Fisheries committee  This is not the Department of Fisheries and Oceans suggesting we want to remove gravel. It's not the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Fisheries committee  There are other institutions, in this case, the province or municipalities, the mayors of municipalities, who are concerned about the removal—

Fisheries committee  I would like to have the chance to respond to your question.

Fisheries committee  And I'm trying to explain.

Fisheries committee  On the first question, of whether or not our resources are an issue, I don't believe that it is resources in this instance. As we've already pinpointed, it is what were the assumptions behind the decision to allow for the causeway to go in, what were the assumptions behind the view that water would be permitted to pass through with the very large rocks that form the basis of that, and so on?

Fisheries committee  Again, I think we made assumptions about the ability of those large materials to pass through with the information that we had. It's not clear to me that this would have changed with additional information. That being said, we are looking at this, and as we've indicated, we've called for a review.

Fisheries committee  I appreciate that, and we will try to respond to that question, given my comments. The second thing we'll be able to provide you at that time is information on something we are doing right now. We're doing what's called a pink downstream enumeration program, and we are actually trying to estimate how many young pink fry are migrating out of the Fraser River.

Fisheries committee  If I were to distill your question, I think what you're asking is whether we could have predicted what did happen would have happened. I think that's the essence of your question, whether we could have predicted that. My response is that with the information we had at the time, we felt we took responsible measures that were designed to address the conditions we were facing and our understanding of the situation at the time.

Fisheries committee  I would like to respond to that final remark, if I may. I think in all the things we do.... We carry out a series of actions, we make decisions in hundreds and thousands of cases, and we have to make assumptions in almost all those cases before we take the action. So we make assumptions about how fish are going to behave.

Fisheries committee  That is part of the review: we've been asked to look at and to see whether we can answer that question. I would start off by noting the following. It's going to be challenging to precisely answer that. The reason is that we know the natural flow in the river is dropping anyway. For example, above and below the site we're talking about this morning, there is natural dewatering occurring.

Fisheries committee  I observed that in the minutes of the last meeting and was stunned to know my bonus was tied to how many permits we might authorize. That is simply incorrect. In this case, I entered into an accord with the deputy minister that sets out some broad objectives for me, things like managing fisheries in a sustainable way and so forth.

Fisheries committee  From my perspective.... First of all, that's a very good question. We did not anticipate that we would have the dewatering effects that I think we observed. The issue is we have to tease apart to what effect the causeway was the cause of that versus the natural flow reduction. That being said, we realize that the installation of the causeway clearly affected passage of water through the causeway and we have to determine to what effect that disruption dewatered gravel sites further downstream that ultimately were affected.

Fisheries committee  My understanding is the evaluation would have assumed or been based on how we would access the gravel site, but I'm just going to confirm that with Jim.

Fisheries committee  That's correct. The CEAA evaluation...we would have assumed there'd be certain design features to facilitate the movement of water, as I've already said, and the evaluation would have assumed that in its screening.

Fisheries committee  I'm going to ask Jim to respond. Maybe I'll just open. I think the proponent ultimately has to make the decision about the safety issues. That individual is responsible for the people who have to work under his direction. That said, my understanding is there were discussions between the department and the proponent; we were aware the conditions were very challenging, and this appeared to be a reasonable decision under the circumstances.