LAKE-TO-SEA COMMISSION, or In ternational Waterways Commission. In June 1902 President Roosevelt approved an act of Congress (Rivers and Harbors Act) providing for the appointment of an international com mission of six members, three representing the interests of the United States and three from Canada, to investigate and report upon the con ditions and uses of the waters adjacent to the boundary line between the United States and Canada. A corresponding act was passed by the Dominion government. At the meetings of the commission held in 1905 it became apparent that the United States government placed a much narrower construction upon the acts au thorizing the appointment of the commission than that applied to it by the Canadian govern ment, which held that the scope of the com mission's powers included all waters adjacent to the boundaries of the two countries. The United States government, on the other hand, interpreted the inquiries of the commission as being limited to the waters of the Great Lakes. The point was yielded by the Canadian gov ernment. Among the questions discussed at subsequent meetings are the uses of the waters at Sault Sainte Marie and of the Niagara River, and an equitable division thereof ; the protection of Niagara Falls as a scenic spectacle; pro posed uniformity in marine signal lights be tween the two countries- the advisability of building controlling worics at the outlet of Lake Erie; the diversion southward of certain waters in Minnesota that now flow north into the Rainy River and the Lake of the Woods; the effect of the Chicago Drainage Canal on the levels of the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence; suppression of illegal fishing on the Great Lakes; common channels, navigation regulation in narrow channels, shore protection and the transmission of electric energy gen erated in Canada, to the United States, and vice-versa.
On 11 April 1908, the United States and Great Britain concluded a treaty respecting the demarcation of the international boundary be tween the United States and Canada, which for that purpose is divided into eight sections.
A new commission with enlarged powers for dealing with all international water rights on the frontier between the United States and Canada was created under treaty of January 1909, under which the International Joint Com mission was created in 1911. This commission is vested with authority to deal not merely with boundary waters, but also with "all questions which are now pending between the United States and the Dominion of Canada, involving the rights, obligations or interests of either in relation to the other, or to the inhabitants of the other, along their common frontier, and to make provision for the adjustment and settle ment of all such questions as may hereafter arise.° It is composed of six members, three from each country, and holds sessions at Wash ington in April and at Ottawa in October in each year. This body has now superseded the old Lake-to-Sea or International Waterways Commission, save as respects the determination of the boundary through the Great Lakes, with which duty it was specially charged by the treaty of 11 April 1 already referred to.