Fisheries Committee on April 17th, 2023

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

My question is for Mr. Chiasson.

My colleague MP Small asked you about the fur market in the U.S. I'm wondering if you can give me just a quick Coles Notes version of the types of fur that are in the market you were talking about between the U.S. and Canada.

[Doug Chiasson]

The fur business writ large is a deeply globalized trade. We see product from Canada that moves into the United States that may move elsewhere. We, in fact, see more product move from the United States into Canada at a raw state. There is still somewhat significant fur manufacturing and fur garment production and sales in the United States. There's also significant participation by Greece, Turkey, China, Hong Kong and, increasingly, South Korea.

There is certainly still an end-user market for fur products in the United States. Unfortunately, in the United States we are beginning to face more and more of the same types of pressure campaigns against all fur, which we've previously seen about only seal products, seeking to ban the sale of fur products writ large.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you. That's interesting. I was wondering if seal was part of this market you're discussing currently.

[Doug Chiasson]

It isn't and hasn't been since 1972 with the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The MMPA is fairly bulletproof when it comes to any Canadian seal product moving into the U.S.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Currently, there's no market.

[Doug Chiasson]

There's zero market.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Okay. I just wanted to clarify.

[Doug Chiasson]

There is demand, but there is no market.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you very much.

You talked about, and I know my colleague Madam Desbiens also spoke about your comment around the need for professional sealers. Can you clarify, just in a few more details, what we would need to do to see that need filled?

[Doug Chiasson]

Really, what would be required is work that is beginning, I will say, between DFO and harvester organizations in the gulf. The discussion around the harvesting of seals and sea lions in British Columbia would also require some knowledge transfer from commercial harvesters in Newfoundland, Îles de la Madeleine, Nunavut and Northwest Territories. There is the knowledge base out there. We just need to find ways to share that knowledge more completely between different regions.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you.

I'm realizing that I'm not speaking through the chair.

Through the chair, we are seeing a push right now happening. I won't go further down that rabbit hole. It's for a large-scale seal harvest to happen today. I'm just trying to understand your perspective a little bit further on whether we are prepared to do something like this today.

I have a follow-up question to that, if we have time.

[Doug Chiasson]

I think like any fishery, we can't go from zero to 60 in five seconds or less. This is something that would require a development of human capital and a development of infrastructure to get from where we are at today to even just reaching the total allowable catch for harp seals and grey seals, but it is something that the industry is ready for. If there were a market and money coming in the door to sell seal products, then businesses would reorganize themselves accordingly.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you.

I just want to make sure I get my last question in. Do we have in place currently the capacity for us to move forward with a sustainable seal harvest and utilizing the entire seal? We talked about all the benefits of the seal products.

Do we currently have in place what we need? If not, what do we need to put in place? I know you talked about market. Is there anything else?

[Doug Chiasson]

I will say, much like your last question, that if there is demand in the market and if there is a profit motive—I'll put it that way—then sealing businesses, fur businesses, will reorganize themselves accordingly. Really what we need to do is to make sure that it's worth a sealer getting on the boat and heading out and onto the ice to go and take that seal, that it's worth it for a processing plant to process that seal into seal skin, oil and meat, and that it's worth it for the folks who sell those three products to do it. At the end of the day, if we can put money in the pockets of people hunting seals, then people will go and hunt seals. That's not to be blunt about it, but it really isn't as complicated as we sometimes make it out to be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Barron.

We'll now go to Mr. Arnold for five minutes or less, please.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

It's interesting hearing the testimonies today regarding the role of DFO. I looked up quickly what is on DFO's website. One of the opening lines is, “We support economic growth in the marine and fisheries sectors, and innovation in areas such as aquaculture and biotechnology.”

When you look up the definition of “biotechnology” you see that “Biotechnology is the exploitation of biological processes for industrial and other purposes, especially the genetic manipulation of microorganisms for the production of antibiotics, hormones, etc.”

This to me sounds like the work that Mr. Engeset is talking about and could probably be part of DFO's work in promoting fisheries.

Mr. Engeset, would you comment briefly on that?

Possibly, Mr. Chiasson, you could comment after that.

[Steinar Engeset]

I would be very pleased to, because I personally feel that, if we're going to succeed with the seals, we can't push the fur industry ahead of it. We have to push and see what the seals can give us that can help humankind. Lots of people are dying. In countries today there are young people who are not developing, because they are lacking iron. I can tell you that you can't get a more healthy product than the heme iron and the seal oil, which is called long-chain.... I think that Canada has a resource that can help those problems in the world. What we're getting attacked on is that we're just taking the fur. That's not to say that I don't love the fur that comes from seals. I have a seal coat, personally.

I encourage you to start to look at all the other products. Don't forget—

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

My time is very limited, so perhaps I could get a brief comment from Mr. Chiasson. Then I have another question as well.

[Doug Chiasson]

Thanks, Mr. Arnold.

I'll actually get my colleague Ms. Vaugeois to speak to this one.

[Romy Vaugeois, Program Manager, Seals and Sealing Network, Fur Institute of Canada]

My job is actually to help Canadian businesses promote their products, and there are already so many good products out there.

Heme iron is one. It's a very specific niche market, but there are so many other markets that are covered right now. For example, with the seal oil, like Mr. Engeset said, we're currently doing rheumatoid arthritis research. It's good for your heart. It's good for the joints of both pets and humans. These are two totally different markets. For the meat, like for crabs, there are the restaurants, the pet food and the feed. There are different uses that we can do and the products already exist.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

Further for Mr. Chiasson, you spoke briefly about the management of all species except predators and so on.

Could you elaborate a little further on what you've seen in your work experience? I know you've worked for different organizations mostly on the environmental side and dealing with environmental issues. Could you elaborate further on what you see as the impacts of managing all species, including humans, except for apex predators in the system?

[Doug Chiasson]

Thank you, Mr. Arnold.

Before joining the institute, I spent five years working for a large international conservation organization focusing on fisheries issues. The global conversation around ecosystem management of fisheries and whatever that means is certainly an ongoing one. However, something that we see very clearly is the need to consider predation within DFO's population models.

We're seeing right now, in the northwest Atlantic, the beginnings of a collapse of primary production. We're seeing the collapse of primary production. Pairing that with significant increases in natural mortality, which we're seeing across a number of species, particularly groundfish, if there's not enough energy going into the system and there's too much of the system going into seals, then it is fairly straightforward to see that there will be an impact across the system.

It's not that we need to put seal predation on a pedestal above everything else in the model, but we need to be honest with ourselves. We need to be honest in the management of our fisheries, not only in commercial fisheries but also in the management of at-risk species, that these increases in natural mortality that have occurred across a number of populations through the 1990s and early 2000s, which are largely unexplained right now, do have a fairly straightforward explanation. We need to be very cognizant of additive mortality above that natural mortality if that natural mortality is itself increasing.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Arnold.

We'll now go to Mr. Kelloway for five minutes or less, please.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's great to have the witnesses here. It's been very educational for me to hear all the witness testimony today and previous testimony in relation to seals.

There are a lot of themes. There are a lot of themes that have emerged already in terms of lack of market access and why that is, lack of infrastructure and why that is.

Through the chair, Mr. Chiasson, you talked about the importance of not having one-and-done meetings. I couldn't agree more with you in terms of this. We've had the Atlantic task force on seals. We've had the summit.

We had the minister, who did say at a press conference in Newfoundland, surrounded by fishers, that seals eat fish. Now, why did she say that? Let's unpack that. We can smile and we can snicker, and we can have a good time at that. The message was to the fishers, yes, but the message was to the rest of the world. She was asked to make that statement. It may be funny for some, but it was very profound for those who were there, and maybe potential markets.

I want to go back to education for a second because you talked about it. You talked about your efforts, and Ms. Vaugeois, your efforts as well, in terms of educating. It seems to me that part of this is reframing—considerably quickly, too, by the way, we need to do this—the narrative in terms of the importance of seals from an ecosystem perspective and that they're eating fish, yes, but also for what they provide.

For example, I go back to education. Last year I attended a seal event here that was put on by Gudie Hutchings and Yvonne Jones. They had different types of products. I picked up a product. I picked up seal pills. I was told that these would help with rheumatoid arthritis. I can tell you that over the past year I think the seal pills I'm taking are having a really interesting, positive impact on it. The gentleman also told me that I would look younger. That hasn't really worked out all that much.