I am going to have a question for Professor Parker, who talked about PFAS in her opening address.
Before doing that, however, I want to come back to what my colleague Mr. van Koeverden said earlier, that the government wanted to ban certain plastics and PFAS. That is a good thing, but the real problem is that the small municipalities dealing with PFAS-related problems are being left on their own. We know, for example, that military bases use firefighting foams with a high concentration of PFAS. Wherever there are military bases we will probably find these same problems. And yet the government is having trouble acknowledging this problem.
The costs associated with this are substantial. For the city of Saguenay alone, an $11 million agreement was made with the federal government. However, that money is not enough to solve the problem; it will simply give the people affected temporary access to potable water.
Apart from acknowledging the need to ban plastics and PFAS, the government has to be able to acknowledge its responsibility when it is itself involved in events that cause PFAS to be introduced into potable water sources.
With that said, I come back to my question for Professor Parker.
Does she know of any technologies that would let us get rid of PFAS-type contaminants?