I can start, and I'll allow my colleagues to add to it.
You're quite right that many of these things are ubiquitous in products. That's why we are working on this regulation to deal with, for instance, the content of mercury in products. We envision this regulation becoming a standard to which we can add other substances so that we can quickly regulate these other substances that contain hazardous products.
The second thing we are working on--and we are working with the provinces on this--is what we call “extended producer responsibility”. Many of the provinces already have requirements that hazardous substances have take back programs, so that the substances go back to the manufacturer or are disposed of in a specific way.
We are now looking at whether or not there should be national regulations governing extended producer responsibility. There are also initiatives that municipalities and private companies are putting in place.
There are the two ends of the spectrum. One is preventing or reducing the amount of a hazardous substance in a product, and the second is dealing with the disposal of that product in a safe and sound manner. With respect to things like computers, there are now places that do collect and disassemble them in Canada. Sometimes there are actually valuable minerals that can be recycled and reused. That is now happening in Canada.
There are also standards for avoiding shipping offshore without proper assurances that it's going to be disposed of properly. For the Government of Canada, Public Works governs that, but it is in response to the regulations and instruments that we're putting in place.