I'll start trying to answer your question by addressing that we've identified essentially seven mechanisms for informing our risk assessment process. The seven mechanisms are the categorization process we've already discussed that was taking a look at the 23,000 substances in commerce and screening that down to the 4,300 we believe might pose a risk to humans or the environment.
As my colleagues have already mentioned, for any new substance that would enter the marketplace we already have a very good process in place under the new substance notification. A new substance cannot enter into commerce in Canada without the risk assessment process.
In addition to the categorization I just mentioned, we have industry submissions through CEPA. We have provincial and international decisions that we monitor to keep abreast of what other countries are doing, not only in their assessments but in their management plans. We have public nominations under CEPA; if anybody from the public has a concern about a substance in commerce, there is a process to bring that to our attention, and we must respond to that.
I've mentioned the new substances notification process. Also, we have emerging science and international assessments, which I partially touched on, whereby our scientists, risk assessors, and risk managers are constantly keeping abreast of what other countries are doing, both on the science side and on the management side.
Finally, and very important--at least for my branch in science and technology--we do data collection; that is, we have biomonitoring programs whereby we're looking at water, wildlife, and fish, but we also have research programs. Under chemical management plans, we have a very good process in place to identify substances that we think might be of concern, and we conduct research on those to try to better understand the fate of these substances in the environment or their actual harm to animal life or environmental conditions.