I was actually fine with the motion as it was. I think until you get into the specifics of defining what that is, which is essentially the work plan, then it gets trickier. Now we're diving into it, yet I do appreciate Mike's comments. I would be happy to support that at that point, but now getting in and removing the Pacific focus, the Pacific region, I think we have to be careful of the implications of that.
From my recollection, when I first joined the committee back at the end of 2009, the Pacific salmon was the reason we were to move to that as a work plan item. Then it became a focus on aquaculture and the impacts on the Pacific salmon. Then it became very much a look at the impacts of sea lice from fish farms on wild salmon.
It makes a lot of sense to let the Cohen commission do its work. They've heard in greater detail than I'm sure we can in limited time what the impacts of sea lice on wild salmon from fish farms are going to be. Fair enough. If they're going to tackle that and provide recommendations to the government, that will hopefully be helpful and beneficial. But I think we need to focus the work we're doing, certainly on salmon, and commercial-scale or commercial-size aquaculture is at issue.
We have closed containment facilities for other types of fish or finfish on land in North America already. We have lots of examples; it's simply different species, like trout and tilapia. But we don't have that for salmon. We have pilot projects, and we're now looking at scaling up. That's the issue. My understanding is it's the scale and size for the salmon farms that's at issue. I think it's healthy that we're going to go in that direction and look at closed containment and is that feasible for this industry, but how specific we have to get in this motion, I'm not sure.
Certainly, I'm fine with the wording that Mike has suggested thus far.
