Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and I thank all of our witnesses for joining us today.
I heard earlier that a federal-provincial-territorial committee is currently considering whether to lower the drinking water standard for lead to five parts per billion, which is half of what the existing standard is.
When I look at the role of that committee itself, I see that it is a well-established national committee that has been active for over 20 years. Quite frankly, it reports to the federal-provincial-territorial committee on health and the environment, and usually the members who sit on that committee are from the departments of health or environment. I simply flag that for us here in terms of some of the recommendations that we may want to make coming out of this study, because it's clear that the management of drinking water treatment and distribution, as well as waste-water treatment, falls within the provincial jurisdiction.
Also, the FCM has identified that many municipalities are aware of the issues associated with legacy water infrastructure and have been working proactively. I too am very fortunate to live in one of those communities—Saskatoon, Saskatchewan—which has been identified by the FCM.
They've also indicated that they are not aware of a reliable national estimate of the number of lead service lines that are still in use in Canada today, so I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done. We're conducting this study to figure out what we can do in terms of encouraging provinces to put programs in place or even to provide funding.
In closing, on all of those observations I've made, I would say that I've really appreciated the very good testimony we've heard today. I think we have a good understanding of the issue. I would suggest, Madam Chair, that perhaps once we're done with this study, we would want to write a letter to either the health committee or the environment committee, to suggest that they perhaps would want to conduct a study in parallel to what we've done in order to see what can happen at those levels that appear to have the responsibility for studying this issue and coming up with recommendations on a good health policy for Canadians.
Thank you.