Catherine McKenna, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change shares her Watermark for the 2016 Waterkeeper Gala.

I wanted to share my story about my love of water. I’m a swimmer. I’ve always been a swimmer. I used to compete in swimming and i’ve actually gone back to swimming and doing open water swimming like I imagine many of you do. One of my highlights every summer, is doing the Ottawa Riverkeeper swim across the Ottawa river. Often it’s freezing cold and wavy. But what is awesome about this swim, is it demonstrates the importance of making sure that we work between jurisdictions to keep our water clean and safe for swimming, for fishing, for everything we love doing in water. I’m also really excited, because as part of my job I get to make sure that we keep our freshwater clean and safe. And we are working really closely with provinces and with the United States for example, on the Great Lakes, because it is really important.