Thank you.
I'll start off with a response and speak to you from the perspective of the science branch.
As you know, DFO is a science-based department. The science sector within DFO is responsible for producing science advice that contributes to the department's mandate. When research findings are published, those are certainly considered as part of our adaptive management approach.
More fulsomely, we have a very strong, formal, robust peer-review process that we call the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, or CSAS, that we use to provide formal science advice to DFO resource managers. That process involves looking at the breadth of the scientific literature that's available. That is not only the science we do in the department, but all available science. We conduct a synthesis of that information. That information is then peer reviewed through a process where we bring both internal and external experts together to review that information and provide advice. That advice is then communicated to the DFO managers and is also published on our website.
It's a robust, transparent process to formalize the advice and provide it to aquaculture management as part of their decision-making process.