After three years of negotiation, their draft agreement was released for public discussion in mid-July. Since then, many Canadian environmentalists have argued that the document amounts to little more than a box of straws for sucking more and more water out of the Great Lakes.

While this assessment is unfair — the critics ignore the fact there is at present no standard for water diversions and no uniform goals or instruments for conservation — the environmentalists do have a point: the draft agreement doesn't go far enough in protecting the Great Lakes.

Four years ago, the International Joint Commission — an independent binational body set up in 1909 to advise Ottawa and Washington on boundary water issues and help resolve disputes — issued its own set of recommendations for protecting the waters of the Great Lakes.

While the governors' and premiers' draft agreement mirrors the IJC report in some respects, it falls short in other areas, most notably in its failure to incorporate a key IJC recommendation on water removals that would limit the total net loss of water to 5 per cent. That is the current average loss resulting from all uses within the Great Lakes.

Since the release of the governors' and premiers' draft agreement, the IJC had the perfect chance to help Ontarians, Quebecers and residents of the Great Lakes states conduct an informed discussion of the issues. In a new report on protecting the Great Lakes waters, the IJC could have offered its own critique of the governors' and premiers' draft agreement.

Instead the IJC chose not to get into a political debate, masking its evident disappointment with the draft accord in language urging governors and premiers to follow the recommendations it made in its 2000 report.

That's a cop-out. We have a right to know exactly what the IJC thinks. The future of the Great Lakes is too important — and too fragile — to be decided without the benefit of the best, independent advice available.