Hello.

I belong to an association that was created at the request of my federal member of Parliament, who noticed that there was a conflict between waterfront residents and recreational boaters, particularly where motorized vessels are concerned. A dozen of us met and we painted a picture of the situation.

Shoreline erosion is obviously a problem. The Richelieu River breaks up in the spring, but there is also a continuous break-up for six to eight months because of the waves caused by the boats. We need to understand that, over the past 20 years or so, we have seen an increase in the number of marinas and, consequently, the number of boats. In addition, the boats are larger and their engine displacement has increased, so they produce bigger waves, which accelerates shoreline destruction. So we've looked into that.

We also noticed that in the villages, many people with wharves and small boats were impacted by these excessive waves. We allowed them to have their say.

As you know, the Richelieu River is a rather extraordinary waterway. I think it is the most popular river in Quebec, if not in Canada. It is nearly 130 kilometres long. Along that river there are about 20 marinas and 800 to 1,000 private wharves. I counted them on Google Earth. This doesn't include the passage of ships from the St. Lawrence River that pass through this waterway to the Hudson River. This is not insignificant. These ships are often, of course, sailboats that sail to the Bahamas and the Caribbean.

At the same time, there has also been an extraordinary increase in water recreation over the past 20 years. These are often motorized activities such as water-skiing, inflatable boat buoys, personal watercraft, and the wakeboarding we've heard so much about. The latter activity is really terrible. How is it that this water sport can happen in a small river 200 metres wide? It should be practised in the Lachine Rapids or the Gulf of St. Lawrence, for example.

In short, when we looked at the situation, we realized that there were no regulations in place to stem this new flow of water-based recreational activities. That is why we looked into the issue.

This included mitigating wave impacts on shorelines and private and public facilities, such as docks and boat-launching ramps.

We also had to look at the situation of animal species endemic to the Richelieu. The copper redhorse is a well-known example. It breeds in the Richelieu, then leaves, and returns in the spring. Without the Richelieu, that fish would disappear completely.

We talked earlier about drinking water. Just in the Lower Richelieu, where I live, 24,000 people use that water. That is 12.6 million litres a day. There are 100,000 consumers along the length of the river. So we have a major responsibility in this regard.

The Richelieu has long had problems because of the former CIL plant, Canadian Industries Limited, and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. Recently, someone asked me if we could pump out the bottom of the Richelieu and remove all this polluted mud. I told him that it would be an impossible mission. The cost would be astronomical.

So what can be done to alleviate the problem? It's not complicated. Because it's in the mud at the bottom of the river, it's important to stop playing in that mud. So we're asking boaters to go through the main channel. Earlier, someone provided figures on that. I think it was said that boats were stirring up the sediment to a depth of seven metres.

The regulatory amendment that we were able to get passed in December 2023 deals with the speed of boats based on banks and shoals—