It's good to see you, Chair Badawey.
To the rest of the committee, thank you for the time that you're giving us today.
The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative is an organization of over 100 mayors from both the United States and Canada, working to ensure that our two countries can effectively use the largest freshwater resource in the world to propel our region's success into the 22nd century.
Our number one priority remains keeping people safe by stopping COVID-19. I want to thank Parliament and the Government of Canada for their financial support of municipalities and the doubling of the gas tax during these challenging times.
As a reminder, 80 years ago, the Canadian Parliament and the U.S. Congress worked together to create a joint vision that became the St. Lawrence Seaway. That inspired the creation of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, and many international bridge corporations, hydro dams, shipping locks and freshwater ports. It was a collective vision for how to drive this region's economy for generations to come, and it was a binational vision.
The electrification and automation of transportation, increased pollution, emerging toxins such as PFAS and PFOS, and invasive species such as Asian carp are some of the challenges facing the environment, our economy and the society of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence region.
The main challenge that affects every other issue and decision in our region is climate change. Addressing climate change requires Canadian and American governments to have a joint vision, with funded plans that municipal governments can access to build for the future.
Canada's 10-year infrastructure programs and President Biden's administration's new infrastructure investments are critical for economic growth. Without a vision to sustainably build along the shores of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence for future growth, this new funding will not reach its full potential.
The Canadian government has spent $19 billion over 10 years in emergency disaster funding—most of that is due to flooding—to rebuild what was there before but not to rebuild to stop future flooding.
The following issues could easily be discussed in greater length, but I just want to touch on them. They are access to safe drinking water across North America, the likelihood of year-round shipping on the Great Lakes due to climate change, the cost of erosion to once stable shorelines, which we've seen all along the Great Lakes, and the effects of harmful algae blooms that put drinking water at risk and kill native species.
These issues cannot be solved locally. Extreme weather events can wash away a community's entire infrastructure in one storm. The local water treatment plant can be closed because of agricultural practices 300 kilometres away and a few days of hot weather.
When high water of 10 centimetres in Lake Ontario threatens Ajax or Kingston, with millions of dollars in damages, the easy solution is to open up a dam on the St. Lawrence to lower the water level in the lake. However, lowering that lake by 10 centimetres could increase the water levels in Montreal by a metre and cause billions in damages. We need real solutions that work for the entire basin region.
Last year, the cities initiative was part of a collaborative funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada that released the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence action plan for 2020-30. I submit these reports and their 30 recommendations to this committee for consideration. Much of the reports have been included in the Canada water agency consultations and the work being done by the Parliament of Canada's Great Lakes and St. Lawrence task force. It's the foundation for our parliamentary priorities, which were also submitted to this committee.
Today, the mayors of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence area have three messages.
One, please review our parliamentary priorities and ensure that all departments get a portion of the required $2.2 billion funding, over 10 years, that they need to protect this important watershed.
Two, invest in a one-time $7-billion investment, over two construction seasons, to help shoreline communities in Ontario and Quebec address their most urgent water and shoreline infrastructure and erosion mitigation projects. This could create over 150,000 jobs in the region. This program could quickly become a national program for all shoreline communities, with an investment of $9 billion to $11 billion over two construction seasons.
Finally, there are 19 federal government departments and agencies that oversee water policy or management in Canada. There are countless provincial and local government groups with some control or responsibility for the water in your community. It was 80 years ago that Canada and the United States came together to develop a long-term vision for the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence area. Now is the time to do this again. Before we spend historic amounts of infrastructure funding in the region, we need a plan for the region that recognizes the realities of the century that we're in and also the coming 22nd century.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to questions.