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A third phase for the St. Lawrence Plan
After 10 years of intensive work in two successive phases, the federal-provincial action program for the St. Lawrence River was well established. It was therefore quite logical for federal and Quebec Environment Ministers Christine Stewart and Paul Bégin to sign a third Canada-Quebec Agreement on the St. Lawrence on June 8, 1998.
The two governments would invest about $240 million in this third five-year action plan. Still under the name St. Lawrence Vision 2000, the goal of the new program was to strengthen community participation, while now emphasizing prevention, education and awareness. With the industrial sector in particular, there was a desire to promote voluntary environmental best practices by establishing appropriate management systems. And in the agricultural community, the parties wanted to promote better agri-environmental management in order to reduce pollution in this sector.
But the truly new aspect of Phase III was the addition of an area of intervention—navigation— that did not feature in the first two phases. Navigation activities have major impacts on the ecosystem, and the environmental partners had been asking for some time to include these impacts in the concerns of the St. Lawrence Plan. A Navigation Coordination Committee of representatives of all the sectors involved began to meet regularly over a number of years to develop a sustainable navigation strategy, which proved to be a model in marine circles.
Phase III also saw establishment of the State of the St. Lawrence Monitoring Program. A more accurate general picture of changes in the ecosystem, which could be continually updated, became possible through development of 21 environmental indicators (physicochemical characteristics of water, existence of wetlands, health of aquatic bird populations, etc.).
Date modified: 2008/07/22 – Important Notices
