Fisheries Committee on April 20th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I'm sorry, Mr. Penney. I have to interrupt because we've gone over time for Mr. Hanley.

We'll now go to Madame Desbiens for two and a half minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Dr. Lemire and Ms. Saint-Pierre, it's all about education. It would appear that there's not much missing for seal meat to become a positive, innovative trend that would attract consumers interested in discovering new types of food. Your collective plays an important role in encouraging this new trend.

What's missing? Could the Department of Fisheries and Oceans do something to support your promotional work and encourage people to taste seal meat for the first time and to view it positively? Are there programs to help you do that? Could a program be introduced that would create organizations like yours across Canada to boost your efforts and promote this trend?

[Dr. Mélanie Lemire]

First and foremost, young people are the drivers of future change. The Mange ton Saint-Laurent! collective organizes workshops with young people. Dietary trends also affect families. We expect that working with these young people will be very stimulating.

You can also rely on us as researchers for sound data, on nutrition, as Mr. Knight proposed, or the social sciences, and even with respect to its cultural role. It's also important not to forget the important role played by culture in eating habits.

To answer your question, we could definitely launch similar projects elsewhere in Canada. However, it will be important for these projects to be organized jointly with the people who live in the areas concerned, including our first nations and Inuit colleagues. And we can also learn a lot from the Micmac and Inuit who have been hunting seal forever. They know how to prepare and process the meat, which is not easy to cook. This knowledge sharing is desirable.

Earlier, Mr. Penney spoke about economic reconciliation through food, which is also a good thing. When there's food on the table, it's always more pleasant. It's all very well to develop projects, but they need to be rooted regionally.

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

That takes money.

[Dr. Mélanie Lemire]

Yes, it's quite an undertaking.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Ms. Barron to close out the first hour. You have two and a half minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

My question is for Mr. Knight.

A previous witness who spoke on this study—I'm sorry, but I can't remember her name—was talking about how one of the number one needs was for professionals in the workforce to understand sealing in order to pass on the information.

Are you seeing anything around that, around capacity or training needs? Could you speak to that?

[Morley Knight]

I see some efforts. In fairness, I see fewer efforts now than I saw 10 or 20 years ago. There needs to be a renewed effort, because we see, 30 years into the decline of the seal harvest, that our problems in managing a number of our fish stocks are continuing, and that the efforts we saw by various levels of government, including provincial governments, particularly Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, and by the federal government, have declined significantly, so there needs to be a re-engagement.

There needs to be training and support. There needs to be an information campaign. There needs to be a collaborative effort that brings parties together—indigenous groups, companies and provinces. We need to bring people together to have a sustained effort to help reduce the population to manageable levels.

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

How about the gear in the boats? What do we need to be able to do a sustainable seal hunt? If everything changed in an ideal world and we went ahead tomorrow with a sustainable seal hunt, what do we need the government to provide for supports? What needs to be done?

[Morley Knight]

I mentioned earlier on that one thing that occurred over the years was the elimination of the large vessels from the harvest, and that's not necessarily a good thing, because they're more capable. They're safer platforms to operate and they are more efficient.

Another thing that happened around the mid-1990s was the elimination of the fishing vessel insurance program, which provided a reasonable cost level of insurance to fishing vessels. It wasn't funded by government. It was administered by government, but it was pretty well cost-neutral. That was eliminated in the mid-90s, and now the only option is to go to commercial insurers. As MP Small mentioned, the deductible is up as high as $100,000. One thing that causes an ineffective hunt because of that factor is that seal harvesters are using smaller vessels or older, worn-out vessels to harvest seals. They can't use their main vessels because they just can't afford to take the risks. Bringing back something like the fishing vessel insurance program would be a very great benefit to increasing the capacity to harvest seals.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that.

That closes out our first hour of testimony. I want to thank Mr. Knight, Mr. Penney, Madame Lemire and Madame Saint-Pierre for their participation here today and sharing their knowledge with the committee on this very important topic.

We'll suspend for a couple of moments while we change to our next panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

We're back.

I have a few comments for the benefit of our new witnesses.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking.

For interpretation for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either floor, English or French. Those in the room can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

All comments should be addressed through the chair.

Finally, I remind you that the use of a House-approved headset is mandatory for all virtual participants in parliamentary proceedings.

I would now like to welcome our next set of witnesses.

Representing Ár n-oileán Resources Ltd., we have Mr. Kendal Flood, chief executive officer. Representing the Halifax East Fisheries Association by video conference is Mr. Christopher Jones, director. We have Madame Stéphanie Pieddesaux, industrial researcher, by video conference, representing Merinov.

Thank you for taking the time to appear today. We have five minutes for opening statements. We'll start off with Mr. Jones, please.

[Christopher Jones, Director, Halifax East Fisheries Association]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to both present and participate in your session.

I'm a retired DFO senior federal fisheries policy and operations manager. I've participated in multilateral and bilateral discussions throughout the last 25 to 30 years and I've also led delegations in Japan and led bilateral herring discussions with the U.S.

What I'd like to do quickly is make a brief presentation and then leave you with some brief questions.

Going back to the point that we see seals off the coast, I'm calling you from Chester, Nova Scotia. At one time, I was able to take my daughters fishing off the coast, and now I take my granddaughters seal watching, because there are no fish. The distinction has not been lost on the preceding generations.

The first of my points that I'd like to go into—and I'll read from them and leave them with a question—is that DFO has indicated that they're applying ecosystem-based management approaches to stock assessments. In the abundance of a formal seal stock assessment, concerns exist as to whether DFO has, currently is, or will restrict commercial allocations of traditional fish stocks like cod, capelin, mackerel, etc., to support seal populations.

As many of you are aware, many commercial fish stocks are becoming threatened or endangered despite tighter efforts, controls, and increased monitoring and enforcement, and in many cases seemingly lower allocations are set, to the point where many fisheries are either closed or subject to a sentinel fishery status, yet many of these stocks are not indicating stability or increasing in stock abundance.

As many of us know, there are limited data on seal diets, at least within the Canadian zone, which has led to surmising that seals consume an insignificant amount of fish. In recent discussions with DFO, it was suggested that seals eat few mackerel, but it's unknown where this diet study was conducted and whether it was during the mackerel migration or off season.

The question that this leaves me with, and it's presented to the committee and to DFO, is this: How can DFO apply an ecosystem-based management without applying the impact of seals on fish stocks?

The second point I'd like to raise is that the Atlantic seal science task team provided a series of recommendations in their report of April 2022. Those recommendations included opportunities to increase the fishing industry's involvement in seal science projects and ways to better communicate scientific findings to the fishing industry. They also included identifying seal impacts on fish stock rebuilding plans and included integrated fisheries management plans where appropriate. A key recommendation was to initiate a seal summit, which was convened in St. John's in the fall of 2022 and was intended to include collaboration and discussions among scientists, commercial harvesters, indigenous groups, and federal, provincial and territorial representatives.

The Baltic Sea is known as a sea basin under ecological stress, and the seal-fishery conflict in the Baltic expanded over the whole region, becoming increasingly more difficult to solve. Solutions to mitigate the conflict have not been adequate, and the impact of seals on coastal capture fisheries and aquaculture has been distressing for the fishery sector. Seal populations have been growing fast during the last 35 years, and opportunities for direct management of the populations remain limited.

As a result, regional solutions for mitigating the seal-fishery conflict in the Baltic Sea, an interdisciplinary synthesis project called RESOCO, funded by the Nordic council of ministers fisheries co-operation program, was convened during August 22-23 of 2022. The core aim of this program was to build an interdisciplinary synthesis and up-to-date Nordic knowledge and best practices and set the stage for alternative solutions on how to effectively reconcile seal-fishery conflict in the Baltic Sea. It sounds familiar.

The project was coordinated by Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Estonia, and the proceedings were published in January 2023. I attached, when I sent the information in, the publication in PDF form for that, and contacts if you need them.

The purpose of referencing the Atlantic seal science task Team report and the RESOCO report is that they had a similar theme—namely, a substantive increase in seal populations that is negatively impacting the social and economic viability of coastal communities.

To that point, the Baltic conference proceedings were published and widely distributed, as well as the Atlantic seal science task team report—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Jones. It's gone over the five-minute mark, and I want to make sure that we have time for questions. If there's anything you didn't get out, hopefully you'll get to it in the questioning round.

We'll now go to Madame Pieddesaux for five minutes or less, please.

[Stéphanie Pieddesaux, Industrial researcher, Merinov]

My name is Stéphanie Pieddesaux. I work at Merinov, Canada’s largest sea-to-market industrial research centre that specializes in technology specific to fisheries, aquaculture, processing and marine bioresources.

We are focused mainly on pinnipeds, but have concentrated on seals in the northwestern Atlantic. There were six species, grey seals…

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I'm sorry. We have no translation. Hang on one second and we'll get that straightened out.

We'll try again. I would remind the witness to try to speak slowly, because the people interpreting have to try to keep up. If you could talk a little more slowly, it would make it a lot easier on our interpretation team.

Start again, please.

[Stéphanie Pieddesaux]

Thank you.

I work at Merinov, Canada’s largest sea-to-market industrial research centre that specializes in technology specific to fisheries, aquaculture, processing and marine bioresources.

We are focused mainly on the six species of seals in Canada, more specifically those on the east coast, in the northwestern Atlantic, where we mainly work. They are the grey seal, harbour seal, hooded seal. ringed seal, harp seal and bearded seal.

What we have generally found in the oscillatory behaviour of the prey-predator relationship is that the decline in prey always precedes the decline of predators. We have also frequently found a major gap prior to the decline in predators and following the decline of prey. This would appear to be the case for the harp seal, the grey seal and the hooded seal, which are predators of fish stocks. We therefore anticipate a decline in some of the species, and in most of the prey in all biological populations.

We can also expect that repercussions from climate change, like the ice melt, will result in drowning and hypothermia among young harp seals, as well as changes in water masses and in the distribution of primary production densities, and areas and distribution of prey. This will lead to changes in diet for a number of species and changes in distribution for others. There will be energy losses causing mortality owing to the eventual shortage of resources for certain species, and there will be pandemics.

We know that all of these situations, which will occur over the coming years, could have an impact on seal populations. We can't predict things solely on the basis of the current circumstances, and we anticipate other changes.

There are currently three seal species of interest to hunters: the harp seal, whose population is around 7.4 million individuals, the grey seal, with a population of around 424,300 individuals; and the hooded seal, whose population is around 593,500 individuals.

However, ecosystem issues must also be factored in. For example, an adult grey seal eats 1.5 to 2 tonnes of fish per year, half of which is cod. In the southern part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence there is a problem with cod stock restoration, and there is a moratorium on cod fishing. The harp seal does not appear to be a threat to the cod population in the southern part of the Gulf. However, we don't have a very clear picture of this species' diet, or for species other than the grey seal.

Many fishers have been complaining, particularly in Gaspé, of the grey seal diet, which isn't necessarily limited to fish in open water. Some seals, which are more intelligent than others, go and eat food directly from the traps. There are quite a few little-known problems involving seals. Seals are very opportunistic and can change their diet when the occasion arises.

With respect to the seal hunt, we wouldn't recommend a large scale hunt because of potential changes and their possible impact on the balance of the ecosystem. We believe that the hunt could be recommended only if corporations are prepared to make use of all seal products. We believe that seals are potentially 100% recoverable. The skin, oil, omegas, meat, viscera and organs can all be used. Our organization has conducted several studies on this.

On the other hand, we have also identified a number of challenges in terms of social acceptability, the marketing of seal products, the processing of waste, and the recovery of by-products. Before doing anything for the seal industry, it's really important to look at these challenges, because they are considerable. After that, the hunt would only be recommended if best practices were adopted for management, and if studies conducted were to use robust predictive models.

As I was saying earlier, climate upheavals are coming, and these will affect populations. Prey-predator oscillation also needs to be taken into account. All these issues are going to have an impact on seal and fish populations. And it just so happens that to date, human management of biological populations has not always been exemplary. We therefore need to approach the situation with caution.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that.

We’ll now go to Mr. Flood for the final opening statement of five minutes or less, please.

[Kendall Flood, Chief Executive Officer, Ár n-oileán Resources Ltd.]

Good day, Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for the invitation to speak before this committee.

I listened to much of the testimony already provided to the committee and to those who spoke or presented at the seal summit in St. John's last fall. It seems to me that most everybody is in agreement that there are too many seals in the water. The current quota for harp seals in Newfoundland is 400,000, and DFO tells us that we need to harvest a minimum of 425,000 just to maintain the current population.

The real question would be that if we are currently only harvesting between 5% and 10% of the total allowable catch, how do we get the seals out of the water? Some people call for a cull, but most people are against one, as it could completely collapse the existing sealing industry and darken Canada's image. Other businesses in other industries could feel those repercussions.

Then it falls on the seal markets. Are the markets there? How big are they? Can they sustain 400,000 to 500,000 seals harvested each year? Do we have the infrastructure to handle the volume?

The markets are there, but there are two very different markets. There is the local and domestic market, which has line-ups for days for seal flippers at fish trucks and seal oil capsules sold in drugstores and grocery stores. However, these flippers are secondary to the valuable parts of the seal, and the volume of capsules that could be sold domestically could never handle a 400,000-seal harvest, so then we look to international markets.

There are large markets in China, Japan, Korea and the GCC countries, just to name a few. There are markets for skins, oil, meat and organs.

I've heard the questions asked during these committee meetings multiple times: What is the disconnect? What are we missing that we can't move these products into these markets that everybody keeps talking about?

For an economic market to thrive and grow, especially internationally, it needs three major components: It has to have a consistent supply of a consistent quality for a consistent price.

A consistent supply we can do. The infrastructure is there, both in the vessels and in the processing plants, to handle great volumes of seals. It's already there. I can provide you with more details at any time you want.

Quality is a big one. The markets demand quality. Our international pharmaceutical customers tell us that our oil naturally needs to be pharmaceutical grade, and in the case of China, encapsulated, bottled and with the legal paperwork to export there.

If we are to sell seal meat on the global market, then we need to treat it like we do crab or salmon. The meat needs to be processed to a value-added level. Again, please feel free to ask me to give you more detail on that.

Seal fur has long been the backbone of the seal industry. Its fur has been sought out and sold across the world. As a previous guest to this committee, Merv Wiseman, pointed out, the fur industry as a whole has suffered of late. However, the fur is not the only viable part of the skin; there is currently a sizable demand for seal leather. It has a very attractive, unique pattern, but also has the second-strongest tensile strength of any leather, behind only wallaby.

If the supply is there and the quality is there, there has to be a consistent price in order to get buyers to build their own sales networks. That's largely what happened in the early 2000s, when over 300,000 seals were harvested every year, and then levels fell to where they are now. The prices exploded, and the market collapsed.

It is imperative that everybody in the industry work together, which includes processors, harvesters and government. I can provide examples on how some of this collaboration has already begun.

Full utilization is another point that's repeated and questioned during these meetings. Perhaps “increased” utilization is a better way to put it. However, the answer is yes, far more of the seal can be utilized than just the fur. Exactly what and how largely depends on the age of the seal.

The last question should be, how can the Government of Canada help?

If we're going to continue to have these meetings to discuss what to do with the seal industry, then let's create a small strategic trade group with Global Affairs, DFO and processors—small and precise. The government can also fund and promote clinical trails on the benefits of seal oil. The vast majority of current omega-3 studies are on fish oils.

We have ideas, which we have spoken to members of DFO about, on how processors and harvesters can collaborate with DFO to collect data more efficiently. That will give a broader picture of what is happening, and with an eye to climate change to stay ahead of what will happen.

Thank you for listening. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Flood. That was right on time.

We'll go to our questions now, and for the first round we'll go to Mr. Small for six minutes or less, please.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming out today.

My first question is for Mr. Flood.

The sealing industry has expressed concerns about activists and NGOs being able to gain too much access to the harvest.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think that activists can get into where the harvest is taking place too readily?

[Kendall Flood]

I think nowadays everybody recognizes the need to have a workplace where you're not constantly harassed. That's the same for sealers, especially in such a dangerous environment. This is not sitting in an office; they're out on the ice. Imagine slipping on the pavement in a parking lot. They're working on ice with eight-inch knives, with machines moving around and with rifles. If they're distracted by a drone or a helicopter that's literally there to harass them, it's quite dangerous. These guys are a long way from home.

Speaking from the concerns of the harvesters, they should be 25 to 30 kilometres away. Otherwise, it's literally life and death.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Do you think there should be a much better-defined and larger exclusion zone than exists?

[Kendall Flood]

I would say it should be at least 25 to 30 kilometres away.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Okay.

I heard you mention your experience with other government agencies, such as Global Affairs, the trade department, CFIA and whatnot. What's been your experience with the level of support for the sealing industry from government departments other than DFO?