Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The approach I'm going to take is to basically try to establish baseline information. I have a question for either the Health Canada or Environment Canada officials.
What do we know about the natural versus unnatural or anthropogenic causes of different toxins or other substances that might appear, or that have appeared historically, in the Athabasca River? From a fisheries perspective, we talk about the bioaccumulation of various toxins, particularly mercury. The Athabasca River is not the only river in Canada that has advisories on it as far as fish consumption is concerned.
I would like some clarification on what we know about these levels of contaminants, whether natural or anthropogenic. Do we know what they were before 1965? Do we know what they've been? Have we been monitoring them all along? And relative to other drainage systems we have in Canada, is the Athabasca River normal in what we would expect to see, given that the river does flow through some very interesting geography? Are there any other drainage systems in Canada that have similar levels of heavy metals and other things that occur naturally?