Well, I guess when smallmouth bass were discovered in Miramichi Lake, we quickly went to work to come up with a plan to eradicate. I sort of led that charge on behalf of the non-profit groups, and consulted experts across North America. We did make contact with the “guru”, if you could call him that, on rotenone. He's a guy who worked for the State of California. He reviewed the whole Miramichi Lake situation and came up with a plan and a cost to do it.
When we presented this to DFO, I guess they discovered at that point in time that it was illegal to do it, because the regulations were not there. We pushed things to see if we could get changes to the Fisheries Act, which is not an easy task, of course. In the meantime, control measures were put in to prevent the spread.
Basically, DFO came back to us and said they had a three-year eradication plan and they would totally get rid of the smallmouth bass in the lake. Our response was that it was impossible: we'd consulted with every expert, and there was no way it could happen. But DFO said they would do it in three years. That was five years ago. They're still on Miramichi Lake trying to control that smallmouth bass population.
We understand that the act has passed in Parliament, but now it's about writing up the regulations. We've been told by the Gulf region to forget it, because it's never going to happen; we'll never get to use rotenone on that lake.