Environment committee  Sir, your timing is perfect. There is no better opportunity to have that kind of cooperation than we have, really, as of today. The International Joint Commission essentially, through a very intensive study that has been essentially confirmed by other parallel, university studies

Environment committee  I believe phosphorus is probably the most significant and dominant concern right now. You are correct. We have made very good progress on toxics, and a lot of that had to do with the banning of PCBs and DDTs so we stopped the flow into the system. With projects like Hamilton har

Environment committee  Yes, mercury from coal-fired power plants. But then there are emerging chemicals of concern, and Canada and the U.S. are working very closely on that to try to make sure we don't recreate the problem we had. That is an area where we have made good progress. Really, phosphorus is

Environment committee  Again I am not an expert in this area, but this is what I hear experts say about it. The answer is no. Although water clarity has improved because of the zebra mussels, you need to understand the quagga mussels are quickly “out-muscling”, if you will, the zebra mussels. I'm sorry

Environment committee  I am not familiar enough with the federal and provincial regulatory system on the Canadian side to speak to it. The federal government does have a role on the U.S. side, although it's a very controversial point. It's a long-debated legal question as to what constitutes a water of

Environment committee  I would be happy to start, Mr. Chair. Your question is very timely, and your observation is very accurate. Wetlands are a tremendously underappreciated part of the ecosystem. It's really where the water and the land interact the most. In terms of habitat for fish, birds, other

Environment committee  I'll do my best. Even though I am a recovering lawyer I grew up in a county in Wisconsin that had more cows than people, and they were often in my backyard in the morning. And I worked on a farm at one point. In terms of being able to expedite the process, dealing with phragmi

Environment committee  Mr. Chair, if I could give one example that is really going all across the Great Lakes, big, medium, and small cities, it is phragmites, these invasive plants that are coming in and turning our wetlands into monocultures where they don't function effectively as a habitat or from

Environment committee  I knew I would have to come to my true confessions, I am an English major lawyer. A recovering lawyer, though.... They are a plant that is not native. I don't think it's native at all to the U.S. or Canada. It has been introduced. Maybe John can bail me out on this but it is a t

Environment committee  That is a fair statement. It is not willy-nilly. In my 40 years in this work, I have spent almost as much time with Canadians as with Americans. I was at the federal level for 30 years and worked very closely with Environment Canada. It's absolutely essential.

Environment committee  It's a lot more difficult than it should be. In theory you would think that all of the cities would say, we're doing these great things and we want everyone to know about them. Honestly, people in cities are, first of all, so busy dealing with the next crisis that even being able

Environment committee  There is a good strategy and practice. I don't think it is as strong as it needs to be. I need to clarify something. The International Joint Commission itself is not responsible for this. In the first instance, it's the Canadian government and the U.S. government. There were reme

Environment committee  No.

Environment committee  So—

Environment committee  As with most things on the Great Lakes, it's not really simple and straightforward. First of all, we have to make a distinction between the salties and the lakers. Through the political process, on the U.S. side at least, the lakers are not subjected to the same requirements tha