Good morning. I am pleased to be joining you.
I am in charge of the Environmental Protection Branch at the Department of the Environment. Our purpose is to monitor, prevent and manage pollution from various sources, to prevent air and water pollution, and to manage risks associated with chemical substances.
We work with our counterparts from Health Canada and, as my colleague Ms. Gonçalves said, we provide scientific and technical support 24/7 to help better manage emergencies. We work closely with our federal, provincial and, in some cases, municipal counterparts. We also work on managing hazardous waste to ensure that it is properly managed and eliminated safely.
In addition, we also ensure the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as my colleague Mr. Jones mentioned.
This area is definitely one of shared jurisdiction. We work very closely with our provincial and territorial colleagues to help deliver on this important mandate. We also have a responsibility for managing environmental programs, such as the federal contaminated sites program, to help reduce the legacy and liability from past practices that have resulted in environmental contamination on federal land. We put in place regulations and other risk management measures. We work collaboratively with industry in helping to reduce and manage the pollution and pollution sources that we spoke about. We take regulatory and other actions under a couple of key pieces of legislation: the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, and the Fisheries Act, in terms of both the general prohibition and administration of some key effluent regulations, including pulp and paper, metal and diamond mining, and wastewater system effluence regulations.
We also support some of the work that my colleague Sue mentioned under the Migratory Birds Convention Act and the pollution prohibition provisions there. We are responsible for helping to support the department's work on the modernization of our legislation—the CEPA modernization, for instance—and we are working to help bridge the environmental gap that we find on reserves.
With respect to air quality, we work collaboratively with our provinces and territories to improve air quality. We are also working collaboratively with our colleagues at Health Canada in the development of an air quality management system that would help set standards and emissions requirements for industries and equipments. We also put in place regulations—