CLOSING CEREMONY

Chairman Legault

Come to the front if you please. It's cosier.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our 1999 Great Lakes Water Quality Forum. As always, we were impressed by your interest, your enthusiasm, your concern for the Great Lakes, and the quality of their waters. We were taken with the beauty of this city of Milwaukee. We were also struck by the quality of the presentations made throughout the forum. We were overwhelmed by the enthusiastic assistance provided by the many, many volunteers who composed the local committee and who did so much make our forum a success.

The one thing I want to assure all of you is that what you have told us, the concerns you have brought to our attention during the forum have been heard. Let me mention one thing in particular that we have heard. We've heard concerns about symbols. Some of you felt that the presence of a representative of industry at the opening ceremonies on the dais could be interpreted as a symbol of inclusion of industry and exclusion of the public and of the non-governmental organizations. Please don't take that impression away with you. If you want a symbol, and symbols are important, look around you in this room and look at all the young people who are here. That's the symbol that I'm going to take away from Milwaukee. A symbol of the dedication of the public, of the average citizen, to the maintenance and restoration of the physical, biological, and ecological integrity of the Great Lakes.

I believe in symbols. I believe in that symbol in particular. I believe, too, in metaphor. To me, the Commission is the conscience of the governments with respect to their obligations under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. You, the public and the members of the non-governmental organizations, are the keepers of that conscience. An especially eloquent manifestation of your role as keepers of the conscience is again the presence and the concern expressed by the very presence here of so many young people. I thank all of you, but particularly the very youngest among you, for your presence here and for giving us greater courage, greater enthusiasm, greater inspiration, to do the job that we have been appointed to do.

One last word on the presence of industry at that table. That was meant to represent, if anything, co-option, and I think you will agree that we must co-opt industry into the effort to protect and restore the Great Lakes.

We've heard a number of other things as well. I will mention only a very few. We've heard that although the Great Lakes are cleaner, there's much left to be done. We've heard some specifics about what's left to be done. Better binational coordination of LaMPs and RAPs is needed. More important still, we've been told that some jurisdictions around the Great Lakes have stopped collecting vitally needed data for the monitoring of progress under the Agreement. We're also told that the IJC should play an important role in working to close gaps between local groups and federal authorities, and that the IJC should take the lead in developing a common standard for the monitoring and control of invasive exotic species.

As we said on Friday, it's our intention to release the IJC's Tenth Biennial Report in the spring of the year 2000. Writing the report will be a challenge as always. We'll be assisted in meeting that challenge by the views you have expressed here in Milwaukee. Clearly, we're not going to be able to include every comment we've heard, nor indeed everything we've received verbally and in writing in the months leading up to the forum. We have, for instance, more than 40 reports and documents on hand and we will, of course, peruse all of those, but we are going to have to make selections. We're going to have to pick up on a number of key issues and key themes which will then provide the basic focus for our report. Clearly, we are going to have our work cut out for us in this task.

Now, before officially adjourning the forum, I want to invite you all one last activity if you are able to do so. That is, the public hearing we'll be holding in this room this afternoon at 1:00 p.m. on the question of the uses, diversions, and exports of Great Lakes waters. You cannot separate the issue of water quality and water quantity so that interest of yours in water quality, I hope will inspire you if you are free to join us this afternoon in that other extremely important undertaking that we are pursuing during our visit to Milwaukee.

Finally, I want to return to the theme I opened with, namely, the gratitude we owe to all the volunteers from the local host committee, Marquette University, and the Convention Bureau of Milwaukee among them, for being here for us, for being so utterly devoted to making the forum a success. I would also to express again on behalf of the Commission as a whole, our thanks to all of those people, whether they were on the local committee or volunteers in other endeavours here, for all their assistance in contributing to the success of this forum.

Let me say and I hope I won't be contradicted by any of you here, but this was a very successful forum. My first was last year in Niagara. I think you have everything here in Milwaukee, including yourselves, to make a successful forum almost inevitable, whatever your Commission may or may not include in its own planning for the event. You make up for any deficiencies that may have existed in our planning. These facilities are really quite extraordinary. I think the public of Milwaukee, the citizens of Milwaukee are most fortunate to have something like this available to them. (applause)

We want to, as a very modest token of our thanks to all the people who provided such wonderful assistance to us, we have certificates of appreciation prepared which will be for those who are here available at the back of the room, and which will be mailed out to those who are not present to accept them in person.

Once again, thank you ever so much for your presence, your participation, and your encouragement to the Commission. Thank you.

I am sorry that I made a mistake with regard to the locale of the Water Uses Reference Hearing. It's in Room 101C at 1:00 o'clock.