Fisheries committee  That's an excellent question, Mrs. Desbiens. The greater the risk of spills of any kind, the greater the danger to the St. Lawrence River. However, the more prevention is done to prevent spills from occurring, the lower the risk to the St. Lawrence River. There is no doubt that

Fisheries committee  What's important is the quality of the ships. If they're smaller but less well equipped, that's not better either. There has to be some security. I can't comment on the issue of vessel weight. However, I would like to come back to an important aspect. There is currently a very g

Fisheries committee  If I understand you well, we are kind of stuck with the impact. When we work with oil spills, we know what we are dealing with, so we can plan for it. We know the substance. We know how it works in the water. We can do all those modifications. However, when we are dealing with un

Fisheries committee  It's a bit like you just said as an introduction, that any broken container containing plastic will obviously come to the surface and float, most likely, and contribute to the already increasing plastic pollution. One issue with plastic is that it's a very nice thing because it's

Fisheries committee  I am an ecotoxicologist, and the issue of labelling and traceability is not my area of expertise. However, I can tell you that we feel somewhat the same way. The labelling of personal consumer products is important in order to be able to respond quickly in the event of a cargo sp

Fisheries committee  As I understand it, materials that are known to be extremely toxic are already transported in sealed containers to protect the carriers. However, containers may also contain certain drugs or pesticides that don't fall into this category. If containers are damaged and there is a s

Fisheries committee  I think so, but you'd have to ask the other witnesses this question to find out what is currently being done. If there was an incident, there would already be a recovery plan. There needs to be a plan and modelling done to anticipate the impact on the environment. Research could

Fisheries committee  Research budgets are never sufficient. Of course, you can never be too informed. It's important to have the right systems in place that allow for all contingencies. As I said at the outset, there are many possible permutations of contaminants, and a wide variety of ecosystems ca

Fisheries committee  That is a very good question. Thanks. I'm not aware of this specific example, so I would need to know how long those containers have been in the water, where exactly they are, the volume and whether the containers are broken. I would need more information. I'm not sure of the c

Fisheries committee  Okay.

Fisheries committee  I would say that for sure there is a risk for the ecosystem, if that answers your question.

Fisheries committee  Good morning, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear before you today. I am a Canada research chair in ecotoxicogenomics, and my research focuses on the effects of environmental contaminants on the health of wildlife