Mr. Chairman, the hon. member, who is a very valuable member of the fisheries and oceans committee, raised a number of topics. I would like to confine myself to the issue of seals.
Just this week I received a letter from someone out in his neck of the woods urging that the seal hunt be banned entirely because there is a danger that the seal population will be wiped out.
Could the hon. member comment on the following and tell us if he agrees with it? The information that I have is that on the east coast, since he already told us there is not a commercial sealing industry on the west coast, the type of seal mainly used in the commercial industry is the harp seal. My information is that in 1970 there were approximately 1.8 million harp seals. Today there are approximately 5.2 million. That does not look to me like a harp seal population which is in danger of extinction.
It seems to me that there is a lot of misinformation out there that people rely upon and believe to be true. One can certainly understand that no one wants to hunt any species into extinction, but would the hon. member agree with me that some sort of a campaign of proper information needs to be mounted to properly educate Canadians on the true facts insofar as they relate to seals?