Environment committee  There could very well be, but it's outside my area of expertise. That's why I can't give you a direct answer on it.

Environment committee  That would be Environment Canada on the Canadian side and the EPA on the U.S. side that are doing those—

Environment committee  They're part of the routine monitoring for the Great Lakes themselves. But again that is being cut back to some extent. The way monitoring proceeds on the Great Lakes right now is that each Great Lake is targeted for an intensive year of study in rotation. So last year was the in

Environment committee  That's a fundamental part of monitoring, and the sediments in the water are monitored on a regular basis. Keeping track of what those trends are is another part where we don't have the resources. We have loads and loads of information that sits there in the databases because we d

Environment committee  No, it isn't. This is research in which I am involved with colleagues at the University of Minnesota Duluth, with support from the U.S. EPA and some funding from Environment Canada, to develop maps of where the stresses are the greatest and the lowest, and then match the stress w

Environment committee  Well, we have formerly received funding to create the maps. We don't currently have funding for that.

Environment committee  It's a very short timeline. The guidelines are required to be in place by September 2016, I believe, and that has to be after public comment. There are three or four meetings a year of these panels to try to bring the science into line, make the recommendations, and then evaluate

Environment committee  That's absolutely correct. Lake Erie is the poster child because we have the most information, the most scientists, and therefore the best understanding of the relationships. That can certainly be applied to the different Great Lakes. Because we almost have three different lakes

Environment committee  That is true, and I'm actually on the task group that's charged with estimating that based on the best available science. Presently, the guidelines that have been proposed for Lake Erie have been 11,000 metric tonnes per year. When we have a normal year in terms of rainfall the a

Environment committee  That's an important phase of it. The other thing to recognize is that the different rivers have different amounts of contribution from agriculture versus rural and suburban areas. One of the points we try to make is that so much attention seems to be devoted to the Maumee, which

Environment committee  I am to some extent. Yes, we're helping to sample in some of the areas. One of the biggest challenges in understanding the condition of the Great Lakes is that over time funding available for monitoring and conducting research has declined. We know more about the conditions in La

Environment committee  Yes, I agree with that too. The timeframes are very short for setting goals, but there's very little in terms of actually implementing them, as we've said.

Environment committee  One of the problems we have is that we have surprisingly little information. This is a point I wasn't able to make, but despite all the efforts, all the attempts, the funding for doing the basic research, as Mr. Sweetnam said, just doesn't seem to be there. If you have only so ma

Environment committee  They recovered in 1992. That's what got me my start there. There wasn't supposed to be any there, and they had recovered very well. They're missing from the eastern part near Leamington. That's the one part of the lake where they haven't returned. But the populations are doing be

Environment committee  It depends on what part of the lake you're looking at, because we have a shallow western base—