Mr. Speaker, my colleague just referred to something very important. As far as public awareness is concerned, he just addressed one of the elements that we would like to see put into practice. He was asking me how I could have that problem while on the lake in my canoe or in my boat. Let us say that it is a bigger boat. I do not know much about boats, but let us say that I am not rowing, at least.
It is very simple. People go from one lake to another. What they do not know is that once they have been on a contaminated lake with their boat, eggs are stuck underneath the boat. The boat should be completely cleaned and washed before being put into a new body of water, to eliminate potential contamination.
This is a very important element in terms of prevention. Can people imagine what that means when they take their boat out of the water? In terms of prevention, it is really important. If they take your boat out of the water to bring it to another body of water, it absolutely has to be cleaned. But did somebody ever tell them that they had to do it? Probably not.
This is where the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans blames the current government. The government is responsible for protecting the resource. Thus, it has the responsibility of informing citizens on the measures that must be taken to avoid spreading the contamination from one body of water to another. This is not being done at this time. The committee has asked for this. Voluntary community organizations have also asked that the government supports them in their public awareness and information campaigns. This is very important.
Of course, when one does not know about this issue, one cannot think that this can have such a major impact on bodies of water in Quebec and across the country. One cannot imagine that we are unconsciously destroying our resources.
We can talk about the zebra mussel. I talked about this earlier. This is the main species that invades our waters. It is virtually indestructible, because it reproduces extremely fast. I could show you a picture of a shopping cart that was put in the Great Lakes for a few months. When it was taken out, zebra mussels had covered the whole cart. It had become almost invisible; it was almost a sculpture. This gives an idea of the ability of this creature to invade our waters.
This is currently happening in the St. Lawrence River, at Montreal, and in the bodies of water wherever there is a connection with the St. Lawrence and the drainage basins.