Any comment, Dr. Favaro?
Yes, just to expand on this concept, you can hope that people will voluntarily comply and voluntarily work on the fish habitat, but I don't think that's working. The alternative hypothesis to all of this is that the reason there are no convictions is that everybody is complying with the law. That's not true, because we know there are 91 at-risk species in Canada that are freshwater fish that are mostly at risk because of the habitat disruption.
We know that we continue to lose habitat. We know that it's not because everybody is complying. I note an ironic observation that if everybody was complying, then we could have just left it the way it was before, and it shouldn't have mattered, right?
A point that's important to make is that it's really important to empower everyone to be conservationists. While we have to have this stick, I think the other thing to talk about is the carrot. How do we get people mobilized and teach them how to be good stewards of the environment, when it becomes a national value to protect your local fish habitat, where it is in some communities?
When I grew up in British Columbia, the excitement when salmon would come back to a stream in the middle of town that it had not been in for 100 years was amazing. People would flock out to see it. If we can get that value shared, then I think we're going to go a long way to that as well. I think another thing not to lose sight of is the importance of education and outreach on this.
Thank you.