Minister's Speech

Remarks prepared for:

The Honourable John Gerretsen
Minister of the Environment

Great Lakes & St. Lawrence Cities Initiative – Annual General Meeting Conference
Theme: Prosperity, Vitality, Sustainability
Sheraton Centre, Toronto
Thursday, July 17, 2008

(Check against delivery)

Thank you, Mayor Miller for that kind introduction.  (Minister introduced by Mayor David Miller)

Good afternoon everyone. 

Let me extend a warm welcome to all our friends and neighbours who have travelled from throughout the region to be here.

I want to thank Mayor Miller for inviting me to join your annual conference of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative.

We’ve all come together because we understand the importance of the Great Lakes and care about their future.

We also know that there is a tendency among many people to take them for granted.  The lakes appear limitless.  Yet, we know they’re not.  They have boundaries.  They are affected by everything that goes on within their watersheds — they exist in living interactions with their surroundings, especially their cities.

This conference is an excellent opportunity to look at the relationships among the Great Lakes and the cities on their shores.

It’s also a chance to consider another kind of relationship — how municipal, provincial and federal governments can best work together on behalf of the Great Lakes.

Today, I want to put special emphasis on increasing the role of cities.

It’s overdue.

When I was Mayor of Kingston back in the 1980s, cities had a secondary role when it came to talking about how to protect the Great Lakes. 

I remember participating in a meeting of the International Joint Commission meeting — one of the first where municipalities were really included. 

That secondary status overlooked the unique strengths of our municipalities and the valuable contribution they can make.

I believe it’s time to renew working relationships at all levels, to ensure this region remains a powerhouse in the twenty-first century global economy.

And I believe it’s time to recognize cities as full partners.

Today we are taking an important step in that direction.  I am pleased to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Cooperation between the Ontario government and the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative.

The agreement is also being signed by my cabinet colleagues Donna Cansfield, Minister of Natural Resources, and Leona Dombrowsky, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

This is good news for our Great Lakes cities. 

It’s good news for Ontario — for our families and for all those communities that will be relying on a healthy and sustainable Great Lakes Basin far into the future.
 
This Memorandum of Cooperation will give municipalities an integral role in providing Ontario with input on the future of the Canada-Ontario Agreement (COA) Respecting the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem.

The COA agreement has been a good vehicle for coordinating actions by the federal and provincial governments to clean up and restore the Great Lakes.

Under the current agreement, the province has committed more than $62 million — more than $32 million for the implementation of the Canada-Ontario Agreement and $30 million for the clean-up of contaminated sediment in Hamilton Harbour.

The new Memorandum of Cooperation is going to help create a new dynamic for the COA and a better exchange of ideas between municipalities and the province.

Looking ahead, we also have an excellent opportunity to strengthen our partnership with our American neighbours.

This coming January marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the Boundary Waters Treaty.

This treaty led to the creation of the International Joint Commission and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between Canada and the United States.

The agreement has been the catalyst for many of the great success stories we’ve seen in the restoration and protection of the Great Lakes.

The stars are aligning for a revitalization of both the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and our bi-national partnership.

A new US president will take office in January; both major candidates have signed a pledge to do more for the Great Lakes.

It’s time to renew the agreement … and give cities a real say.

Ontario has been participating in a review of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and we’ve made numerous recommendations to the federal government — including to bring municipalities on board in a real and meaningful way.

I want to speak for a moment about the importance of partnership under this agreement.  We work closely with our federal partners, of course.

And my ministry works in close collaboration with our sister ministries: Natural Resources and Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs — on whose behalf I am signing today.

I particularly appreciate and want to recognize our long-standing working relationship with conservation authorities.  They’ve been — and will continue to be — key partners on the front line.

My ministry has been working over the past few months toward a Memorandum of Understanding with the Chiefs of Ontario to better address environmental policy issues, and particularly water policy, in cooperation with First Nations.

And today’s Memorandum of Cooperation is, of course, about recognizing a new partnership with municipalities.

This partnership approach — this commitment to work together — is critical to address the significant challenges that are emerging. 

I’d like to touch on two such challenges:

• the changing dynamics in the near-shore, and
• climate change

First, pollution is showing up in different places.  It’s no longer evenly distributed in the waters of the Great Lakes.  It is moving closer to our shores and cities.

The most visible example is increasing amounts of filamentous algae growing in near the shore and washing up on the shoreline as a result of the massive colonization of the lower lakes by mussels.

Stormwater is bringing pollutants to the near-shore from thousands of different residential and industrial sources throughout our cities.

It’s not so much the big industrial pipes anymore.  The things we all do in our daily lives are also contributing to the problem.

The products we use in our homes and on our lawns are washing down into storm sewers and being carried into the lakes.

Output from sewage treatment plants can also have a considerable effect on conditions close to shore.

In rural areas, agricultural practices, land development, removal of natural cover and other things we do on land are also contaminating the Great Lakes waters.

All of this has a direct bearing on our health and quality of life.

It destroys the beauty of our waterfronts.  It prevents us from swimming and enjoying our beaches.  It affects the quality of our water and the fish and ecosystems that rely on that water. 

We need to work more closely with municipalities.  Those who are in the watershed and are influencing water quality in tributaries and the near-shore.

If we don’t form the necessary partnerships to get the job done, things could get a lot worse.

But I refuse to believe that we cannot rise to the challenge.

One reason for my optimism is right here in Toronto Harbour, one of the most difficult of all the Areas of Concern in the Great Lakes.

The problems are complex … solutions are costly … and it will take years to complete the actions set out in the Remedial Action Plan.

At the same time, I believe real progress is being made … thanks in large part to our partnership work with the City of Toronto.

One of the keys to this work lies in restoring water quality in the Don River.  The Don is about 80 per cent stormwater and carries untreated urban pollutants into Lake Ontario.

We’re working with the City on the environmental assessment for tanks to store and treat this stormwater.

I hope that 10 years from now we will see that this work, along with the repair of combined sewers, has helped restore a clean and revitalized Toronto waterfront.

We face big challenges in getting to the point where we can say that.

The second more recent Great Lakes challenge is climate change, which threatens to add an additional level of complexity to the problems I have been discussing.

We may already be seeing some of the consequences of our changing climate in the Great Lakes region including lower water levels, warmer water temperatures, changes in water flows and more severe storms.

Cities must consider these effects when planning future drinking water systems and their water and wastewater infrastructures.

Climate change also highlights the need for us to bring our water and wastewater systems into a state of good repair — to build resiliency to the effects of climate change.

Cities will need to rethink the design of water treatment facilities.  Lower water levels in the lakes, along with the slow rate of replenishment, will change water flows.  Plant intakes and outtakes may have to extend further from shore.

Warmer water temperatures are making the Great Lakes more hospitable to invasive species.  We must be able to treat new and different pathogens that may be more resilient than what we’re dealing with now.

Waste water treatment plants will also need greater capacity to prevent bypasses caused by more severe storms.

We need to look at what the possible effects of climate change will be and make sure we have measures in place to help our communities adapt.

This is why we set up an Expert Panel on Climate Change Adaptation — to provide us with strategies to address the effects of climate change on our communities and our ecosystems.

The City of Toronto is developing its climate change adaptation strategy.

Toronto’s plan puts the focus on conservation — where any discussion of water protection needs to begin.

Conservation is already built into some of our major legislation. 

The Great Lakes Charter Annex Agreement puts the emphasis on keeping Great Lakes waters where they belong.

It bans diversion of waters from the Great Lakes Basin.

And it commits the States and Provinces around the basin to developing water conservation and efficiency programs.

I’ve just outlined for you two of the modern-day emerging challenges we must address to revitalize the Great Lakes and the entire ecosystem.

We have of course been making significant progress in cleaning up the lakes, and I’ve mentioned some of the successes already.

We have a lot of work ahead of us and it’s not going to be easy. 

We need to engage all partners — and continue to use our combined talents, expertise and resources.

We can’t gloss over this last point — resources.  Cleaning up the Great Lakes is costly.

A key challenge municipalities across Ontario are facing is raising the funds needed to renew and modernize water and wastewater systems.

These systems are facing a considerable need for investment.

We need to shift our attention back to these assets, which are mostly out-of-sight, out-of mind.

Ensuring these critical services are financially sustainable and affordable is a key priority for the newly created Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure.

We are committed to working with our municipal partners to ensure people understand why this work is so vitally important to the quality of life we all enjoy.

And we want to continue developing effective partnerships with the federal government.

All levels of government have an interest in coping with the growth of our urban centres — especially when it comes to providing high-quality water and wastewater services.

I’m convinced we will succeed if we build strong partnerships and take effective action at the local level.

The Memorandum of Cooperation we are signing with the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative is a positive step.  It marks a new era in municipal involvement in the revitalization of the Great Lakes.

Cities must be recognized for the important role they have to play.  At the same time, they must rise to the challenge.

Working together, we can get the job done.

Clean and healthy Great Lakes will help us build a prosperous, vital and sustainable future for all our communities and for the Ontario families who call them home.

Thank you.

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