Thank you very much.
I guess I would comment on two parts. First, with regard to your reference back to target 4.3 and how it's reflected in the strategy, there is an action plan, the St. Lawrence action plan, that's been in place for a considerable period of time. It's actually something of a model of intergovernmental collaboration between the federal and provincial governments. It covers across federal departments and across provincial agencies. It intersects with both municipalities and communities up and down the St. Lawrence. There's a series of comités ZIP, zones d’intervention prioritaire, right along the St. Lawrence. It's a long-standing means of looking at the St. Lawrence on both the economic side and the environmental side.
With respect to the particular release of sewage by the City of Montreal, I think that was the minister's day one on the job, just before she had to head off for international negotiations on day two. The first action was that she issued an order with respect to the release of sewage, and in that order, it did two things.
First, it established a monitoring program that the City of Montreal was obliged to follow so that we would have good information on what were the consequences of the diversion that had to take place for maintenance work and what were the effects on the ecosystem and the communities. That was one part of the order. The second part of the order was that the City of Montreal was obligated to participate with Environment and Climate Change Canada and the affected first nations in a comprehensive review of the circumstances that led to the cause of the release, with the intention of avoiding those circumstances in the future.
That review is still going on. A series of workshops have been held with the communities, with first nations communities, with the City of Montreal, and with the provincial government. The workshops looked at what happened there. They're looking at the scientific information that was provided by the monitoring program and will be coming up with a report to the minister, hopefully by the end of this month, on actions that can be taken to avoid this in the future.