Environment committee  Good afternoon. My name is Ian Wilcox, and I'm the general manager of the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority. I want to thank the standing committee for the invitation to attend and the opportunity to provide a conservation authority perspective regarding efforts to impr

Environment committee  Thank you for the question. Not only did World Wildlife Fund give us a poor score, we gave ourselves a poor score in our own report cards for water quality as well. The Thames River basin is incredibly developed. Most of the wetlands that would have been in place historically,

Environment committee  Sorry, I didn't get to that part. Actual water takings are quite low in our watershed for agricultural purposes. It's not used even for domestic purposes. Water supply in our watershed is either provided by ground water or it's piped from the Great Lakes. In fact, water takings

Environment committee  In all honesty, the principal reason would be the loss of wetlands. We've lost over 80% of the wetlands. Wetlands provide a very, very important function of retaining water just as a dam or a reservoir would. In the spring, wetlands retain the water and slowly discharge it. Throu

Environment committee  That's a great question with kind of a complicated answer. For forecasting for the future, I would say certainly that's a big part of our job. A large responsibility is flood control, maintaining flows and protecting people and their property. From a forecasting point of view, we

Environment committee  Mr. Chair, we are engaged in those activities. The showcasing water innovation program was mentioned by my colleagues here. We are engaged in a water management plan right now in trying to anticipate population growth for the next 20 years generally through the watershed. We did

Environment committee  That's absolutely correct. We're trying to put a house fire out with a garden hose.

Environment committee  I'm not familiar with the program but—

Environment committee  —from what you've said, absolutely.

Environment committee  It's a great question. I have to refer to the work of my colleagues and the work of even the International Joint Commission. This has been a big discussion recently. There are certain practices; voluntary incentive programs only go so far. There are practices that have a majo

Environment committee  No.

Environment committee  I don't think we're at that point. I don't think that's efficient or effective in the long run.

Environment committee  Again, our work is more local. I'm not as familiar with national and international. Absolutely, we're moving in that direction, but it has been 30-40 years of slow progress. Again, when I'm talking about stronger policies, if there's a requirement to participate in conservation f

Environment committee  Mr. Chair, I am not familiar with the program. I apologize. Certainly we do work through the Ministry of Natural Resources for fisheries enhancement work, but that program specifically I am not familiar with.

Environment committee  That would be great.