I'll jump into it anyway.
In my presentation I will spend a few minutes speaking about why we should care about invasive alien species; provide an overview of a national strategy, an invasive alien species strategy for Canada that was developed a few years ago; and then speak a bit to both interjurisdictional coordination—domestically, I mean, not internationally so much—and then the federal role.
Invasive alien species is what I would call a horizontal file that involves a number of agencies.
Turning to slide 3, dealing with why we should care about invasive alien species, I'll start with a definition.
Alien species are simply species of plants, animals, and micro-organisms introduced by human action outside of their historic or current range. When do they become harmful or invasive? It is when they have an economic, a social, an environmental, and perhaps even a human health impact.
In Canada we have a number of alien species, and then within that there are a number of species that actually cause harm to our environment, our economy, or our society.
It's estimated that there are about 70,000 species in Canada. About 12,000 of those have been assessed in something called the Wild Species 2010 report. That's about 17% of the species that we have in Canada. Of those approximately 12,000 species, about 1,400 or about 12% have been identified as alien species.
Of those more than 1,400 species, about 90% are invasive plants. And then spiders, believe it or not—about 70 invasive spiders—and about 50 or more ground beetles have been identified as alien species in that report.