(ON) Canada.com - Nearly seven months ago, Herb Gray watched as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Lawrence Cannon, met halfway across the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls and — amid considerable fanfare — pledged to redraft and bolster a decades-old treaty aimed at protecting the Great Lakes from environmental harm.

This week, on the eve of Gray’s departure after eight years as Canadian chairman of the International Joint Commission that oversees transboundary waters, he expressed frustration that the “very fine words” spoken by Clinton and Cannon at the bridge ceremony in June had not yet led to the launch of formal negotiations between the two countries to modernize and strengthen the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. More