Environment committee  I think you worked on the Green Economy Roadmap for Conservation Authorities in Ontario or a group closely related to you did. This document suggests creating sound partnerships to manage climate change, adapt to it and promote green economy. Can you tell me more about that? Unless I'm mistaken, your group is involved in the roadmap.

Environment committee  Partly this is attributable to the changing climate, which has produced more frequent and intensive rainfall events, and to longer exposure of soils to the elements during the shorter duration of snow cover in the period when crop cover is absent. Obviously, again, climate change and the changing weather patterns impact our water quality protection efforts. We have to our adjust our agricultural practices on a very wide scale to compensate for impacts resulting from changing weather patterns.

Environment committee  Canada will continue to work to advance the development of a fair, transparent, and effective climate change agreement that includes a commitment by all world emitters as well. Thank you.

Environment committee  Thank you very much. A little earlier, you spoke about the importance of climate change. I think that Ontario has the municipal adaptation and resiliency service. Can you tell us a little bit about that program in relation to water quality in the Great Lakes?

Environment committee  There is a website and a training program for municipalities to implement efforts to prevent the negative effect of climate change, such as severe storms and things like that.

Environment committee  You tack on environmental objectives as being sort of the next pillar, and then you tack on to that, as David mentioned, our climate change adaptation, which is presenting significant financial pressures on the limited funding that we do have available.

Environment committee  Chair, if I could beg your indulgence for just one minute, I need to recognize the fact that I know there was an interest in talking about climate change adaptation strategies in the City of Toronto to deal with urban flooding as well as the work we've done for source water protection in the near-shore area of Lake Ontario. Time does not permit, but I include a few references to presentations I've made recently.

Environment committee  There is not as much certainty about what kind of results you can get from it, but lot of good work has been done in that area. Directly related to this stormwater runoff problem is climate change. I can tell you, from our members, and across the basin on the Canadian side, Thunder Bay, Wawa, Goderich, Mississauga, Hamilton, and Toronto have been hit by incredibly intense precipitation events.

Environment committee  Previous to that I was the director of water infrastructure management for the city and so have overarching responsibility for infrastructure planning, dealing with all the water, waste water, and stormwater infrastructure in the City of Toronto. I've led a number of environmental stewardship initiatives, including on climate change adaptation and a strategy to help reduce the risk and impact of flooding from extreme events and the development of the City of Toronto's innovative wet weather flow master plan, which I'll get into in some detail.

Environment committee  We need to be ahead of the game and looking out for those fish interests. Then in terms of climate change, we need to look at areas in the United States, because their temperatures today will be Canada's temperatures tomorrow. So what can we learn from their habitats right now as they're being managed?

Environment committee  The plan addresses the issues of water quality, water quantity, and flood control, and the way these matters are impacted by our growing population and by climate change. Working with many partners, we have identified several best practices in priority sub-watersheds. These practices include programs to promote cover crops and nutrient management plans in areas with intensive agricultural production.

Environment committee  I think what you're trying to say is that with the advent of climate change, and perhaps the temperature rise, two degrees would be substantial. I think probably in the last 30 or 40 years, there's been an increase of about one degree, or three-quarters of one degree, on surface water.

Environment committee  Modelling has been going on for years, but better and better modelling is our key initiative. We now have to appreciate.... For instance, the climate change issue is something that probably has been fully recognized in the past dozen years and probably was paid little attention to prior to maybe the middle nineties or the end of the nineties.

Environment committee  Do you have modelling systems now that you're using to determine the impacts of all these stresses on the Great Lakes? Are you able, say with climate change, to predict what will occur with a two-degree warming in the system? Are you in a position to forecast different outcomes as a result of potential change in climate or different types of loading that may end up in the system due to increased population or use?

Environment committee  In the possibility that we have extreme weather events—and we are having them. We can't mention the term “climate change” around here, but in extreme weather events, it's maybe not unreasonable to assume.... Even this winter there has been a massive amount of snow. There may well be a pretty significant thaw very quickly, and you might have a flood.