It's my privilege and pleasure today to welcome you to the province of Ontario and the 90th annual conference of the Air and Waste Management Association. I hope you take advantage of this visit to see our city and province beyond the venues for this conference and enjoy some of our Canadian attractions and warm hospitality. Monitoring and solving environmental problems are difficult and challenging tasks. The knowledge you share is essential to protecting and enhancing our environment. I am also hoping that this transboundary dialogue will provide some reinforcement for our efforts on transboundary issues.
Air quality is a priority for Ontario.
We are also committed to providing leadership for this collaborative process. We recently proposed new, tougher interim standards for inhalable particulates in ambient air of no more than 50 micrograms per cubic metre of air over a 24-hour period. Working with the petroleum industry, we have lowered the volatility limit of summer-grade gasoline to reduce the release of VOCs by as much as 18,000 tonnes across Southern Ontario this summer. Ontario's smog plan will not exist in isolation, however. Because we know that not all of our air and water quality problems are home grown.