Fisheries committee  Our role would be ensuring full compliance in that only legal and lawfully declared or fished products are admitted into Canada. In terms of this fishing activity outside of our economic zones, we don't necessarily have oversight or a mandate specifically. However, there may be a different role through our governmental partners that might be manifested in the marine security operations centres, which also provide a bit of an oversight of certain types of fishing.

Fisheries committee  Specific to the one enforcement action that I recall, without researching it I can't speak to the volume of seized elver eels. Based on the fact that it was an official enforcement action, it's something we can return to the committee with should you wish to know the size, quantity, weight or any of the details of that.

Fisheries committee  It would be a pleasure. In terms of compliance or any attempts to smuggle contraband fish, seafood, etc., into or out of Canada—for import or export—there is not necessarily a high volume. We have not noticed a significant threat of late. Through our national targeting centre, we run different types of targeting models that are very much designed to catch these types of illicit or nefarious activities.

Fisheries committee  There may have been CBSA regional resources that were aware that an elver or an eel facility may have shut down, but I cannot state for certain.

Fisheries committee  The statement makes sense. I can't speak to how many other fisheries conducting the same activity may have been open, but, if it is the only fishery and it's shutdown, then it would make sense that there were no exports of elver eels.

Fisheries committee  I would suspect yes. We would likely have statistics on how many elver eel exports were deemed for abroad.

Fisheries committee  Our role, really, is at the port. If you are referencing vessels that are in the process of fishing or harvesting within or outside of our economic exclusion zone, the CBSA does not have a direct operational role, and I would defer, potentially, to Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Coast Guard.

Fisheries committee  Within the ports of entry, absolutely, we will ensure that there is compliance. We will assess compliance, and we will do risk assessments of the crew, the cargo, the vessel and the company for any commercial vessel that does come to a Canadian port. We will ensure that there is compliance with all of our administrative, legislative or regulatory policies.

Fisheries committee  Yes, of course. It would be a pleasure. Starting with the initial training at Rigaud for border services officers, an extensive number of training routines and repetitions occur to ensure that people are very aware of the different types of legislation and also the operational practice of searching different types of vessels, commercial motor vehicles, aircraft or air cargo, etc.

Fisheries committee  We absolutely collect statistics for a variety of different reasons, not only to inform predictive analytics on non-compliance but also to guide our priorities so that we ensure that we are shifting towards some of the greatest threats, such as this, when it comes to local fishing communities on either of the coasts.

Fisheries committee  Thank you for your question. My opinion is that we are very effective at using the tools that we have at our disposal and that the administrative monetary penalties have been an impactful tool in previous cases. With regard to whether or not the penalty matches, outweighs or is a sunk cost for the lucrative nature of exports, I'm not qualified to make that opinion.

Fisheries committee  In terms of penalties, I would have to give a bit more thought to the range of penalties. I think that the challenge is the issue of the seizure of goods destined for export, because we can seize the goods, but that does not necessarily relieve some of the pressures on local fishing communities that might have been disadvantaged by that product having been illegally harvested or unregulated in its harvesting.

Fisheries committee  The CBSA reports to the Minister of Public Safety.

Fisheries committee  Those are excellent questions, for sure. Based on the information that is provided and surfaced through the exporter requirements, we are able to do risk assessments based on our gauge of whether or not the person is compliant. In certain circumstances—to extend to the example you provided—if there are individuals, modes of transport or destinations for export that have previous enforcement actions, or that are linked to other problematic entities, criminal networks or organized criminality domestically, those are the types of threads that we will pull through the targeting process.

Fisheries committee  It's not a stretch at all. The interesting aspect to people pursuing illegal activities is that we do not expect honesty in certain administrative components or phases of them. In circumstances where dishonest or non-truthful information is provided in export declarations, we do our best to ensure compliance, and we also integrate, within our intelligence partners, a lot of the research that is hopefully intended to identify those circumstances of administrative or operational non-compliance.