That question really relates well to one of the department's priorities over the last year and a half. That was how to take the overall smart regulation approach and apply it to major natural resource projects. The reason we had been drawn into this priority was the fact that we have, for one thing, a significant increase in the demand on our regulatory agencies in review and assessment of large natural resource projects. There's about $300 billion worth of projects that are pending review—either are in review or pending review now—at the federal level.
One thing we had heard loud and clear from a number of different stakeholders was that our overall systems within the federal government lacked a coordinating or management function. In the development of the major projects management office, which the minister referred to and which was funded in budget 2007, the aim was to improve significantly the performance of the federal government overall when it came to the review of major natural resource projects. So it's not only the environment assessment, which is coordinated by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, but the regulatory review by departments like DFO, Transport Canada, and Environment Canada. NRCan itself is a regulator when it comes to the area of explosives on large NR projects.
The idea was to pull together an office that would be able to establish an overall management regime for these projects. We secured a cabinet directive that provided a direction to all regulatory agencies to work together and sign large agreements for these large projects. The office itself was funded out of budget 2007. It provided not only the funding for that office but also support for capacity in the other major regulatory agencies. It was launched in February of this year, so it's now up and operational. We are just finalizing project agreements and templates for these agreements that will contain timelines and distinct accountabilities for each regulatory agency.
I think this will improve significantly the performance of our regulatory system. We certainly will rely on committees like your own to be reviewing progress on that front as we proceed, because just the volume of natural resource activity under way is so vital for the economy and the environment of the country.