulatory measures. We are one of the, if not the, most active regulatory departments in town. We give Treasury Board a lot of its business.
Karen talked about the chemicals management plan. Again, we're the risk managers. We work closely with the scientists and use what they tell us to decide what we need to propose to the minister and Governor in Council in terms of what regulations to put into place. Among the regulations that we currently administer, there are a lot on vehicles for both air pollution and greenhouse gases.
I'm going to talk finally about the Fisheries Act, on page 9. The Fisheries Act is where we administer the pollution prevention provisions, and we have a number of regulations under that act that we administer.
Finally, we provide support to the agency and to the National Energy Board on environmental assessment.
I will stop there. Thank you.