Thank you.
Mr. Chair, I'd like to thank the member for his tireless championing of the Great Lakes area, its people, its economy and its environment. He's truly a champion for the Great Lakes. I'm pleased that we as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans are involved in the Great Lakes Fishery Commission to address the invasive species of sea lamprey, and in a successful way over many decades.
I've talked about that already, so if there are specific answers to the quantitative requests that the member has, we will provide that.
What I do want to say is that freshwater fisheries across Canada are delegated to the provinces. I was in provincial government, for example, many years ago, and I was the delegated authority by DFO to do activities and management in the land aspect of the fisheries. My guess is that the provinces that are involved with the Great Lakes, such as Ontario, have fisheries officers and others who are active in that regard. We do look after small craft harbours, so there are harbours in some of our freshwater fisheries.
I will draw attention to our government's new national water strategy that Parliamentary Secretary Terry Duguid has announced recently, which s a very timely and important way to look more holistically at Canada's fresh water, its environment, its use, its protection, its importance economically and to have a framework for moving forward to have healthy, abundant fresh water as a nation, as we're known to have.