Thank you very much for having us, Mr. Chair.
I'm here with Jodi Romyn from our organization. Jodi and I will be with you for the day. I have to apologize, but I will be stepping out a little bit early in order to catch the last flight I need for the night.
The Invasive Species Council of British Columbia is the largest and oldest organization in Canada that's focused simply on invasive species. We've been around 15 to 20 years now, and we're governed by a board of directors. Our board of directors is quite unique in that it has members of governments, indigenous, business and communities on our board. Aquatics have been a part of our mandate since the early 2000s, and we've been working on what are now becoming national programs for aquatic invasive species. Our work focuses on making sure that people have the right tools and information in order to stop the spread.
I'm assuming, because you're sitting in an aquatic invasive species group here today, that you already know that Canada has 20% of our fresh water. You know that we have three major coastlines, and that our waters are really important to indigenous cultures, rural communities and certainly, being from British Columbia, really important to all of our members across the province.
Our work is often focused on what we call pathways, because we know that managing species by species is a lost economic cause. We want to really make sure that we're looking at trying to close the pathways that cause the spread of invasive species. It actually turns out that most invasive species are moved—both in our province, which I'm particularly focusing on, and across the country—by people, intentionally or unintentionally. The solution, then, is to stop how they're spread by people.
In British Columbia, things like salmon, bivalves and trout are really important. I come from a rural community. They're really important for our rural residents, but they're particularly important for our indigenous cultures, which is a really big factor in British Columbia, as I'm sure you know through your work federally.
I want to thank you again for doing this study. This is excellent, and it's really neat to not only see this come out in a standing committee today, but also on the tail of the Auditor General's report on fisheries and oceans. It's been great to see that. It's great to see that Fisheries and Oceans has responded to the Auditor General's report and that it is tackling the challenges that were raised.
There are definitely some things you've raised at this committee that are really important. First of all, investments by Fisheries and Oceans need to be strategic and need to address, in our opinion, all of Canada, not just the Great Lakes. Sorry, Ontario, but that's been a big focus and we feel a lot of the other parts of Canada still need have this investment.
It's important to move funds from inside of government to ensure things happen on the ground. One of the things the Auditor General's report called for was focusing on and restricting enclosing high-risk pathways and making sure there's responsible practices in place that close those pathways. Government can't do that alone. You can't work with the pet and aquarium trade and close those unless you work with the pet and aquarium trade. You can't stop boaters from moving invasive species unless you work with boaters. That collaboration is really important.
We recognize that DFO has more staff since it started the aquatic invasive program three years ago in 2017, but there needs to be more movement hitting the ground, heading action on the ground, where organizations, governments and indigenous communities can make a difference.
The investments need to be much more strategically invested across Canada. We know the sea lamprey has been a major investment for the federal government, but we in the west feel that stopping and preventing invasive mussels from becoming established in the west is equally important in order to protect our waters.
It's interesting that some of the federal investments recently, whether they're investments to the Great Lakes or investments to the Canada nature fund for aquatics, are focused on species at risk and dealing with recovery. Even the recent announcement for the aquatic program was focused on the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence, and the Lake Winnipeg basin.
Those are leaving out a big chunk of Canada. We need to look at the rest of our coastlines and the rest of our waters. The investments have to move from chasing and trying to restore something into prevention. If we can prevent mussels from coming to the west or we can prevent a new invasive species coming in, we'll save all those dollars you have to spend chasing a species afterwards.
Another action we're calling for is making sure that the regulation, which the Auditor General's report has pointed out, needs to be stronger. It needs to have a stronger, more rapid listing of species, and it needs to be enforced. Enforcement can both be on the compliance side and also working with Canadians and getting them engaged.
I have a couple of other quick points.
We definitely want to see the financial investment of Fisheries and Oceans focused on those strategies and on those pathways, but also focused on engaging Canadians. Across Canada, whether it's fishing or planting those aquatic invasive species in their water gardens, we can engage Canadians to stop the spread of invasive species.
We were just talking earlier about how, in the west, fishermen can be the first ones who point out.... For example, the northern snakehead fish was first found in British Columbia because of an informed citizen, so we need to engage Canadians in becoming more informed and having the right tools to be the eyes on the ground.
We're calling on Fisheries and Oceans to be the national leader, to be a stronger national leader than they are now and to protect our waters from coast to coast to coast. We want to make sure that the investments are disbursed. We, in a very self-serving perspective, believe that the west needs to be protected. We believe that highly invasive fish, such as pike, bass, etc., are threatening the fragile salmon environment, which is really important to our cultures, both indigenous and non-indigenous. Our coasts are being impacted by aquatic invasives, green crab, tunicates, and I know we share that with the east coast. Those are having a major impact on both our trade and our biodiversity there.
We need to close those pathways. On shipping containers, New Zealand uses shipping containers that are.... When shipping containers come into New Zealand, they have to be inspected, and they have to pay for it. If we can close our pathways as New Zealand and Australia have, that would be much more effective for Canada.
Our council, along with our chapters across Canada, including our Canadian council, are more than willing to work with Fisheries and Oceans on a regular basis.
Thank you for your time.