There will be a lot more.... Right now, we spend about 80% of our time with our staff, looking at chemical assessments and their requirements. We're compelled to provide all of the data requirements that the government imposes on us under the act.
What the senators are suggesting we do that could cause.... The EU, for instance, has thousands of chemicals assessed annually, and we hear at this committee on a regular basis that it is a better approach. REACH, since 2006, has assessed 2,300 substances, whereas the CMP has assessed 4,230 substances. The TSCA in the U.S. has done just 10.
We don't have the capacity to comply with all of the extra requirements to submit data as some of those proposed amendments imply. In Europe, they have hundreds of millions of dollars that they spend, which is way beyond what Canada can spend, so we're going to be challenged there as well. We don't have that capacity now to get all of the data we need without...and not meeting targets at the same time.
We have very high requirements now, and that would only triple the work we do. We can't keep up now. We're missing deadlines in data submitted, and the assessors are missing deadlines in assessing the data. We are trying to get the data. We think that substantive data is required to do a full and complete assessment.