FOPO Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, February 6, 2003

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1105

The Chair (Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.))

Mr. Carmen Provenzano (Sault Ste. Marie, Lib.)

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1110

The Chair

Mr. Greg Farrant (Manager, Government Relations, Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters)

Ms. Francine MacDonald (Biologist, Invading Species, Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters)

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1115

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1120

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1125

The Chair

Prof. Anthony Ricciardi (School of Environment, McGill University)

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1130

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1135

The Chair

Mr. Chris Goddard (Executive Secretary, Great Lakes Fishery Commission)

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1140

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1145

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1150

The Chair

Mr. Andy Burton (Skeena, Canadian Alliance)

Prof. Anthony Ricciardi

The Chair

Mr. Greg Farrant

Mr. Andy Burton

Prof. Anthony Ricciardi

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1155

Mr. Chris Goddard

Mr. Andy Burton

Prof. Anthony Ricciardi

Â

1200

The Chair

Mr. Andy Burton

Prof. Anthony Ricciardi

The Chair

Mr. Andy Burton

Prof. Anthony Ricciardi

Mr. Andy Burton

The Chair

Mr. Carmen Provenzano

The Chair

Mr. Chris Goddard

The Chair

Prof. Anthony Ricciardi

Â

1205

Mr. Carmen Provenzano

Prof. Anthony Ricciardi

Mr. Carmen Provenzano

Â

1210

The Chair

Mr. Carmen Provenzano

Mr. Chris Goddard

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NDP)

Mr. Chris Goddard

The Chair

Mr. Greg Farrant

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Â

1215

Ms. Francine MacDonald

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Mr. Chris Goddard

The Chair

Mr. Chris Goddard

The Chair

Â

1220

Ms. Francine MacDonald

The Chair

Prof. Anthony Ricciardi

Mr. Chris Goddard

The Chair

Prof. Anthony Ricciardi

The Chair

Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing, Lib.)

Prof. Anthony Ricciardi

Mr. Bob Wood

Mr. Chris Goddard

Â

1225

Mr. Marc Gaden (Legislative Liaison, Great Lakes Fishery Commission)

Mr. Chris Goddard

Mr. Bob Wood

Mr. Chris Goddard

Mr. Bob Wood

Mr. Chris Goddard

Mr. Bob Wood

Mr. Chris Goddard

Mr. Bob Wood

The Chair

Mr. Andy Burton

Prof. Anthony Ricciardi

Mr. Andy Burton

Prof. Anthony Ricciardi

Â

1230

Mr. Marc Gaden

Mr. Greg Farrant

Mr. Chris Goddard

Mr. Andy Burton

The Chair

Mr. Greg Farrant

Prof. Anthony Ricciardi

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1235

Mr. Chris Goddard

The Chair

Mr. Carmen Provenzano

Ms. Francine MacDonald

Mr. Carmen Provenzano

Ms. Francine MacDonald

Mr. Greg Farrant

Â

1240

Mr. Carmen Provenzano

Ms. Francine MacDonald

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Mr. Chris Goddard

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Â

1245

Mr. Chris Goddard

Mr. Peter Stoffer

The Chair

Mr. Chris Goddard

The Chair

Mr. Chris Goddard

The Chair

Mr. Chris Goddard

The Chair

Â

1250

Mr. Chris Goddard

The Chair

Mr. Chris Goddard

The Chair

Mr. Dave Brown (Fisheries Biologist, Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters)

The Chair

Prof. Anthony Ricciardi

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans

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NUMBER 013

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Thursday, February 6, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Á  (1105)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.)): We have quorum, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to get the meeting started so we can get as much time as possible with our witnesses today.

    For the record, the order of the day today is pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), a study on invasive species.

    Just before we begin, I have five very short points I'd like to bring to the committee. One is a reminder that on the subject of invasive species we have a meeting next Tuesday, which will be televised. Because of the timeframes it will start at 9 a.m. in Room 237C. I'd like to make use of every available minute, so I would like your cooperation so we can bang the gavel at 9 a.m.

    Second, I just want to bring it to members' attention that I commissioned a research paper on the powers of committees regarding estimates. I want to make sure that was sent to everybody. I recommend that everyone read it prior to when we deal with the estimates.

    Third, I also made available to members of the committee in November a copy of Derek Lee's book on empowering members of Parliament. For those of you who are new to the committee, I don't have any extra copies, but I would urge you to call Derek Lee's office to get a copy of that very small but very handy and important book on empowering members of Parliament in their committee work.

    Fourth, there was an article--I only raise this; I'm not asking for any comment--by Peter O'Neil in the Times Colonist in Victoria on February 5. He talked about the report of this committee that was going to be presented to Parliament. He made the statement that he had a copy of the report and he quoted directly from it. It was not until the next day that I submitted the report to the House of Commons.

    We're all honourable members. I would ask you to do whatever you can individually to ensure that when we have a confidential report, the House of Commons hears about it and gets it before any reporter. I'll say no more.

    I also have a notice of motion.

    Mr. Provenzano.

    Mr. Carmen Provenzano (Sault Ste. Marie, Lib.): I'm giving notice of a motion that the committee consider and complete the draft report on aquaculture.

    I'm aware that on Tuesday we have a televised hearing scheduled. It's fine with me that this motion be considered at the next meeting, which I understand is on Thursday of next week. I can file the motion with the committee now.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Á  (1110)  

    The Chair: The motion is in order. The requisite 48 hours' notice has to be received.

    I will read the motion for your information:

That, notwithstanding any previous motion, the Committee move forthwith to consider and complete consideration of the draft report on aquaculture and that no new business be considered until the report has been disposed of.

    The mover has indicated that he will raise that at next Thursday's meeting, which by sheer coincidence happens to be the meeting at which we will begin our consideration of the aquaculture report.

    Thank you very much for your indulgence on those few points, witnesses. Sorry to take up your time.

    We have three separate witnesses today, and we're delighted to hear from you. We would like you to keep your presentations to approximately 10 minutes each. I think it's best if we allow all of you to proceed and give your presentations. Then after all of you have given your presentations, we will have questioning from the members of Parliament in a specific order. Many of the points you may not get an opportunity to elaborate on during your 10-minute presentation, you will undoubtedly have an opportunity to elaborate on during the questioning.

    We will hear from the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, if you will be so kind, Mr. Farrant, to begin the presentation.

    Mr. Greg Farrant (Manager, Government Relations, Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters): Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. We thank you very much for allowing us the opportunity to appear before you this morning. We are also pleased to appear along with our colleagues from the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, with whom we have worked very closely on this issue. We also work very closely with Mr. Gray and the IJC. The three groups have done a number of joint projects together over the last year.

    With me this morning is Francine MacDonald, an invasive species and aquatics biologist; and David Brown, a fisheries biologist.

    The OFAH is the largest non-profit non-governmental organization in Ontario, representing more than 83,000 members in 640 affiliate clubs. For more than 75 years our members have been working on fish and wildlife habitat and conservation programs and promoting the wise use of our natural resources. The OFAH is deeply concerned about the threats that aquatic invasive species pose to Canada's ecosystems, fish and wildlife, and the recreational and economic benefits we derive from our natural resources.

    We believe that the Government of Canada and the provincial governments have a joint responsibility to commit the necessary resources to address this serious national issue. We are pleased that these agencies have begun to work together to develop a national framework to deal with the introduction of invasive species to our natural resource and ecosystems. However, while this framework exercise is taking place, new introductions of invasive species through pathways such as aquariums, horticulture, recreational water craft, and the live food fish industry continue to occur within our lakes, rivers, and wetlands.

    With a decade of experience working on these issues, our presentation this morning will focus on how we believe we need to act now to effectively prevent new introductions of invasive species through a comprehensive public education and awareness program.

    With your indulgence, I will now turn it over to Francine MacDonald.

    Ms. Francine MacDonald (Biologist, Invading Species, Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters): There is often confusion as to what the definition of “invasive alien species” is, so I thought I'd start the presentation with a basic definition of what exactly this means.

    A species is considered alien if it has been introduced outside its normal past or present range. This could include plants such as geraniums and agricultural plants such as wheat or corn. An alien species is considered invasive if its establishment and spread threaten economic or environmental harm to ecosystems, habitats, or other species. Well-known examples are of course the zebra mussel and the sea lamprey.

    Aquatic invasive species threaten the productivity and function of the Great Lakes. More than 160 alien species have already become established in the Great Lakes, more than 10% of which have had significant economic and environmental harm. These impacts have threatened the health of our Great Lakes fishery, which is worth over $4 billion.

    Lesser known but more devastating are the impacts of aquatic invaders on our inland waters. Canada's plentiful and diverse lake ecosystems are one of our greatest assets, one from which Canadians derive numerous social, recreational, and economic benefits. In Ontario alone there are more than 250,000 inland lakes, which support a recreational fishery that is worth more than $2 billion.

    These vital lake ecosystems are more vulnerable to impacts because of their smaller size and lower species diversity, which enables invasions to occur more rapidly and pervasively. Scientists believe that invasions will be the primary cause of extinctions and biodiversity loss in our lake ecosystems in this century.

    I'll just give a few examples of some of the invasive species that are affecting inland waters in Ontario.

    Zebra mussel invasions to inland lakes in Ontario have caused habitat alterations and disrupted fish communities and have had severe economic impacts to shoreline residents, power generators, and municipalities by clogging intake pipes.

    The spiny water flea, a tiny European crustacean, has reduced zooplankton diversity by more than 40% in over thirty inland lakes in Ontario, and there are numerous questions as to what the further impacts of this species will be on the food chain in these lakes. There's concern that it could be a mercury accumulator, and it could have potential impacts on fish communities as well.

    Unauthorized fish introductions of rock bass by the public have also caused fish community changes and reduced lake trout growth rates by more than 30% in northeastern and central lakes in Ontario.

    These invasions to inland waters occur along pathways such as recreational boats, angling, baitfish, unauthorized fish stocking, aquariums, water gardens, and the live food fish trade. The common denominator in all these pathways is that they are all preventable and that they are all conducted by uninformed members of the public.

    Public awareness and outreach programs are the only way to prevent the spread of invasive species to inland waters. In the U.S., state and federal agencies have recognized this and have committed millions of dollars to public outreach programs. As a result, in Great Lakes states such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, they have been able to successfully change public attitudes and perceptions. As a result, they've documented in some regions actual reduced rates of spread of exotic species through these pathways.

    It's also interesting to note that these states, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, make up much of the geography of the U.S. side of the Great Lakes, yet in Ontario we simply have not devoted the same amount of resources to outreach programming--or in any other province, for that matter. This is despite federal and provincial commitments to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and the Canadian biodiversity strategy to address invasive species and implement public awareness programs. As a result, aquatic invasive species are continuing to be introduced and spread throughout our inland lakes, rivers, and wetlands.

    As a result of this lack of government action, public outreach initiatives have been spearheaded by non-governmental organizations such as the Federation of Anglers and Hunters. Recognizing the importance of protecting lake environments, the OFAH initiated the invasive species awareness program for Ontario in 1992.

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    For more than a decade we've worked to raise public awareness among boaters, anglers, aquarium hobbyists, and water gardeners of the impacts of invasive species and what their role is in preventing their spread. We've also worked to monitor population spreads of the zebra mussel and the spiny water flea in Ontario inland lakes and have contributed to research efforts.

    Central to our program has been the Invading Species Hotline. It's a toll-free number that acts as a clearing house for the public to contact for current information on invasive species and to report new sightings. These citizens' reports have resulted in many new discoveries of exotic species in the Great Lakes and in our inland waters as well. Over the last decade our toll-free hotline has received thousands of requests from the public, and we've distributed hundreds of thousands of pieces of educational material as well.

    Our program has been extremely successful in coordinating partnerships with a wide variety of governments and NGOs to combine awareness efforts, and I want to just give you a few highlights of some of our program initiatives.

    Working with York University and cottagers, particularly the Federation of Ontario Cottagers' Associations, we've organized more than 150 lake associations across the province to monitor the distribution of the zebra mussel and the spiny water flea. This network of cottagers also coordinates community-level awareness programs in areas we've identified as vulnerable to invasion.

    Working with other NGOs and industries such as the Ontario Marine Operators Association and the Canadian Marine Manufacturers Association, we've also been able to include messages on invasives in boating publications and at marinas. The OFAH has already posted more than a thousand boat launches in the province with signs stating the precautions people need to take to prevent the spread of exotics.

    Working with aquarium hobbyists, we've been able to work with the Canadian Association of Aquarium Clubs and the pet industry to coordinate an innovative fish rescue program that provides alternatives to releasing fish into the wild. We've also been able to work with stores such as Pet Palace and Pet World to post posters in their stores to let people know, when they buy fish, that they shouldn't release them into the wild because that has serious impacts on the native ecosystems.

    Working with anglers, we've worked with the Bait Association of Ontario and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, producing numerous educational materials on baitfish releases and unauthorized fish stocking, and we've been able to post information in the fishing regulations and distribute a lot of good information in bait shops across the province.

    Probably one of the best ways we've been able to reach the wide public is through the media. We've been able to continue to generate media interest in exotics for the last 10 years. For example, our annual Project Purple campaign, which is designed to raise awareness of purple loosestrife, has been able to consistently draw numerous media contacts each year, even after a decade, since we started this program.

    Our program also works internationally. We're recognizing that aquatic invasive species are a global issue and that they cross borders. We've combined our efforts with numerous international organizations, including the IJC and the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, to raise political awareness of the issue and collaborate on outreach materials.

    The success of our awareness programs...as much as an NGO, has resulted in membership on the United States' Great Lakes Panel on Aquatic Nuisance Species, and we are actually the only Canadian non-governmental organization to be represented on this panel of U.S. state agencies.

    So how can we build on the success of our program? As an NGO working with numerous partners, the OFAH has been able to make great strides in raising public awareness of invasive species. However, to build on the success and truly make a substantial impact on public perceptions and behaviours, we require the support of both federal and provincial agencies. We have submitted a proposal for a national awareness program to Environment Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, a copy of which is available for your review in the packages we've distributed.

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    Working with our provincial and territorial wildlife federation affiliates, through this program we will build on our existing partnerships within various industry and recreational pathways. The program will also include new approaches such as highway billboards, classroom educational programs, and television public service announcements. With the necessary financial support, it can be delivered at low cost and reach millions of people to prevent new introductions of invasive species to our lakes, rivers, and wetlands.

    Partnerships such as this one are key to preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species by involving NGOs, community groups, and industry and research institutions, and by awareness initiatives. We can effectively prevent new introductions and protect Canada's vital lake resources.

    Thank you.

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    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    That concludes the OFAH presentation. It was very interesting.

    Perhaps we could hear from Professor Anthony Ricciardi.

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi (School of Environment, McGill University): I have several points I'd like to bring to your attention. First of all, just to tell you where I'm coming from, I'm a professor of environmental science at McGill University and I've been studying invasive species for the last 11 years.

    I have a few points I'd like to bring up within the timeframe I've been given.

    The first point is that aquatic invasions are increasing in frequency worldwide, and most likely therefore also in Canada, and most of these are probably undetected. The ones that are detected constitute a pattern seen in various regions. In every region for which we have long-term data, the pattern is the same: the invasions are increasing. In the Great Lakes, as you've already heard, over 160 invasions have been documented. No doubt many more have gone undetected.

    The trend is increasing, especially following the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959. Right now we discover one new invader in the Great Lakes at the current rate of every eight months. The trend is even more pronounced if we look at our marine coastal waters. In fact, the increase is exponential.

    These are just a couple of examples, but if we look at similar long-term data sets around the world like the Baltic Sea or the Mediterranean Sea or anywhere we have long-term data, the trend is the same. Maybe the intensity is slightly different, but the trend is an increase in invasions. So the problem is increasing.

    Now, most of these invasions don't produce any detectable impacts at all. But a small fraction of invasions--and I have to emphasize that it's a small fraction but a large and growing absolute number--cause ecological and economic disruptions. Now, you know a lot of these already. You've heard of some famous cases. There are many more you haven't heard about.

    But I'm going to focus on something else you may not have heard about that we're only just beginning to realize. Invaders can interact to produce synergistic disruptions.

    What do I mean by that? I mean their joint impact, the impact of their interaction, is greater than the sum of their effects if they had acted alone. It's analogous to mixing a couple of benign chemicals together to produce a toxic mixture. It is possible that some species, in the presence of other ones, act differently and their impacts are enhanced. We're seeing examples of this now.

    I'll give you a couple of recent cases. Over the last few years there have been outbreaks of avian botulism in Lake Erie and most recently also in Lake Ontario. This has resulted in thousands of dead fish and birds washing up on shore, including thousands of loons, merganzers, and gulls; in other words, fish-eating birds.

    The cause has been identified as a rare strain of botulism. We've had botulism before in Lake Erie, but not this type. Just for your information, it's actually been identified by the same guy who identified the West Nile virus in North America. He's been very busy over the last couple of years.

    This strain is probably introduced, in fact. In any case, it is virulent. This is a bacteria that lives in the sediment and it's thought that it's somehow related to the activity of other exotic species, zebra and quagga mussels.

    Now, I'm not going to get into the specifics. I can if you want technical details later on how the zebra and quagga mussels are promoting conditions to enhance this bacterial growth. But one thing is certain. They're sequestering it in their tissues. There are bacterial cysts and toxins in the zebra and quagga mussel tissues, all right. How does it get to the ducks?

    How is the toxin getting from the mussels to fish-eating birds? There is a go-between, another invader, the round goby. This is the most common bottom-feeding fish now in Lake Erie and is becoming the most common in Lake Ontario. Unlike most other native fish, it eats zebra mussels and quagga mussels. Therefore it transfers the bacteria and its toxins to higher levels of the food chain, including fish-eating birds like loons.

    Dead loons, when opened up, have been found to contain round gobies. The gobies themselves eat zebra mussels and have the toxin in them. So the loons are getting it from the gobies and the gobies are getting it from the zebra mussels.

    Without either one of these invaders, you wouldn't have this connection. You wouldn't have the outbreak. The two of them together are needed to do this. This is an example of what mean by synergistic impact.

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    Another example is occurring right now and it affects fisheries. It involves a Japanese seaweed that's invading Atlantic Canada. This seaweed forms dense meadows. The important thing is that it is displacing kelp beds and is harmful to sea urchins. Laboratory experiments show that urchins feeding on this seaweed suffer physiological impacts. Their gonadal tissues shrink, for one thing. There is an urchin fishery in Atlantic Canada, and since the urchins feed predominantly on kelp and since their major food source is being replaced by junk food, essentially, there will no doubt be an impact on this commercial fishery. So all we need is another stress to commercial fisheries in Atlantic Canada, and here it is.

    Furthermore, it may be another stress to lobsters. They normally forage, or carry out their feeding activities, inside kelp beds. The larger lobsters have difficulty moving through these dense codium meadows. So the question is, how did codium come to replace kelp?

    I should tell you that codium, the seaweed, has been present in Atlantic Canada for over ten years, but only in recent years has it started to replace kelp. It couldn't do so without the help of another invader. I won't get into the details about this other invader, which is an interesting little invertebrate, except to note the fact that it forms calcareous films on kelp fronds, on kelp blades, and it renders them brittle.

    Kelp blades are flexible normally so that they can withstand wave action during storms. This invertebrate covers kelp blades and when it grows very prolifically it will render the kelp blades brittle and therefore they can be destroyed during wave action. So you can get a situation like that, a picture of damaged kelp. Suddenly, light penetration reaches the bottom, and suddenly its competitors are now free to grow again. It happens during warm years, so it's correlated with global warming.

    Normally the kelp would resurge. When the invertebrate dies back, the kelp would simply grow back again. During one of the times the kelp was damaged, the seaweed got in, its competitor was reduced; it got in and it took priority, and it now prevents kelp from resurging. That is how it's happening. This could not have happened without the help of another invader. It's another example of two invaders working synergistically to create what we're seeing.

    I expect that the frequency of synergistic disruptions will increase with species invasion simply because the more species you add, the more combinations you'll have to create these problematic mixtures. In fact, it will increase non-linearly by simple probability. The more species you add, you get a disproportionately increased number of combinations you can have that could produce unpredictable disruptions. So that's the first thing to expect. As you add more invaders, you're going to get more of these disruptions and they're going to increase disproportionately to the number of invaders you have.

    That implies that our ecosystems, including our fisheries, will become increasingly unstable and difficult to manage, more so than they are already, if this continues unabated. But it also means this, that even a partial reduction of the rate of invasion will yield major benefits. We don't have to shut the tap completely off. It's good to aim for that, but we don't have to shut it off. We will stand to benefit disproportionately if we can slow the rate of invasion. This is a rebuttal to anybody who says that you shouldn't bother expending costly controls if you can't control everything. We don't have to control everything. The more we shut down the tap, the more we're going to benefit. That's what this implies.

    That brings me to the next point. Current management efforts are inadequate, grossly inadequate. There's no sophisticated monitoring system in place. It's lucky we have hotlines for this, because otherwise we wouldn't know what's happening until after these things become very problematic. We usually discover invaders after they're already abundant, after they've already become invasive. There's no emergency response plan. There are few personnel and little funding. The vectors, and they include ballast water, the pet trade, aquaculture, and the food industry, are poorly controlled.

    I'll give you an example of this. Ballast water is the major vector for aquatic invasions worldwide. This is important because ships carry most of the world's trade, and as trade increases there'll be more ballast water discharged. Already, right now it's estimated that about 5,000 species are being moved around the world in ships in total, at any given moment. Canadian coastal ports receive 50 billion litres of this stuff. This is a veritable soup of organisms. The Great Lakes receive 5 million tonnes of it per year, or 5 billion litres if you like. We're getting a lot of it.

    This is a new paper that's not out yet. It shows invasion trends before and after ballast water regulation. I should say that we have one regulation in this country about ballast water, and it is voluntary guidelines. They were instituted in 1989. The guidelines were to cause ships that are coming into the Great Lakes to exchange their water beforehand with marine water, in other words, with salt water. The idea was that any freshwater organisms in the tanks will either be expelled from the tanks or will be killed on contact with the salt water and any marine organisms coming in replacement will not survive in the Great Lakes.

    It makes intuitive sense; it's intuitively appealing. Unfortunately, it's not perfect. The reason is that we can't get rid of all the water when we're trying to exchange it. Owing to the position of the pump, there's always residual water. Furthermore, there are sediments in the tank. Sediments decant over time, and so you get lots of sediments accumulating and they contain eggs and resting stages.

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    So there are loopholes in here for the organisms to exploit, and also there are other vectors that are occurring. The invasion rate is actually increasing with the increase in these vectors. So that regulation wasn't good enough. I should say also that it was actually mandatory, because the United States made it mandatory in 1993. Since they also control the St. Lawrence Seaway, it became mandatory for ballast water exchange to occur. Despite the fact that it was mandatory, the invasion rate has increased.

    The last point is that we have to adopt a more serious attitude. We have to treat introduced species as biological pollution. I'd say we have to treat them with at least the same kind of concern as we treat chemical pollution, because unlike chemical pollution, biological pollution doesn't dilute in time and space; it adapts, it proliferates, and it spreads. I would recommend that you reconsider amending the Canada Shipping Act to include foreign ballast water as a pollutant.

    This was attempted or proposed by a private member's bill called Bill C-389 in 1999 by deputy Thompson from New Brunswick, I believe. I don't know how or why this bill was defeated or was prevented from occurring, but I think you should revisit it. It would probably make more sense to enhance existing legislation than to try to create new legislation. In any case, that is one thing I'd suggest.

    Most importantly--and this has been emphasized by people so far and will continue to be emphasized--prevention is the key. It's hard to deal with these things after they become established. The trouble is we don't have very good means of preventing them yet. We have to foster and coordinate research on predicting the future threats. We have to control vectors. We have to coordinate expertise that already exists in this country. It's in diffuse areas; it's in academia, it's in government, it's in NGOs. We have to coordinate it. There is no central place to coordinate it. I'd like to see regional response centres set up.

    Each one of these invaders is a potential hidden tax if you want to look at this another way. It may be a small cost, it may be a big one. The small cost may turn out to be big later if they interact with the right species. This is costing us billions of dollars. The commissioner of the environment put out a report showing that recently. I don't understand why it hasn't received more attention. This is one of the things that could actually unite the parties. It's costing us in every way, all forms of society. Invasions, not necessarily aquatic ones but invasions in general, also impact human health. We're under siege here. We have to treat this as a national priority.

    That's all I have to say.

    The Chair: Thank you, Professor, it's another good news report for our committee. You've given us a lot to think about.

    Next we have, from the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, Chris Goddard.

    Mr. Chris Goddard (Executive Secretary, Great Lakes Fishery Commission): Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for inviting me to speak today.

    I'd like to introduce Mr. Marc Gaden, who is the communications officer and congressional liaison for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.

    We are honoured to be here today with the OFAH and Dr. Ricciardi. For 75 years, the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters has been a true partner in the conservation of our natural resources, and Dr. Ricciardi is a leading scientist on invasive species research.

    As both Francine and Dr. Ricciardi have pointed out, invasive species have had a dramatic negative impact on the Great Lakes. Consistent with its mandate, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission has supported much of the key research into invasive species in the Great Lakes. This research, and as you point out, Mr. Chair, the recent Auditor General and General Accounting Office's reports don't leave us much room for optimism.

    To quote briefly from the Auditor General's recent report:

Prevention is recognized by experts and the government asthe best response to invasive species. Preventative measures...are generally considered more practical than reacting to asuccession of crises and repairing damage after invaders havebecome established.

    In this regard, I will be discussing two issues, the Asian carp and the sea lamprey, which are two invaders. As I discuss these issues, please keep in mind the emphasis of the Auditor General on prevention. I hope to illustrate just how costly it is to continuously respond to established invaders. I will also discuss that despite very strong recommendations from the standing committee, the sea lamprey control program in Canada remains at risk and underfunded.

    Asian carp have the potential to be the next biological catastrophe in the Great Lakes. They're poised to enter the Great Lakes in two separate vectors. In hindsight, Asian carp were legally imported to the United States through gaps in the regulations. They were brought in for biological control in catfish ponds in the southern States. They escaped from these ponds, and three species have become established in the Mississippi River. Asian carp grow from 30 to 40 kilograms, and they are currently 25 miles south of Lake Michigan. There is a shipping canal that connects Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River, and they are poised to swim through that canal. If they enter the Great Lakes, there is absolutely no question they will drastically change the Great Lakes ecosystem.

    The Great Lakes Fishery Commission, the International Joint Commission, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are actively trying to stop them from swimming through the shipping canal.

    An electrical dispersal barrier for invasive species was recently constructed and began operation in April of last year. The IJC, GLFC, and EPA recently contributed $100,000 each to try to refine that existing barrier. We also recently secured $500,000 from the U.S. Congress to operate this barrier annually.

    A second barrier is clearly needed. Last fall, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission and the International Joint Commission, in partnership with the Army Corps, started the construction of this second barrier. This barrier will be built this year with the State of Illinois, in partnership with the Army Corps. It's going to cost $10 million to construct this second barrier.

    The commission also recently received significant funding from the State Department to develop a rapid response plan, should Asian carp get above this barrier.

    There is also another vector for possible introduction into the Great Lakes, which is through the live trade. Right now, more than 900,000 pounds of Asian carp are trucked annually across the Ambassador Bridge for markets in Ontario.

    The Great Lakes Fishery Commission is working with federal, state, provincial, and tribal law enforcement officials to stop this trade in live fish. I'm very pleased to announce that in the last couple of months, the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois have banned the possession of live Asian carp, and effective tomorrow, possession of live Asian carp will be prohibited in the state of Michigan.

    We have a chance to stop a major catastrophe. Asian carp must not be allowed to enter the Great Lakes. I'm pleased to report that your two binational commissions and several U.S. federal agencies and states are working very hard to see this doesn't happen, but it is not without great cost. As I pointed out, it is going to cost $10 million this year to construct the barrier, and probably $1 million in perpetuity simply to operate these barriers.

Á  (1140)  

    I'd like to talk about the sea lamprey. I will circulate this replica and a couple of pictures. The sea lamprey entered the Great Lakes from the Atlantic Ocean through canals that were constructed for shipping. They kill fish by attaching to the side of the fish and sucking out the bodily contents. An average lamprey kills about 20 kilograms of fish during its adult life.

    When it entered the Great Lakes, there were no predators. It spread rapidly throughout the Great Lakes, decimating the fisheries populations. The fisheries in the Great Lakes collapsed.

    The invasion of the sea lamprey, however, was the catalyst for the creation of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, which was established by an international treaty between Canada and the United States in 1955. The Great Lakes Fishery Commission is funded by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans and by the U.S. Department of State. It is managed by four commissioners appointed by the Privy Council in Canada and four commissioners appointed by the President of the United States.

    It has the responsibility of coordinating fisheries research in the Great Lakes, but its main function is to control the sea lamprey in the Great Lakes. This is a remarkably successful program. Through an integrated program of trapping the spawning adults, by constructing barriers to deny adults' access to the spawning grounds; through the application of specific lampricides to kill the larva lamprey; and through the introduction of sterilized sea lamprey to sterilize sea lamprey and thereby disrupt spawning, sea lamprey populations in the Great Lakes have been reduced to 10% of their historic abundance. It's pretty exciting right now. The commission is working on a new technology, including the use of pheromones, to disrupt the mating behaviour of sea lamprey.

    Effective sea lamprey control allowed all of the management agencies around the Great Lakes to stock fish, because with sea lamprey control, fish could grow to large size and provide a fishery.

    I have to emphasize that sea lamprey control is the cornerstone of the Great Lakes fishery. More than that, effective sea lamprey control has paved the way for the rehabilitation of the Great Lakes fisheries. Not only do the fish grow large, but they also now reach adulthood, can mature, and are able to spawn, paving the way for our ecosystems to try to restore their natural balance.

    A couple of years ago, the management agencies around Lake Superior declared a major victory, as stocking of fish was no longer required. The fish species in Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world, had become self-sustaining and were regulating themselves. This rehabilitation of Lake Superior is one of the greatest fisheries management successes in the world. As the contract agent for sea lamprey control, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans played a major role in this rehabilitation. Sea lamprey control is unquestionably DFO's most successful fisheries management program.

    We are very fortunate that sea lamprey is one exotic species we are able to control. Despite the success of control, it is unfortunate that sea lamprey populations are too large in all of the Great Lakes, with the possible exception of Lake Ontario. Sea lamprey populations are like a coiled spring, and we've learned that if you release control they rebound very rapidly.

    With our present technologies, sea lamprey control will remain an ongoing cost of mitigation for the construction of shipping canals. These costs are shared by the U.S. and the Government of Canada. On the United States side last year, the commission received $13.1 million U.S., and another $800,000 from the Army Corps of Engineers, for a total of $14 million U.S.—or $22 million Canadian.

    Five years ago, Mr. Chairman, the standing committee recommended that:

The government of Canada, through the Department of Fisheries andOceans, fund the Canadian portion of the sea lamprey controlprogram from the Department's "A" Base. The committee furtherrecommends that the Government of Canada, through the Departmentof Fisheries and Oceans, commit to provide a long-term minimumfunding guarantee of $8 million per year to the Great Lakes FisheryCommission for the purposes of sea lamprey control and recognizethat this commitment is of fundamental importance to the long-termsurvival of Great Lakes fisheries.

Á  (1145)  

    Mr. Chairman, my understanding is that these funds are not yet in the A base. Canada contributes $6.1 million Canadian to sea lamprey control. The U.S. is currently contributing $16 million Canadian more to this essential binational effort. Asian carp are now knocking on the door of the Great Lakes. Sea lamprey are well established in the Great Lakes. Control of these species is essential, and control is expensive and ongoing. Prevention of further introductions must be our highest priority.

    The International Joint Commission has requested a reference from the governments in this regard, and I understand that they will be addressing this committee next week. I think this provides the governments with a unique opportunity to address this critical binational issue in a binational forum, and the Great Lakes Fishery Commission strongly supports this IJC request.

    Mr. Chairman, I very much appreciate the opportunity to talk to the committee about this important issue. The Great Lakes Fishery Commission really appreciates the strong support it has had from the committee, particularly Mr. Steckle and Mr. Provenzano. I thank you for hearing my statement.

Á  (1150)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    Mr. Steckle is now the chair of the agriculture committee, but I'm sure that will not reduce his interest in a subject he has been interested in for many years, particularly the sea lamprey.

    Thank you very much, all of you, for your presentations.

    We'll now allow members of our committee to ask questions. We'll start with Mr. Burton for 10 minutes. Mr. Burton, please identify whom you are addressing your question to unless you're addressing it to everybody.

    Mr. Andy Burton (Skeena, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    That was a very interesting presentation. I want to thank all of you for that, especially Professor Ricciardi. What you had to say was fascinating and very professionally presented, I must say.

    Being a layman in these things, it's a little difficult to get my head around some of it. I have a couple of fairly straightforward questions. The first one is, who is actually responsible for the management of these issues? Is it DFO or some other agency?

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: The only agency I know that responds to terrestrial invasions--I don't know about the aquatic ones--is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which is overwhelmed with responding to any invasive insect, plant, or anything else that comes into the country that's terrestrial. There are not enough of them to do the job, and we've seen that with the current invasions. The reason I'm bringing up terrestrial invasions is because the problem is the same, and it impacts all forms of our resources. We're a resourced-based economy, so we're very vulnerable to this.

    I know about the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and how they're stretched to the limit, but I don't know who's responsible for the aquatic ones. I'm not sure any particular agency is, except perhaps DFO when it comes to impacting fisheries outside the Great Lakes area or within it. I'm not certain who is responsible. It's a very good question.

    The Chair: Does any other witness have an answer to that? Mr. Farrant.

    Mr. Greg Farrant: Our understanding has been that Environment Canada is now the lead agency responsible for at least the development of a national program on invasive species, along with DFO. I think the point the professor has just made is a good one in that it is very confusing as to exactly who is supposed to be responsible. Nobody has stepped up and taken the lead, but technically Environment Canada is supposedly the lead agency.

    Mr. Andy Burton: Clearly, this is something we need to address as a committee, to clarify who is the lead agency. That has to be a starting point.

    You talked about the synergistic disruptions. I found that to be extremely interesting. You gave us a couple of examples. Do you have any idea of how many more examples like that might be out there?

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: There aren't any more that I know of. We don't have any idea how many there are, because some of the impacts may not be recognized with respect to their sources. If we didn't have people making the links between the bacterium and the sediment--I'm talking about the botulism bacterium--in the mussels and in the gobies, we wouldn't be able to put the connection together. We'd only be treating this as a simple avian botulism outbreak. In other words, there may be effects going on that are so subtle in terms of their causes that it's hard to pin down what's responsible.

    We have a number of examples beyond the ones that I've given you--I gave those because they're recent--that indicate that sometimes two or more species can interact to produce unpredictable synergisms.

    Another example involves the sea lamprey. As Chris Goddard mentioned, the sea lamprey devastated the fisheries in the Great Lakes, particularly the lake trout fishery. Why is that important? Because lake trout is the natural predator at the top of the food web in the Great Lakes. When this top predator was removed, either gone extinct, as in some parts of the Great Lakes, or reduced to insignificance by the sea lamprey, it opened a window of opportunity for something else to invade, which was the alewife, a planktivorous fish; that is, a fish that feeds on plankton in the open water. It reproduces very rapidly and very prolifically. It came in through the canal system the same way the sea lamprey did, but could not establish or become abundant because of predation by the native predator. In the absence of that predation, the window of opportunity opened. It became so problematic, it caused a variety of impacts, including the reduction of the base of the food web, in other words the plankton--what drives the food web--to the detriment of other native species of fish. It caused certain native species of fish to go near to extinction, including very important fish that are also at the base of the food web.

    It went through boom and bust cycles, cycles where it became very abundant and died off, and then became very abundant again, which was problematic in itself because carcasses of the alewife would wash up on shore, decaying along the beaches and probably causing property values of cottages to go down, I would imagine. Furthermore, carcasses, living or dead, would get trapped inside and clog the intake pipes of industries.

    It is a disaster no matter how you look at it. The only reason they became so prolific was because of the absence of the top predator that would have controlled them, except for this.

    So there was an indirect facilitation, an indirect enhancement of the alewife, caused by prior invasion of the sea lamprey. Wherever the lamprey went and did its damage, the alewife followed. So there's another example of a synergy. There are many of them involving zebra mussels and the round goby fish that I told you about. They're happening all over the place and they're going to continue to happen.

Á  (1155)  

    Mr. Chris Goddard: Sir, if I may follow up on that, at the base of the food chain were the deepwater ciscos, and we had five unique species of deepwater ciscoes in the Great Lakes, three of which are now extinct as a direct result of the alewife introduction.

    One of the things that the management agencies are trying to do now is restore these deepwater ciscoes, because they're so uniquely adapted to the Great Lakes that it's difficult for the Great Lakes to function in its historic way in the absence of them. The three species became extinct as a result of that synergism.

    Mr. Andy Burton: One of the solutions you suggested was to ban the dumping of foreign sea water ballast. Is that practical? Can that be done?

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: I would say ban it. I would say to regulate it to a greater degree.

    If I recalled the private member's bill correctly, there had to be a certificate presented in the case of ships carrying ballast water that was deemed to be deleterious, perhaps because it came from a port known to have an invading species in it, and there had to be an inspection officer to allow the ship to dump its ballast in the receiving port.

    So I would suggest that the committee look into this and consider resurrecting it or perhaps amending it, because I think it is a good idea.

    This is where we also need the bridge between legislation and research. If we develop a predictive knowledge of invasion threats, in other words, a means of assessing invasion threats that are more immediate than others, for example, then we can identify which ports they are going to come from and at least assign a probability as to which ones pose a higher risk.

    For example, I know there are about 40 species similar to the zebra mussel, in terms of where they come from, from the Black Sea, which is where the zebra mussel comes from. They are spreading across Europe right now. And they're invading ports from which we have ships that are taking up ballast water and heading back into the Great Lakes. So any one of those could arrive at any time. In other words, you haven't seen the last of it yet.

    We have given you an example of Asian carp. There are more that could be coming. If anybody says, “We've seen the zebra mussel; it can't get any worse than that”, it could, actually.

    So if we can identify which of those threats is the greatest--and I believe we can--we can identify which ports they're coming from, based on information of where they are at the moment, and then we can identify which ships are likely bringing in the worst ballast water.

    That is a scenario. If we combine research and legislation through some kind of a coordinated organization--and we come back to this, then, somebody being responsible for coordinating things--then we might be able to stave off some very problematic invasions. We can't stop them all, but we don't have to stop them all to gain a benefit. That theoretical model I presented, the idea of synergistic disruptions, suggests that we stand to benefit from even a partial reduction of this invasion pressure because that invasion pressure could have added one more species that could create another huge series of problems.

    So we stand to benefit from keeping some of them out, even if we can't keep them all out. So there is a good-news message to this, actually.

  (1200)  

    The Chair: It took us an hour to get to it.

    You have one more question.

    Mr. Andy Burton: I'm sure you're aware, Professor, that in B.C. there's a very serious problem with Eurasian milfoil in a lot our lakes. I suspect it's somewhat similar to this Japanese seaweed. Is that correct?

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: No, it's freshwater. The freshwater weeds--

    The Chair: So we can have perhaps a proper interpretation and we can have the blues correct, if you wouldn't mind, Professor, letting him finish his question, then you can go right ahead.

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: Okay, sorry.

    Mr. Andy Burton: I want to clarify, then, that the Japanese seaweed is strictly a saltwater issue. It's not a freshwater issue. Is that correct?

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: That's correct.

    Mr. Andy Burton: Okay. Thank you.

    The Chair: Mr. Provenzano.

    Mr. Carmen Provenzano: First of all, I want to thank all of the presenters today for very interesting presentations. I certainly believe that the work of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters and the Great Lakes Fishery Commission needs to be recognized. It's good work.

    Now, on my question, it's really for any of you and all of you, if you want to take a stab at it.

    DFO has been accused of lacking or perhaps not having any formal vision of the Great Lakes aquatic ecosystem. The first thing I would like you to do is perhaps react to that, as to whether you think that's true.

    Secondly, a scientific database details scientific information. It's probably necessary as a prerequisite to having an effective vision. With respect to any program that you're going to implement with respect to invasive species or whatever, reliable scientific data needs to be the basis for that. And it's been said that DFO lacks that scientific data. What I'd like, as well, is your reaction to that. Do you think that's true, that DFO lacks the scientific data? And then I have some more questions that flow from that.

    So, anyone?

    The Chair: Who would like to take a stab at that first?

    Mr. Chris Goddard: I'd be happy to speak to it in terms of fisheries and fisheries management.

    From a fisheries management perspective, the Great Lakes are managed by a cooperative agreement among the United States, the provinces, and the federal government, called Joint Strategic Plan for Management of Great Lakes Fisheries. There's a brochure about that in the back of the packet we distributed. DFO is a member of that.

    In terms of fisheries management, very clearly each one of the Great Lakes has identified the fish community objectives that they want to see established, and they have identified the steps in order to get to those fish community objectives. DFO was very much a partner in the development of those fish community objectives and does have a vision for what they want fisheries management to be. That is very clear.

    Also, as a contract agent of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans embraces and has endorsed the vision of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission in terms of sea lamprey control and how they're going to deliver that program.

    I can't talk specifically about their scientific vision and their research vision. What I can point out, and as we pointed out to the committee when they spent considerable time with us, is that there is a difference in the delivery of fishery science between the United States and Canada.

    On the U.S. side, the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have a tremendous role in the assessment of the forage stocks within the Great Lakes, all of the forage-based fishes. The United States does all the assessment on the larger fish that are fished recreationally, commercially, and tribally. On the Canadian side, DFO does not have that role, and so there is a very large gap in our management data in terms of the status of forage stocks that exist within the Great Lakes.

    The Chair: Does anyone else wish to comment?

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: My impression is that DFO, as a group, tends to respond to problems rather than anticipate them. That may be a fault of the way the organization is set up and how they're directed. I know some very good scientists within DFO. The problem is that there is no central repository for data, so they don't have access to it. No one scientist does. That's why we go to meetings, to exchange information.

    I would recommend that a national centre or regional centres be set up for a variety of reasons, including the coordination of the collection and exchange of information, rapid exchange of information so that we can respond more rapidly to invasion threats, similar, in a way, to Centers of Disease Control, because diseases actually are invaders, too. We're always anticipating the flu virus; it's an invader.

    We're getting hit by hundreds of thousands of exotic species, and so we have to have some means of dealing with them in a predictive way, not a reactive way. The only way to do that is through advance information and rapid coordination of information. I think the gentleman's question relates to the lack of any central coordinating system for that.

  (1205)  

    Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Yes, that's exactly where I was headed.

    First of all, I can appreciate that perhaps none of you can just respond to the question in a yes or no way: is there or isn't there a scientific data deficiency in DFO; is DFO suffering from that kind of deficiency? Then we could get into the reasons. I can understand why that's difficult, but if there were a central repository for that kind of scientific data, first of all, is that possible, and would you say that would address or help address the problems we're facing?

    Let me just tell you what I'm wondering about. We hear these presentations, and we have someone like you, Professor Ricciardi, who obviously has knowledge in specific areas, a knowledge that perhaps DFO doesn't have. To what extent have you been able to share that knowledge with DFO, to what extent are you invited to share it, and to what extent do you think your knowledge might be useful to DFO?

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: I've never been asked by any government organization in Canada for information on any particular exotic species or invasion threats in general; I have been by U.S. organizations.

    As far as coordination of information goes, there are a number of us researchers across the country who because of their different research programs.... I have my lab working on certain things, other people have their labs working on certain things, and we share this information in two ways.

    The most standard way of sharing scientific information is to publish it. The trouble is there's a delay between when the information is found and when it is published for widespread dissemination, because of the printing process. It can be a year or more in some cases.

    The second way in which we spread information is through scientific conferences. They are very important because they're also attended by managers and policy-makers, in some cases. An aquatic nuisance species conference happens every year, for example. These are important ways by which information is shared before it gets published.

    The third way, which many scientists do not want to engage in, is to actually talk to the media, but then you only get half the picture sometimes. So we have diffuse ways in which information is shared. We don't have a central coordinating mechanism for the expertise we have in this country, which is considerable in the aquatic realm. Our aquatic ecologists are well respected around the world, but we have no way of coordinating their efforts to tackle particular problems.

    The only way that's happening at the moment within the current infrastructure is through NSERC, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. It has network grants that can facilitate coordinated research. They're not for invasions in particular, but they could be.

    We don't particularly promote that research topic as a priority, despite the fact that it affects all levels of society, especially ones such as ours. Ours is a resource-based economy that is more vulnerable to the effects of invasions, either terrestrial or aquatic, than the economies of countries that aren't so resource-based.

    Mr. Carmen Provenzano: I have many questions.

  (1210)  

    The Chair: You can ask one more.

    Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Aquaculture was mentioned as one of the sources. The Asian carp situation was the result of an escape from an aquaculture facility, if I understood the presentation. Is that an isolated situation with respect to aquaculture, or are we concerned about aquaculture operations contributing to the invasive species problem in general?

    Mr. Chris Goddard: A number of invasive species have arrived in the Great Lakes as a result of accidental releases from aquaculture. When I talk about aquaculture I also include the pet industry. Back in 1990, the commission funded a pivotal piece of research into the vectors for invasion. Dr. Ed Mills was the primary investigator, and he identified that about 28% of the invaders at that time came in through aquaculture.

    The Province of Ontario and the Great Lakes states are very concerned about the regulations they have in place right now to regulate aquaculture and the pet industry. One of the things that we are investigating on behalf of the states and the province is a comprehensive investigation into the existing legislation in both aquaculture and the aquarium trade to identify which regulations currently exist, what the options are, what the gaps are, and then develop a regulatory framework to try to prevent these sorts of things from happening.

    The Great Lakes Fishery Commission has developed a model program to ensure that when new aquaculture proposals are brought into the Great Lakes Basin they go through sequential steps of questions and answers to ensure that before their permission is granted to establish that new aquacultural site it will not have those sorts of impacts.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Stoffer.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks very much to all of you for your presentations.

    I remember in 1997 doing that report on the continuation of funding for the sea lamprey program, especially in the St. Mary's River. After our report it was immediately announced by Minister Anderson that over $6 million would be...but just on an almost yearly basis. There was no long-term commitment to that funding.

    Are you still encouraging the government, in the best efforts, through yourselves and the provincial ministry, to ensure there is long-term guaranteed stable funding for this particular program?

    Mr. Chris Goddard: We very much encourage the federal governments to do that. The core funding program that was requested in 1997 was $8 million Canadian, and that target has not yet been achieved.

    The Chair: I think Mr. Farrant wanted to say something.

    Mr. Greg Farrant: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I just wanted to follow up on Mr. Goddard's comments. We have met with both Mr. Thibault's and Mr. Anderson's offices on that specific issue as part of our larger concerns around invasive aquatic species and urged them to put that funding in the A base.

    The other thing that I think needs to be mentioned is the lack of parity on the funding between the two countries. The United States has been picking up the slack that Canada has not been. For instance, if we've been contributing $6 million instead of $8 million, they've been picking up the extra $2 million. They're obviously not going to do that in perpetuity, so it's in our best interest as equal partners in signed agreements that we live up to our funding obligations under those agreements.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: I remember that Mr. Provenzano, Mr. Steckle, and all of us back in 1997 considered this an investment, not necessarily an expenditure. I think that type of language in communication is very helpful in that regard.

    Dr. Ricciardi, do you know Dr. Paul Brodie from Nova Scotia?

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: No, I don't.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: He's a professor, formerly of DFO, and a scientist who is almost in the final stages now of treating ballast exchange water with ultraviolet light. He's almost concluded it. He's working with the Irving shipping company in order to put this into practice.

    I'm not sure, Mr. Chairman, if you've heard it yourself, but I've been in constant communication with him for awhile, because he has been working on this for over 20 years. Afterward, I'd like to talk to you a bit more about that because ballast exchange is a very serious problem in this country.

    My other comment is that I'm always amazed at how volunteer and community-based groups really take the bull by the horns in order to protect not only their commercial livelihood but their recreational livelihood. As a person who used to live in the Yukon and fished recreationally for many years, I normally don't go anywhere without my little No. 7 Len Thompson lure.

    Ms. MacDonald, in order to elaborate a bit more, when governments, either provincially, municipally, or federally, fail to act or don't recognize the serious threat to economic opportunities, how do community groups--in Atlantic Canada we say coastal groups, but yours is an inland community group--respond? What are they actually looking for in terms of leadership or direction from all levels of government in this regard?

  (1215)  

    Ms. Francine MacDonald: I think conservation groups, particularly hunters and anglers, have had a long history of picking up the slack, seeing when there's a problem that something needs to be done, and responding to issues, even if it means spending money out of their own pocket or spending their time in order to do these things.

    With respect to invasive species, our volunteers have been working on this issue for over 10 years, and I think it's about time the federal government really started to commit the necessary resources to this program. We're facing a serious problem in our inland waters and nothing is being done about it, unless you count what the NGOs like ours, the Federation of Ontario Cottagers Associations, and all of those community groups are doing for their communities to protect their lakes. We really need to see commitment from the federal and provincial agencies.

    Certainly, invasive species are starting to become more of an issue. We're starting to see Fisheries and Oceans and Environment Canada start to deal with invasive species much more, particularly because of the commissioner's report on invasive species last year.

    But really, we need a federal lead to take action on aquatic invasive species and provide a response plan to exotics. How are we going to deal with it? What's the strategy? Education and awareness are key components, but also, how are we going to prevent new introductions?

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: I have just a couple of small questions.

    You indicated that some of the states are banning the transportation or importation of live carp. Excuse my ignorance on this, but does Canada have that as well, and if not, would you advise us to say that the importation or transportation of live carp should be banned from Canada?

    Also, you talked about synergy in terms of one species to another. What about pharmaceuticals that get into the sewage and septic systems, that people flush down their toilets, and how that reacts with species? And, of course, it gets into the food chain and into our systems as well.

    If you could just elaborate on those two, I'd greatly appreciate it.

    Mr. Chris Goddard: I'll address that one first.

    At this point in time, the regulatory mechanism within Ontario and Canada to stop or prohibit possession of live Asian carp, and also the snakehead, does not exist. But what is happening is that as the states throughout the Great Lakes basin prohibit the possession, then through the WAPPRIITA, the Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of Internationaland Interprovincial Trade Act, which is the enabling legislation for CITES, there are provisions in that act that say if it is illegal in the United States, it is therefore illegal in Ontario. So we think that initiative will come forward.

    But what is exciting too is that they are currently trucked across the border. We have them virtually stopped now, or will tomorrow, at the Ambassador Bridge. We expect that similar legislation will be passed in New York state in the very immediate future so they will not actually be able to physically enter Ontario.

    And I would like to point out--

    The Chair: Mr. Goddard, just so that we're clear, is there an Ontario regulation or a federal regulation that specifically bans the importation of live Asian carp into Ontario?

    Mr. Chris Goddard: No, sir, there is not.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    And you were going to go ahead?

    Mr. Chris Goddard: Yes, sir, I was, but--

    The Chair: I'm sorry, but I wanted to get the answer on the record. If you think of something, let us know.

    Ms. MacDonald.

  (1220)  

    Ms. Francine MacDonald: I wanted to add to this the fact that with the live food fish trade and the aquarium trade, and the horticultural trade for that matter, we are importing thousands of different species into this country, and we do not know what they are and what impact they could have on our ecosystems. We know nothing. We know about Asian carp, that they could potentially have a major impact on the Great Lakes. That's one species we know about that we're trying to prevent. But then thousands we don't even know about are being brought into this country every day.

    The Chair: Anthony, did you want to say something?

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: I have something in response to the second question, but do you want to pursue--

    Mr. Chris Goddard: I wanted to follow up with one small point, and it is that banning the possession of live Asian carp is not a commerce issue. The states and the province are not trying to say you cannot consume Asian carp. They're saying it has to be transported either fresh or fresh frozen. So it's not saying you can't have this as food; we just don't want it transported live.

    The Chair: Professor.

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: In response to the question about synergies, I didn't want to bring this up because it was more bad news, but it turns out that invasions interact with other environmental stressors--and they've been shown to--so that we can get these synergies involving a particular invader and some other stress. An example is global warming. If you didn't have enough reason to believe that global warming is a problem, I mentioned before that what is occurring now and impacting our fisheries on the Atlantic coast, that is, involving the Japanese seaweed, could not have occurred without that strange little invertebrate, which also got introduced from Europe in ship ballast water to the region, that is facilitating the seaweed.

    The reason that little invertebrate has become very prolific is unusually warm summers. Warm currents stimulate its growth. There are a myriad of other species that will respond in the same way, so there's just one example. There are many, and we don't have time to talk about them all.

    The Chair: Mr. Wood.

    Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    Professor Ricciardi, in your presentation--I hope I heard this right--in view of the foreign marine plant life, you said it was all right for a slow rate of invasion, but it wasn't important to stop it all. Can you elaborate on that?

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: Yes.

    Mr. Bob Wood: Maybe I have it wrong but--

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: I said that given this theoretical evidence that two or more invading species can interact in unpredictable ways and produce synergistic impacts as impacts that are greater than the sum of their separate effects, then the more species you add, you get a disproportionate increase in the number of possible synergies. That's just a simple statistical fact. If that is true, and it is, then we stand to benefit from even a partial reduction in the rate at which we add new species to the system. Those benefits will be major, because we would have stopped a variety of combinations from occurring. In other words, for a certain incremental decline in the rate of invasion, we get a larger decline in the frequency and magnitude of synergies that could have been caused by them.

    So what I'm saying is that there is a theoretical reason for expecting a major benefit from even a partial reduction of the invasion pressure, that is, the number of species coming in, even if we can't shut off the tap completely. So that is a rebuttal to anybody who says there's no point in trying to impose costly measures and trying to stop invasions if we can't stop them all. There is a point to it. We stand to benefit greatly if this model is true.

    Mr. Bob Wood: Thank you.

    Mr. Gaden, you talked about Asian carp and the two species, silver and bighead carp, and they're only located in the Chicago area. What kind of protection do you people have in place to stop this coming into the United States? I should know that, but I'm new to the committee so I don't.

    Mr. Chris Goddard: As it stands right now, the response of the aquaculture industry in the southern states was really quite alarming given the problem we had with the three species, and this was that the aquaculture industry requested the importation of a fourth species, the black carp, for similar purposes.

    What has happened is that the Great Lakes states and a number of the committees of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission in the province of Ontario all wrote to the U.S. government using what is termed the Lacey Act, which is a fish and wildlife act, and we have had the black carp labelled as an injurious species. As an injurious species, its importation has been denied. This is the same legislation they have in the United States that they use to prohibit the possession and the importation of snakehead. So they listed it as an injurious species.

    What is also interesting, and Mr. Gaden knows more about this than I do, is some protection in terms of importation that is coming through in the National Aquatic Invasive Species Act, which is up for authorization this spring.

    Mr. Gaden.

  (1225)  

    Mr. Marc Gaden (Legislative Liaison, Great Lakes Fishery Commission): This piece of legislation that is going to be introduced soon in the United States will put into place a screening process for new species coming into the country. If there's a species that comes in after a certain date--and the legislation specifies that--this species has to go through a certain screening process. That's designed to be another layer of protection as they look at these species that are coming in.

    Ms. MacDonald had mentioned there are a lot of things coming into Canada, into North America for that matter, that we don't know anything about. This is a process that, at least, is expected to be put into place to address that.

    Mr. Chris Goddard: If I may follow up, what is exciting about this is that the way the legislation now reads in the United States, if somebody wants to bring in a species, it becomes the responsibility of the state to in fact identify that this species, when it comes in, will cause a problem. This new process will reverse that trend.

    Mr. Bob Wood: If I could talk about the black carp for a second, Doctor, apparently it escaped into the Mississippi River, if I read it right, back in the mid-nineties.

    Mr. Chris Goddard: Yes, that's correct.

    Mr. Bob Wood: It has never been seen since.

    Mr. Chris Goddard: Right.

    Mr. Bob Wood: What's your take on that? Why is that? Did it just disappear? What happened to it? If it is then related to the Asian carp and everything down the line, why is it so different that the black carp hasn't shown up?

    Mr. Chris Goddard: We think the main reason is that a few black carp came in, incidentally, with some grass carp. When they escaped into the Mississippi, they did not become established. More recently, the black carp have been triploid. In theory they are sterile.

    I'd also like to point out that the grass carp, which is another smaller species of Asian carp, was only allowed in the triploid state, so it was theoretically sterile as well. It has now become established in 36 states in the United States. It is not yet established in Ontario.

    Mr. Bob Wood: Do I have some time?

    The Chair: Actually, you're out of time. But we have many rounds and not too many members, so everybody will get a chance. I have a few questions.

    Mr. Burton.

    Mr. Andy Burton: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    It was a very interesting discussion, I must say.

    I have a question for Professor Ricciardi again, for my own edification. For instance, the black zebra mussel is a saltwater creature. How does it survive? Or am I incorrect there? When a saltwater species gets introduced into fresh water, I thought there was a problem there in terms of survival.

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: The zebra mussel is a freshwater species; however, it is a marine-like organism--it looks very similar to the blue mussels you order in restaurants, for example--and it can tolerate a certain amount of salinity. But it is a freshwater mussel.

    Mr. Andy Burton: I thought you stated earlier that they were actually picked up in the Black Sea.

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: Yes. That's a good point. They are from the Black Sea, but they are from the freshwater deltas of the Black Sea. A number of freshwater rivers empty into the Black Sea, like the Dnieper River and other rivers that come from the Ukraine, for example. Those freshwater outflows are the natural range of the zebra mussel as well as the round goby and a variety of other species that have arrived here over the last ten years. They're called Ponto-Caspian species, because they're part of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea fauna.

    For some reason--and it gets very technical, so I won't get into it--we've been getting a lot of them lately. You've heard about the round goby. You may have heard of the tubenose goby. You've heard of the zebra mussel, and you may have heard of its cousin, the quagga mussel. You may have heard of an invasive freshwater shrimp called the Echinogammarus. You may have heard of the fishhook waterflea. They all come from the same place. We're getting a lot of them.

    There is a good reason we're getting them. One reason is because of a loophole, again, in the ballast water exchange. Ballast water exchange, as I indicated before, is incomplete. Ideally, you're supposed to remove all the fresh water and replace it with salt water, but we don't do that. So you get a mixture. Those species that can tolerate some salinity will get in, so we're selecting for those species. All the species that come from the Black Sea can tolerate a certain amount of salinity, so we're still getting them. They're coming through anyway. They're exploiting this loophole.

  (1230)  

    Mr. Marc Gaden: There are some species, as well, that thrive in the ocean but also can thrive in fresh water. The sea lamprey is a prime example of that. That's a species that's native to the Atlantic Ocean. When it swam its way into the Great Lakes system, it survived there. Actually, sea lampreys in the Great Lakes don't migrate back to salt water at any part of their life stage. So they've made fresh water their home. Some species can do that.

    We've also had some species that have been identified in the Great Lakes, some European flounder-type fish, that can survive and grow in fresh water but can't reproduce in fresh water. So we have some signs that they're slipping in in the ballast. Fortunately, they can't reproduce.

    What we're worried about are the ones that actually can reproduce in fresh water that come in through the ballast. There are some species that can spend their whole life stage in fresh water.

    Mr. Greg Farrant: Just to follow up on Mr. Gaden's comments, I was at a meeting last year with Parks Canada regarding the establishment of a park on northern Lake Superior. One of the commercial fishermen who were involved in that meeting also noted to us, much to my surprise, that he had been pulling flounder out of Lake Superior in his catch.

    At the time, I asked the same question, how is that possible? The adaptability of these species and the introduction through the ballast water, the connection there, is quite extreme. To think that you have fish that are normally associated with southern coastal waters suddenly showing up in Lake Superior.... It's a clear demonstration of the kinds of synergies the professor has referred to, how these things happen and the adaptability, and why this is such a dangerous thing that we need to control, because certainly these things are a lot more adaptable than we are.

    Mr. Chris Goddard: Just to follow up, we do have species like European flounder and Chinese mitten crab that we are finding throughout the Great Lakes. We sort of confidently say they're marine species and they cannot reproduce in fresh water.

    About 15 years ago, as Mr. Provenzano knows, in an effort to transport pink salmon, a Pacific salmon, to Hudson's Bay, they've stopped over in Thunder Bay on the Great Lakes, and some pink salmon were inadvertently introduced into Lake Superior. As fisheries managers, we weren't at all concerned, because of course we knew they could not reproduce in fresh water. We now have established pink salmon populations in all the Great Lakes.

    Mr. Andy Burton: Maybe this question is for all of you: what would you like to see come forward from today's session in terms of this committee's recommendations? Are we looking strictly for dollars, or legislative change? Is the answer just dollars, or do we need to go beyond that?

    The Chair: Mr. Farrant.

    Mr. Greg Farrant: I think it's a combination of all of those. It's easy for us to come forward and say to you, we need more money. That's true; we do. We need money to live up to our obligations under U.S.-Canada agreements on sea lamprey. We need money for establishment of national programs. The proposal we put forward to Environment Canada for a national invasive species awareness program is $1.4 million over five years or, as I said to Minister Anderson, about what he spends on staples in a week. He didn't appreciate the characterization, notwithstanding....

    But it's not just that. What you've heard from all the speakers this morning is also the fact that we need legislation. We need regulation. We need screening. We need coordination of all the agencies, somebody to take the lead to coordinate data, to coordinate research, to coordinate the efforts of all of us in the field who work on these issues. That's as critical as just throwing money at the problem, because giving money without establishing the procedures, the priorities, and the processes is not going to solve the problem.

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: We need a national plan of some kind, and it will have to develop over time. We need tighter legislation. One way to approach that is to enhance existing legislation, such as the Canada Shipping Act. We need emergency response centres so that we can attempt to prevent an exotic species spread before it becomes impossible to eradicate or it starts accumulating costs in terms of its impact. These are just the minimal things, but we have none of these so far.

  (1235)  

    Mr. Chris Goddard: I think it would be excellent if the committee could come forward and support the International Joint Commission's reference to study invasive species and to harmonize ballast water regulations between Canada and the United States. I think that is the first step. I think it also would be very good if the commission could once again come out strongly in support of secure funding for sea lamprey control in the Great Lakes, through Fisheries and Oceans, by having the funds placed into a base and fully funding that base program. That will also serve as a catalyst to work with organizations such as the OFAH to enhance sea lamprey control in the Great Lakes. I think it would be nice if we had federal support for regulations, possibly in conjunction with the IJC reference, to stop the importation of new species. Also, we'd like to see support for the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters education initiative.

    The Chair: What a good question, and what an excellent answer to that question.

    Mr. Provenzano.

    Mr. Carmen Provenzano: I'd like to follow up on the support for the education program of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters. My question is for Francine MacDonald. I understood you to say that the United States has a somewhat effective public awareness program and that Canada is really not doing a lot in that area. Then you went on to make a presentation on behalf of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters. What I heard was that you have a very effective invasive species public awareness program. It seemed to involve many players and to be quite comprehensive. I also understood you to say that it was successful.

    I have two questions. One, is there a federal or provincial contribution to your association toward the development of that program? You can comment on whether or not that's adequate. Two, if you felt you could improve your own program, in what area would it be, and what would it take?

    Ms. Francine MacDonald: Our program has certainly been successful, but I want to say that with the caveat that we have supported this program with the assistance of partnerships. Our budget is probably $50,000 a year for these initiatives. The State of Minnesota spends about $1.5 million on public outreach programs. I think we're doing a good job right now, but we could be doing a heck of a lot better with more resources.The MNR does support our program minimally. They provide us with $20,000 a year. We haven't received any funding from the federal government in the recent past for our initiatives. For our Ontario Great Lakes program, we're asking for approximately $350,000 a year.

    Mr. Carmen Provenzano: If you had the money, what would you do to your program?

    Ms. Francine MacDonald: We need a widespread media communications program. We would like to see public service announcements dealing with exotics on television and radio. These are the ways we create widespread public awareness of this issue. Right now there isn't a great deal of public awareness of the issue. People don't know the impacts that exotics have on our ecosystems, and we need to do something about that. We'd like to see billboards on every major highway, so cottagers, anglers, and boaters travelling to cottage destinations will be able to get that message that way. We have numerous ideas of what we could do if we had the money.

    Mr. Greg Farrant: This is just to add on to what Ms. MacDonald has said.

    We at OFAH are also the lead of a group known as the National Coalition of Provincial and TerritorialWildlife Federations, that is, all of them across the country. As the lead on that, with a small amount of funding, as Ms. MacDonald has suggested, we can provide education and public awareness programs in every province and in every territory in this country over a five-year period through our provincial affiliates in other provinces, with whom we work very closely. A very small amount of dollars leverages a lot of public awareness and education. We would develop the strategies here, and they would deliver them there after helping us identify which particular issues are of a critical nature to them.

    For instance, the B.C. Wildlife Federation has talked to us extensively about the salmon aquaculture issue, which, you will be aware, has been in the news again in the last week with the problems it is causing in the rivers there. For a very small amount of money we would develop something they can deliver province-wide in B.C. to assist them in their particular indigenous species problems.

  (1240)  

    Mr. Carmen Provenzano: We have a voluntary program with respect to ballast exchange or replacement. Are you aware of any programs--and would it make any difference if there were any--directed at the shipping industry? We don't have legislation that makes it mandatory. Do we have programs that try to educate the shipping industry as to the potential impacts of not exchanging ballast water before ships enter our ecosystems?

    Ms. Francine MacDonald: The shipping industry is certainly aware of its role in exotic species introductions. There is a national ballast water working group as well as regional working groups conducted in coordination with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Transport Canada. Certainly, there is room for financial support for research to look at ballast treatment technologies. I don't think that the federal government is providing any support, even minimal support, for treatment technologies. That is definitely a major gap we need to address.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Provenzano.

    Mr. Stoffer.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you very much.

    What role are aboriginal groups and communities playing in terms of the efforts you are presenting?

    My other comment is, I haven't yet heard anyone come up to say, we'll do it, we'll be the central authority; give us the funding, we'll organize everything, and we'll run with it. I'm thinking of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, where you have Mr. Herb Gray, who'll be honoured tonight with a lovely dinner--a well deserved one, I may add.

    Could your organization be the lead if it were properly funded? Should it be a Canadian initiative, working in conjunction with the Americans, or could it be a joint one because, as we know, the Great Lakes span the border?

    Mr. Chris Goddard: First of all, in terms of fisheries management and in terms of sea lamprey control, we work very closely with tribal groups on both sides of the border. I talked earlier about a joint strategic plan for management of the Great Lakes fisheries, and in fact two tribes on the U.S. side are signatory to that agreement and they have management authority in the Great Lakes. They contribute a tremendous amount in terms of fisheries assessment, and they work very closely with us in terms of sea lamprey control. In fact, they do carry out some of the assessments for us in terms of sea lamprey.

    In terms of fisheries management, again through this joint strategic plan, there are a number of fisheries databases that are held jointly on a lake-by-lake basis. One of the great successes of fisheries management in the Great Lakes is the fact that each state and province on a shared water body has agreed to the assessment program, to the data collection. These data are held centrally and are analyzed centrally so we don't have arguments on the status of fish stocks when we make allocations to either commercial or recreational fisheries.

    Those data exist for fisheries. In terms of the other scientific database Dr. Ricciardi was talking about, to my knowledge that database does not exist, and I think that the International Joint Commission with Mr. Gray could be a good repository for that database.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: Correct me if I'm wrong, but we have heard we need some sort of emergency centres in terms of this. We also need a coordinated effort with community-based groups. We need a coordinated effort with international groups, with academia, and with fishing groups here. If we were making a recommendation to government, who should be that one central agency? Should it be Environment Canada, should it be Transport Canada, should it be the Province of Ontario, or should it just be the federal government through the Department of Fisheries and Oceans? Which agency would you recommend should take the lead and run with it, because if we make a recommendation that says the government should, that will just get watered down and thrown away.

    We need to make a recommendation. With your experience, where should the command centre be and who should actually do it?

  (1245)  

    Mr. Chris Goddard: I'm trying not to drop back 10 yards and punt on this, but I think this is very clearly one of the questions the International Joint Commission wants to specifically address in their reference. My recommendation would be that we allow the IJC to come back to both governments with their recommendation and that we support it.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: In conclusion, I just want to personally thank you for your presentation. It was very well done.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    First of all, I too want to say how impressed I've been with the testimony from everyone, and I want to pay tribute to the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters. It amazes me as well how volunteer organizations step up to the plate when there appears to be a vacuum and do a fantastic job in helping us deal with problems that otherwise wouldn't be dealt with in the same manner. So congratulations, truly.

    Now, it seems to me that money talks, as we all know, and one of the ways, I would think, to convince governments of the importance of these issues other than from an environmental perspective is on the basis of the economy involved.

    Notwithstanding that it's in the presentation of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, I'm going to address my question to Mr. Goddard. I'd like to get some kind of handle, if you can give it to us, on the economics. For example, the Great Lakes fishery, we are told by the federation, is worth $4 billion annually. Is that the Great Lakes fishery on both sides of the border or is that the Canadian part? If it's not the Canadian part, what is the Canadian part worth?

    Also in their presentation we hear that the recreational fishery is worth $2 billion. I presume that the $2 billion is part of the $4 billion. If I'm wrong, please let me know.

    Our researchers have given us a paper that says:

Annual commerce exceeds 180 million metric tonnes at approximately 145 ports and terminals in the basin, and adds an estimated $3 billion annually and an estimated 17,000 jobs to the Canadian economy.

With respect to the fisheries, the Great Lakes commercial fishery is one of the largest freshwater fisheries in the world. In Canada, it has an average annual landed value of about $45 million and adds over $100 million to the Canadian economy. Recreational angling provides a further $350 million, for an overall contribution of $450 million to the Canadian economy from the Great Lakes fishery.

    Given those numbers, could you just clarify it for us from the Canadian perspective?

    Mr. Chris Goddard: Yes, sir. I can point out that the $4 billion figure that is used is throughout the Great Lakes. If you were to apportion that, I would think the best reference we have on that would be lake area, which is about 69% on the U.S. side and 31% on the Canadian side. So the majority of that $4 billion total impact on the fishery is on the U.S. side.

    We also know a figure that has been produced is that the fishery--the combined commercial, recreational, and tourism industry--generates about 75,000 jobs throughout the Great Lakes basin.

    The Chair: How many are in Canada?

    Mr. Chris Goddard: Sir, I don't know that figure.

    The Chair: Will anyone know that? Where would I be able to get that information, do you think?

    Mr. Chris Goddard: I cannot answer that question.

    The Chair: So it's 75,000 people, roughly, and $4 billion in the total industry, including the recreational fishery, right?

  (1250)  

    Mr. Chris Goddard: Yes sir.

    Now in terms of the commercial fishery, you mentioned it is one of the largest freshwater fisheries in the world. It is clearly the most valuable freshwater fishery in the world. Lake Erie alone is the most valuable freshwater fishery in the world. The largest freshwater fishery in terms of actual production is Lake Victoria in Africa.

    The Chair: What do you mean by “most valuable”?

    Mr. Chris Goddard: The sale of the fish species in Canada generates more revenue than the sale of the fish species through Lake Victoria.

    The Chair: I see. Okay.

    Does anyone else have to comment on that?

    Mr. Brown, we haven't heard from you, so let's get you on the record.

    Mr. Dave Brown (Fisheries Biologist, Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters): I wanted to further clarify that the $2 billion that we talked about for the recreational fishery was for Ontario's inland recreational fishery.

    And that's from the DFO 2000 angler survey report.

    The Chair: But that doesn't include the Great Lakes.

    Mr. Dave Brown: No.

    The Chair: Professor.

    Prof. Anthony Ricciardi: With respect to the costs of invaders, including not only aquatic ones but also terrestrial ones, I can send you an unpublished report that was done on behalf of the Auditor General. It was done by my colleagues at the University of Windsor and they put together costs and bottom lines, and I thought that would be useful to the committee.

    So if I can have an e-mail address, I can send it off.

    The Chair: You can send it directly to our clerk and he'll distribute it to everybody.

    Well, that was absolutely fascinating. We very much appreciated your coming and giving us your evidence. Thank you very much.

    We're adjourned.