Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for inviting me today. I thank you for letting me do this via video. Being from Canada and working in Michigan, I would have preferred an opportunity to get back home but the schedule didn't permit it, so thank you for allowing me to do this.
I missed a lot of Commissioner Walker's comments because of the video problems, so hopefully that won't plague my few minutes here.
I'll start with an opening statement, as you suggested. I'm not going to start with some of the superlatives that I normally use to describe the Great Lakes. I'm sure you'll hear a lot of those over the course of the coming weeks. But I will point out a couple of facts. It represents 5% of North America's water. It is home to 30% of Canada's entire population. One that you may not hear otherwise is that it houses a $7 billion trade. These are just some of the things that speak to the significance of the Great Lakes.
They are great. However, urban things like urban development, industrialization, globalization, fishing, habitat alterations have all left an imprint on the basin, and in some cases, a considerable legacy that current and future generations will have to address. So while the lakes are great and large enough for abundant resources, they are indeed fragile and require protection. Canada and the United States have for a long time cooperated; they have a cooperative history on the Great Lakes. For instance, in 1954, Canada and the U.S. agreed to the Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries, which is really what created my organization, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, as a two-way cooperation for the benefit of...[Technical difficulty--Editor]...to combat the most destructive of invasive species, the sea lamprey.
The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, first signed in 1972, and updated as recently as 2012, is the very mechanism used to help Canada and the U.S. work together to ensure the physical, chemical, and biological integrity of the Great Lakes Basin.
It is those two things, the Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries and the water quality agreement, that I wanted to focus my comments on today.
First, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement—I believe Commissioner Walker spoke to that in his opening statement. The water quality agreement, as we mentioned, was revised in 2012 to bring greater attention to the basin's ongoing and emerging issues. I believe the revised agreement in 2012, in my estimation, offers an unprecedented opportunity for the commissions to work with other agencies, governments, first nations, and stakeholders to connect fishery issues to overall Great Lakes priorities. In particular, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission is deeply engaged in a number of annexes addressing such things as lake-wide management, invasive species, habitat, and science.
I just want to spend a few minutes talking about the role that the Great Lakes Fishery Commission is playing on those annexes, which really define the water quality agreement.
First, on annex 2, it focuses on lake-wide management, with a goal of coordinated binational assessment and management of...[Technical difficulty--Editor]...which, due to their nature, are best addressed on a lake-specific basis. Under the Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries, as I mentioned before, my commission is responsible for facilitating...[Technical difficulty--Editor]...arrangements among the fishery management jurisdictions of the Great Lakes Basin. It also went to a non-binding agreement called a joint strategic plan on Great Lakes fisheries. Under the plan the agencies come together to develop, work, and implement fish community objectives, which are shared fishery management goals and environmental objectives that really define the objectives.
Traditionally, and unfortunately, fisheries managers and water quality experts have not worked together as closely as they could have. Annex 2, however, presents a tremendous opportunity for fishery managers to link their objectives to the lake-wide management plan. As such, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission is working to provide an active link between the strategic plan signatories and members of annex 2.
Moving on to annex 6, its focus is on aquatic invasive species, which is our major concern from a water quality perspective. It focuses on invasive species with a goal of preventing new introductions, managing existing invasive species, and conducting scientific risk assessments to improve the understanding of those things. Simply put, invasive species must be addressed.
Annex 6 is particularly promising in that it calls for major efforts to detect new invaders early and to respond quickly upon their discovery. It calls for a ballast water discharge program, whereby Canada and the United States would have either identical or at least harmonized ballast water standards sufficient to protect the Great Lakes ecosystem.
It envisions the immediate implementation of proactive, binational programs to prevent new introductions of invasive species like Asian carp, and it commits the nations to scientific understanding of the risk invasive species represent so that prevention, control, and rapid response measures could be supported.
Great Lakes Fishery Commission knows much about invasive species because, after all, we are charged with sea lamprey control, and I'll discuss that briefly in a minute. The commission sees annex 6 as a fantastic opportunity for both nations to make tremendous progress in mitigating the considerable threats that invasive species pose.
The commission has long been involved in invasive species policy and sees annex 6 as a tremendous opportunity for great collaboration and action. By integrating invasive species into the water quality agreement and by demanding swift and aggressive action, the commission, other government agencies, and stakeholders throughout the region have the chance to make real and lasting progress in this area. So we're quite committed to annex 6.
Annex 7 focuses on preventing further loss of critical habitat and native species that contribute so much to the overall integrity of the Great Lakes. The link between quality habitat and thriving fisheries is, of course, strong. Without spawning habitat, for instance, self-sustaining fish populations and the billions of dollars in economic benefit they provide would not be possible. Annex 7 is critical in that it establishes tight timeframes and affords the development and implementation of lake-wide strategies to prevent habitat loss and aid in the restoration of native species.
Annex 10 seeks to establish efficiencies and effectiveness in Great Lakes science. The Great Lakes Fishery Commission has always believed that science is essential to manage the resources effectively and to justify the expenditures of public resources. Not only will science indicate how, why, and where to expend resources, it will also inform about progress in achieving objectives. One really important point about annex 10 is that it commits Canada and the U.S. to the development of and adherence to science-based indicators of success. That informs about the health of the Great Lakes and helps direct policies.
Under the Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries, the commission is charged with facilitating the generation of fisheries science. So indeed since the commission was created in 1956, it's led the way in identifying science priorities and native species recovery. To that extent annex 10 really provides the commission with great opportunities to connect its resource priorities with those of the larger priorities of water quality agreement from a water quality perspective.
I'm going to conclude by speaking briefly to sea lamprey because it does speak to invasive species issues in a large way. Sea lamprey is a tremendous threat to the sustainability of the Great Lakes fishery. Sea lamprey is without question the most destructive of the invasive species that we've ever faced. It's a non-native species, has no predators, and attaches itself to fish using its large suction cup mouth. A typical sea lamprey will consume about 20 kilograms of fish during its lifetime. Sea lamprey caused unprecedented ecological and economic harm to the Great Lakes. The Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries, 1954, called upon the commission to implement a border-blind, sea lamprey control program. The commission works with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and agencies in the U.S. to deliver sea lamprey control.
The program has been extremely successful. Over the years, we've been able to reduce the population by 90% of what it was in its problematic days of the early 1960s. Now we have a thriving fishery that was once destroyed. The fishery at present is worth $7 billion. So the news is good. We have the technology to control it. But as we've seen a couple of times in the past, when we relaxed control these predators do respond and rebound quickly and start to have the same devastating effect on the fishery.
Canadian currently contributes $8 million to this program, the U.S. in excess of $20 million. Even with the equitable distribution of the formula that was developed for funding this program, Canada still falls short. In fiscal year 2014, it should be contributing about $11 million; it's contributing $8 million. A report last year by the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans lauded the sea lamprey control program and recommended that it be fully funded. So I hope that the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development will follow suit and join the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans in recognizing the significance of funding this program fully.
In the interest of time, Mr. Chair, I'll stop there and try to answer any questions. Thank you very much.