Dear Mr. President: Sault Ste. Marie has another bone to pick with you

Overlooked during the past week's focus on U.S. steel tariffs was a second issue on which Mayor Christian Provenzano is actively lobbying U.S. political leaders.

City Council authorized the mayor this week to send "a letter of grave concern" to appropriate Canadian and U.S. politicians about President Donald Trump's wish to torpedo 90 per cent of funding to the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

That's the eight-year-old U.S. program aimed at cleaning up pollution on the world's largest fresh surface water system.

Since it was launched by the Obama administration, the restoration initiative has received US$300 million a year in federal funding.

President Trump wants to slash that in 2019 to US$30 million a year.

"This decision would negatively impact tourism, the environment, agriculture, drinking water, jobs, animal habitat and would halt the considerable progress made in anti-pollution initiatives," Ward 1 Councillor Steve Butland said in a resolution approved by City Council this week.

The resolution, seconded by Butland's wardmate Paul Christian, asks Mayor Provenzano to express the city's "vehement disapproval" of the proposed funding cut.

President Trump made a similar effort to decimate the Great Lakes cleanup program last year, and City Council passed a similar resolution at that time warning it was a bad idea.

"The politicians in the Great Lakes area rose together, Democratic and Republican, and said 'Don't do this, Mr. President' and they did not cut the Great Lakes cleanup fund," Butland said.

"Any progress we made, it's a considerable setback. It's obviously a major environmental but also economic issue."

Butland said the environmental issue nonetheless paled in comparison to this week's steel tariff scare, but he expressed admiration for the way municipal, provincial and federal political leaders stood together on that issue.