Mr. Chairman, we have heard many very important speeches tonight, and we have heard talk of numerous different issues related to fisheries in Canada. We were reminded earlier that the topic of fisheries is very broad and just recently we heard it mentioned that some topics perhaps get forgotten. I would like to talk about something which I think gets forgotten, and that is the fishery of the Great Lakes. I would call the Great Lakes our fourth ocean, after the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans, and I will offer just a small geography lesson. They are bordered by eight American states and, interestingly enough, only one Canadian province, the province of Ontario, from where I hail.
Is the Great Lakes fishery important to Canada? The answer to that is very simple: absolutely. In Canada, the average landed value annually from the Great Lakes fishery is about $40 million, which translates into approximately $100 million annually to the Canadian economy. In addition to that, we have recreational angling, which provides a further $350 million a year to the Canadian economy, for a total of $450 million annually. All together, the combined value of the Canadian and American commercial and recreational fisheries in the Great Lakes has been estimated by the American co-chair of the International Joint Commission, Dennis Schornack, to be worth roughly $7 billion Canadian and 75,000 jobs.
There are three important treaties between Canada and the U.S. which help to manage and administer the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway. The first is the Boundary Waters Treaty and the second is the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. These two combine to create the International Joint Commission. Third is the Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries, which created the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.
On February 11 of this year, the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans heard important and, in my view, very troubling testimony from the joint chairmen of the International Joint Commission, the Right Hon. Herb Gray and Dennis Schornack, and their officials, as well as Madam Johanne Gélinas, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development for Canada, and her officials.
The gist of the testimony was that the Great Lakes fishery is gravely threatened by invasive species. What are invasive species? Very simply, they are organisms that are not native to the Great Lakes. Examples can be briefly summarized as the zebra mussel, the round gobie, which came with it, Asian carp, and in areas outside the Great Lakes, for example, the green crab.