Thank you very much.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. I'm sorry I missed the earlier presentations—I'm covering for another member of our committee—but what I did hear I found very interesting.
Professor Renzetti, I was particularly interested in what you had to say about Canadians' perception or understanding of this whole issue of our water and how we value it. I think the notion of making irreversible mistakes is something that's very important.
I'm from Vancouver. In Vancouver we tend to have a perception that our water is boundless. British Columbia is a province that has lots of water, rain, and all the rest of it, and yet we went through a pretty severe drought this summer on the south coast. Things are definitely changing, with climate change and other things.
I want to pick up on the overarching question as to whether or not the public policy we deal with is treating water as a commodity or whether it is a common or public good.
I think this is something that you raised. We need to have a national water strategy for overall management and so on. I wonder if you could give us any examples of where you've actually seen this in other states, where there a comprehensive policy that deals with not only possibly the ban on exporting water but also the management of water internally. I think it would be helpful for us to know that in terms of what we need to do beyond this bill.