Chairman Baldini
We welcome now the opportunity for you to provide some advice to us on the Agreement. First and for the next half hour, we have reserved time to hear a coordinated presentation from representatives of environmental non-governmental organizations. After that we will hear a short presentation by Paul Muldoon and Lee Botts. And also, a group of students from Erie, Pennsylvania followed by students who attended a student environmental summit in Buffalo, New York. This will be followed by an open microphone opportunity and we will monitor that as it goes along. So I'm going to turn this portion of the program over to John Jackson who is no stranger to all of us. John?
ENVIRONMENTAL NON-GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS PRESENTATIONS
John Jackson, Great Lakes United
Thank you, and thank you to the Commission for inviting us to be here today. I'm John Jackson with Great Lakes United [GLU]. We have a presentation to make on behalf of environmental groups around the basin. You heard this morning from the governments, their statements of the progress that they have made over the past 25 years. We felt as citizens' groups that we had to sit down and do our own in-depth assessment of what has been done and what has not been done over the past 25 years. The Canadian Environmental Law Association, the National Wildlife Federation and Great Lakes United sat down and went through the Water Quality Agreement item by item and came up with a report in which we detailed what had been done and what had not been done. I think the title gives you some sense of our conclusion which is called, "Treading Water." They clearly have not solved the problem. We have here a 170-page document of our detailed assessment. I have for the Commissioners, a summary at the moment. The full document is on its way and we'll make sure that it gets to your staff.
Based on our assessment of the commitments that governments themselves made in the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and we also did the assessment on the basis of the recommendations that the IJC has made over the past 25 years, because those recommendations from the IJC have been absolutely critical in understanding the implications of the Agreement and where we need to go with it, and we as citizens in the Great Lakes basin have immensely appreciated those recommendations that you have made and look forward to future great recommendations.
Our conclusions are that we are alarmed that first of all we haven't gone as far as we need to go. And secondly, a fear that there is going to be a falling backwards. That we are going to lose ground and we're seeing the signs. You heard some of it this morning. The cuts in various programs, a movement away from a regulatory approach to a voluntary approach, and the dropping of responsibility, very often by the federal and provincial and statement governments onto municipalities who do not have the resources to do the job and onto volunteer groups who don't possibly have the resources to do the jobs. We leave that document with you to read in depth. We will not go into detail on it now.
In addition, what we've done is citizens groups around the basin have written an update on a document that we gave to the IJC two years ago, called, "Our Lakes, Our Health, Our Future." And this is a document that assesses what has changed in the past two years and what we then feel needs to be done in the future. Our people will be commenting on various aspects of that. Enclosed with that is a report card that we have put together on our assessment of governments' progress and we leave that with you at your leisure to read. Needless to say, we don't feel that the governments have done a good enough job. In most categories, they are ranking around C, D, mostly in the D area. They clearly have not done the job. Some people would put them lower; we've been generous in our assessment. We'll begin by talking about persistent toxic substances -- Diane?
Diane Heminway, Great Lakes United
Thank you, John. We are deeply concerned about a number of things, as you'll see in the report. We feel there is a tremendous need to halt the release of persistent toxic substances into the Great Lakes, as it is now abundantly clear there is no longer merely suspicion that these chemicals are causing harm. The evidence is in. The unheeded warnings of the environmental community are now resounding in scientific circles. Even the U.S. Dept. Of Health, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry agrees that the data confirms that there is destruction to wildlife and humans. It is occurring as a result of exposure and bioaccumulation of persistent toxics. EPA's Office of Children's Environmental Health acknowledges that the rapidly increasing incidence rates of certain childhood cancers can be attributed to no other cause, than toxic chemicals in the environment.
We continue to witness in our communities the tragic consequences of industrial poisons -- deformed wildlife, reproductive failures, hormone disruption, weakened immune systems, birth defected babies. and exceedingly high rates of cancer. They are undoubtedly a direct result of the chemical barrage. In the community of Rochester New York, within a five mile radius of Kodak, the state's largest polluter, over 40 children have been diagnosed with central nervous system cancer. This is cancer of the brain and/or the spinal column. The youngest victim is an infant, just four week's old. We are tired of this silent corporate violence and we are tired of the government's broken promises. We are still waiting. We are waiting for EPA's dioxin reassessment, we are waiting for enforcement of environmental laws while we watch the gutting of environmental budgets in Ontario and Quebec, and New York State and other Great Lakes states. And we are waiting while we watch U.S. elected officials adapt policies to protect and defend polluters under the guise of regulatory reform. We watch as the assault continues.
The map that you see before you gives you a very thumbnail sketch of the toxic releases that are occurring. Some 382 pounds of toxic substances were released in 1992/93. This is Canada Pollutant Release Inventory [NPRI] data and U.S. Toxics Release Inventory [TRI] data from the U.S. As I said, this is a thumbnail sketch. The General Accounting Office estimated that the TRI data represents only about 5% of the total releases. There are over 14 million chemicals and chemical compounds out there with between 75 and 100,000 of them used commonly in commerce now, today. This map represents only some 200-300 chemicals; some 200 in Canada and about 350 in the United States. As I said, this is a very, very thumbnail sketch. The picture is much worse than this map indicates.
In our call to confront persistent toxics, we turn to the IJC and beseech you to commit to the following recommendations. (1) We ask that you study the effects of current legislative attacks on the future ecological integrity of the Great Lakes and transmit that report to all jurisdictions in the basin; (2) Consistent with the philosophy of zero discharge, we ask that you urge the governments to develop materials, policy projects starting in critical industrial sectors that will lead to zero discharge, and to seek precautionary approach in environmental decision-making; (3) To facilitate planning for a just transition, involving governments, labour and industry to a sustainable economy; (4) To broaden its call for global ban on selected toxic substances to include other critical pollutants as well as processes, such as incineration, of chlorinated feedstocks that unintentionally produce toxic substances like dioxin.
We are also deeply concerned about the increase threats of radionuclides. Not only does pollution from radioactive waste continue to threaten the Great Lakes ecosystem but since 1995, we have seen proposals to use weapons-grade plutonium fuel in commercial reactors. A proposal that could easily spread deadly contamination throughout the Great Lakes basin. We are being forced to acknowledge that nuclear reactors are rapidly deteriorating, especially in Ontario where Ontario Hydro's units on Lake Huron and Lake Ontario are spilling ever larger quantities of tritium-tainted water into the Great Lakes. There are 60 nuclear power reactors that directly impact the Great Lakes watershed and windshed. We are witnessing electric power restructuring, forcing nuclear utilities into bankruptcy and creating huge public cleanup liabilities. While we must accept that cleanup is really a myth. In addition, we continue to watch day-to-day operations of uranium mines, refineries, nuclear research laboratories and nuclear weapons production facilities. The vast majority of these facilities are located on the shores of the lakes. Daily their operations continue to contaminate the Great Lakes with the release of radioactive pollutants.
Today we are asking that the IJC make the following recommendations: (1) To complete its study of nuclear power releases and waste storage leakages of radioactivity, and make this study available to the public; (2) To recommend that your 1993 recommendation that "governments incorporate these radionuclides which meet the definition of persistent toxic substances in their strategy for virtual elimination of persistent toxic substances" be incorporated as an amendment to the 1997 Great Lakes Binational Toxics Strategy and that the impact on human health will be acknowledged and addressed; (3) And lastly, recommend to the governments that they phaseout nuclear risk in the Great Lakes basin by scheduling deadlines for the phaseout of radioactive pollutants from nuclear power plants, imposing an immediate moratorium on the granting of new reactor licenses, imposing an immediate moratorium on storage of additional high level radioactive waste, banning retrofitting of reactors to accommodate new fuel configurations such as MOX, and phasing in energy efficient and renewable options based on full cost accounting. We ask that you commit to these recommendations because it is the right and moral thing to do. Thank you.
Julian Holenstein, Great Lakes United
Thank you. My name is Julian and I'm a member of GLU as well. I'm also a resident of northwestern Ontario. I live on the northshore of Lake Superior at the very top of the basin and I'm happy that you've held this meeting and that I've had an opportunity to come down and talk to you. I'm here to ask for your help. Lake Superior is one of the most beautiful and pristine lakes on this planet. It is a lake that remains relatively clean to this day. It is a lake that screams out opportunity; opportunity to be pro-active. Just look at this map showing the toxic releasers in the Great Lakes basin. Sure there is a few dots where Lake Superior is, there's a few circles, but there is not that many. This is where there is an opportunity. If our governments take the initiative, Lake Superior could become the model of a healthy Great Lake. Unfortunately, the governments surrounding Lake Superior have not made serious measurable progress towards a special designation. A designation that will freeze toxic discharges at present levels as recommended by the binational forum. In fact, the government is not even uniformly regulated, permitted, zoned or in any way changed what activities are allowed on shores or in the air and water of Lake Superior.
Six years after accepting the challenge made by this Commission, our governments have not made any significant progress towards establishing Lake Superior as a zero discharge demonstration zone. It is time, in fact it is long overdue to immediately designate the whole of Lake Superior as an area where no new or increased discharges of persistent toxic substances are allowed, and to take action on atmospheric deposition to Lake Superior by identifying air sources of the nine zero discharge chemicals and taking steps towards elimination of these sources. A healthy future for Lake Superior and other Great Lakes also means maintaining and renewing biodiversity and forest ecosystem health.
The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement clearly charges the IJC with monitoring progress towards the preservation and restoration of biological integrity of our Great Lakes ecosystem. To this end, little progress has been made. In fact, in many cases our governments are dismantling environmental legislation. In the government-sponsored State of the Lakes assessment it was found that 11 of the 17 Great Lakes eco-regions are in decline, with five severely degrading. So what are our governments doing? Nothing. In fact we are falling backwards, as John mentioned. Since 1995 we have lost another major fish species for the Great Lakes. We've witnessed protection for native species coming under attack through takings challenges and proposals to weaken endangered species legislation. We have watched the U.S. approve a timber salvage rider that raided diseased and dead wood from public forest, under the guise of improving ecosystem health --completely contrary to what we know and what this board here knows about ecosystem science, but is allowed to occur.
And now in my home province of Ontario, the Harris government has launched Lands for Life or what I call, Leftovers for Life. This initiative will carve up 46 million hectares of Ontario's public forest, without the requirement to implement process recommendations before handing out long-term lease arrangements with forest industry. The ecological integrity of the Great Lakes has been broken. Whole populations of native fish, such as the yellow perch are mysteriously declining. Intentionally and unintentionally introduced species are having devastating impacts on native fish populations. In addition, efforts to prevent the loss of critical habitats is failing.
To protect biodiversity and ecosystem health, the IJC must act now. Some action steps will include: identifying policies that are detrimental, to intact fully functioning forces including a review of management practices on public lands; assembling inventories of protected areas of the forest estate within one year and reporting to the next IJC meeting on plans to complete the network of ecologically represented protected areas; monitoring and reporting on the government's commitments to actively control the population of sea lamprey and other exotics; and examining the ecological and economic impacts of intentionally maintained populations of exotic species -- the dumping of hatchery fish into our Great Lakes. We must establish goals that reflect the current state of knowledge for the rehabilitation and the restoration of native Great Lakes eco-regions, communities and species. There is much work to be done; let's get moving. Thank you.
Elaine Marsh, Great Lakes United
Commissioners, my name is Elaine Marsh. I'm from Great Lakes United as well. I am here to request that you expand your agenda and I am certain that when those people who discharge toxic substances into the Great Lakes basin hear that we are requesting that you expand your agenda, they will say, "When will it all end?" And we ask the same question as well, "When will it all end?" Four years ago, you also included nuclear issues. This year we are asking you to consider two additional issues. One is mining. I'm sure you are well aware of the toxic problems that remain because of the unreclaimed mine sites throughout the basin. Two of those that I would like to mention; One exists on Lake Superior's Keweenaw Peninsula in God's country. Another one on Ontario's Serpent River region. However, it is not only the unreclaimed mine sites that concern us. In addition, there are proposed mines which deeply concern us all.
In Wisconsin, the Exxon and Rio Algom Corporations are proposing a 25 year mine that will extract 55 million tons of copper and zinc from the headwaters of Wisconsin's Wolf River. It would produce nearly as much tonnage of waste. And they are proposing that the wastewater from this site be transferred out of the basin into the Wisconsin River, where it would enjoy less protection under that river system. Ontario has seriously weakened mine regulation requirements since 1995, exempting prospectors from environmental liability.
Therefore we make the following recommendations concerning mining: (1) That the IJC apply the provisions of Annexes 13 through 70 of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement to mining activities in each of the Great Lakes jurisdictions; (2) That they designate the Serpent River as an Area of Concern and fast track the development of a RAP for the Serpent River system; (3) And we recommend, that the IJC recommend that governments identify all abandoned and orphaned sites in the basin within one year and report to the next IJC meeting on plans to remediate sites.
The other item we request that you add to your agenda is that of sustainable waters. While the mine in Wisconsin is proposing diverting its wastewater out of the basin, in Ohio a diversion request of 5 million gallons a day is suggesting that they transfer wastewater into the basin in order to make up for water diverted out. At the same time, U.S. and Canadian mining companies are proposing diversions of 3 million gallons a day of groundwater. We believe that these are only the tip of the iceberg so to speak, in terms of diversions of the Great Lakes waters. We believe as we indicated in our recent report that there are very real threats to the integrity of the quantity of Great Lakes water and they include climate changes which will significantly lower the Great Lakes water levels; unlimited groundwater diversions which may soon become legal in the United States; and finally, and most importantly, the sale of water which may become a commodity as multi-national water companies establish a North American water market over the next decade.
And so, we have the following recommendations to the IJC: (1) That they establish a board with the status of the Science Advisory Board and Water Quality Board to draft and monitor a sustainable water quality strategy; (2) We also would like that the IJC personally review all applications or plans for withdrawals, diversions and consumptive uses of the Great Lakes water. And we would request that that would include groundwater as well; (3) We therefore recommend that the IJC recommend to the governments that they explicitly define groundwater as a part of Great Lakes water for the purposes of national laws. We believe that there is much evidence for this already in Annex 16. Clearly the IJC cannot fulfill its mission to restore and preserve the waters of the Great Lakes if it is not procedurally concerned with water quantity, as well as water quality. Thank you.
John Jackson, Great Lakes United
Our reports have arrived. The full report of "Treading Water," which I'll now pass to you, and as you will see in that, the assessment that was done by the Canadian Environmental Law Association, Great Lakes United and the National Wildlife Federation of progress under the Agreement. We are sure you'll come to the same conclusion that we did, when we went through this assessment. and that is: that the governments have not begun to complete their job and indeed are moving backwards in some respects.
And as a result of that conclusion, we recommend to you that you urge the governments not to renegotiate the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement at this time. There is much to be done still and we are afraid of having time and resources diverted away from doing the job of the commitments already made in the Water Quality Agreement. We don't want to have resources diverted away from the critical job of implementing the existing Agreement. At our annual meeting of Great Lakes United in the beginning of June our membership unanimously passed a resolution saying that they did not want the Agreement renegotiated.
There is one item however, that we do want the IJC to assess. It is clearly unacceptable and bizarre, that we have a situation where the end of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence system is not included in the mandate of what is happening under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Currently, the Agreement's provisions end at Cornwall, Massena, and yet the St. Lawrence River which receives all the contaminants from upstream all the way from Lake Michigan and Lake Superior and all the way down, and its south in Montreal and other places, contributes to contamination of the St. Lawrence River, and from there to the ocean. We ask you to assess ways to make sure that the rest of the St. Lawrence River and Quebec are included in the Agreement; it is absolutely critical.
Finally, we just want to say that we appreciate the role the IJC has been playing over the past decade, at least. In terms of bringing forward very progressive and forward thinking ideas about how we can implement the Agreement -- what are the real implications of this amazing Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement; and we ask you to continue. We're confident you will continue in providing recommendations that move us forward to new understandings and new ways of dealing with the problems. And we also want to express to you our appreciation for having put on this forum, and we look forward to another one two years from now. The public really wants to be here, is coming out, we really want forums like this. So, thank you.
Chairman Baldini
Thank you, John, and thank you for your presenters. John, we always get thoughtful papers from you. Thank you very much, seriously. The next two presenters are Paul Muldoon and Lee Botts.
Good afternoon. It's an honor to be able to present the results of an in-depth review of experience under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement at an event that celebrates its 25 year history. I'm going to describe the purposes, the methodology and the major findings of the review and then Paul will discuss the recommendations that emerged from our analysis of whether and why the Agreement has been effective and the reasons for our concerns about its future. One would have to wonder, given all the complaints that we environmentalists have been making about how not enough's been done, what is the use of this binational accord? Well, the project that we undertook was sponsored by the Institute on International Environmental Governance at Dartmouth College, where a lot of attention is being given to how to make arrangements for managing environmental matters across international boundaries. And they were especially interested in having a case study of the Great Lakes because its been so widely regarded as a model around the world.
Paul and I had three reasons of our own for undertaking this project. First, we do not think that the importance of the Agreement itself was appreciated. Second, we thought that perhaps a lack of a comprehensive history and a formal evaluation of its results was a factor in the lack of understanding about its significance. And finally, it seemed even more important to examine this experience because there seemed to be signs of major changes in processes that had evolved in its first quarter century, as we approach that anniversary. So those were the reasons why we did it. And we had three purposes in what we did. First, we wanted to document the history in detail. If you look at the number of footnotes in the report, you'll see how hard we tried. The second was to evaluate whether the Agreement has been successful, and to consider the reasons if it has been successful, why has it been successful. Why has it failed, if it has failed. And finally, we developed recommendations for how to maintain the strength of the processes of the Agreement to ensure that continued progress will be made in restoration and protection of the lakes.
Our methodology was pretty straight forward; usual thing. We interviewed a lot of people, over 80 people. And I want to take this opportunity, a lot of them in this room, to thank everybody for giving us so much time and so much information in many different ways. We reviewed documents -- boy did we review documents -- things that had been written about the IJC; analyses of the Boundary Water Treaty; read and re-read publications of the International Joint Commission and the government agencies; and we also became familiar with the current literature on international agreements, because there are a growing number of those agreements that concern the environment; and then, the other factor was between us, Paul and I have been involved over the whole history of the Agreement. Obviously my involvement began before his. But it dates from before the Agreement was signed in 1972. So we drew on our own experience and personal files. We had a lot of original materials collected over the years. It's true that we began with a predisposition to consider the Agreement a success, but we believe that we have backed up the view with the documentation and the evidence that we have assembled. We also used criteria that a political scientist named, Oren Young, who is one of the leading theorists about international agreements -- we used his criteria and applied them to the Agreement. And there's not time here to go into details.
We do have with us copies of both the full report and a short version which was done -- for those people who don't want to wade through the whole thing -- and see us and we'll see that you get these copies.
Major finding of the whole project was that the most important result of the GLWQA was the development of a unified basin-wide Great Lakes community in which environmental activists and government agencies' staff and many others share the commitment to its goals. Nothing would have happened if this community had not developed. Our analysis showed that the growth and effectiveness of the Agreement was fostered by features of the Agreement itself: its special characteristics, including the binationalism that governs its operations; the flexibility which allows new responses to new information; and the ongoing research whose results are shared throughout the community; and it's the processes around the Agreement that allow the sharing of the information, and allow the interaction, and allow us to complain about each other and then go out and all together fight for the Great Lakes.
The success of the binational accord is confirmed by its influence on the laws and policies of both of our countries, and by the strengthening of the political will of the Parties to the Agreement or the governments. The whole thing lasted a lot longer and proved harder than we thought when we started because even though we thought we saw signs of a weakening in the community when we started, we didn't anticipate how much things would change in the early 1990s. And we found that we had to give a lot more attention to exploring the reasons for the weakening of the strength of the community in recent years. Again, I want to thank everyone who helped us with the study. And Paul will now discuss the recommendations that we make to try to counter this trend of a weakening of the community and the reasons why we agree it is essential to maintain the Agreement substantially in its present form, maintain those processes that make the community strong. Thank you.
Paul Muldoon, Canadian Environmental Law Association
Thank you very much. I would like to do a review of the recommendations. What Lee didn't tell you is that we didn't really intend to release the study on the 25th year of the anniversary of the Agreement. In fact, we started so long ago, we thought we would have made the 20 year mark, but we're lucky we got it off at the quarter century mark. I'm not going to review every recommendation, many of them are technical in nature. But let me review the five major ones. The first one as mentioned already is at the next annual meeting, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement calls for a review of the Agreement in terms of whether or not it should be renegotiated. The recommendation of this report is quite unequivocal, in that no change should be made to the Great lakes Water Quality Agreement except to enhance its operations and progress towards its present goals. We really think the question now is of implementation and not to re-inventing a model which has not only worked in the Great Lakes basin, but has in fact been duplicated, and attempted to be duplicated elsewhere in the world. We think this is an international model for governance. And to try and play with that model now -- we're still trying to grapple with how to meet its goals and implement it -- would be a mistake. So our view is, let's move on with implementation, rather than revisiting the goals.
Now what Lee talked about was the important part of the Agreement which is something that is not in the words of the Agreement. The Agreement gives us goals and aspirations to maintain the physical, chemical and biological integrity. But what makes that work are the scientists, the public interest groups, local residents, politicians -- those are the people -- and all the other stakeholders in society, which really create the community, to keep governments accountable and to really make the cogs of that machine, of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement work. That community, the Great Lakes community, really is the guts of the Agreement. And what we're asking you, Commissioners is to make sure that that community is maintained and in fact enhanced.
Now, those are abstract words. How do we do that? And we try to outline that in the Agreement. But let me give you a few of the examples as we go on. But, those are the two key recommendations. Many of these recommendations though, are not just geared to you, they are geared to the governments. And one of the things we'd like in particularly to note, is recommendation four. And what we think is fundamental is that the IJC becomes and maintains its role of accountability towards governments. You are the voice of the people in the audience here as to what is going right and what's going wrong with the Agreement. You are the communication translators of our aspirations. Whether it be industry, whether it be non-governmental groups, or whoever.
We think you're doing a good job and we want you to maintain that. But to do that you need information, vital information. The citizen's presentation in my view gave an excellent idea of what you're hearing from the trenches of the Great Lakes. But you also need to hear the detailed data from governments, so that you can assess progress. And we don't think that that detailed concrete information that you need is coming. So one of the recommendations, is that you should describe to the Parties in as much detail as you can, of the kind of information that you need to undertake a proper assessment of the effectiveness of government programs. And we think that can be done in a formal way so that they know exactly what to submit to you every biennial cycle. Further, I think that not only must they give you the information, but the Parties should work and design these State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference and other joint processes to provide you with the information. And in that way not only do they know what information you require, but the processes that are ongoing now can be geared to ensuring that you get that information.
A few others -- The other one deals with this: the International Joint Commission should create a forum for debating greater participation by representatives of non-governmental groups in the regime. Such as the creation of a citizen's advisory committee. We think that the once every two years of having input from non-governmental groups is fundamental. But I think that also understates the expertise, knowledge and experience of environmental groups and citizens across the basin. The question is, "How do you get that on an ongoing basis?" And we think it may require some institutional design changes to allow that to happen. And I think if it did happen, you would see that the quality of the information coming to you, just not every two years but continually, would rise exponentially.
And let me just end off with this. Is that the International Joint Commission should seek clarification of its relationships with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission and the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, and to consider taking a more active role in relevant international forums outside the Great Lakes. And that's really two or three recommendations in one. We think that the public is confused of who's doing what. The extent to which you can coordinate your activities with the other institutions in the Great Lakes and on the continent, that can go out and coordinate the workplans and try to present data which we all understand and more importantly which the public can understand, and get a clear voice of what's going wrong, what's going right.
Also, many of the problems of the Great Lakes are coming from outside of the Great Lakes, to the extent to which you can take an active role in participating influencing those international fora we think would be fundamentally important. Remind you that the 1998, there will be the commencement of the negotiations of International Protocol on the Persistent Organic Pollutants. That treaty will fundamentally affect the state of the Great Lakes. If the treaty is weak, so too will be the future of the Great Lakes. So we ask you to think how you can influence that, and bear down your experience and the experience under the Agreement to those negotiations.
Those are only a few of the recommendations, and I hope it does reflect some of the thinking and thought that we've put into it. I know you have copies of the report and please, feel free to ask questions at some point throughout the weekend and later on, if you have any inquiries on it. Thank you, very much.
Chairman Baldini
Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Lee. If people are interested in obtaining a copy they are to see you directly? Okay, thank you. Next our presenters, Sister Pat Lupo? Okay, students?