This proposal must be…

This proposal must be rejected. Our climate is changing, and we are increasingly suffering droughts. We cannot afford to allow water taking permits to be automatically renewed: instead we need to assess our current weather conditions and see if we can afford to divert groundwater from agriculture or municipal, public, drinking water supplies.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada noted that at the end of June, "45% of the Central Region was classified as Abnormally Dry (D0) or in Moderate to Severe Drought (D1 to D2), including 20% of the region's agricultural landscape." (See the attached map for details).

Automatically allowing water taking for bottling, aggregate operations, mining, exploration could mean there is not enough water to irrigate crops. Instead of automatic renewals, even short-term automatic renewals, we need to look at current, not past, conditions and see if water taking makes sense, given current weather conditions. It doesn't matter if there was lots of groundwater 10 years ago. Our climate has changed so much since then.

People can't eat gravel. We need to ensure there is sufficient groundwater for crop irrigation.

Please do not implement this change.