Hello. My name is Sébastien Sauvé. I am not sure that I am going to be able to be as effective as my colleague before me, but I will do my best.

I am a professor of environmental chemistry at the Université de Montréal. I work on contaminants in the environment, legacy contaminants such as lead or cadmium, but mainly emerging contaminants, such as pharmaceuticals, hormones, pesticides, plastics and, at the moment, mainly PFAS, also known as forever chemicals.

PFAS are recognized as carcinogenic, cause cholesterol problems, reduce the response to vaccines, and are suspected of affecting the liver, kidneys and thyroid. Quality criteria for PFAS in water are constantly evolving worldwide, but despite Heath Canada’s recommendations they are still not regulated in Canada.

In my research, I examine the presence of PFAS in water, fish, food, sewage sludge and the environment in general. I assume that my experience around the Bagotville military base is the reason why I was invited to testify before the committee.

We carry out water analyses using a rather original procedure: we travel around and sample publicly accessible water points, water fountains in parks or libraries, or washrooms in restaurants or convenience stores. We stop in these places, we take a sample of water from the washrooms, for example, we leave, and we do the same thing in the next village or town. I could also work with municipal governments, request permissions, and have them send me a representative sample, but you will understand that if I did that, I would still be trying to extricate myself from all the paperwork and I would not have published anything on this subject. So I analyze water that is publicly accessible.

Through this work, we have identified drinking water contamination issues in five or six Quebec cities where the drinking water system or wells were contaminated. One problem we have seen is that there was a very high level of PFAS contamination in the drinking water from the water system in La Baie, located some ten kilometres from the Bagotville military base. To confirm this, analyses were carried out in my laboratory and at the Quebec ministry of the Environment, and I assume that other federal agencies have also done this. Those analyses showed that a water table had been contaminated somewhere between Bagotville and La Baie, over a ten-kilometre stretch. This means that regardless of where the well is located in that stretch, several nearby wells are contaminated.

When I saw this, my first reaction was to inform the Quebec Ministry of the Environment, which is responsible for distributing water in this kind of situation. I quickly realized that all these people did not talk to one another much. We would like them to talk more, but that is not the case. I also informed Health Canada and the Department of National Defence, assuming that it was of interest to those departments, and the City of Saguenay. I sent this information several months before the story came out in the media, but those organizations did not see fit at that time to inform people.

In conclusion, I leave you with this question: why is it a chemistry professor's work that identified a contamination problem in the drinking water around a military base?

Thank you.

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