Hon. David M. Wells: Minister Murray, as you’re aware, lost, abandoned and discarded fishing gear, also known as ghost gear, is the number one type of marine debris in the world. Last summer, I recognize the government invested an additional $10 million in funding towards the Ghost Gear Fund to help remove thousands of units of ghost gear from our waters.

Hon. David M. Wells: Minister Murray, as you’re aware, lost, abandoned and discarded fishing gear, also known as ghost gear, is the number one type of marine debris in the world. Last summer, I recognize the government invested an additional $10 million in funding towards the Ghost Gear Fund to help remove thousands of units of ghost gear from our waters.

Minister, with the changing climate, this is not enough. With the stronger seas and annual ice conditions that damage fixed and mobile gear, will the government invest even more for the identification and removal of the increasing volumes of ghost gear?

Hon. Joyce Murray, P.C., M.P., Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard: Thank you for that question. I couldn’t agree more that this is a very important program, and I was pleased that out of the Fiona funding, there is approximately $30 million in addition to the $10 million that the senator mentioned for removing ghost gear.

I just want to tell you, I was recently on a vacation for a week with my family in Ecuador, and on a trip out to an island off a relatively remote part of the country, my daughter saw a large sea turtle with ghost gear wrapped around its neck and fins. It was an awful sight. The people from the boat, the crew, lifted it into the boat and spent a half an hour cutting off the fishing line and the floats for this turtle to be able to be taken to the rehabilitation centre. For me, it was a first-hand look at what ghost gear can do to vulnerable other species.

We’ll continue to invest in that and work with the local communities and Indigenous communities to do that work of removing the ghost gear out of the waters. For the North Atlantic right whale, this is a very important part of our protection of that endangered species as well.

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