Environment committee  Absolutely. That's correct.

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through you, over the past four years Environment Canada has directly contributed $90,000 in funding to the water management plan, which was certainly appreciated. Just as appreciated was a really strong staff contribution in our steering committees and our committees' working groups to actually develop this plan.

Environment committee  I don't know any specific details, but I am encouraged to hear that though.

Environment committee  Certainly. Through you, Mr. Chair, a nutrient management plan is just what it sounds like. It's a management plan that matches a crops nutrient requirements with the amount that the farmer puts on the field or applies. The intent is to leave little phosphorous to runoff and little nitrogen to soak down into the groundwater.

Environment committee  Thank you. Certainly, we just recently had some seats on some of the annex committees—the Grand River Conservation Authority directly and Conservation Ontario under the Great Lakes agreement—to actually participate with some of the larger initiatives around the Great Lakes Basin.

Environment committee  Certainly. It's estimated that the Grand has the potential to create a plume that runs about 12 kilometres along the shoreline. Depending on which way the wind is blowing and how the drift is going along the shoreline, it can go east or west, but it's a fairly extensive plume. It's really in the nearshore area.

Environment committee  The weeds consume oxygen at certain times of the day and reduce the oxygen levels. Certainly, it changes the whole aquatic ecosystem in and around that area. Less available oxygen always results in a different system.

Environment committee  Good afternoon, and thank you. As you said, my name is Joe Farwell. I'm the chief administrative officer for the Grand River Conservation Authority and I'm really pleased to have the opportunity to provide input to this study on water quality in the Great Lakes Basin. The Grand River Conservation Authority is one of 36 conservation authorities in Ontario that manage water, forests, and other natural resources in some of the most populated parts of the province.

Environment committee  Yes, certainly.

Environment committee  I don't have a real preference at all. I don't think the actual workings of the program have changed that much, it's the delivery and the name of the program that has changed. But we don't really have a preference.

Environment committee  We would still like it expanded.

Environment committee  My recommendation is that the nation work to actually understand what's happening through monitoring. Within the Grand, we're responding by examining the rainfall patterns and the shifting changes in modelling what could potentially happen. I think that has to happen on a national scale, and really, monitoring is probably a key piece of it.

Environment committee  Certainly we do. We don't deliver the workshops under the environmental farm plan—that's carried out through different groups—but we do actually have a connection. A requirement for our funding programs is participation in the environmental farm plan, so we're very familiar with how it works.

Environment committee  The Government of Canada doesn't provide direct funding assistance. That all comes through our municipal partners through the environmental farm plan, and so continuing support for that plan becomes an important piece.

Environment committee  That's absolutely right, and that was the main draw to pull the federal group into the discussion of our water management plan, so the federal government has representation on the development of a watershed plan because of its interest in Lake Erie.