Fisheries committee  We didn't look into that, but we would have assumed that they were approved by—

Fisheries committee  —Health Canada. That's who's responsible.

Fisheries committee  We found they had committed to completing 10 risk assessments of two diseases. At the time of our audit, they had only completed one of them, but they apparently have a plan to complete the other nine by 2020. We made a recommendation that they complete their planned health risk

Fisheries committee  I believe in our audit we indicate that approximately—and I'm going to say 50%, but it might be more—of the fish that we are consuming worldwide are farmed. This industry is an important source of protein worldwide and much of the fish that we're eating is farmed at this point. I

Fisheries committee  No, we didn't look at that issue. I agree with you that this is a complicated issue. This is an industry valued at almost $1 billion just in Canada. It's providing a huge source of protein, yet at the same time, there are risks to wild fish. I did not look at the interaction be

Fisheries committee  That is what we looked at. Are they protecting wild fish, both on the floor—because even though there are three years of impact, potentially, there's no requirement for any industry to monitor the ocean floor during those three years....

Fisheries committee  No.

Fisheries committee  We made a similar assumption. We did not include that part in our audit. What we found is that Fisheries and Oceans Canada doesn't know whether the current regulations regarding drugs and pesticides are adequate. They don't know, for example, whether they need more rules regardin

Fisheries committee  Well, I would suggest that one of our recommendations was that they need to articulate the level of risk to wild fish that it accepts when enabling the industry. They need to show us how they apply the precautionary principle. We made a recommendation to that, and I believe they

Fisheries committee  Obviously, we've identified many gaps. If you're asking what the department should do, or how they respond, that's really a question to ask them. I encourage you to bring them to your committee and ask that very question.

Fisheries committee  My mandate is that all I'm permitted to audit is the role of the government in managing aquaculture, so the objective of our audit was to see whether they were properly managing aquaculture in order to prevent harm to wild fish. That was the audit objective and I'm only allowed t

Fisheries committee  Closed containment is already used to raise them to a certain size. I believe that is correct and then they're put into the pens. Closed containment also costs a lot of money. It uses a lot of energy. However, it would probably deal with many of the risks to wild salmon, just bec

Fisheries committee  That's a policy question. It's really up to Parliament to decide where the regulation of aquaculture should sit. Should it sit within DFO, or I've heard potentially it should go to agriculture, for example—

Fisheries committee  —or somewhere else. What I can tell you is we found in our audit that Fisheries and Oceans Canada is at risk for claims that it prioritizes aquaculture over the protection of wild fish. The reason you could say that it's at risk of this is that, for example, there's no threshold

Fisheries committee  Okay. Mr. Chair, I am pleased to be here today to discuss my report on salmon farming, which was presented to Parliament in April 2018. I am accompanied by Sharon Clark, the principal responsible for this audit. In our audit, we examined whether Fisheries and Oceans Canada and