Agriculture committee  Absolutely. The U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center is a lab based in Madison, Wisconsin, and that's the U.S. centre for wildlife disease research. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also has their own wildlife research. We're talking with them all the time. For example, we co-host the World Organisation for Animal Health wildlife collaborating centre with the USGS National Wildlife Health Center.

Agriculture committee  We do work with the Canadian Council on Invasive Species, for example. We've worked on feral swine and the SF file, but when it comes to insects, that's a little bit outside our bailiwick.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question. I'm sorry, but I only speak English. I would love to be able to answer in French—one day. Of course, we all need resources. Avian influenza is a perfect example of that. All of our labs went way beyond their capacities—people working late, working weekends.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question. I want to reiterate how important hunters are. These are people who are on the land and who know what's normal. In any kind of disease situation, unless you know what's normal, you can't detect the abnormal, so that integration, that co-operation with hunters and indigenous people and whoever else is on the land, is critical to what we do.

Agriculture committee  We have absolutely. Thank you for the question. Science is difficult. We're not able to actually draw a line and say that, if it weren't for climate change, we wouldn't see this disease, but we certainly are seeing different migration patterns. Even in the example of avian influenza, highly pathogenic avian influenza, this H5N1 strain, has been in Asia since 2005 or 2006.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. The way the system works is that we'll get a call about a dead animal. A dead goose or a dead skunk will be reported. It will come to one of our labs. We'll do the preliminary screening test and then send samples to the lab in Winnipeg for confirmation. We can't actually say, “That's high path avian influenza.”

Agriculture committee  That's an excellent question. Thank you very much for that question. We work really closely with all the provinces and the territories, and our role is a support role. Ultimately, we all know there's a constitutional mandate for provinces, the federal government and indigenous nations for wildlife and wildlife health.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you very much for this invitation to speak today. We really appreciate this opportunity, and we really hope we're going to be of some use today. My name is Dr. Damien Joly. I'm the CEO of the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative. Before I start, I just want to acknowledge that I'm grateful to be a guest on the unceded territory of the Anishinabe Algonquin nation.