Yes.
I would start by saying that our organization has talked about that a lot and I don't want to create an impression that we're not fans of DFO. We see the need for DFO. We don't know all the details, but our perception is that DFO has been a staunch and stalwart defender of sealing, for example, off the coast of Newfoundland and in the north. We appreciate that. We appreciate their science.
If I could just go back to the border issue, as I didn't get a chance to comment on it. But on invasive species, the border situation here is dire. I don't know if that's a DFO thing or if DFO could take a role in that. However, just to put it into perspective, when our season opens here in just about a week and a half or so, there will be hundreds and hundreds of boats coming from America to fish because the fishing is so good. Those boats often come from Great Lakes states where there are zebra mussels and other things like spiny water flea—you name it. Right now it's an open [Technical difficulty—Editor].
My buddies come up to fish from the States, and they're not getting checked at the border, so that is a disaster waiting to happen for us here. We think that would be a good role for DFO. I don't know if that is what they do or if that's something that makes sense for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
On the fish police era, to me that strikes at the heart of a really big issue that we have to deal with in landscape conservation. Most of our landscape in prairie Canada is farmed. If you're going to do something good for water, fish, wetlands, animals, or wildlife, and you want to sequester carbon, whatever you want to do on that landscape is going to be about farmers.
In dealing with farmers in rural communities, if you want to club them with a stick, you're going to turn them into enemies. The same person who will stop at two in the morning and help you change your tire is an amazing person. They're lovely, and they're giving, until you go on their land and threaten their land rights. The moment you go and club them with that stick, you better know what you're doing—there had better be a bloody good reason for it—and you'd better have exhausted every other opportunity first. Carrots get you a lot further with rural communities.
There have to be rules and there needs to be enforcement, so there's a balancing act there. It's a fine line. Reasonable rural communities know that there need to be rules. They get that, but the initial approach can't be to cop-up and get on the landscape. You can't police the landscape. Are you going to have a fish cop on every section of land looking for infractions? We have to engage those communities and get them doing it with us and for us. We have to get the people, the citizens, involved in policing, because you can't pay enough people to do it. If you alienate them, then you create enemies. You get resistance. You get hard feelings, and you get fractured relationships.
Going forward, this grant is only one small example. There have to be lots of other ways that a group like DFO can engage rural communities to get them buying into the Fisheries Act, understanding the Fisheries Act—