Restoring and Enhancing The Great Lakes
and St. Lawrence Region

Summary

Invest $6 billion over the next 3 years to effectively restore, protect and enhance the environment of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence region so that the region’s residents, environment and economy are all healthy and thriving for generations to come. The priority areas for investment should be:

• Clean-up and de-listing of the existing Areas of Concern in Canada, so that they become “de-listed”; and
• Sustainable water and wastewater infrastructure.

Benefits for Canadians

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Background and Rationale
The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement is under Review and there is a general sense that while the Agreement has been hugely beneficial to progress in protecting the Great Lakes, it is out of date and needs to be re-thought. New issues have come to the forefront, including climate change, invasive species, and development and growth pressures, and we will likely need new agreements and approaches to reach the goals that a new GLWQA or its successor, will require. Despite the federal government’s commitment to safeguarding Canadians from environmental issues and toxics problems through a myriad of Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River initiatives, there is a need for order of magnitude increases in federal spending on the Great Lakes.

In the United States, a recent Great Lakes Regional Collaboration initiative, stimulated by the White House, has resulted in the development of a U.S. work plan for restoration of the Great Lakes that has been estimated to cost about US$20 billion over 5 years. It would include funding for priorities including invasive species, habitat restoration, coastal management, clean-up of Areas of U.S. Areas of Concern (AOC), non-point source pollution controls, toxics, and work on indicators and information. In the United States, it is estimated that contaminated sediment cleanup costs at U.S. Areas of Concern could range from $1.5 billion to $4.5 billion. Since the amount of contaminated sediments listed in the U.S. AOCs as needing attention is slightly less than twice the volume estimated for Canada, this could mean costs of $0.75 billion to over $2 billion to address contaminated sediments in Canadian AOCs.

While the White House has not yet approved of an expenditure of this magnitude, the financial scale is indicative of the challenge we face in Canada. Canada has not yet undertaken an equivalent, broad-based consultative initiative to the U.S. Great Lakes Regional Collaboration initiative.

In terms of infrastructure renewal in Canada, Environment Canada estimates that approximately $1.8 Billion is required for wastewater infrastructure improvements in Canada’s Areas of Concern.