Fisheries committee  They are all road and highway accessible.

Fisheries committee  It's a good question. I invite you all to come up to experience fishing—

Fisheries committee  Let me give you a brief overview of what the commercial fishery is like. I think that to understand why that's the case, it will help. Basically, our commercial fishery takes place on Yukon's large lakes. There are six lakes that have commercial licences. The challenge we face is that these are also lakes on which there is a strong recreational fishery.

Fisheries committee  There was a process undertaken. Dan mentioned the political and regulatory context in which we do fisheries management. Yukon is largely driven by processes from the final agreements. This collaborative management process has involved stakeholders, first nations, renewable resource councils—so they are regional resource councils.

Fisheries committee  Sure. I'll just give an overview, and then maybe, Dan, you could talk about the projected future of aquaculture. I'd say on a year-to-year basis we issue a dozen or so licences. There are two major categories of aquaculture in the Yukon. One is family-run, stocked.... There are also pothole lakes that are seeded with young fry that are left to grow out and then they are harvested.

Fisheries committee  Thanks. That's a good question. Certainly something that came out very strongly in our report was that when we looked at trends in participation and recreational fishing in Yukon, we did begin to see a slight decline in some categories. Overall, I'd categorize it as relatively stable right now, but the indicators are there such that we believe in the next 10 to 20 years, we're going to have a reduction in the number of people who participate in the recreational fishery.

Fisheries committee  I'm not sure if we're able to determine specific trends like that right now. It would need a more in-depth analysis than what we've done. In talking to operators, what they're saying is that the state of the world economy is a much more important driver of their success on a year-to-year basis than those big trends right now.

Fisheries committee  Yes. We definitely believe so, and that's what the data suggest. As you said, the impetus behind that is to provide, first of all, very easy, accessible opportunities to people near communities, so that gets people out. So it's a fostering of angling opportunities, but at the same time diverting pressure away from what tend to be more slower-growing, more sensitive wild species.

Fisheries committee  That's correct.

Fisheries committee  In 1989, the Yukon government was delegated management authorities from Canada, but that delegation did not include management of habitat. Those responsibilities still lie with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. They're responsible for managing all fish habitat for salmonids and also for freshwater fish.

Fisheries committee  Yes, I agree with Dan. I think more knowledge of invasives, their likelihood of invading northern environments, and the kinds of impact they would have, would be something that would be very useful to us. Climate change is something that's always in the front of our minds because the north is changing at a much more rapid pace than more southerly jurisdictions, so the impacts of changing climate, be it temperature or precipitation, how that would impact fishery resources.

Fisheries committee  Sure. Thanks for the question. The idea behind what we conceive of as ecosystem and watershed-based management is that there are a lot of commonalities and similarities among fish species within particular watersheds. For those reasons, managing them as a unit collectively or considering them collectively has some sound biological and scientific basis.

Fisheries committee  The data I have from the recreational fishery comes from the five-year national recreational fisheries survey that's done across the country and led by DFO. From that survey we estimate through direct and indirect expenditures about $23 million for the recreational fishery across the territory.

Fisheries committee  We did a threat assessment, which is a separate document I would be happy to share if the committee were interested, that lays out as far as we can gather based on some of the biological principles or the biological characteristics of the species whether they are likely to survive if they are introduced to Yukon waters, because that's a question we have considering the climate up here.

Fisheries committee  Thanks for the question. It would be more the populations for particular species. The three main fisheries that are most heavily utilized are Arctic grayling, northern pike, and lake trout. Within each of those three species, there are certain populations that we found were probably overexploited to some degree.