Public Accounts committee  Yes. Good afternoon. We looked a little bit at the cost of doing nothing. We've been looking primarily at reports published by the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices a few years ago, regarding infrastructure and health. For example, they talked about a cost of about $450 million just for flooding in the west, and that was just the initial cost for insurance.

Fisheries committee  We didn't speak of specific species during our discussions with DFO during the course of the audit. We spoke mostly of the tools—

Fisheries committee  Again, we didn't—

Fisheries committee  I think so.

Fisheries committee  I do, actually. We were initially mandated to do a follow-up of the oil spills audit. When we started looking into it, we found that the departments were in transition at this point and it wasn't a good time. We were also following up on the tanker safety panel report that had highlighted this risk in terms of marine mammals not being included in the national oil spill response regime, which sparked something to dig a bit deeper.

Fisheries committee  And external advisers.

Fisheries committee  The program began in 2006. Just to clarify your question, you're asking about data on distressed or collision—

Fisheries committee  They've had data since 2006 or 2008, but the data is collected regionally. We found that the data wasn't really consistent. Every year the nomenclature isn't clear. The type of incident reporting isn't clear. The data is available, but it's not very consistent, so it's hard to really poll it to make an assessment.

Fisheries committee  As Julie stated, on the west coast it's done by the federal government. On the east coast, they use a network of mostly conservation organizations that do that. They mainly get contracted to set up the hotline. These typically serve fishermen who might find a large mammal, or the Canadian population that finds any type of marine animal in distress.

Fisheries committee  —or it could be a large whale entangled in fishing gear and someone needs to come and help untangle it. The disentanglement of large whales is what few people are able to do. It is high risk and there are few people trained in Canada to do it.

Fisheries committee  Specifically, I don't know all the minor details, but it's to address bycatch and entanglement, bycatch being the capture and retention of species. Entanglement is entanglement in fishing gear. Those are the two key areas they're looking at under the Marine Mammal Protection Act in the U.S.