Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We would first like to thank the members of the standing committee for receiving us today on this important study.
For our opening statement, I will be sharing my time with the mayor of Contrecoeur, Ms. Maud Allaire.
To begin, for those of you who are not familiar with the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, we are a binational coalition of more than 170 mayors across Ontario, Quebec and the eight Great Lakes states. We work to advance the socio-economic and environmental health of cities across the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River basin.
If there's one issue that unites our members from Leamington to Quebec City, it is the concern around shoreline resilience, particularly when it comes to erosion. We hope that commitments by the federal government, like a strengthened $1-billion freshwater action plan and a well-funded national adaptation strategy, will lead to decisive action to counter shoreline erosion across the Canadian Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River basin.
We're pleased to work with members like the City of Contrecoeur to raise the profile of this issue and advocate for federal action.
I'll now pass it on to my colleague, Mayor Maud Allaire, to complete our opening statement.
The floor is yours, Madam Mayor.