Thank you for the opportunity to discuss freshwater resources and how our small island province is relying upon the resource.

As a province, we're 100% reliant on groundwater to supply our drinking water. All of our water is extracted from water wells. We also extract water from rivers for agricultural irrigation, but even in this case, there's an important link to groundwater. In the summer, the base flow from rivers can be almost entirely fed from groundwater.

With ever-increasing demands and threats to our water, we're striving to understand and address the issues. We're discovering that droughts can affect water availability at times of high demand. We are seeing more anoxic events in our waters. They are occurring earlier and they are lasting longer. We're also noticing that incidents of saltwater intrusion in our wells are becoming more common.

Because of this, we've been very active in trying to protect our valuable resource. In 2021, the P.E.I. Water Act was proclaimed, which provides the foundation for water and waste-water management in P.E.I. We are providing government with the tools necessary to mitigate issues and employ protection of the resource.

While the development of regulations is far from complete, several regulations, such as water withdrawal regulations and the drinking water supply and waste-water systems regulations, provide mechanisms for government to properly manage water.

Agriculture is a critical industry for the province and there are increasing demands for water for irrigation. Water is extracted from both wells and from rivers for irrigation. However, we've been trying to move away from river withdrawals, as groundwater extraction through a well can have a less immediate impact on the river in a watershed than the instantaneous impact that comes from surface-water extraction.

We have also instituted a requirement for all major water users to create drought contingency plans, where the users provide written plans for what they will do to reduce water usage during drought conditions.

Water permitting on P.E.I. is done on a watershed-by-watershed basis. Water extraction is to only occur up until the threshold deemed harmful to freshwater aquatic life is reached. While most watersheds in P.E.I. are not near water extraction limits, there are some watersheds where demand is approaching allocation limits.

Our department has always been a proponent of transparent monitoring, as we use much of this data to determine how best to protect our water resources. As a requirement of the new Water Act, we have created the P.E.I. water registry. I encourage each one of you to look at that and discover all it has to offer.

For our drinking water users, we have instituted several protection measures. For example, we offer drinking water analysis to the public for free. We're in the planning stage of the development of well-field protection regulations for our municipal systems.

We have long believed that protection and decision-making at a local level is an integral part of environmental protection. For example, we have the P.E.I. watershed groups on the island. With the Water Act, we hope we can expand governance at a local level to include water allocation decisions.

We consider the continued collaboration between the provincial and federal governments as a key part of protecting our water resource. A very successful example of this is the Canada-P.E.I. memorandum of agreement on water. Within this agreement, we've been able to partner and share resources with the federal government on a range of initiatives, such as water quality and water quantity monitoring, CABIN monitoring, pesticide monitoring, CESI, shellfish water classification program and, for the past two years, an expanded pesticide monitoring program with PMRA.

It is crucial that collaboration such as this and continued funding for water and waste-water systems continue, especially with the population growth we've seen. These models have served both governments very well in the past.

As I mentioned, agriculture is a critical industry for P.E.I. The federal government can support producers in their continued goal of reducing impacts to the environment. This can come in the form of research, education, collaboration with local watershed groups and monitoring in the following areas: reduction in the use and impact of fertilizers; reduction of soil loss and improved soil health; the use of pesticides best suited for P.E.I.'s unique environment; and pest- and drought-resistant crops.

There is widespread use of pesticide products within P.E.I. and PMRA should be reviewing registrations with a P.E.I. lens to ensure that they are safe to use with our unique environmental conditions. They have run an expanded pilot program across Canada in the last two years. We support the expansion of this program to fully understand the fate of these chemicals.

As emerging contaminants such as PFAS become an issue, there's often little known about them. The federal government can again assist with sampling costs, research and setting guideline values.

Governance at a local level is important and the federal government should continue to expand support for local groups, such as watershed groups on P.E.I. This support can include financial, research and sharing scientific expertise.

I hope I was able to provide you with a quick overview of the island's unique environment and the need for support on a variety of water-related issues.

Thank you for your valuable time.