Fisheries Committee on April 20th, 2023

[Morley Knight]

I don't think they're a barrier. I think they're an enabler to demonstrate that we do have the necessary tools in place for effective management.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

You would say, then, that the marine mammal protection regulations would allow the ability to effectively manage populations of seals.

[Morley Knight]

I would, yes.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Do the regulations allow for predator control by anybody other than somebody authorized by the government?

[Morley Knight]

I believe there are some new provisions and policies that have been brought into place since my departure from DFO, so I'm not sure that I can totally be confident in giving you the correct answer to that question in saying yes, but I don't believe that the regulations are necessarily the impediment in and of themselves. It may be the application of them.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

You talked about the bounty ending on seals. You talked about the explosive growth in the population of seals. We talked about the collapse of the cod stocks and the moratorium back in the early 1990s. As a matter of fact, ironically, I think the marine mammal protection regulations came into force in 1993—the original version of them, if I have my facts right.

I grew up on a farm in Alberta. I'm not a coastal guy in any way, shape or form, but I love fishing. I also love hunting. Growing up on a farm as a farmer or a landowner, we didn't need the permission of the government to do predator control if a bear, a wolf or a coyote on our farm posed a threat to our livelihood. If you're a forestry company with a forest management agreement anywhere in the country and you have pine beetles threatening your livelihood, you're allowed to take out the beetles without necessarily getting permission from the government in order to do so, because it directly affects the livelihood.

Is a commercial fisherman allowed to shoot a seal to protect the viability of their fishing quota?

[Morley Knight]

The simple answer to your question, I think, is no.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Okay.

I think the simple solution to the problem is if we turn that “no” into a “yes”. That's just my humble opinion.

The reality is that I don't think, as wonderful as the testimony is today from everybody who's here, and despite the admiration and respect I have for people who are willing to push a piano up the stairs with a rope to try to create an industry and create a demand for seal and seal products in the face of insurmountable pressure on the international stage, and even domestically in certain parts of our country.... I have nothing but admiration and respect for everybody involved in this, but it is pushing a piano up the stairs with a rope. We have to, I think, come to the inevitable conclusion that we have to manage these things. These things are the wolves of the sea.

You've said that we need to study seal consumption so that we can actually accurately determine this—I have no idea why the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which is responsible for science, wouldn't have a better understanding of that question—and that we have to have an “ecosystem-based approach”. If we're going to do that, we need to use the tools that are available to us.

Hunting is a very valuable part of wildlife management, and fishing is a part of wildlife management. It's a tool that can be used. As a matter of fact, it's not only a tool that can be used to help the Department of Fisheries and Oceans manage the population, but it actually generates revenue, generates income and creates tax revenue for the Government of Canada.

In fact, a hunter in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador—no different than a hunter in Alberta—would actually pay the government for the privilege of helping the government through the purchases of licences and tags. We would actually pay the government to help the government manage its wildlife population. I think we have a lot of work to do, not only when it comes to the seal industry but to hunting and fishing writ large, against the animal rights movement and those who pander to them, whether they do so all the time or even some of the time. I'm very frustrated by this.

I have another question for you. In your experience and knowledge, you're aware that there is a strike on right now in certain parts of the Government of Canada. Are the conservation and protection officers or the fisheries officers on strike right now?

[Morley Knight]

I'm no longer an employee of the department, but my knowledge of that process is that a significant number of the conservation officers would be designated as essential, and therefore.... That's my past experience. Whether that's currently the case or not, I'm not 100% certain, but I'd suspect that somewhere in the range of 50% of the uniformed officers are designated as essential because they're so widely dispersed across Canada. I suspect that probably 50% are working.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Do the fisheries—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Calkins. You've gone a little bit over time. Your five minutes are five minutes and 30 seconds at this point.

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

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you very much.

I agree with Mr. Calkins' observations on the very informative witnesses today. Thank you very much to all of you.

I hope to maybe get to each of you on the theme of increasing marketability, let's say, of seal harvesting and various approaches.

Mr. Knight, going back to the ecosystem approach, one thing you mentioned before that is going on two fronts. You said that we need to present better information to prove to Canadians what's going on, yet we have been here for 30 years and presumably we have been accumulating information. Do we not yet have enough of the type of information that will convince Canadians?

I'm going to ask you to be fairly short.

[Morley Knight]

Unfortunately, we don't. We have been accumulating information, but it was only about seven years ago that we were able to determine in the Gulf of St. Lawrence that grey seals were a heavy predator on the cod stocks there. Where the huge herd of harp seals are, we know they consume maybe 1.4 tonnes per year each, but we don't know what they consume, and there are seven million of them.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Regarding an ecosystem approach, presumably some of that includes managing seals, as you said. Can you be more precise on what that would look like, particularly the “managing seals” part?

[Morley Knight]

I think if we knew how much crab, turbot, cod or other valuable commercial species that seals were eating, we could develop an approach. It may be like pushing a piano upstairs or it may be that we will take an effective management strategy that includes the elimination, where possible, of an adequate number of the top predators.

The next challenge is to make sure that we effectively use what we remove from the ecosystem to the extent possible. However, we cannot not do step two because we can't accomplish step one.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

In other words, we can apply both steps simultaneously.

[Morley Knight]

Exactly, but we can't fail to act in either case.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Could part of step two be starting at a fairly small scale and evaluating what is being done, with a view to perhaps increasing it according to the results of the evaluation?

[Morley Knight]

I think it could. I think some effective strategy to help reduce the predators in key locations could help. I think other countries have done that more effectively than we have, and I think we need to stand up and do the right thing.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Knight.

Ms. Saint-Pierre, you said that the best way of influencing client demand was to serve these products in restaurants. Have you seen progress since your restaurant began serving seal?

[Colombe Saint-Pierre]

I'll begin by saying that awareness and education are extremely important. That's what has to be done first before focusing our efforts on growing a market, or saying that we have access to a product. Our Mange ton Saint-Laurent! collective does considerable awareness-raising among consumers.

We've seen some changes. For example, my restaurant has sea urchin on the menu, and we sometimes even give customers free samples. I came to the realization that nine out of ten people have never eaten sea urchin. Having people try them for the first time can change some preconceptions. People have to be better informed about seal hunting and the amount of seal in our markets has to increase. It's also important to work together on awareness and education with respect to the consumption of seal meat.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

I think I have 20 more seconds.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You have 22 seconds.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Penney, I think you said that developing social science research capacity with DFO would be an important part of helping Canadians understand and would encourage an increase in the market.

Am I correct in that? It might have to be a yes or a no.

[Bill Penney]

Yes, that actually came out of the Atlantic seal science task team report.

I also need to point out that when we're trying to make comparisons to market, a seal has meat—blubber, which gets turned into omega-3 seal oil—and fur and leather. Seals have three different product lines. We need to market to each individual product line differently. People who take seal oil capsules could be athletes, because it's incredible for maximizing oxygen levels in their blood. It's incredible for inflammation and for seniors.

I'm also the chair of Canadian Seal Products. We're also doing a study with Université Laval to look at the impact on arthritis. As part of Canadian Seal Products, we have a website called canadiansealproducts.com through the Seals and Sealing Network. We also have Proudly Indigenous Crafts & Designs, which sells seal fur products from crafters.

There are three different product lines we need to be thinking about—