Fisheries committee  Unfortunately, the answer to that question is associated with a huge amount of uncertainty, not based on the lack of information but because various experiments have shown that the engineered salmon can have influences under certain conditions and be at a disadvantage under other

Fisheries committee  On the issue of whether these animals will end up in net pens, I have heard of no plans to do that, and it's because of the things I mentioned previously that there's a great deal of uncertainty as to what the effects are. It would be unlikely that there would be approval of a pr

Fisheries committee  Those practices can have effects on natural populations if the breeding strategies are not controlled very carefully. In British Columbia, for example, the fish that are used to produce the next generation in hatcheries are as much as possible selected from fish that have been bo

Fisheries committee  Pacific salmon.

Fisheries committee  On the west coast of Canada, where Atlantic salmon are not indigenous, there seems to be very little risk of them hybridizing with Pacific salmon. We do get the odd few survivors, but they die very early in development, and never would contribute any of the genetic material to th

Fisheries committee  Certainly. There are really several aspects to the risk assessment. Just to clarify, DFO interacts with Environment Canada, which is one of the leads for the Canadian Environmental Protection Act; the others are Health Canada and CFIA. Fisheries and Oceans is not directly involv

Fisheries committee  I'm not in that area. I'm a geneticist. I hear that the department on the west coast is trying to integrate many studies on ecosystem parameters at the same time. Many studies are done on an ad hoc basis, with small studies here or there, and they don't end up being integrated to

Fisheries committee  Thank you very much. I very much appreciate the opportunity to appear before you. I don't have a formal presentation, but I'm here to answer any questions you may have. I work for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans as a research scientist in West Vancouver. We have an aquati