Environment committee  That's a very complicated question. What I know from research is that, if you start introducing economic criteria in the allocation of the water, you will reduce losses. We had a speaker in the previous session who was talking about wildfires and the need for prevention, instead of treating the results or the damage costs afterwards.

Environment committee  I think there are sectors in the economy that speak the language of money, so I strongly believe in raising awareness. When I was a kid, I was taught to brush my teeth and not leave the tap water running. I also gave that message to my children, and I think it's an effective way of communicating that water is valuable and that you shouldn't spill it.

Environment committee  Generally speaking, you would. I cannot speak to carbon. I can speak a little bit to organic farming. You see that there is still a huge discrepancy in the amount of organic food that we're buying versus conventional food. We're not internalizing the externalities associated with conventional farming in our food products.

Environment committee  We also need to have patience. It takes time because it's highly dependent on the baseline price that we pay. The reason farmers don't respond right away if you introduce a price on water is that they hardly pay for it. If they already pay a very high price and then you start increasing the price, they will feel it more and more, so they will start reducing their water use or invest in more efficient irrigation—

Environment committee  Foremost, what is needed is that we value the resource itself, because what they're paying for is an administrative fee that is not related in any way to the water they are extracting. It used to be $3.72, or something like that, per 1,000 cubic metres. That's almost a million litres.

Environment committee  Honourable Chair and members of the standing committee, thank you very much for your invitation to participate in this hearing today. I'm a professor of economics and director of the Water Institute at the University of Waterloo, one of the largest interdisciplinary water research and innovation centres in Canada.