Anne de Bellevue, Quebec, at the end of June. Representatives of some 180 countries will meet at The Hague, Netherlands, in March next year to officially proclaim the Vision and to challenge world leaders to implement it. The Agricultural Institute of Canada was represented at the meetings by Henry Heald, AIC's interim communications coordinator. Brad Fairley, Water Resources Manager for the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Agency in Regina, said Canadians are wrong to think that Canada does not have problems of water scarcity and quality that plague many other countries. He noted that water scarcity is a constant problem on the Prairies and said that only four municipalities in Saskatchewan meet the province's standards for water quality.
Every body of water is polluted to some extent.
The delegates discussed key issues in water management, such as lack of public awareness, fragmentation of jurisdiction, allocation of water resources and lack of funding. Environment Canada is the lead agency for water in the federal government. Canada's Water Issues Branch, gave a keynote address at the Canadian Roundtable, outlining Canada's new Freshwater Strategy. Delegates from 11 countries in South and Central America and the Caribbean joined the meeting for the Water for Food sectoral session, to give a hemispheric perspective on the question. Fernando Gonzalez of Mexico, irrigation advisor to the World Bank, presented an overview of the problems of water scarcity for food production in Latin America.