Former prime minister of Canada Jean Chretien was at McMaster Innovation Park on Tuesday morning to speak about global water issues.

The event was a book launch for The Global Water Crisis: Addressing an Urgent Security Issue, a publication from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH). The book was produced alongside the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation and the InterAction Council, of which Chretien is a member.

Also in attendance was former McMaster president Peter George, who chaired a panel discussion following talks from Chretien, UNU-INWEH director Zahar Adeel and Thomas Axworthy, who is President and CEO of Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation and the Secretary-General of the InterAction Council. UNU-INWEH is hosted at McMaster University.

Chretien, who spoke after Adeel and Axworthy, expressed his concern over the coming global fresh water shortage, mentioning that Canada has 20 per cent of the world's fresh water.

"We might regret that nobody paid attention to this problems when it started ... and I have a feeling that we can find solutions, but we should not start to do that too late. It's better to start right away. We might avoid international crisis," said Chretien. He explained that the recommendations in the book were key to the solution.