Thank you very much for the question, Ms. Davidson.
You will be aware, given the riding that you represent, that there is an ongoing issue between.... There are nine provincial hatcheries in Ontario, and there are 50 volunteer hatcheries that supplement the efforts of the nine provincial hatcheries stocking fish across Ontario. Lake Huron is one of those areas where fish are stocked. There are a number of volunteer hatcheries on Lake Huron that stock a number of species.
The first nations community, Saugeen Ojibway First Nation, has commercial licences on Lake Huron out of Owen Sound, Colpoys Bay, and areas like that, for whitefish. They do not support the stocking of other species, such as brown, rainbow trout, and salmon because they feel they are an impediment to the whitefish fishery, the commercial fishery. It's been a long-standing point of contention between the recreational fishing community and the first nations in that particular community about stocking.
In general, if you look at the bass fishery in Ontario, it's a huge and very productive fishery, but bass in many lakes are actually an invasive species. They were put there. They were not originally in those lakes.
Having said that, stocking per se is not so much the problem in terms of invasive species; it is the introduction through other means. That's everything from people dumping aquarium plants into lakes and rivers to dumping things like round goby into rivers when they're mistaken for minnows.
Of course, the biggest threat we are facing right now is the potential for Asian carp getting into the Great Lakes through the Chicago sanitary canal. If they ever get into Lake Ontario or Lake Erie, they will spread rapidly, and the recreational fishery, to say nothing of the commercial fishery, will end because they will wipe out species across the five Great Lakes in unprecedented numbers.
It's not so much the introduction through stocking that we see invasive species, but other means, whether it be ballast water or people putting species in where they shouldn't be. However, in terms of stocking pressures, there are some pressures between commercial, particularly aboriginal commercial interests, and stocking of recreational species in Ontario. It's an ongoing debate that has no particular end in sight.