Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for inviting me today. I thank you for letting me do this via video. Being from Canada and working in Michigan, I would have preferred an opportunity to get back home but the schedule didn't permit it, so thank you for allowing m

Environment committee  You're talking about the governors' and premiers' summit?

Environment committee  I thought it was a great summit overall. The one thing that we were particularly pleased with was the resolution to establish a mutual aid agreement amongst the provinces and the states. The Council of Great Lakes Governors actually came to the commission to establish that. We ha

Environment committee  Yes. It's a very good point that you make. Those are probably the three best examples of species that technically would be called invasive; however, we have found a balance with them in the ecosystem. They've become prized sport fisheries as well. We have other examples of introd

Environment committee  We did an assessment, the Government of Canada actually led an assessment, and the report was released in 2011 that demonstrated that Asian carp could have a pretty devastating impact on the Great Lakes. Simply put, we have to keep them out. Right now, there's a lot of debate g

Finance committee  Thank you for your question. Our ask is actually for $19.44 million. That would close the gap between what we need to deliver the programs that were designed to fulfill the mandate as outlined within the convention or the treaty under which we were formed. The $19.44 million wou

Finance committee  The impact is that the programs would have to be curtailed. I'll give a couple of examples of the devastation that would create. We would have to really cut back on the delivery of sea lamprey control in Canada. The other biggest impact is that the research that really drives fi

Finance committee  Okay.

Finance committee  We do know that they are very prolific. If they're not treated, the population rebounds incredibly quickly. It takes about four or five years for larvae to mature into the adult phase where it goes out from the streams where they spawn, out into the lakes where they do their dama

Finance committee  In the 1980s, during a period of austerity we relaxed control, and we were proud at that point that we had held the population to about 90%, generally speaking, across the basin to what it was pre-control. We started to fall back really quickly well below the 70% range in just a

Finance committee  Go ahead, Greg.

Finance committee  Part of what we saw back in the early 1950s, when sea lamprey destroyed the top of the food chain, primarily lake trout, was that the fish on which the top predators feed grew out of control. They couldn't feed either, and the population just exploded. They started to die off. Th

Fisheries committee  No, sir.

Fisheries committee  If we were to go back to the last time Canada funded according to the formula, it would be the year 2000, so the cumulative deficit from that period to 2022, when it was funded, would be about $70 million.

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Certainly, I would agree with Mr. Goodyear that a lot of effort has gone into the codification over the past couple of months. We have made good progress. “Future-proofing” is an interesting word to use. We got to this point because of a deep-seated cultur