Environment committee  The scope, frankly, is enormous. Lake Winnipeg, of course, as I'm sure you are well aware, is a drainage basin that encompasses much of central Canada, from Lake of the Woods to the east, the Red River to the south, and the Saskatchewan rivers to the west. We are actively engaged

Environment committee  I will confess that I'm not an expert in the range of initiatives that are being undertaken, so I think we'd need to come back to the committee with a list. I know there's an extensive list of local initiatives that have been invested in to improve water quality and contribute to

Environment committee  Obviously, with population intensity on both sides of the Great Lakes, ringing the Great Lakes, particularly Lakes Huron and Ontario and Erie in our case, all aspects of development—from building close to rivers, to power development, to wastewater treatment plants and effluent o

Environment committee  As you mentioned, the responsibility for de-icing fluids like those being used at the airport in Montreal, in fact, rests with Transport Canada. It is the authority that regulates all airport activities, including de-icing and the recovery of de-icing fluids. I'm not aware of da

Environment committee  In fact, I would have to come back to you. I don't know if we are specifically collecting data around the airport. We have a very close cooperation with the Province of Quebec in terms of water quality sample collection. It may be that it's actually the Province of Quebec that is

Environment committee  The joint oil sands monitoring program includes a component of what we call the extended geographic area, the EGA. That area is actually quite far north. It includes Wood Buffalo National Park and actually beyond it, as far as Great Slave Lake. I would encourage members, if you'

Environment committee  Yes, I'm pleased to confirm that the Canada-Ontario agreement is in place now. It is an integral part of meeting the Canadian commitments under the Canada-U.S. agreement, which was renewed in 2012. As a general comment, it's important context, I think, to understand that federal

Environment committee  We don't actually base our assessments of the network design on geographic considerations. What we're looking at are the risks of water quality impairment. As I mentioned, the range of factors that we consider, we consider them from a geospatial consideration. Then as we understa

Environment committee  Fracking has been an emerging issue and, obviously, there has been more and more attention given to the issue. We initiated a study—what we would call a surveillance activity—four years ago. We are looking at a water quality baseline in an area of heavy fracking activity, the H

Environment committee  What we're looking for are chemicals that are indicative of fracking activity in surface water quality.

Environment committee  We're looking for evidence of fracking fluid, fracking chemicals, in the surface water.

Environment committee  There have been relatively small changes over time in water quality monitoring sites. We are currently at a point in our implementation of a risk-based approach such that we may actually make adjustments to water quality monitoring in accordance with the risk assessments we've

Environment committee  The risk-based basin analysis is one of the tools that we use in a broad-based, risk-based adaptive management approach that we're now using in the water quality monitoring program. Basically, we take geo-referenced information from a range of factors that can lead to water quali

Environment committee  That guides our implementation of our program so that we are addressing the biggest risks to water quality impairment across the country while not ignoring areas where the risks to water quality are low.

Environment committee  The short answer is that we have actually done everything that was recommended in the report and more. We have done a review of our mandate. We have done site-specific risk assessments. We have done this basin level risk assessment. We have developed a new leading-edge statisti