Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are pleased to be here today to discuss chapters 5, 6, 8, 9 and 14 of our 2008 Status Report, which was tabled in Parliament on March 6. Chapter 5 deals with protection of species at risk, chapter 6 with control of aquatic invasive species, chapter 8

Fisheries committee  I'd be delighted to. There is, at present, a listing of these environmental agreements. One can determine by piecing together information from various departments what the agreements are. What is lacking, sir, is an indication of what the agreements are designed to bring about,

Fisheries committee  Are you referring to the agreements, sir? I could tell you the four agreements we looked at under Fisheries and Oceans Canada, if that would be helpful. We looked at four of the agreements that are the responsibility of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. We looked at the International

Fisheries committee  One of the things we didn't do is put the details in the chapter. We didn't try to analyze agreement by agreement. I might suggest that the member might like to have a look at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans website, where a lot of this information should be. We pulled tha

Fisheries committee  I'm looking at DFO's website, and here's what you will find about that on the website. NASCO was established under the convention for the conservation of salmon in the North Atlantic Ocean, which came into force on October 1, 1983. NASCO uses the best scientific evidence availa

Fisheries committee  That's a very good question. This is an area of concern to us as legislative auditors. On the one hand, we look at a fairly large amount of money that's been allocated in budgets to this area. But on the other hand, we don't see much action. In fact, 13 out of 40 is not a very go

Fisheries committee  What we are saying is that the information that the department has isn't being made available to parliamentarians and the Canadian people.

Fisheries committee  I am, yes.

Fisheries committee  Mr. Chairman, I'd certainly be pleased to answer that. The one thing I should say, though, is that in chapter 9 we looked at something called strategic environmental assessments, not at what you're referring to, I think, which are environmental assessments. They're quite a diffe

Fisheries committee  Thank you very much for that question. Aquatic invasives is an interesting situation. There's a paragraph in our chapter 6 that I'd direct your attention to. It's paragraph 6.8. In there--I'm an accountant, so forgive me for talking in numbers and dollars--there's an allocation

Fisheries committee  Thank you.

Fisheries committee  We have asked, and the answers coming back aren't very satisfactory. Let me give you the bad news on this and then the optimistic news, because I think there is some optimism here. The bad news is that nobody seems to care whether they're done or not. SEAs, strategic environmen

Fisheries committee  Let me be very clear that I would never suggest that a budget allocation be increased to one department or another. As I said earlier, that is your job, not our job, as auditors, to do. I simply indicate, through the $10-million and $2-million issue, that these are questions you

Fisheries committee  Yes, that's exactly what we're saying. We wouldn't speculate about the future, but the last time we did an audit, which we're following up on now, the number of invasives in the Great Lakes was 160. When we did the audit this year, which is two or three years later, they're up to

Fisheries committee  I do. It's not of the cottage, but only the grandchild.