I have found over the years in looking at this issue that water is such a diffuse issue—I mean, so many people are working on it in different capacities and at different levels of government and at the grassroots level—that whenever there's a problem such as with water quality in the Great Lakes, which I know is a big problem, there is no lever you can pull on to say, “We'll do this and solve the problem.” The issue seems to be coordination, but there's so much to coordinate that we can't seem to wrap our minds around it.
As I understand the problem in the Great Lakes, it's that there are many components. One is waste water, which contributes to pollution in the Great Lakes.
Last week, I went to see a presentation by one of your colleagues—was it Dr. Blais?—who came to speak to us. She is a biologist at the University of Ottawa. She said that really it's not good that we still have waste water problems, but they seem to pale in comparison, if I understood her correctly, with the problem of phosphorus coming though agricultural runoff.
I was interested, Mr. Florean, to hear what you had to say about how you have improved streams and prevented agricultural runoff.
Earlier in the presentation today, someone mentioned the federal environmental farm program. What is it, and how does it link with efforts such as yours and those of other watershed groups and with provincial regulations regarding agricultural buffer zones and so on?
Can you give me a picture of how all this might work? Is this federal environmental farm program useful, or is the government going to say soon that it's better that the provinces do it?