Thank you very much for that question.
Aquatic invasives is an interesting situation. There's a paragraph in our chapter 6 that I'd direct your attention to. It's paragraph 6.8. In there--I'm an accountant, so forgive me for talking in numbers and dollars--there's an allocation through DFO to look at aquatic invasive species of about $10 million a year. A little over $8 million of that goes to looking at one aquatic invasive species. There are, at last count, 184 others that the department knows about. So when you think of it, what's left is $2 million to look at 184.
Now, it's not up to us, and certainly we can't say there's not enough money allocated to this, that, or the other thing; that's actually the parliamentarians' job, and we don't want to get into that. But when you do the math, it does make you wonder. I think if you were to have DFO here, I would certainly ask them how they are able to take care of this issue, which is growing, with that amount of money. It's growing faster than they're able to look at it.
There are also a couple of other issues that we raise in the chapter. In addition to their coming in quicker than the department is able to assess them, there's also the issue of a rapid response that we point out at the top of page 3 in our chapter. We say that DFO doesn't yet have plans in place for early detection of these things or a rapid response to them once they have been identified.
It's a question of what does need to happen to get DFO ahead of the curve and ahead of this growing problem.
Mr. Chairman, I noticed that this committee is looking at revisions to the Fisheries Act. As I understand it, there's a section in that act that deals with aquatics. If it becomes law, it would give more legal clout to the department, but that's legal clout. What's needed underneath that is management clout. That's what DFO is going to have to develop an ability to deliver on. They're going to have to have the right people, enough money, and the right organization to use the clout that they might be given under this new act, if it comes through, or to use now under existing situations.