Time to take care of our waterways

If I had a New Year’s Resolution for Canada in 2020, it would be to focus the collective attention of all Canadians on our oceans, lakes, rivers and shorelines.

Getting rid of garbage within our oceans, caring for our three ocean shorelines and investing what is needed — to ensure that no Canadian city or town ever again dumps raw garbage or sewage into our rivers — would capture the imagination of the world and could set up Canada as the leader in caring for this most precious resource.

As a nation bordering three oceans, and as the country with the most renewable freshwater per person each year, it should be natural for us to establish ourselves as having the gold standard for investing, cleaning and caring for our waterways.

Imagine what we could accomplish if we used all of our collective wisdom and resources to raise the standards of waterway maintenance around the world. Here is something we could do with pride, and best of all, something that we could point to as making a tangible and real difference to future generations.

Every day, millions of tons of plastic and garbage are deposited into our oceans and lakes.

Lately I have been reading about a young Dutch man named Boyan Slat who has formed a group that he calls The Ocean Clean Up. Here is a true “evangelist” when it comes to cleaning up the oceans, and I would encourage all of you reading these words, to Google his name and listen to his podcasts.

Amazingly, many of the countries that deposit the bulk of plastic and garbage do not have any form of municipal or organized garbage collection; the word “recycle” is not even in their vocabulary; and, the people have simply

Imagine what we could accomplish if we used all of our collective wisdom and resources to raise the standards of waterway maintenance.

become accustomed to throwing anything and everything into the slow moving rivers nearby. There is a story of a community that simply piles all of its garbage on the riverbank knowing that when the annual floods come, the garbage pile will be washed away and they can then start piling it up again for another year.

In Slat’s opinion, we have two challenges in the world. One is the existing and massive Pacific Garbage Patch, which is growing and cycling around the Pacific. This patch contains everything from minuscule pieces of plastic to fishing nets, milk crates and containers that have fallen from ships. This patch is a priority that must be addressed and countries that face the Pacific Ocean ignore this patch at their peril.

Here is a task that Canada could invest, in, tackle and make a huge difference. Here is a task that can be brought to the United Nations with a real hope of making an impact. The Ocean Clean Up has actually developed radical new equipment and techniques that are intended to attack this garbage patch and if it is successful, it will indeed make a difference.

The second challenge, Slat says, is the continual addition of more and more plastics and garbage into the waterways, every single day. Again, through our reputation as a negotiator and a country sincerely concerned about the environment, we could actually be the nation that funds, teaches, influences and supplies the equipment and skills needed to change the way other nations dispose of their waste.

A New Year always brings with it optimism and excitement. In spite of the past two or three difficult years, and my own opinions about government policies, I remain truly proud of Canada.

We can restore our country as a nation that others look to for leadership, by focusing on water in the 2020s and using our collective wills to make changes. We can clean our oceans, protect our rivers and lakes, and leave something for future generations who ask, “What did you do to save the planet?”