Fisheries Committee on April 17th, 2023

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

I have a little bit of time, I think.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You have 40 seconds.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

There are 40 seconds for Mr. Hutchings. One of your recommendations involved our needing to be much better at data collection. I wonder if you could be a little bit more specific on what kinds of data we need that we don't currently have and how we should approach that.

[Keith Hutchings]

Thank you very much.

I guess one of the issues we've heard from industry, and continue to hear, is the actual time period in collection of data.

An example would be the extraction of the stomach for the evaluation of stomach content in terms of what the predation habits are of a particular seal, whether harp or grey seal. Oftentimes now that's done between January and April. It's a restricted period of a point in time in a migratory pattern or a location or an interaction between a predator and a species.

There's no long-term evaluation, say, on an annual basis. A harp seal will migrate north. What's it eating off the Front, what's it eating in the Arctic and what does that full diet in the predation description look like over an annual period? That type of work comparatively over multiple years is not being completed. I guess that's what I'm referring to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Hanley.

We'll now go to Madam Desbiens for six minutes or less, please.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses, who are always very interesting and relevant.

Mr. Hutchings, the demand is already greater than the supply in Quebec right now. There are 200 restaurants waiting to add seal meat to their menu. The Metro chain also wants to offer seal meat in a number of its stores. In Quebec, there is really a lot of momentum around this meat.

You were saying earlier that your centre is a facilitating organization. What role could you play in balancing supply and demand in Quebec?

[Keith Hutchings]

Thank you very much.

I think you've isolated an item there in terms of...and I think we saw some of this in the Seal Summit with regard to bringing groups together in the various dialogues and in what was discussed in terms of some regions of the country. There may be a market and availability for product, but maybe it's not known and maybe the ability to get it to that market is not known.

That's where we need.... We talked about collaboration and integration in what's happening with the industry. We do, through our centre here, all types of product development that industry drives or that R and D drives, but those are areas we can enhance if there are different types of products or if we do a discovery of what type of product the market will take.

With regard to your point, I think we need an integration of that knowledge of what you talked about.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

There is only one processor in Quebec to meet all the demand. Do you have any power of recommendation, within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, among others, to get information out more?

I am wondering if it is possible to set up a round table to establish better communication. Could your organization launch such an initiative? Is this within its purview?

[Keith Hutchings]

Thank you very much.

It's something, yes, that we've been looking at on a broad basis in terms of the seafood industry in Canada. Whether it's seals or some other species or some other technology, there often seems to be a separation in terms of that information and knowledge.

CCFI could certainly work with you and others in industry to try to bring a national perspective to some of the items we talked about with regard to the knowledge and what's available with marketing with the seal industry. Certainly domestically—and internationally—it's something we could get involved with.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Thank you. What you are saying is very interesting and moves us forward.

Ms. Peter, you said that seal meat is shared. Do you feel that the different northern populations have enough access to this meat? Is there room for improvement in terms of meeting those populations' food needs? I know that some of them are in a state of deficiency. It is very natural in their environment to eat seal, and not having access to enough of it can alter their health.

Could access to this food for northern populations be improved?

[Aaju Peter]

Absolutely. We increased the access to seal in schools, for instance, as part of the school program. Nowhere in the Arctic or nowhere down south have I been able to buy sealskin for my own consumption. If you hold your hand out like this, the amount of seal in your hand equals an amount of 56 pieces of sausage if you were to consume it for iron.

The iron deficiency and food insecurity problem would be solved if we were to help the hunters' organizations—provide funding for the hunters to harvest the seals to share them in the community. They're already sharing their catch. They share their whale. They share their fish. They share their seal, because they're doing it out of their own tradition. They have to. It's the part of giving back to the community.

If the federal government were to help promote healthy living, good nutrition and lessen the food insecurity that we have in the Arctic, we would totally support that. It's education and retaining and maintaining our traditional knowledge.

Ms. Desbiens, thank you so much for this question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Madam Desbiens. There are only five seconds left in your time, so we certainly won't go to another question.

Ms. Barron, you have six minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for keeping us on track with our timing today to make sure that everybody gets a chance to ask these important questions. I really appreciate it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I am trying to keep everyone on track.

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

Thanks, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

Through the chair to Ms. Peter, I do want to express my appreciation for your being here with us today. I feel very grateful to be able to hear from you first-hand. I want to thank you for your work defending the human rights of indigenous people in the Arctic, and also to congratulate you. I know you received the Order of Canada in 2012. It's great to have you here and to share your knowledge and experiences.

I had the honour of visiting Nunavut with my colleague MP Idlout, the MP for Nunavut. I spent time in Iqaluit and Pangnirtung and had the opportunity to go out on a boat with MP Idlout and her family where we fished for Arctic char, and they taught me the names in Inuktitut of the different seals that we came across. It was an incredibly impactful experience.

I wanted to ask if you could expand a little bit more. I know my colleague, MP Hanley, had asked a little bit.... You had spoken about the impacts. I was wondering if you could share a little bit more on the impacts on Nunavummiut and other indigenous people of the international campaigns against seal harvesting and the reasons why, as you worded it, the colonial exemptions and patronizing rules and regulations were far from sufficient.

[Aaju Peter]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for the question, Ms. Barron. I'm glad you were able to go to Nunavut. I wish everybody could come up and share some seal the way the former Governor General did.

In terms of the exemption, I was so against it when it was being talked about, because the Europeans think they can define who's Inuit and what is traditional and what is sustainable. However, under our Nunavut Land Claims Agreement within Canada, we define who we are and what our tradition is. That patronizing attitude has made it very hard for us, because it becomes administrative. We have to come up with the money in order to defend ourselves in court. We have to prove that the seal was caught in this particular way. At the end of the day, as we know, it's up to the European Commission, even after we've proven everything, to decide that the sealskin is not hunted properly or not in the way that the regulations are stating.

The other very negative impact it has had over time has been that, even for our young men and our young women, the imagery put on television about sealing and seal hunting, and about how bad sealing is, sticks with people. It's an image that we are having a really hard time fighting. Rather than going on and on about the imagery, what we need to do, and what we've been saying in the sealing industry that we need to do, is put the human face on the sealing issue: This is our life. You are impacting us. You are making a harsh life even harsher.

It's about education and then putting our stories out there about our traditions—5,000-year-old traditions, the lost hunting culture, the blue economy and you name it. As the other speakers have said, we need to turn the dialogue around to our dialogue, to our Canadian dialogue,

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

Thank you so much.

With regard to the bans that we've seen and the exemptions that we've talked about, I've been hearing from others about the impacts on livelihoods and the capacity for Inuit to make ends meet. I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit to the impacts of these bans, specific to the market, on the people who relied so heavily on this market prior to these changes.

[Aaju Peter]

Thank you for that question.

As you know, Inuit have the highest rate of unemployment and the highest cost of living, which is three to seven times that of southern Canada. When the seal market crashed from $100 to $10, then the ability of the hunter to provide his free food, nutritious food, to the community.... It was catastrophic. It made it so that we had to live on less food. The ability of the hunter to provide for the community became very harsh. It meant that the hunter had to work five days a week just in order to be able to afford to buy gas and go out hunting so that he could share his food.

We are still practising the sharing of the food. As a non-hunter myself, we still expect our hunters to provide for us, which is really unfair. I think we should support the hunters so that they can keep providing this healthy food to the communities and create food security.

It's a tragedy. It's devastating. There's a term for it that I can't think of right now. We should look at it as a human rights issue right now that we don't have access. Seven children out of 10 go to school hungry. In Canada, one of the richest countries in the world, we are accepting that this is happening, but it's really not acceptable. We have to do our part to secure that people have access to food—seal.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Barron.

We'll now go to Mr. Perkins, who is anxiously waiting, for five minutes or less, please.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for your very interesting testimony.

Ms. Peter, you used a term in your opening that I found interesting, which was environmental corporations. I look at them, in regard to seals, more as environmental businesses that have raised all of the funds to do the things they do off of seals. I wonder if you can comment a little more on that concept.

[Aaju Peter]

Thank you, Mr. Perkins, for your question.

That is not what I was saying. If I said it, then it was wrong. It was the animal rights groups that I mentioned.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I'm sorry. I meant the animal rights groups.

[Aaju Peter]

Can you say your question again? I would never call them “environmental”.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

The animal rights groups, with regard to seals, are really businesses more than they were anything else. That's had a devastating impact in a lot of rural communities in Atlantic Canada and in northern Canada. In particular, could you comment, first, on the impact that those businesses raising money from banning the seal hunt has had on your community?

If the government actually managed to advocate and get those markets open in the United States and Europe, what would that mean for your community?

[Aaju Peter]

Thank you for that question.

I have maintained that, with all the money that was raised by the animal rights groups—animalists, as they call them—they need to pay every Inuk from all the money they have made, $1 million, to repair what damage has been caused and all the death and hunger that Inuit have suffered.

We have to aim high. We have to dream high and that's my dream. It's that more reparations should be given to the communities—not just the “we're sorry we harmed you” kind of attitude that Greenpeace had.

The impact on our community is the most severe, as we had mentioned before, because we are still a hunting culture. We still depend on hunting and sharing the food. When we can't share the food, then people go hungry and no money is made. When the price of the sealskin fell from $100 to $10, our own government had to compensate that amount of money because it knows how important it is for our hunters to keep feeding our communities.

Inuit have borne the cost of this.