Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee, thank you for this invitation.

My name is George McGraw. I'm the founder and CEO of the U.S.-based water access non-profit DigDeep.org, and I'm a global expert on the human right to water and sanitation.

Imagine waking up and your kitchen sink has run dry. Imagine flushing your toilet and it backs up into your yard, making your family sick. To prepare dinner, you first have to travel miles to haul water.

Over the past 60 years, high-income countries led by Canada and the U.S. have invested more than $25 billion U.S. of foreign aid in water, sanitation and hygiene projects abroad. Between 1990 and 2015, more than 2.6 billion people gained access to improved drinking water, perhaps the single most important contribution to rising global life expectancy, but WASH insecurity remains a huge issue, and now the United Nations sustainable development goals, goal number six, calls for clean water and sanitation for all.

People from high-income countries like ours often think that this work is only needed in other places, but that's a myth. Millions of Americans and Canadians still don't have access to clean running water or a working toilet, and, with a worsening climate crisis, more families are at risk of falling into the water access gap for the first time.

In Canada, the best available data shows that members of first nations are 90 times more likely to live without running water than other Canadians. Many of those communities have faced water advisories for decades, causing significant concern for health risks and long-term prosperity, and the number of waterborne diseases in first nations communities is 26 times higher than the national average.

Canada isn't alone in this. More than two million people in the United States are similarly impacted. Our indigenous households here are 19 times more likely than white households to lack running water, and Black and Latino households in the U.S. are twice as likely. Similar challenges exist in Australia and the European Union.

There is a clear and common thread here. In high-income countries, indigenous people, communities of colour, immigrants, the unhoused, rural families and other disadvantaged groups live inside an invisible water access gap, largely forgotten by their governments. They experience higher rates of mortality, physical and mental health issues and economic inequality. In the U.S., our research demonstrates that the water access gap costs our economy nearly $8.6 billion U.S. every year. That's nearly $16,000 per household, in many cases more than a family earns in a year. One could easily guess that the impact on families inside Canada's water access gap is similar.

Fortunately, our research also shows that, for every dollar we invest in closing the water access gap, we get a five-dollar return on that investment, but the crucial point is this: Access to water and sanitation is a basic human right and, for millions of people in the U.S. and Canada, two of the wealthiest democracies on earth, that right is not being adequately protected.

I've spent my career working alongside other activists to defend the right to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water and sanitation services, recognized as a human right by the UN General Assembly in 2010. Many high-income countries haven't enshrined this human right into their own laws, and that must change. The governments of the Northwest Territories and Quebec have paved the path to codifying the human right to water in Canada, but efforts like these must be led by national governments here in Canada, in the United States and globally.

Codifying the human right to water makes access to safe water and basic sanitation a legal entitlement rather than a commodity or a charity. It spurs the development of government programs to close the water access gap, and it gives people living in that gap, especially sovereign indigenous nations, a key advocacy tool, ensuring that they are respected and empowered as part of any decision-making process. More importantly, it ensures that your race and your zip code no longer determine whether you and your family have access to a working tap and a flushing toilet.

For now, the promise of a human right to water in Canada remains unfulfilled. I say all of this not to shame anyone for failing to meet their obligations but to inspire you. To close, I'll share a glimpse into the most incredible part of my job, that moment when someone turns on their tap for the first time.

It's impossible to describe this experience as a single thing. Sometimes it's met with tears or shouts of happiness. Other times, hordes of kids jostle around the sink waiting to be the first to touch the water when it comes out. Perhaps my most favourite of these moments, though, are the quiet ones, those few times when a person just opens the faucet, watches the water pour out and then closes the tap again without saying a word. It's a powerful reminder that access to water itself really doesn't deserve much fanfare. After all, it's our basic human right.

Thank you for the invitation and for your time.