A large part of my confidence stems from talking to the people who work on the farms and manage their operations and also to our scientists. I'm a big believer, in the DFO context and more generally, in the elders concept. I spend a lot of time talking to those I consider to be my elders in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, guys who have been around for a long time. Those are guys like Dick Beamish--not just him, there are others as well--who has spent a lot of time on the water and who knows the field very well. I've spent a lot of time with him in formal meetings. I've met with him over coffee, over beers, and so on, and I've talked to him about these issues.
So I put a lot of faith and stock in what they tell me, and also in the formal scientific literature. I haven't seen anything that suggests to me that there are disease problems in the water today. I'm aware that there are people who feel that those problems did exist in the past. I haven't seen any data to suggest that. I'm quite confident in the advice and the guidance I've been given by a variety of people, but mostly from within DFO.