:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Distinguished members of the standing committee, thank you for the invitation to appear before you today.
My name is David Lavigne and I am science advisor to the International Fund for Animal Welfare. I have been conducting research on harp seals and other pinnipeds since 1969.
IFAW is an animal welfare organization whose mission is to improve the welfare of wild and domestic animals throughout the world by reducing the commercial exploitation of animals, by protecting wildlife habitats, and by assisting animals in distress.
Let me begin by stating the obvious. The controversy surrounding Canada’s commercial seal hunt, like all debates in modern conservation, is not about science or about facts. Rather, it is a conflict over differing attitudes, values, and societal objectives and differing views about what is right and wrong. In other words, Canada’s sealing debate is a political debate with ethical overtones.
Within this political debate, scientific facts often become misrepresented, misquoted, or fabricated by some of the participants. Today I would like to spend a few minutes discussing what is known and what is unknown about some of the issues surrounding Canada’s seal hunt. I will also provide a few insights from modern conservation biology to suggest a way forward.
Canada’s seal hunt is the largest remaining commercial hunt of a marine mammal population anywhere in the world. That alone makes it an important conservation issue, despite what you may have read or heard. Modern conservation is about managing the impacts of human activities on individual animals, populations, and ecosystems, and it is about values
According to the latest published estimate, the northwest Atlantic harp seal population numbered about 5.8 million animals in 2005. That estimate has confidence limits of plus or minus 2 million animals, meaning that the population could have been as low as 3.8 million, or as high as 7.8 million. Such scientific uncertainty must be taken into account when developing management plans for any exploited species.
Canadian government scientists also tell us that the current sustainable yield is about 250,000, but of course that estimate is also uncertain. If the population were actually lower than 5.8 million animals, then the estimated sustainable yield would be lower as well.
As you are well aware, the current total allowable catch, or TAC, for harp seals is 335,000 animals, and that exceeds the estimated sustainable yield. The current TAC should therefore cause the population to decline. In this sense, the current TAC is not sustainable.
For the fourth time in the past five years, Canada’s landed catch in 2006—over 353,000 harp seals—exceeded the TAC, this time by almost 20,000 animals. Such overruns would not be tolerated in a well-managed hunt, yet this hunt is frequently described as well managed.
Unless the TAC is reduced and enforced, the government’s model predicts that the harp seal population will continue to decline. Over 95% of the animals killed in Canada’s commercial seal hunt are recently weaned pups, aged two weeks to about three months, animals that the majority of Canadians consider to be “baby seals”.
Public opinion polls repeatedly tell us that the majority of Canadians are opposed to the killing of seal pups.
While the fullest possible use remains an objective of the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans, that objective is not coming close to being realized. Most of the carcasses are left on the ice or dumped in the water. A recent report from Memorial University in Newfoundland claims that 80% of the blubber is discarded. The situation has become even worse in Norway, Canada’s major sealing partner, where the government subsidizes the killing of harp seals and now, apparently, pays out further subsidies to burn the pelts.
In short, hunts for harp seals in Canada and elsewhere are extremely wasteful, violating a 100-year-old founding principle of conservation, and raising serious ethical issues in the process.
Speaking of ethical issues and seal blubber, I note that one witness before this committee admitted that he has disguised shipments of seal oil to the United States. Such practice by Canada's sealing industry is not only unethical, but it is also illegal under U.S. law.
Moving on to broader fisheries issues, we know that harp seals did not cause the collapse of cod stocks off Canada's east coast. Furthermore, there is no scientific evidence that harp seals are impeding the recovery of cod or any other fish stock. In fact, culling harp seals might actually be detrimental to the recovery of cod. There is therefore no scientific justification for culling harp seals.
As DFO scientists, among others, have noted, legitimate proposals to cull seals should be submitted to independent evaluation, such as that outlined in the United Nations Environment Programme's protocol for the scientific evaluation of proposals to cull marine mammals. Canada has yet to do this. Regardless, there is emerging evidence that harp seals play an important and positive role in the northwest Atlantic ecosystem. Such marine ecosystems are extremely complex, and we have neither the expertise nor the ability to manage wild populations or entire ecosystems. All we can really do is try to manage human activities.
Then there's animal welfare, another component of modern conservation. Since 2000, two groups of veterinarians have examined Canada's commercial seal hunt. Although you would never know it from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, both of these veterinary reports are qualitatively remarkably similar. Both document what most reasonable people would consider unacceptably high levels of animal suffering. Consistently, when a third group of veterinarians was brought together by the World Wildlife Fund in 2005, that panel listed 11 recommendations that would have to be implemented in order to make Canada's commercial seal hunt more humane.
The only viable conclusion from the available evidence is that Canada's commercial seal hunt does not satisfy modern standards of humane killing as defined by folks like the American Veterinary Medical Association. Taken together, the facts of Canada's seal hunt raise a number of important ethical questions. Is it right, in the 21st century, to subsidize the killing of so many animals, many inhumanely, for non-essential products, while wastefully abandoning the majority of the carcasses and discarding most of the blubber?
In addition to factual issues, there are other things we know about, but the effects are unknown or difficult to predict precisely. Donald Rumsfeld might call these “known unknowns”. The most obvious and important known unknown today is global warming and its effect on harp seals and indeed hooded seals. The best study of these effects is on the impact of global warming on the formation of ice, upon which these seals depend for whelping and nursing, off Canada's east coast during February and March.
For most of the past 11 years, this region has experienced warmer than average winter temperatures and below average ice cover. While it is relatively easy to document the effects of global warming on ice conditions, it is more difficult to measure the precise impacts on seals.
A lack of suitable ice combined with violent storms and early breakup disrupts the seals' normal pupping season. This can result in increased abortions if female seals do not find ice upon which to give birth, or increased mortality of newborns if the ice breaks up before the end of nursing. For example, in 2002 DFO scientists assumed that 75% of the pups born in the Gulf of St. Lawrence died even before the hunt began. Such effects in any given year result in reduced cohort size, and have longer-term implications for population trends and population size.
If warm years with reduced ice coverage become the norm, as appears to be happening, there will be additional uncertainties. These include effects on the timing of reproduction, and the loss of critical breeding habitat. They also include effects on fish and invertebrates, leading to changes in the availability of prey for seals; and effects on seal condition, growth, reproductive success, and survival.
Managers have limited opportunities for dealing with the increased scientific and environmental uncertainty associated with global warming. But one thing management authorities can do, as recommended, for example, by World Wildlife Fund’s climate change program, is limit non-climate stresses, including over-hunting, on exploited species like harp seals that are being impacted by global warming.
WWF’s approach to building resilience to climate change is a good example of implementing a precautionary approach in conservation. Canada has included the precautionary approach in the preamble to the Oceans Act. The government claims that its management of the seal hunt is precautionary. It is not.
In modern precautionary approaches, total removals from a wild population are linked directly to the degree of scientific and environmental uncertainty. When uncertainty is high, the total allowable removals are reduced to ensure that wild populations are maintained at sufficiently high numbers that their future is not jeopardized.
In marked contrast, there is no mechanism in Canada’s seal hunt management plan linking total allowable catches to current scientific and environmental uncertainty. Furthermore, Canada’s management approach has never been subjected to the rigorous testing that is mandatory in the development of modern, precautionary management procedures.
A recent scientific study specifically examined the Canadian government’s approach for determining population status and trends for northwest Atlantic harp seals, and for providing advice on total allowable catches. It found that Canada’s management approach is likely to maintain a high total allowable catch, despite a declining population, and it risks seriously depleting the harp seal population by as much as 50% to 75% over the next 15 years.
That study recommended that Canada reduce the current TAC for harp seals to levels calculated from a well-established precautionary procedure, such as the potential biological removal method mandated for use with marine mammals under U.S. law. Such a step would drastically reduce Canada’s TAC for 2007. It would also dramatically reduce the likelihood that the population will be depleted by further over-hunting. It would provide some measure of resilience for the seals in the face of global warming, reduce the number of animals killed inhumanely, and reduce the amount of waste associated with Canada’s commercial seal hunt.
Thank you
:
My name is Rebecca Aldworth. I am the director of Canadian wildlife issues for the Humane Society of the United States.
The HSUS is the world's largest animal protection group. We have nearly 10 million members and constituents around the world, and we work internationally through Humane Society International.
HSUS is a multi-issue animal protection group. That means we work on a variety of issues, from the conditions for animals on factory farms to laboratories, puppy mills, cruel animal-fighting, and of course the protection of marine mammals and the ending of the fur trade.
The campaign to end the commercial seal hunt in Canada is actually one of our most prominent campaigns right now. We have worked for many years to put a final end to it.
I want to say that I was very conflicted about appearing here today. It's my opinion that this committee is not impartial when it comes to the issue of the commercial seal hunt. Based on attendance at previous hearings such as this and previous reports from this committee, it's my belief that the outcome of this committee hearing on the seal hunt is actually predetermined. But my colleagues tell me I'm being cynical, and for that reason, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you a few things about the commercial seal hunt from my perspective.
I have observed the commercial seal hunt in Canada for eight years at close range. I've observed it in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and I've observed it in the “Front”, which is northeast of Newfoundland. I, for that reason, have some experience, I think, in the issues regarding cruelty, and because I've studied this issue for 10 years, I have some knowledge about the economics of the commercial seal hunt and the various issues that pertain to commercial sealing in Canada.
I would like to talk just briefly about a few myths that I feel have been perpetuated in this committee and by this committee. I am going to go through these very quickly, as we all know we don't have much time here, so please bear with me.
The first issue is baby seals. Dr. Lavigne talked about it quite briefly, but I also want to touch on it. Canadian government kill reports show clearly that 97% of the seals killed in the past five years have been pups under the age of three months. The majority have been under one month of age at the time of slaughter.
When these animals are killed—and this is personal observation—many are not yet swimming and many are not yet eating solid food. They have literally no escape from the hunters and they're completely defenceless.
You can call them pups, you can call them juvenile seals, you can call them infants. I call them baby seals, because that's what I call a baby elephant or a baby hippopotamus or any other kind of wildlife. To me, they're baby seals, and anybody who's been on the ice floes with them would agree.
I want to talk about the issue—and this is a disgusting lie that has been stated by our government representatives repeatedly in recent months and I'm appalled as a Canadian that you're doing it—the concept that the footage that we're showing in Europe and elsewhere on our TV stations and on our websites is 20 years out of date. I was there over the past years when most of this footage was filmed. There is not one group out there using out-of-date footage. The footage that is being shown is from the last couple of seal hunts in Canada.
I'm going to show you some of it today, because I want you to see what the commercial seal hunt looks like. I would be willing to hazard a guess that many people in this room have never attended the commercial seal hunt themselves. I have for eight years.
I was appalled to hear members of this committee tell the European delegation last month that this is the most humane hunt in the world. I have been prevented by Canadian law and our unconstitutional marine mammal regulations from intervening as I have watched conscious seal pups stabbed with boat hooks and dragged across the ice floes. I have watched dead and dying animals thrown together in stockpiles. I have had to stand by and watch while a three-week-old seal pup choked to death on her own blood for 90 minutes. This is something I see routinely at the commercial seal hunt. I see wounded animals left to suffer, seals that are shot, some of them for up to eight minutes in open water.
I've seen this each and every year, and I've seen things that no human being should have to observe, not to mention the sealers themselves. I've seen the working conditions on the ice floes for the sealers, the people you claim to be here to defend. Some of these people are in their fifties and sixties. They're running across the ice floes, working in extreme weather conditions as quickly as possible. It's dehumanizing work for them and it's really dangerous. There is a reason that insurance companies put a $250,000 deductible on the boats when they go up there in those ice floes.
Read the news clippings. Boats get trapped in the ice every year. People have to be airlifted out of the hunt. This is a dangerous hunt for the people involved.
I want to talk to you a little bit about the idea of seals and fish. This is another myth that I hear perpetuated in this committee: that if we don't kill the seals, all the fish stocks will continue to decline and there will be no hope for recovery.
I want to make note of the fact that even the Magdalen Island sealers who were here in this room spoke to me in the hallway and admitted that seals had no role in the collapse of the cod fishery or the groundfish fisheries. Speak to fishermen. They will tell you what caused the collapse. It was mismanagement by the federal government.
I believe the people in this room have political careers that depend on scapegoating seals for fisheries mismanagement. For that reason, we're going to see in your report a lot of claims about seals negatively impacting fish stocks even though the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' own science shows that this is not the case.
I want to again talk very briefly about the humane aspects of the hunt, but to do that I would like leave from this room to show some footage. I think it's important, given that you have heard repeated claims that this footage is out of date or doctored or out of context. I'd like to explain some of the things that we see each and every year at the commercial seal hunt.
Is that okay, Mr. Chairman?
:
This footage is from the 2005 commercial seal hunt in Canada. As you can see, sealers are not stopping to ensure that the animals are dead before moving on to the next one. That's a violation of marine mammal regulations. As you can see, this is not what we would call regulation killing. We are now in 2006, almost a year later, and no charges have been laid even though the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has had this footage for almost a year. As you can see, animals are clubbed to death in front of each other. They are often left, literally wounded, suffering, and choking on their own blood.
This seal was left for 90 minutes before the sealer finally finished him off by spiking him through the skull with the spike end of a hakapik. Those of you who know sealing know that this is not the way this implement is supposed to be used.
These animals are left wounded, conscious, and suffering on the ice floes. The argument that I hear from the Canadian government and from sealers themselves is that this is the 2% to 3% of any industry that operates incorrectly. All I can tell you is that I've filmed this hunt for eight years. This is every boat that I film and every sealer I follow across the ice floes, in every direction I look.
This hunt is completely unregulated. It happens from 70 miles offshore up to 150 miles offshore, in extreme weather conditions and on unstable ice floes. These sealers literally compete against each other for quotas. They're killing as many animals as quickly as they can. I want you to think about this. In Newfoundland, over 140,000 animals are normally killed in less than two days. When you think about the scale of that hunting and what kind of humane considerations are taken into account when working in these conditions....
I'm showing this to you—and it's not easy to watch—because it is not shown in Canada on our media. It is shown in the rest of the world, and that's why many nations are taking steps to shut down their trade in seal products. Around the world, these images have been shown on television stations, and they're not our images that are being shown. Media from all over the world have come up and filmed this hunt for themselves. More European parliamentarians have viewed this hunt firsthand than have Canadian members of Parliament, and that is a disgrace for Canada.
These images are real and they happen every single year at the commercial seal hunt, and it's a level of cruelty no thinking, compassionate human being, no Canadian, could ever accept if they saw it for themselves. I say that as somebody who grew up in Newfoundland. I say that every Newfoundlander I know would stand up and speak up against this if they knew it was happening on the ice floes.
I will close by thanking you for the opportunity to appear here today. I'm going to submit to you some information on the economics of the commercial seal hunt, and I hope we'll have an opportunity to discuss that during the questions and answers.
This is a hunt that doesn't need to occur. It accounts for less than 1% of the gross domestic product of Newfoundland and less than 3% of the commercial fishery. The people who do it in Newfoundland brought home, on average, under $1,500 each in 2005. This is an industry we could easily phase out and replace in a heartbeat if we chose to do it, and I hope you will do so.
As you know, this industry costs us far more than it's worth. An ongoing boycott of Canadian seafood products is beginning to impact the value of Canadian fish exports to the United States. In the 20 months since the boycott of Canadian seafood was launched in 2005, the value of Canadian snow crab exports to the United States has declined by over $330 million. While we are not claiming sole responsibility for that decline, we believe the seafood boycott is a significant factor.
At HSUS, we would love the opportunity to call off the boycott and work with the Canadian government to find viable solutions for the people in outports of Newfoundland and in the rest of the country who are involved in this commercial seal hunt. We can't do that until the federal government works with us to find an end and put a final end to killing seals in Canada commercially.
Thank you.
:
First of all, there is a lot there, and I'd like to address a couple of things. I don't know if this was the translation, but if you're saying the concept of baby seals is a lie, then you, sir, need to go to the ice floes and visit these animals. There are baby seals out there.
Sealers will tell you that these are very young seals. They will tell you they're pups, some will even say baby seals. The fact that I choose the word “baby” is my own choice. Our organization alternately uses the word “pups”, “juvenile seals”, “very young seals”, “babies”. The word “baby” is an applicable term, in my opinion and my organization's opinion. The fact that you don't agree doesn't make us liars; it makes us having a difference of opinion.
I also want to say that the actions of any other animal protection group are not controlled by me. If Brigitte Bardot chooses to use certain images in her publicity, she is not a part of the Humane Society of the United States and she doesn't work for me and I don't tell her what to display or not display. Brigitte Bardot runs the Bardot Foundation in France, and they choose their own images. That's not the Humane Society of the United States.
So to answer your question, no, it didn't take me three to four minutes to realize the seal was alive. I realized the seal was alive the second I saw this seal crawling, breathing out blood. It was very clear this animal was not only alive, but conscious. We had no way to humanely euthanize this animal.
As I have witnessed over eight years, it is very difficult to kill a seal. I see so many of them left behind after they've been clubbed. These sealers are strong and they're out there with heavy clubs, with long wooden clubs with metal ends on them, with wooden bats. They hit them hard, and still these animals are revived. They regain consciousness when they're left in piles on the ice floes.
I am not a veterinarian and I am not qualified to euthanize a seal. This was very heartbreaking to live through, because this animal was in a lot of pain, and there were no enforcement officers anywhere out there, because there never are. All I could do.... I had a satellite phone and I called the United States and I asked them to see if they could find a marine biologist or a veterinary college to see if we could move this animal, if this animal could survive a helicopter trip, if there was something we could do.
We had just got the Atlantic Veterinary College on the phone when the sealers came back and stabbed the seal through the skull with a spike and then proceeded to cut the seal open as it continued to move its upper flippers and show signs of response to pain.
This is not easy to live through. And if this were one incident, that would be one thing, but it's not. Because when I went to the next pile of seals, there were two conscious seals there. The year before when I was up on the ice floes, I filmed a seal that was there for 60 minutes, and this is not easy. It wouldn't be easy for a sealer. It wouldn't be easy for you. You're a human being, and I'm sure you have a dog or a cat at home, and you care about animals.
The problem is this happens on the ice floes every year, and it can't be stopped because of the physical environment in which the hunt operates and the speed at which it has to operate. That's why it needs to end.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank both of our witnesses for appearing before us today.
I want to start out by saying that, in the end, I know what IFAW's main goal is, not just within the seal hunt but within all animal welfare—that is, the protection of animals in their environment, which leads to the protection of the human species. In many, many ways, such as the Sable Island Gully and many others, you should be congratulated.
But where I have differences of opinion is on the seal hunt. And, Rebecca, you're right. If that footage was passed on to DFO and if they have refused to move on it and charge, then the charges should be appropriate. The reality is, you are correct, this committee has unanimously accepted the commercial seal hunt, based on the evidence that is before us, in many, many years of observation. I, like many others, have observed the seal hunt, although I have not witnessed the rapid, as you call it on the footage.... I have seen others, so I have experience in that regard.
One of the things that I have, though, is that I speak to DFO scientists on a regular basis on behalf of our party, right across the country, Mr. Lavigne, and they say things differently than you're saying them. You appeared before us in 1999 and you're appearing before us now in 2006, and scientifically, you haven't changed your wording at all. Basically, you said the same thing before. But the scientists at DFO are saying something completely different—and not just one scientist, but several scientists.
I'm just wondering. It's like you get 100 lawyers in a room and you get 100 legal opinions. You get 100 economists, and you get 100 different economists' points of view. But in the scientific view, not just within DFO but within various universities in the Nova Scotia area and others, they're saying things differently, that the hunt can be sustained at 250,000, or the current TAC that is there now of 330,000, I believe. But obviously if global warming and serious things do take effect, there will be other mitigating factors that affect not just the seals but other species.
Are you saying, then, that DFO has its science incorrect, or are they telling us something that is not factual?
:
No, not at all. In fact, when you get the endnotes to my presentation, you will note that many of the sources I cited are papers authored by DFO scientists.
There isn't nearly as much scientific controversy about the current situation as there is conflict over values. If the estimate of sustainable yield, and that's DFO's estimate, is 250,000, and if you set the total allowable catch above that, it follows—and I don't think you'll find a scientist in Canada who would disagree with this—that if the models are all right, that population has to drop. That's what the sustainable yield level is.
The only one specific example you gave me of a gross difference of scientific opinion was this comment about sustainability. Every time you use that word, of course, you have to define it. So what I'm saying, and I don't think you'll find a scientist who would disagree with me, is that—and I was very careful in the wording in my presentation—the current TAC is higher than the sustainable yield; therefore, the population should decline.
If you look at this over—what was the timeframe I used—15 years, there will still be seals out there. So in that sense, if you want to define it, it's sustainable in the sense that you haven't wiped the population out yet.
You know as well as anybody that scientists tend to use technical terms and things like this, but I worked very hard in my presentation to give you examples where Canadian government scientists are saying exactly the things that I've been saying.
I think it's very interesting, your comment about my presentation perhaps not being very different from 1999. Well, the science has changed qualitatively since 1999, but the Canadian government's management of that hunt has not kept up with the developments in modern conservation biology. It hasn't been sufficiently precautionary.
If you're suggesting that I might have some arguments with Canadian government scientists—who I also talk to, by the way—yes, we'd argue on the details. But when we first suggested in 2000 that the Canadian government should adopt a precautionary approach in the paper on conservation biology, within a year or two the Canadian government or the DFO scientists were putting forward something they called precautionary. Now the scientific argument is on the definition of “precautionary”.
So I don't see any big conflict. I'd be quite happy to sit down with my colleagues in DFO in front of this committee, and I think you'd be surprised at the level of agreement among us.
:
No, it wouldn't, from our perspective.
From my observations, and also studies by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, if you look at the commercial seal hunt, these guys are shooting at seals from moving boats, they're shooting moving animals on moving ice floes. It's very hard to kill a seal with one bullet in those conditions, often in extreme weather conditions, big ocean swells.
I was just at a North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission meeting in Denmark. They noted struck and loss is very influenced by environmental factors. We have a hunt that occurs far offshore, on the ocean, on these ice floes. So when sealers are shooting at animals, they often don't kill them with just one bullet. What I observe up in the Front, where the Canadian government claims that 90% of the seals are killed, is that sealers will immobilize seals with a bullet, pull the boat up alongside, climb over the side, hop onto a very small ice pan and finish the animal off with a club, hook the animal, drag the animal onto the boat. Sometimes they don't bother clubbing before they hook the animal and drag them onto the boat.
It's a very inaccurate way of killing animals. The Canadian government admits that 5% of the young seals that are shot at on or near ice floes are struck and lost, which means they're wounded and they're allowed to escape. They're recovered and they die slowly. If you do the math, that 5%, plus the 50% of adult seals that the Canadian government estimates are struck and lost, translates to an average of 26,000 seals per year. That's a tremendous number of animals dying slow and painful deaths. So, no, we don't believe that shooting is a good way to kill these animals.
As a final point on that, processing companies take off money for every bullet hole they find in the skin, so sealers have an incentive not to shoot seals more than once. So if you immobilize a seal with a bullet, you don't want to shoot that seal again, because the company is going to take off money for that extra bullet hole. That's why you will wait and go and club the animal to finish it off. That is the reality of the commercial seal hunt. It's because of the physical environment in which this hunt operates that shooting and clubbing are both inherently inhumane.
Just for starters, Ms. Aldworth, I'd like to say for the record that, boy, you come in here with guns blazing, attacking the integrity of the members of this committee, referring to myths that have been perpetrated, you say, by this committee, and bias in this committee. You come in with an adversarial approach from the beginning.
On behalf of my colleagues around the table here, I have to say I find that very offensive. I'm glad that Mr. Matthews addressed that, because you actually impugn the integrity of all the members around the table, and that is somewhat reprehensible and unhelpful.
I don't come from Newfoundland. I come from Vancouver Island. I also have an interest in matters related to biology. My undergraduate degree is also in zoology. I listened very carefully to the presentation by the veterinarians who appeared here about the kill, about the hakapik in particular, and the evidence produced from their studies, dissections, and analyses of the brains of seals that had been killed. Their conclusion was in fact that the hakapik is a very effective tool and very humane in use.
Maybe you'd be happier if somehow you could round these animals up.... Perhaps you wouldn't, but you were saying that if they were slaughtered in an abattoir, in a closed building somewhere like cattle, sheep, and lambs for human consumption, somehow that would be more palatable. I suspect your group wouldn't support that either.
For the record, I find your attack on the integrity of members around this table is certainly unhelpful and somewhat reprehensible.
:
—or the math. That's a good point.
There are two things, though. Ms. Aldworth, you did make two statements that I can absolutely and unequivocally challenge.
My family is in the fishery, my friends are in the fishery, I live in the fishing community, and my riding is a coastal community. I have never, not once—and I'll swear this on my kids' health—ever heard a fisherman say they don't believe that the seals have had an impact on the fish stocks. To fishermen, they believe that there is an impact. They know those other factors are out there—overfishing, the whole list of factors—but they believe the seals are a significant factor.
The other small point was that you said the sealing was not a hunt for food. In fact, it is. What I know is about the economics of my community. It's easy to dismiss $1,500. I have families in my community who would feed their families for two months on $1,500; it's significant.
You've stated that there are three components to your concern around the fishery: where it takes place, how it operates, and over the period of time.
As to where it takes place, we're not able to control that. We could invite the seals to the parking lot of Mile One Centre, but I don't know how many would show up. I'm just being cute with it. We have to go to where the seal population is.
As to how it operates, that's what we're talking about here, because we want to look at best practices and we want to look at what we can do.
And on the period of time, you've had the exchange already about the period of time.
Let's get right down to the nub of the issue. In your view, can seals be hunted humanely?
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I represent a riding on the North Shore of the St. Lawrence River. A large part of my riding is located between Kegaska and Blanc-Sablon and reaches up to the border of Labrador. The villages there live exclusively off of the only industry in the area, which is fishing. The families living in these villages along the coast went there for the sole reason that they could fish.
Seals are marine mammals which live in the water and feed on fish at the seabed level. One can only conclude that seals are a major predator of cod or any other ground fish. These same fishermen today must deal with a cod moratorium. They are not allowed to fish cod because of this moratorium, which is in place so that the cod can regenerate.
Because of dwindling numbers of ground fish, these fishermen must also deal with lower fishing quotas. Indeed, some species are on their way to extinction. However, the seal population has increased considerably, but fishermen cannot exercise their profession, namely fishing, because of the growing number of seals, which eat ground fish. As you can understand, this has created a certain degree of frustration.
Some fishermen are even asking for sports licences to hunt seals for their own survival.
So since these villages live exclusively off fishing—which is the only industry on the lower North Shore—it is only normal for them to ask us to regulate the seal hunt and to provide them with more seal hunting licences in order to protect the ground fish.
A little earlier, I was watching your video on cruelty to animals. For people who are sensitive to the killing of animals, you presented several scenarios. In one, you showed the seal hunt with an image of red blood on white ice. You then showed an image of a pig being bled and crying out, squealing for 15 or 20 minutes until it bled to death. You also showed images of a chicken with its head cut off, which was thrown into boiling water, and then put on a conveyor belt, and was plucked but still moving. You also showed a sheep being led to the slaughterhouse with tears in its eyes and which meekly obeyed because it could not defend itself. A child or a person sensitive to this type of situation would of course be sensitive to the killing of any animal.
You show the seal hunt, but I also want to let you know what happens when a pig, a chicken or a sheep are killed. Please rest assured that people are also sensitive to those types of situations.
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That question is frequently asked, and no scientist can answer it. There is no ideal level. There is in ecology no balance of nature. That was rejected by ecologists about 70 years ago. So this is one of these things that kind of carries on. We can see it today; you just have to look at the Arctic and what's happening to polar bears. There is no balance. The world is in constant flux, sometimes because that's what the earth does and sometimes because of our activities.
If there were no seal hunt tomorrow, what we know about the biology of seals is that they would in fact eventually limit their numbers through the availability of food and competition between individuals. Technically, it's called a density-dependent response. We would never predict that a seal population would simply explode.
There's just one more brief point. I would like to refer to density dependent. What it basically means is that as the population goes up, individuals have to compete more for food, they get less food, their birth rate does down, their mortality rate goes up, etc.
In response to a question earlier and to your question, I'd like to refer you to a paper that was recently published, co-authored by a person at UBC and by two Canadian government scientists in Mont-Joli. It's called “The Trophic Role of Marine Mammals in the Northern Gulf of St. Lawrence”, and it talks about the role that marine mammals play in marine ecosystems. The last line talks about--this is the last line in the paper—“This beneficial predation effect is even greater than the predation itself, leading to an overall positive impact of the predator on the system.”
In other words, this complex system, which I did show and I actually referred to in this year's presentation, is structured and ordered by the feeding interactions that occur in it, and harp seals eat all sorts of prey, as you noted in that figure. The end result is a positive impact on the system. If you start to remove predators, it reminds me of what Victor B. Scheffer, one of the grand old fathers of American pinniped biology, said in 1972: “If you remove seals from the system, what sorts of holes are left?” We can't answer that question.
Thank you.
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You may, as a matter of fact.
The other issue is the aboriginal hunt. I think the record has been corrected a couple of times today. I don't pretend to be the expert on every aboriginal community in northern Canada, but I've been in a number of them. The truth has to be told about when the fur moratorium came into place and the leg-hold trap was nearly banned totally in the country. The aboriginal first nations suicides went up 250% and alcoholism increased dramatically. There was a lack of a sense of place and self-worth. Anyone who has been around the aboriginal culture at all would understand that. It was a terrible thing that happened. When you shut down the sale of fur, you don't just shut down the sale of fur for non-aboriginals, you shut it down for everybody. You close off a marketplace.
I have a real concern. You mentioned whaling. We have a huge first nations whale hunt. It's a huge hunt, probably the largest whale hunt in the world. Are narwhal and porpoises and belugas next on the list? And then what happens?
I don't think, on the one hand, you can hold the aboriginal community up and say we're going to protect this interesting group of Canadian society, when, quite frankly—and this needs to be said—I think they're simply next on the list. When it's more convenient and they have no one else standing with them and they're standing alone.... It's a very, very difficult life in northern communities for people who are not attached to a southern lifeline. There are all kinds of people who have that southern lifeline and who travel south and live south, but they don't have to subsist in that environment.
I think there are some recommendations made here today that we'll follow up on: lengthening the hunt and making sure there are more observers out there. There are other recommendations for which I think the record, especially with first nations, needs to be corrected.
Again, I apologize for taking too much time for my comments.
I appreciate both our witnesses coming.
The other comment I wanted to ask you to follow up on.... You made a comment. This is important. You said your fundraising doesn't come from anti-sealing, that it was a very, very small portion—