Fisheries Committee on May 30th, 2012

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Are we still working with them?

[Becky Cudmore]

Yes, we absolutely work with them—

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

How are we funding that?

[Becky Cudmore]

—but for plants it is....

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

You mean an invasive species plant.

[Becky Cudmore]

For an invasive species plant, we rely on the province to deal with that toxic group specifically.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Although we funded them up to March 2012.

[Becky Cudmore]

The Government of Canada did.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Right.

[Becky Cudmore]

It was not DFO.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

It was not DFO. That's understandable. We have information. I'm just trying to figure out what we are doing with that information. What is the next step? Again, I'm not hearing that we're working with anybody other than the U.S. government and the Ontario government.

[Becky Cudmore]

The Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters is also a strong partner with us. It leads on education and outreach in the Great Lakes area.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Well, we're certainly lucky that we have them, but I'm wondering if there are any other organizations that have been on the list that required funding in the past and that are no longer going to be able to assist us.

[Becky Cudmore]

I would suggest that for those groups you should try to leverage whatever expertise and abilities they have with their partner agencies outside of the Great Lakes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you, Mr. Toone.

Mr. Leef.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Thank you very much.

I should just ask, maybe collectively, if any one of you is familiar with the WAPPRIITA legislation.

Look at that; we have a group. You're the first group so far to nod your head and say yes.

Let's go back a little.

Mr. MacAulay was talking a little bit about international and interprovincial transport and trade in invasive species or harmful species. I'm interested that the snakehead, for example, can be bought and sold and traded in British Columbia. If you can't answer it or don't feel comfortable offering an opinion, say so, because it might fall more into the enforcement purview, but wouldn't WAPPRIITA speak directly to that kind of activity—interprovincial transport and trade in a species that could be harmful?

[Becky Cudmore]

I appreciate that question very much, because I ask myself that same question. Organisms in trade is an area of specialty for me, and I do work closely with enforcement agencies, both the province and the Border Services Agency.

Dr. Mandrak and I had been connecting what we would call a characterization of the organisms in the trade pathway, and we were invited along to the airport to look at live fishes coming in. During a slow moment around 2 a.m., I was reading legislation—

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Yes, it must have been a slow moment.

[Becky Cudmore]

—and I came to WAPPRIITA and asked myself why we aren't using this to ban species harmful to the environment. So I did bring that up to DFO, and the legal opinion is that we can't use that because there's no mechanism, the way the legislation was built, to add species to the list. So then it became important for DFO to step up to the plate and develop draft regulations in order to have a list to prohibit import, and that's where we are right now, drafting these regulations.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Okay, and that's to annex a particular group?

I'm sorry, I don't have the regulation or the act itself right in front of me, but if I remember right now there is a definition of species that would be considered harmful. It's pretty general, which would beg the question why we don't just add an annex with some defined species.

So the legal opinion right now is that even with the generality of that, you can't say.... I'm thinking out loud here. I guess in some locations a species could be harmful, but the exact same species in other locations is not, and that generality would be nice to play with in WAPPRIITA.

It's just not carte blanche, where the legislation would kick in regarding an invasive or problematic species. I guess if you put it in an appendix, without starting to add geographic locations to the species as well, which complicates your regulations...you would think the enforcement staff would be able to act based on scientific information about the geographic region in which the species is introduced, and the harmful impacts, and you could present a case with the general definition of that regulation. That's not the case, is it?

[Becky Cudmore]

But then we recognize our gap and are hoping to close that gap with these new regulations from DFO, to which we can list things, and also recognize that species in one part of the country may not be harmful while they are in another. So we're working on it.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

From my past experience, it was the provincial and territorial conservation officers, enforcement agencies, that were able to enforce that regulation along with DFO. Is that going to be a continued track as well?

[Becky Cudmore]

With the regulation, yes, there would definitely be partnerships between the federal government and the provincial and territorial governments, and that's where the discussions are going on right now. The provinces certainly can ban—and many of them have banned—possession and sale of certain aquatic invasive species. What they can't ban is import, which is a federal responsibility. So this helps close that gap as well. There's some closing of gaps as well as continuing the enforcement relationships between the federal and provincial agencies.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

And does that act cover interprovincial and international trade?

[Becky Cudmore]

Well, it would cover movement interprovincially.