Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As this is our last meeting on this important study, I'd like to make a comment and then ask a broader question about the Canada water agency.
First, I'd like to thank you for the call for proposals, in particular on the freshwater ecosystems. I represent Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, and it's very important for Lake Simcoe in particular.
Many of my constituents are concerned not only about Lake Simcoe but about fresh water across Canada and the challenges we're facing. In fact, in the public engagement process, as reported in the “what we heard” report, almost all the people who participated in that process supported the government's initiative to establish the Canada water agency. I think it spanned 75 days of engagement, over 2,700 Canadians, 900 national forums, six regional forums, tens of thousands of website visits, emails and much more, and it ensured regional engagement from coast to coast to coast.
Also, then, in this committee, we've heard from a great many witnesses over the course of this study, most of whom support and find a need for a Canada water agency, but there are some who question the need for it, including a member of our committee, who questioned it earlier in the meeting. Because of that, I want you to comment broadly on the need for the Canada water agency. Even though we've had provincial and territorial watershed authorities and many departments and agencies in the government addressing the serious issues facing us with fresh water, we still see that the challenges have been increasing over the past few decades.
As someone who is concerned about the future of our country—and the future for the next seven generations, as indigenous people often say—I feel that if we don't have this coordinated, concerted effort made by the government to establish the Canada water agency, we're not going to be able to address a lot of these challenges. I'm talking about things like droughts, obviously, and the tailings ponds, and the management of water and water quality—in fact, all the sorts of things that we've been talking about.
If you could, talk a bit about how the CWA is going to address those concerns more broadly, why you think this is necessary and what might happen if we didn't put this in place at this stage in terms of the progress of these challenges and the destruction of our fresh water.