We found several.
In terms of monitoring the health of wild fish, at this point the department had made a commitment to complete 10 risk assessments for the principal farmed-fish diseases. They had only completed one out of 10. We also found that between the CFIA and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans it was not clear whose role and responsibility it was to deal with new and emerging diseases. There's one issue around known diseases, but what about the new and emerging ones? It's not clear which department would be responsible for that.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans did not know if regulations on the use of drugs and pesticides were sufficient to protect the health of wild fish. As I said earlier, there were no limits on the use of drugs and pesticides, and they did not know if they needed regulations to assess the cumulative effects of drugs and pesticides.
As I've already said, they had no threshold for action when wild fish stocks decline; no validation of industry self-reporting on the use of drugs and pesticides; no requirement to minimize the development of resistance to drugs and pesticide; and, no requirement to monitor the ocean floor. On issues related to enforcement of aquaculture regulations, we found that discrepancy that I also mentioned around the research.
We've made some recommendations to the department.
They should articulate the level of risk to wild fish that they are willing to accept when enabling the industry, and they've accepted that. Also, they have to complete their risk assessments of the key diseases, and they have a plan for that. They also have to figure out how to to handle new and emerging diseases, which was one of our recommendations. As well, they need to update a program to audit the farmed-fish health, which they've agreed to do. They need to publish information on diseases, parasites, drugs, and pesticides, because that information was not being made public in a timely way. Also, we made a recommendation that they start speaking to their counterparts in the Atlantic region to think about national standards for equipment.