My name is Aaron Freeman. I'm the policy director with Environmental Defence Canada. I'd like to talk about the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Basin as one of Canada's most vulnerable ecosystems.
The basin is home to more than 30% of the Canadian population, and it generates about one-quarter of our GNP. It's the largest freshwater ecosystem in the world, and it's hard to overstate the seriousness of this basin as a toxic hot spot. Fifty-eight per cent of the industries that report to the National Pollutant Release Inventory are located within the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence Basin. Air, water, and land-based pollution releases are disproportionately high, with nearly half of all toxic air pollution being emitted within the basin. Canada is falling behind the United States in terms of cleaning up the basin. On a per facility basis, National Pollution Release Inventory facilities emitted on average 93% more air pollution than their U.S. counterparts. According to the Commission on Environmental Cooperation, between 1995 and 2002, Canadian facilities reported a decrease of just 2% in air pollution, versus U.S. facilities reporting a decrease of 45%.
For the first time, we're now seeing the United States moving forward in Great Lakes protection generally without Canadian participation. While Canada allocated $125 million over five years for Great Lakes protection in the 2005 budget, U.S. legislative commitments to restoration efforts leave Canada lagging far behind. These include the 2002 Great Lakes Legacy Act, which earmarked $270 million to cleaning up contaminated sediments; and the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration, which was established by a presidential executive order in 2004. It identified the Great Lakes as a national treasure and it brought together stakeholders from various levels to complete a comprehensive, integrated plan for improving the Great Lakes, and the plan was released in December 2005. The collaboration formed the backbone for two federal bills, each of which have garnered widespread congressional support. These bills would earmark between $10 billion and $20 billion for Great Lakes cleanup work, boosting research and monitoring, cleaning up contaminated sediment, and remediating the effects of invasive species.
There are serious effects of the United States, moving forward, with legislative commitments without Canada, and I can go into some of those impacts in the Q and A. The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement is currently being reviewed. This agreement has been a model for international cooperation, but we need to bring the agreement up to date. One of the things we're proposing is for CEPA to be the implementing mechanism for this agreement.
Finally, it's worth noting that all four major political parties pledged in their last election platforms to implement restoration efforts in the basin.
What we propose is a new section of CEPA to protect significant geographic areas that are vulnerable to pollution. My submission goes into greater detail as to how this would work within CEPA, but first it would grant the Minister of the Environment the power to designate a geographic area “significant” if that area is especially vulnerable to pollution, or if high levels of toxic substances are used or generated in that area. Second, we would propose designating the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence Basin as the first such area, establishing pollution prevention goals, including overall five-year and ten-year pollution prevention targets, elimination goals for carcinogens, for smog precursors, and CEPA-toxic substances.