Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to speak to the committee today regarding the Great Lakes water quality, an issue that my colleague from the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Mr. Bitran, has indicated is very important to the province of Ontario from an environmental

Environment committee  Environment Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada have been active participants in the Lake Simcoe protection plan, initially through, as you suggest, funding on the lake, and currently funding through the Georgian Bay-Lake Simcoe initiative. Much of the work within the a

Environment committee  I can't quote you the numbers on the watershed basis for Lake Simcoe, but in Ontario there are about 59,000 farms in the province, and 23,000 best practices have been funded over about 13,000 different farms. We find that for every dollar that Canada and Ontario put in through

Environment committee  The agreement provides a right to be consulted for any large consumptive takings or exports from the basin, and a right to be heard. It provides certain legal remedies. It would not constitute a veto power, but it does allow you to be heard. It's a reciprocal process, so each of

Environment committee  Yes, of the Great Lakes states.

Environment committee  It has a right to be consulted, and be heard, and given a legal standing in the process. The process varies for each jurisdiction.

Environment committee  There is a regional body that coordinates the process, but the hearing is in the local jurisdiction.

Environment committee  Yes. If it's Wisconsin that the water taking occurs in. I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with the particular application you're speaking to. Let me turn it around and say that if Ontario were to do this, when we went out for public consultation, it would give the Great Lakes states th

Environment committee  My ministry administers the Drainage Act. In the last year we've worked with the conservation authorities of Ontario, the drainage superintendents in Ontario, who are usually municipal employees in charge of drainage in their rural municipalities, and the Ministry of Natural Reso

Environment committee  Yes, certainly. Mr. Chair, the formal name of the principal program I was referring to is the Canada-Ontario farm stewardship program. Colloquially, it's usually called the environmental farm plan. It's a joint federal-provincial program between Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Environment committee  The program generally runs on a sixty-forty basis, with the 60% being provided by the federal government.

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  There are slightly different ways of calculating. Those were 23,500 best practices.

Environment committee  The report prepared by the International Joint Commission and in which the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food participated is founded on work by the Science Advisory Board and the Water Quality Board. It states that if you look across the Great L

Environment committee  I don't have specific stats. Certainly we fund some portions of wetlands work under the Drainage Act where it's agricultural, and the vast majority of our budget has now gone to maintenance rather than construction of new drains. I agree with Mr. Wilcox that the rules largely pre