Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Baril.
First of all, I want to applaud all of the initiatives taken by your organization. You have wildlife redevelopment projects, some 125,000 members, you have trained 450 volunteer monitors, and I could go on.
It is truly impressive. This is in keeping with the other information that you have provided to us. Approximately 500,000 people a year come back to fish, and recreational fishing activities have direct benefits on the order of $1.2 billion in Quebec alone. That is very important.
For all these reasons, I would like us to look together into some of the problems we are facing in order to ensure the sustainability of all of these activities.
First of all, let us talk about the fish, or the elephant in the room.
In 2014, Quebec's ministère du Développement durable, de l'Environnement et de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques indicated that three times fewer salmon are returning to Quebec rivers than 30 years ago. In 2015, a decision was therefore taken by the Quebec government: to impose mandatory release on 14 North Shore rivers and two in the Lower St. Lawrence. It was the ministère des Forêts, de la Faune et des Parcs that took the decision.
The Quebec federation of anglers and hunters and the Quebec Atlantic Salmon Federation jointly signed a memorandum in 2013. This document dealt with the possibility that the federal government might add certain Atlantic salmon populations in Quebec to the species at risk list. I would like to know if in your opinion there is an imminent threat to Atlantic salmon in Quebec. What are the most significant threats? Do you have any solutions to suggest that might prevent seeing a decline in the resource in some of our rivers, or even seeing them disappear?