Environment committee  Do you want to discuss the Northwest Passage issue?

Environment committee  Yes, that passage happens to be in the sea, in the water. It's not at all the same dynamic as the freshwater we've been talking about, though. That said, there's the whole issue of Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, an issue I would like to explore at this time. The United States agrees with Canada that it doesn't agree on this sovereignty, so it's not a defence priority.

Environment committee  That's another vast question. In the mountains of both Canada and the United States, we are indeed seeing not necessarily a major decrease in precipitation over the whole year but a change in precipitation patterns. Before the advent of climate change two or three decades ago, when it started to become very noticeable, a high proportion of winter precipitation fell as snow.

Environment committee  This debate on the appropriateness of pricing water rather than privatizing it, in order to conserve and better manage the resource, is relatively old. It's true that many studies and, in particular, many water governance initiatives, particularly in Europe, include water pricing, not only because water is privatized, but also because it's a lever for changing behaviour and making users pay for the cost of the resource.

Environment committee  Yes. That's a possibility, as I said a moment ago, but I wouldn't want to sound alarmist. I'm not telling you that it will happen, contrary to what may have been announced in the public debate in previous years. I'm simply saying to keep that possibility in mind. It would depend a lot on the speed at which climate change is taking place, especially in the western United States.

Environment committee  That's a very relevant question, and I thank you for it. I touched on it very quickly, in that it's part of an ongoing debate in Canada. We've been wondering for several decades whether there's indeed pressure from our American neighbours to buy up part of Canada's freshwater resource.

Environment committee  I could go on and on about the geopolitical tensions associated with the water resource. It's certainly a factor that contributes to geopolitical tensions elsewhere in the world, particularly in the Middle East, the Nile basin and central Asia. I could go on and on with examples where tensions arising from the sharing of water resources contribute to the deterioration of relations between states, even if those tensions aren't the only factor involved.

Environment committee  Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be able to share a few thoughts with you on water governance dynamics. As has been mentioned in previous testimony, there's been a lot of emphasis in Canada for quite some time on the need to improve water quality. However, everything was happening as if the quantitative problems didn't really apply to the governance of this resource in Canada.