Environment committee  Yes, Mr. Chair, I'd be happy to comment. Environment Canada has been monitoring the major tributaries of Lake Winnipeg for 30 years, so we've been watching the Red River and the Saskatchewan River. That's one of the main reasons why the Province of Manitoba approached the Govern

Environment committee  Again, in terms of the science in our organization, we fundamentally have formally ingrained in ourselves a philosophy of continual improvement. So we think we do well; we think we can get better. An expression of this is that the past environment minister, Minister Prentice, d

Environment committee  I'll answer the question this way. We're a science organization. We always think we can do better, and we're always prepared to take advice, such as we get from the commissioner, and use it where applicable and get better. I would say that the data the commissioner looked at is

Environment committee  We have extensive water quality monitoring on the Great Lakes and in the St. Lawrence River. We use two different types of monitoring. One is the type of monitoring the commissioner looked at, which is a long-term monitoring site. The other is a type of monitoring that the commis

Environment committee  That's exactly what we're doing. So we're quite excited about this. It's outside the scope of the audit. It would really change the findings of the commissioner, if it were inside the scope of the audit, because it's very much scientifically valid—and it's extremely cost-effect

Environment committee  Right, it could bioaccumulate and could change the communities.

Environment committee  We do participate. We're highly leveraged in the provinces. We actually have formal agreements for water quality monitoring across the country with, for example, British Columbia, P.E.I., and Newfoundland. We also have an MOU on water that we signed with the whole suite of Atlant

Environment committee  Unfortunately, my salary's not nearly as impressive.

Environment committee  Yes, it does. It monitors for something called polyaromatic hydrocarbons, which is one of the key potential pollutants.

Environment committee  I'd be happy to clarify. Monitoring in the Athabasca River is very much a shared responsibility among a number of different entities. There are four major monitoring entities: the Government of Canada, the Province of Alberta, the industry, and a multi-stakeholder group called RA

Environment committee  There is one long-term water monitoring station, but it's a very incomplete picture.

Environment committee  That's right.

Environment committee  The Province of Alberta has 10 monitoring stations, long term. They started in the seventies. They monitor a broad suite of parameters. RAMP is funded by industry, again a multi-stakeholder group. They have over 40 sites. They monitor even more comprehensively. They include poly