Certainly the results of that study were made available within the department. Every piece of science that is done in my group is reported up through the chain if it could potentially impact policies or regulations. The department certainly knew, even back in 2012, of those findings.
Publicly, the findings of PRV were first put out by another group, based on the IP in the findings of my group. I wasn't able to publish the first discovery of PRV in Canada, nor was I able to carry out a lot of new research in that area, and certainly not with those particular samples.
It's a hard question. There has been a lot of research on that particular virus now. There have been laboratory challenge studies undertaken. There have been a lot of field studies. PRV has been tracked within the department for several years, largely in cultured fish, but my program has tracked it in wild fish.
There is a mounting weight of evidence on the impacts of PRV. It's really important to note that, everywhere else in the world, PRV is known to be a disease agent, and all strains of PRV have been shown to be capable of causing disease in salmon—in Pacific salmon and in Atlantic salmon. The research from my lab would back up that international viewpoint.
I don't know.... It's hard to turn back the clock and know how things would have been different if that had been made public at the time. However, I think that significant inroads have been made since that time.