First, I'd like to thank the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development for allowing me to appear this morning. It's a very important issue, of course, that you are referring to today.
I have brought with me a copy of the final report of the Lake Winnipeg Stewardship Board. I'll leave it with the clerk. We are having it translated into French as well. And I have French and English copies of the press release we sent out when I released the report a few months ago.
I'm going to start very quickly, then I want to get into the questions.
Water, of course, is very important to all Manitobans, to all Canadians. Manitoba is home to three of Canada's largest lakes, including Lake Winnipeg, which is Canada's sixth Great Lake and the world's tenth largest freshwater lake.
Lake Winnipeg is situated wholly within the borders of Manitoba. It covers about 25,000 square kilometres. However, the drainage of the watershed is nearly one million square kilometres. There are parts of the drainage basin in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and of course, Manitoba, as well as in the four states of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota.
Lake Winnipeg is unique among great lakes in the world because it has the largest ratio of surface area to drainage basin. For every one square kilometre of lake surface there are 40 kilometres of drainage basin, and this speaks to the prairies--the flat, wide expanses of land.
The three major watersheds that drain into Lake Winnipeg are the Winnipeg River, coming from Ontario; the Saskatchewan River, coming from the Rocky Mountains in Alberta through Saskatchewan; and the Red River, which comes from North Dakota and other states in the south.
We are experiencing cultural eutrophication, which means that through human activity we are getting regular algae blooms. Lake Winnipeg is home to over 30 communities situated around its nearly 2,000 kilometres of shoreline. We have a very large inland commercial fishery industry that has an annual catch of 55 million a year. There are also world-class beaches, which of course bring tourism.
Scientific studies in Manitoba indicate that the loading of nitrogen and phosphorus in Lake Winnipeg has increased by over 10% since the early 1970s, and unless we make changes throughout the entire watershed, we will see this escalate.
Since 1999, we as the Manitoba government have taken several actions that we feel are quite significant. However, there is more to do.
We launched the Lake Winnipeg action plan in February 2003. The focus of this action plan was to begin the process of reducing nutrient loads in Lake Winnipeg to pre-1970s levels. As part of this action plan, the Lake Winnipeg Stewardship Board was created.
We then passed the Water Protection Act, which gave us a strong new framework to guide the management of water quality and quantity. This act allowed the nutrient management regulation to come into law. Extensive consultations have been done on this regulation with all the stakeholders, and shortly we will be bringing it into force. It provides limitations on the amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus that can be applied to Manitoba's landscape, and for the first time in Canada, it will apply to nutrients from both animal manure and synthetic fertilizer. We've also established buffer zones and sensitive areas where nutrients cannot be applied.
With the assistance of the federal government, through the International Joint Commission's International Red River Board, we have reached an agreement with North Dakota and Minnesota that will see us reduce cross-border contributions of nutrients to Lake Winnipeg by 10% over five years. We have heavily invested in requiring nutrient reductions at waste water treatment facilities in our province's major cities.
The Lake Winnipeg Stewardship Board, which presented its final report recently, outlined 135 recommendations in 38 areas in which to take action. We have accepted them in principle, and in fact, we have already acted on 84% of the recommendations. The board has been given a new mandate. It is to ensure that cross-border linkages will restore the health of Lake Winnipeg. And we have established a federal-provincial Lake Winnipeg action plan implementation committee that will report to the Lake Winnipeg Stewardship Board.
I was very pleased that both the federal Minister of the Environment and the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans have agreed to participate in this committee through their staff.
To end the problem in Lake Winnipeg we need sound science. We established a science subcommittee that will serve to meet the needs of the Lake Winnipeg Stewardship Board and other committees as needed.
Again, we are pleased that there is support from the federal level as well as participation from Ontario and, through the Prairie Provinces Water Board, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Since 1999 Manitoba has contributed and committed about $130 million to new water and waste water treatment infrastructure. On November 8, 2006, among other actions, Manitoba placed a pause on new and expanding hog barns and engaged our Clean Environment Commission in a review of this sector to ensure that it was environmentally sustainable.
While much has been accomplished, there is more to do, and we must collectively work to keep moving forward. Strong Canada-Manitoba linkages are needed. I'll go through some specific areas that I hope we will make real progress on.
One is implementing basin-wide watershed management. As I mentioned, the Lake Winnipeg watershed covers four provinces and four states. I am hoping that we will have the sort of support we need at the federal level as well as interprovincially to be able to cut down the loading of nutrients into our water.
We must continue to build on science. Science, of course, is an ever-changing and ever-developing area, and we must be open to what our new knowledge will teach us.
There is a need to develop and implement new Canada-wide policies and regulations to reduce the phosphorus content of cleaning products such as dishwasher detergents. While significant success was achieved by federal actions in the 1970s to reduce the phosphorus content of laundry detergents to help protect Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes, significant amounts of phosphorus are still contained in many other new household cleaning products such as dishwasher detergents.
It is now time to repeat the successes of the 1970s with laundry detergents by reducing phosphorus in other cleaning products. A strong federal approach in this area could possibly come under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. This way, we would have Canada-wide regulations creating cost-effective solutions not only for Manitoba, but for all of Canada.
It's important to note when we look at the Lake Winnipeg watershed that what goes into detergent in a dishwasher in Edmonton finds its way into Lake Winnipeg. That gives you a sense of how vast and broad our catchment is and how important it is to work collectively.
There have been many successes through the agricultural policy framework. We have certainly seen a lot of benefit from the beneficial management practices, and we know local producers in Manitoba are very pleased and very happy to be working with this program.
Finally, there is a need to significantly increase federal-provincial investments in enhanced municipal waste water treatment. We hope that this will be done to provide consistent levels of tertiary treatment across the country to reduce contributions of nitrogen and phosphorus to our waterways.
I'd like to bring my opening remarks to a close by recognizing the children from grade 2 to grade 6 in Lakewood elementary school. Just last week I received a package of several hundred pieces of art and written letters asking me to take care of Lake Winnipeg. With this hope also came the concern that their collective pleas to governments would not be heard. I want to assure those children and all of our children in Manitoba that their pleas have been heard.
I think that when we look into the eyes of our children collectively, we know what our task is. By working together, we will achieve that for them and all future generations.
Thank you.
