Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses for being here and for the work you're doing on this really important topic.
I particularly want to thank you, Mr. O'Connor, for your challenge to this committee to focus on the topic at hand, because water is life. We know this is a very important study that we're doing that has been interrupted several times by diversions on other things that are not necessarily on our agenda right now.
You also mentioned that we all have a favourite body of water or lake. Mine is Lake Simcoe. I'm the member for Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill. It's a medium-sized lake, a large watershed, and almost 500,000 people live in the watershed area. It's been faced with many challenges, especially phosphorus loads, climate change, and many invasive species, although different from the ones you have.
One thing that I have found to be very disconcerting is that even though we might agree the federal government should have jurisdiction over some of these issues, often when provinces are not in accordance with the same goals or have different goals, we cannot see progress made.
In this case, there has been extensive development. There are new highways, and many things are threatening, or continue to threaten, and continue to increase the phosphorus load and other problems this lake is experiencing.
How do you think the provincial and federal governments should collaborate? How can we work to help these freshwater bodies when provincial governments are not of the same mind?