Thank you for the question.
I don't think you could speak about the social determinants of health without the foundation being clean drinking water. I think every aspect, from bathing to consumption to....
Also, when I'm talking about consumption, I'm not speaking only about drinking the clean water. We just had a question about source water protection. We have the birds we eat and the fish we eat. We call the animals we eat “four-leggeds”. When they do not have clean drinking water and we consume them as food, our bodies become sick.
If we don't have complete balance in physical health and the ability for us and our animals to access clean drinking water, that leads down the pathway for kids to not go to school. When we talk about poverty, it's not only financial poverty, but also the poverty of education. With regard to mercury and other things in the drinking water, we also don't have the access to physicians for the different types of medical needs we have.
We're all interconnected, whether we're human or, like I said, the swimmers, the ones flying in the sky or the four-leggeds. We're all interconnected. Water is life. When we talk about the social determinants of health, if our animals aren't healthy and the water is not healthy, we won't be healthy. Therefore, we cannot contribute to our nation and to society—or what is now Canada.