Thank you very much.
Good afternoon. My name is Bob Duncanson. I'm the executive director of the Georgian Bay Association. I'm joined today by my colleague John Wilson, who's a director of our organization and the chair of our fisheries committee.
I have a few slides, just to give you a bit of background on where we come from on the invasive species issue. Then we'll get into some specifics on species of concern to us.
The Georgian Bay Association is a not-for-profit umbrella group representing 20 community associations along the eastern and northern shores of Georgian Bay and the North Channel. We've been speaking out in the interest of property owners in this area since 1916.
There are about 10,000 families who own land along the shores of Georgian Bay collectively. Through their taxes and the goods and services they purchase, and such, they contribute about $100 million to the local, provincial, and federal economies every year.
Approximately one-third of our members are U.S. citizens, so that's new money to our country. That's for just the Georgian Bay Association. We don't propose to speak for other landowners on the rest of the Great Lakes, but there are 42 ridings that touch on the Great Lakes and we happen to touch on two of those ridings. You can see that the multiple effect is quite significant.
The Georgian Bay Association is an incorporated organization, with shareholders and an annually elected board of directors. We are fully accountable to our members, who are all property owners. At the direction of our shareholders we have committees that focus on key issues, including fisheries, and monitor aquatic invasive species, which is why we are here today.
The Georgian Bay Association is proud of our heritage of providing quality input and feedback to all levels of government. We're actively involved on committees such as the advisory panel to the Canadian re-negotiators of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, the International Upper Great Lakes Study Board; and in Ontario, the source water protection committee.
I'll now turn the floor to my colleague John Wilson.