This is an area where we have in fact made a fair bit of progress since the hearing with the Auditor General. I can't quite remember, but it's 11 or 12 areas where the Emergencies Act requires the department to take the lead.
We have developed draft plans at the strategic level in every single case. We've gone down one level of detail to try to make sure that when an emergency actually happens, we have practical processes set out for people to deal with it. They are now tentatively in place.
For example, we opened the new operations centre in the department to be able to deal with these. Mr. Brown's sector is responsible for electrical reliability, and there's a specific plan to deal with that. If you were interested in asking him, I think he could tell you about it in a little more detail. It involves coordinating with the provinces to make sure we know who is involved in the provinces in terms of the sharing of electricity. We have similar arrangements with the United States. We have written arrangements now with the United States to deal with the sort of blackout that occurred in Ontario. We also have plans to ensure that notices of these kinds of events are put out in a very organized fashion.
There is another one where I in fact disagree and continue to disagree with the Auditor General, for example, when she said that our department's plan for dealing with mine disasters was inadequate. I had to remind her that this is a provincial responsibility. NRCan is responsible for one mine, and it's one mine that we own.
We have a plan for that. One of the difficulties we have in this area is that the actual resources are owned by the provinces. A large part of what we do is to coordinate and make sure that their plan and what we can do with the federal government are on the same wavelength. I think we've done that fairly effectively.
Perhaps you'd be interested in having Mr. Brown tell you a little about electrical reliability.