Fisheries committee  Yes. Overall, it was a very comprehensive report. The P.E.I. one was also quite comprehensive. They spoke to the requirement for better organizations, or more organizations for the LFAs themselves, the harvesters, to marketing, to quality in handling, to a lobster market institute, to price-setting mechanisms, and to industry-funded levy.

Fisheries committee  The idea is, and as you know, we had the Atlantic lobster sustainability measures initiative, whereby we—

Fisheries committee  It can be. It says, “rationalizing”. It wasn't specific. You could combine them. In the Maritimes region, for example, we have an arrangement whereby you can put two sets of traps on one vessel, but with 50% less of the second licence. Those types of initiatives are promoting us to work with industry.

Fisheries committee  Yes. All those things are in play. It really is quite a comprehensive report, as is the other one.

Fisheries committee  Yes, there is, and we have two programs in our science world, the aquaculture collaborative research and development program and the program for aquaculture regulatory research, which continues to have expertise around this and continues to work with people in the private sector and be available to them.

Fisheries committee  Sure. The definition of “serious harm” is permanent alteration or destruction of habitat. It's one of the challenges that's being put out there. It's different from a HADD, which is harmful alteration, disruption, or destruction of habitat, and it is indeed a different level. We have ensured that permanent alteration or destruction of habitat is linked to the definition of habitat, which is very broad, as I said earlier, and it covers all the life processes of the fish.

Fisheries committee  We have signed up. It's a CBD, which is a convention on biological diversity. That established, internationally, objectives for all countries that signed up to try to get to 10% protection by 2020. Race Rocks, Hecate Strait are moving forward. When it comes to MPAs—small m, small p, small a—there are our formal MPAs, but also on the west coast, marine parks like Gwaii Haanas count toward that MPA list, and the work that Environment Canada is doing on Scott Islands just off Vancouver Island.

Fisheries committee  Another example is cod, where you've got different “species” of populations of cod. Some of them are threatened and some of them are endangered as proposed by COSEWIC, and it is a challenge. I do think it comes back down to genetics and population areas. Some would say it's an art more than a science, but there apparently is a science to it and COSEWIC establishes those things.

Fisheries committee  Government provided $17.5 million, I think, over five years for Asian carp. You asked what we are doing with the funding—we've talked about that in the past—and what we actually think is happening with respect to Asian carp. There are concerns. There's been a number of cases where an Asian carp is picked out of the lake, or in a river that's near the lake, which is part of—and this is Lake Erie, by the way—the Great Lakes basin.

Fisheries committee  So negotiations have been taking place—

Fisheries committee  We should add about the Maritime Lobster Panel, which you asked about, that it was to the three maritime provinces. We've worked with the maritime provinces to see what their response is going to be. There were about five specific recommendations for DFO, even though it wasn't our panel.

Fisheries committee  Yes. It's not called an offsetting policy. It's called a fisheries productivity investment policy, but it includes an offsetting guide. Basically the new regulation says that if you're planning to cause a negative impact to the fishery and to fisheries productivity, you need an offsetting proposal.

Fisheries committee  We have good standards, good best practices. It's not just us; the world does. One of the objectives of the new act is to put those standards into regulation. That will come with time, but those best practices are there.

Fisheries committee  Yes, it was a record run in 2010. This last year, there have been low numbers of sockeye in some areas, but very high numbers of pinks and chum in some other fisheries. It is variable each year.

Fisheries committee  It depends on the circumstances, but in your anecdote, yes. If there is a headlands that is very important to a fishery downstream, that's protected. Habitat, as you pointed out, is very broadly defined. It's defined as anything that's supportive of the overall life processes.