Minister's Speech

Remarks prepared for:

The Honourable John Gerretsen
Minister of the Environment

OWWA/OMWA Joint Annual Conference & Trade Show Theme – “Only Tap Water Delivers”
London Convention Centre, London, ON
Monday, April 28, 2008

(Check against delivery)

Good morning.

It’s great to be here at your annual conference and trade show.

I want to thank our hosts, the Ontario Water Works Association and the Ontario Municipal Water Association.

Water is essential to life.  All of us who call Ontario home are fortunate to have such dedicated and knowledgeable professionals working to make sure that our taps deliver only clean, healthy drinking water.

Your efforts are a big part of the reason why we enjoy such a high quality of life in this province.  And that is reflected in the growing confidence people have in our municipal drinking water systems.

My background is mainly in the municipal arena, including as Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing before I took on the Environment portfolio. 

In fact, when I became a Minister in 2003, my cabinet colleagues and I started to work together in “clusters” to coordinate our efforts on key issues.  Natural Resources, Municipal Affairs and Housing, and Environment are such a “cluster” — we work effectively together.

So, I was quite pleased when the Premier appointed me to take on the job of Minister of the Environment for Ontario.  It has been a natural transition for me.

Much of what we need to do to protect our environment involves municipalities.  And we need to work in partnership to make the progress we all need to see.

As a government, we are dedicated to providing high quality drinking water to the people of Ontario.  It is essential to life, to growth and to our future prosperity.

We’re taking a comprehensive approach to protecting our water.

I’d like to talk to you today about this approach, and about two initiatives in particular that have benefited from the direct involvement of your organizations: our new Lead Action Plan and the new Municipal Licensing Program for drinking water systems.

I also want to explore briefly some issues related to climate change.  We already know that the challenges of dealing with a changing climate will have a profound impact on our sources of drinking water and we’ve started to address it in earnest.

Drinking water protection involves almost everything we do at the Ministry of the Environment.

Our work begins long before water enters plants, pipes and taps.

We begin by preventing sources of our drinking water from becoming contaminated before the water even enters drinking water systems.

With the Clean Water Act, we’ve taken a huge step forward by making the responsibility to protect our drinking water sources a legal requirement.

Nineteen local source protection committees are now working closely with their municipal partners to engage communities in protecting the sources of their drinking water.  They are developing protection plans that are collaborative, locally-driven and based on the best available science.

Our government is committed to making this process work.  To that end we committed $120 million for communities and their partners so they can get the work done that’s required under the act.

We are providing more than $23 million for additional technical work by both municipalities and conservation authorities to support source protection planning.

Our government also established the Ontario Drinking Water Stewardship Program.  Under this program, $7 million was invested in early actions, education and outreach and special projects as part of a four-year $28 million commitment to encourage early actions.

You’ll be hearing more about the Clean Water Act from the Director of our Source Protection Planning Branch, Ian Smith.

I’d now like to turn to some of the areas where my ministry and your two organizations have developed a particularly strong and effective working relationship.

I know that people in London and throughout this region are especially concerned about lead in drinking water.

Testing required by our regulations has shown this to be a province-wide issue.

I can assure you it is of great concern for me, as it is for Premier McGuinty and our government.  Children are especially vulnerable to the effects of lead on their nervous systems because their bodies are still growing.

We have developed a workable Lead Action Plan that strongly protects human health.

In June 2007, a new regulation became law, governing flushing and lead testing requirements for schools, private schools and day nurseries.

Special attention was paid to reducing the potential for lead intake by pregnant women and children.  We worked closely on this with the Chief Medical Officer of Health and the Chief Drinking Water Inspector.

Our plan requires annual testing at day nurseries built before 1990 and at all schools and private schools … and semi-annual testing of taps in homes and businesses served by municipal and private residential systems.

We developed these requirements based on advice we received from technical experts in lead in drinking water from across North America.  We also received advice from Ontario’s Drinking Water Advisory Council.

Our testing requirements are intended to identify situations that need to be corrected when Ontario’s drinking water standard for lead of 10 micrograms per litre is exceeded.

As part of the plan, municipalities must also account for the cost of lead service pipe replacement in the financial plans we are requiring for their water systems as part of the municipal license in 2010.

We have now completed the first round of community lead testing for drinking water systems.  As well, the first year of sampling has been completed at schools, private schools and day nurseries.

Later this afternoon, Ontario’s Chief Drinking Water Inspector, Keith West, will talk about Ontario’s drinking water safety net.  He will also provide you with an overview of lead test results on a province-wide basis.

You’ll be hearing tomorrow from Paul Nieweglowski, Director of the Safe Drinking Water Branch.  Paul is going to present some of our initial findings from testing conducted at schools, private schools and day nurseries.  He’ll also be discussing the preliminary results for the community lead testing program.

We now have educational materials to ensure that the people who must meet our requirements have all the information they need.  We have created posters describing how to take water samples and how to flush your plumbing.  We’ll follow up with how-to videos.

We’ve also released a plain-language guide outlining legislative requirements.

I believe Ontario’s Lead Action Plan is a good one, but there is always room for improvement — and we’re getting a lot of useful feedback from stakeholders.

I know, for example, that there are concerns about the cost and staff time required for sampling and testing.

We are working with both the Ontario Water Works Association and the Ontario Municipal Water Association to address these concerns. 

The strong relationship between our organizations was also a valuable asset as we designed and now are implementing the new licensing program for municipal residential drinking water systems.

You played a big role in the development of the program.  Your efforts helped give Ontario Canada’s first Drinking Water Quality Management Standard to support a quality management approach to operating municipal systems.

The new licensing requirements for owners of municipal drinking water systems — as well as a standard of care for municipal officials — will help municipalities manage and operate their water systems to the highest possible standard.  

I’d like to articulate some of the key benefits of the program.

It clearly states that everyone within the owner and operating authority’s organization, from the Mayor to the Operator, has a role to play in the provision of safe drinking water.  The owner of the system (Mayor, Councillors) will be required to provide a written endorsement and commitment to the management system.

The quality management system will ensure that everyone, including the public, is aware of who is responsible for what part of the drinking water system.

Quality management is the responsibility of the people who manage the drinking water system; it is not a ministry program dictating how the system must be managed. 

The knowledgeable staff within the organization will develop practices that make sense for their drinking water system.  And the independent auditor confirms that these practices are being followed — you plan what to do and do what you plan.

The quality management system allows organizations to store and update knowledge gained over the years from all staff and ensures that this information is available for everyone.

The program requires that information is reviewed every year, this ensures that practices are kept current and relevant; information will be kept in one central document, which is accessible to everyone.

It also ensures that tasks are not duplicated and that staff are doing things relevant for their specific drinking water system, not just tasks that have always been done.

And it provides an opportunity for owners to promote to the public their effective management of the drinking water system; which in turn leads to an increase in public confidence.

In addition to the safeguards I have just outlined for you, we have stringent drinking water standards, rigorous inspections of drinking water systems and labs and more drinking water inspectors. 

There are tougher penalties for endangering water.

And there is greater transparency and accountability through the Chief Drinking Water Inspector’s annual reports.

So, with help from organizations like OMWA and OWWA, my ministry is working to protect our watersheds, and in particular our sources of drinking water.

Of course, this work is increasingly taking into account the earth’s changing climate.  Climate change is going to affect many things — from the quality of source water to the infrastructure that treats and distributes drinking water.

We recognize that climate change is already here, and I’m proud to say that Ontario is taking action.

We have set ambitious targets for greenhouse gas reductions: six per cent below 1990 levels by 2014 … 15 per cent by 2020.

We’re also focusing on adapting to the climate change-related effects that are already with us.

To ensure that we are guided by innovative thinking and practical advice to meet this challenge, we have created an Expert Panel on Climate Change Adaptation.

We have asked the panel to come up with practical public policy options that can help us prepare for the effects of climate change on our people and communities.

Here in Toronto last month, the panel’s co-chairs — Dr. David Pearson and Dr. Ian Burton — headed up the first Premier’s National Climate Change Adaptation Summit.  One of the key themes was water.

Climate change adaptation is also included in two very important Great Lakes agreements that we’ve recently signed.  Ontario worked hard to make sure that explicit climate change adaptation commitments were included in the 2007 Canada-Ontario Agreement respecting the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem.

The Great Lakes Charter Annex — signed by Ontario, Quebec and the eight Great Lakes states — will help our waterways adapt to climate change by banning large-scale transfers out of the Great Lakes Basin.

Our Safeguarding and Sustaining Ontario’s Water Act implements Ontario’s commitment under the Annex.  It includes monitoring and action where necessary to address the cumulative effects of water-taking and climate change, and new charges for commercial and industrial water users.

It also reinforces our commitment to conservation.  And of course, water and energy conservation together are key to both climate change mitigation and adaptation.

There are many challenges.

We will be looking to you to play an important role in helping us take on other new challenges and plan for the future — just as you have been instrumental in helping us get where we are today.

A remarkable transformation has taken place in the way we protect our drinking water in Ontario.

Your partnership and input in the development of the Clean Water Act, the Lead Action Plan and the Municipal Licensing Program have been key components in this transformation.

I’m proud of the leadership that our government has shown, not only in protecting our drinking water, but in recognizing the importance of integrating resilience to climate change into our policies and actions. 

And I’m equally impressed by the tireless dedication shown by organizations like the Ontario Municipal Water Association and the Ontario Water Works Association.

Working together, we can create even better protections for Ontario’s drinking water — and a cleaner, healthier and better future for our families, our communities and our province.

Thank you.

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