Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair, esteemed members of the committee, thank you for your invitation. It's a pleasure to be here today.
For 20 years now, the Rivers Foundation has been working on water quality, access to riverbanks and protecting our rivers' natural state. We believe in increasing and expanding the respectful uses of water and waterways so that more people enjoy, care for and protect water.
Among the challenges we are currently facing, the first is to dispel the false perception that urbanized waterways and rivers are dirty and polluted. Our rivers are no longer the dumping grounds they once were, even though there are still major challenges in terms of treating municipal, industrial and agricultural waste water and there are too many microplastics and emerging contaminants. Be that as it may, we have to reclaim our waterways.
In addition, we must dispel the false perception that water can be contained, channelled and controlled. As you know, because of climate change, there is too much water in some places and not enough elsewhere. If we were smart and allowed waterways to flow freely, they could help us better adapt to climate change.
I bring this up because we are mediators in the field of information. We interpret data with the intention of protecting our water sources and rivers. We take knowledge and we act on it. To be able to act, we have to start by taking a balanced, holistic and pragmatic look at the situation. That is what we did when we tackled the issues related to municipal waste water treatment in Quebec. We organized the data that was provided by municipalities and collected for years by the Government of Quebec.
The previous witness mentioned that a lot of data is being collected. Indeed, we are almost obsessed with data. However, no one analyzes the data. Not a lot of people get useful information out of it, but that is precisely what our organization has managed to do. We processed the data using the Microsoft PowerBI platform. We developed an extraordinary diagnostic tool called AuditEAU. This tool enables us to publish annual rankings based on wastewater overflows and a map that allows us to compare how various municipalities in Quebec are performing.
The impact was immediate: The media relayed the information, citizens became involved and, above all, elected officials got on board and made the necessary changes. AuditEAU has become a tool for the public good that enables elected officials, citizens and departmental officials to do their work better. Moreover, the Quebec Ministry of the Environment has acquired a licence for the software to use it with its own data.
The Canada Water Agency needs to be a data exchange facilitator. We talk about data all the time. Protecting water is a complicated business. We have to find solutions that go beyond administrative divisions, solutions that almost always fall under shared jurisdictions.
So how can we get the agency to contribute in the right way to provincial efforts, particularly in Quebec?
First, the agency must have the role of facilitator to foster the intersection of scientific, public, private, citizen and indigenous expertise. It could encourage the development of simple, powerful indicators that work to motivate people. A performance indicator does not have to be perfect. In fact, it must definitely not be left solely in the hands of scientists, because people on the ground have to get involved and ask the right questions. A good indicator makes it possible to measure and take concrete action to protect our waterways.
That's what our annual rankings do. We developed an overflow per capita intensity indicator, which allows us to compare municipalities. We now see that the municipalities are on board. In the Gaspé, we established a direct link between sewage discharges and the ban on shellfish harvesting. Fisheries and Oceans Canada had taken samples far too long ago, and the analysis showed that there were contaminants from water treatment plants. That could enable us to develop indicators.
Second, the agency must facilitate data sharing. Data is collected in Canada and we don't know what to do with it. Why is the data being collected? What are the datasets used for? What kind of picture do they paint? Are there any comparisons to be made?
The agency can and should support the sharing of as much data as possible, develop interoperability mechanisms for open data, and support citizen data mining efforts that might seem to provide different results at first glance.
Third, the agency must facilitate the participation of civil society in the search for solutions. Protecting water requires the active and engaged participation of civil society. Citizen organizations are creative. They are committed and they know how to get governments to act. You are prime witnesses to this effect.
Innovations will emerge from the bottom up, and the agency must support citizen involvement and science initiatives. The Action-Climat Québec funding program, which funds citizen involvement in efforts to fight and adapt to climate change, is a good example.
In its role as a facilitator, the agency must serve as a unifying force. This must be done while respecting each province's jurisdiction, of course, but to succeed collectively, we need this unifying body that will allow information to be shared.