Environment committee  The agency is composed of the employees who were working on water previously in the various disparate units across the department. That's in the range of around 120 employees, who were working on various water programs and who have now come into the agency. Also, we've hired a few more to work on the policy and the coordination issues in the past year, and we're starting to build our corporate services.

Environment committee  In our executive cadre, we have nine, including me.

Environment committee  Indeed, we have a call out for programming for the Great Lakes. We have a call out for Lake of the Woods and for Lake Simcoe. We have a call out for Plan Saint-Laurent, and we are preparing calls for the other remaining freshwater ecosystem issues.

Environment committee  We could table for you those for which we have decisions. For those that we have a call out on, we don't have the decisions yet on what those projects will be, but we can certainly table with you what the call has been—the purpose of the call.

Environment committee  The agency will not have regulatory powers, no. The regulatory authorities for the minister that come from the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the Fisheries Act or the Migratory Birds Convention Act that deal with water will remain with the department.

Environment committee  Water flow will continue to be done by the Meteorological Service of Canada. Water quantity, the science work, will continue to be done by Environment and Climate Change Canada's science and technology branch.

Environment committee  There are two key elements of our mandate that I would like to put forward. The first part is that we are to be implementing the freshwater action plan. That consists of eight freshwater ecosystem initiatives across the country, and we will be continuing to work with provinces and territories and other partners for their implementation.

Environment committee  The department undertook consultations from 2020 to 2022. They spoke with thousands of Canadians. They had a number of bilateral and multilateral conversations with provinces and territories and held a separate consultation with first nations, Métis and Inuit. In much of those interactions, it was recommended that an agency be created to be a focal point for coordination, for addressing issues around data and data accessibility and availability in Canada and to continue the work to implement the freshwater action plan, including being a place for the implementation of the agreements with Ontario, Manitoba and Quebec on the freshwater ecosystem.

Environment committee  Chair and members of the committee, thank you for having me here today. I'm Daniel Wolfish. I'm the acting assistant deputy minister for the Canada water agency. It's a delight for me to return to your committee and to participate in your study. As the chair noted, I am joined by several colleagues.