Mr. Speaker, let me thank my hon. friend, and as I mentioned earlier, I would be remiss if I did not say that on our committee we have a very cohesive group of individuals who fully understand each other and have supported each other tremendously in their concerns.
We have had people from Ontario come before us, people particularly concerned with wildlife in the area. We heard several groups. We heard from environmentalists, sports fraternities, people like Mr. Gray, as I mentioned, people who have been through the mill and who see a disaster in the offing if this concern is not addressed.
What they are basically telling the government is, first, fund the agencies that are creating this awareness and developing mechanisms to address dealing with these invasive species. They are saying, “Let us perhaps implement some of the ideas we have come up with”. The Canadian government has worked on rules and regulations to deal with dumping of bilge water in the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes. However, to date there are no teeth. The United States took the very same ideas raised by our government and implemented them. So the United States has stringent regulations about dumping, but yet our own government is very hesitant.
The major concern is the ability to be able to address these species. It can only be done by a concerted effort. That means organization and funding for the agencies to go after some of these species. If these species were worth anything, we could institute an open fishery and we would have no problem. Somebody said the best way for government to destroy a resource is to set a quota, because we know what happens then. However, for a lot of these species it does not pay for the fishermen to go out and fish, so it has to be controlled with government help and government action.
The government knows what to do because it has been told what to do. The problem we are having is its own members. I hope some of them will get up and basically lay it on the line in regard to what their constituents are really asking for. Then we can get the government to respond to their concerns and to ours and address this serious problem.