There is a clear movement toward secondary treatment, all across Canada, and even examples of tertiary treatment.

 

Of course uniform standards don’t work here; we need to move toward a national strategy based on environmental risk.  That’s what the CCME is doing.  There is wiggle room to seek better outcomes-based approaches in the CCME strategy and subsequent EC regulations. But the basic commitment to push to secondary treatment or beyond is clear.

 

Economic Development interjected that IGR should work inside CCME to define secondary treatment sensibly, so that it does deal with the emerging risks.

 

IGR countered that we have to think of Canada’s role in the world.  We would have a lot of explaining to do if we depart from commitments to secondary treatment. BC’s reputation with Washington State and other partners would suffer. Internationally, we’ve signed on to the Global Program of Action. Having committed ourselves, there would be a penalty in terms of our relationship with our partners and our image in other jurisdictions (which has implications for other files) if we were to step back from that commitment. .