Environment committee  That's quite right. My only guess is that water, for so long, has been an issue that countries like the U.S. and Canada can ignore, because water is perceived as being so abundant, but now we know, from our recent experience and from learning from generations of folks who have lived without it, how deeply inequitable water access is across these places where we assumed it was abundant.

Environment committee  Absolutely. The Quebec government has enshrined the human right to water in its territorial legislation, and I'm encouraging the Canadian federal government to do that at the federal level. I'm engaged in that same advocacy down here in the United States. We see that when we enshrine human rights protections in a country's founding document, like its constitution or its bill of rights, or even in separate laws, there is a massive move toward protecting those rights.

Environment committee  No, I'm not aware of Quebec making massive moves on this yet, but I can give you an example. Here in California, we enshrined the right about 10 years ago now. Our first piece of legislation on that passed last year. It created a safe and affordable drinking water fund here in the state, which has made a massive impact in access, but I think there's a big lag in time between the recognition of the human right for water, its codification into law and then eventually its use to produce policy and programs, which I'm hoping will follow quickly in the Québécois example.

Environment committee  Thank you so much for that question. By my knowledge, the best data we have is on first nations communities. Canada, like the U.S., isn't collecting comprehensive data on water access across the board, so it's difficult to pinpoint other communities of need. In the U.S., for instance, we've had to use proxies, using census data and others, to first identify these communities, but then actually send physical researchers in to look.

Environment committee  Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee, thank you for this invitation. My name is George McGraw. I'm the founder and CEO of the U.S.-based water access non-profit DigDeep.org, and I'm a global expert on the human right to water and sanitation. Imagine waking up and your kitchen sink has run dry.