Fisheries committee  This is really an opportunity that the industry should seize. Clearly, all industries have to keep growing and developing. As I said earlier, either we do it ourselves or we continue to be forced into doing it. This is an opportunity for Canada's industry to maintain its international reputation.

Fisheries committee  As has already been mentioned, right now, the requirements imposed on Canadian harvesters who export their products are much more stringent. Of course, Canada exports large quantities of crab and lobster, and those harvesters comply with other systems that are already in place. Domestically, our industries are very transparent when it comes to the products they export.

Fisheries committee  I wouldn't say a challenge, necessarily, but right now, we are doing less on that front.

Fisheries committee  We test imported products as well as Canadian products. As mentioned, a huge number of products are sent elsewhere for processing, so when it comes to processed products, there's no way for us to necessarily know whether the products were imported or local to begin with. There is a huge amount of product movement when it comes to the seafood trade.

Fisheries committee  What the European Union does is ask other states that they are importing from to provide proof that their fisheries are properly managed and that they're keeping illegal products out of their supply chains. They conduct audits on those certifications as well. As I mentioned earlier, if countries are not conforming with their products, they do not allow them to sell to the European Union.

Fisheries committee  Sure. What we're basically looking for are key data elements to follow a product through a supply chain. Essentially the who, what, where and how a fish is caught; the type of gear used; the date it was caught; the vessel information; the company information for importers or exporters; and having all that information follow that product through the supply chain.

Fisheries committee  I think there are various levels of granularity in terms of different industries. I'm not sure exactly in 100% of cases.

Fisheries committee  As we've talked about, right now consumers don't have access to a lot of information on seafood labels. As Dr. Hanner has spoken about, we currently use common names for dozens of species of fish, so if you are trying to avoid a certain species for ethical or health reasons, if you have an allergy or for sustainability reasons, then you don't have the power to know exactly what it is that you're eating.

Fisheries committee  I think the biggest risk is not doing something. There is an upward trend in the rest of the world towards transparency and traceability. In that context, we either do something ourselves and take control, or we continue to comply with other systems. We've already talked about the E.U.

Fisheries committee  Exactly.

Fisheries committee  The European Union's system has been in place for 10 years. We are fortunate to be in a position where we can benefit from the lessons EU countries have learned over those 10 years. Naturally, the system wasn't perfect from day one. They made changes and learned a lot. We are very lucky that we can look to their model and benefit from the lessons they learned.

Fisheries committee  Thank you very much for the question. You're absolutely right that there really must be a task force, given that several stakeholders and departments are affected by this file, as we stated last week. That's precisely what the United States did when it wanted to take action on this problem: President Obama set up a task force in 2014.

Fisheries committee  Thank you. I think there was quite a bit of discussion about that study at the last meeting. As the witness from CFIA mentioned, those tests were done really quite far back in the supply chain, and they weren't done at the restaurant level at all. We like to test products that are at the consumer point so we're seeing what really reaches the consumer, because we know that fraud happens at every stage along the supply chain.

Fisheries committee  It's really throughout the supply chain, because seafood supply chains are really one of the more complex supply chains that we have in terms of food products. We're not talking about dairy or chicken for which we know where 100% of the products are coming from. We import hundreds of products.

Fisheries committee  When we've tested in Canada, we have tested at grocery and restaurant, so the end points of the supply chain. We've tested in six cities across the country. We've been doing this kind of investigation since 2017, and we've had pretty consistent results since then. We've done multiple rounds of testing across the country for the last several years, and we haven't really seen improvements.