Absolutely. Thank you for that opportunity.
As you recognized, the act right now focuses exclusively on vertebrates, and especially.... Hopefully members of the committee have seen My Octopus Teacher in particular, which recently came out and really showed how highly intelligent those animals are.
What we're proposing right now is that.... We recognize that toxicity testing right now is being done on invertebrates. However, we don't know what direction science is going to go in, and we do know that octopuses are increasingly being used in research around the world. What we propose is really just to create the option to create regulations in the future if needed, not to protect all invertebrates. We're not suggesting to protect very small micro-organisms. We're saying to protect animals that we know to be sentient and complex, like the octopus. We think it's really important to put it in there, because who knows when CEPA will be reviewed again? It could be another 20 years.