Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wish I had much more time, because I have many questions.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here.
What I'd like to focus on is how we enforce a coherent strategy for water management. I heard testimony about some things you looked at, Mr. Pomeroy, back in the nineties, which were predicting what was going to happen. Things didn't change very much.
Right now, we're talking about a national water agency, which is amazing. It will consolidate, coordinate and do more research. However, one problem I see constantly in Ontario, where I am, is that we're not all working in the same direction. There are different priorities and objectives.
One example in Ontario is a connector highway called the Bradford bypass. It's going to be a small highway of 16 kilometres costing over $1.5 billion. It's crossing the Holland River twice and having a huge impact on Lake Simcoe. It's taking up wetlands, farmlands and all the natural infrastructure we need to keep. The priority of the municipalities and the government is development and putting in another roadway that will help with traffic congestion, which is real, but rather than looking at other options, they're sticking with a lot of the same solutions we had before this climate crisis.
I think Lake Diefenbaker is a bit the same, from what you were saying. It's necessary, but how we look at it and what we do have to change.
How do you think we can address that? Even if the Canada water agency consolidates and does the research, if other levels of government don't move in the same direction, we are going to have a very hard time meeting our goals when it comes to water management and fighting climate change.
This is for Mr. Pomeroy.