I'll speak to CAST first, but if I don't completely answer your question, maybe you could rephrase it for me.
CAST, Collaboration for Atlantic Salmon Tomorrow, is a collaboration of industry partners: J.D. Irving Limited, Cooke Aquaculture, International Paper, NGOs such as the Atlantic Salmon Federation, the Miramichi Salmon Association, the University of New Brunswick, DFO, the Canadian Rivers Institute, and others.
It is a program that is still waiting for funding. A lot of private money has been put into it so far. Hopefully, we're going to have some good news from the federal government and ACOA. It's a $15-million program over six or seven years. There are many elements to it. It's habitat improvement. It's identifying cold water refugia and protecting the cold water refugia. It's better assessment.
Then there is the innovative enhancement strategy that you spoke about, Mr. Finnigan. That is on the northwest Miramichi, which is the branch of the Miramichi that is in the most trouble, which two years ago met only 20% of spawning escapement. It involves capturing wild smolts as they leave the northwest system in the spring and holding them in the Miramichi Salmon Association's hatchery, growing them to adults, and then releasing them naturally into the river so that they run up and find their own tributaries and their own mate, the idea being that you bypass what right now is an exceedingly low at-sea survival. That's a new technology for a river such as the Miramichi. It's been done on a small scale in rivers where there aren't wild salmon populations.
You're correct. The permits to collect 5,000 smolts were given. There needs to be a very rigid monitoring assessment research program so that we know.... Everyone believes it's going to be a good thing, a positive thing, but there are still some unanswered scientific questions.
There's an expert panel that includes DFO, scientists, and geneticists from both sides of the Atlantic that will hopefully help us develop that rigid monitoring program. If it's successful, which we believe it will be, it could be a blueprint that could be used to help other rivers to restore their wild runs.