Mr. Chair, I do not think there has been a member of Parliament in the history of this House who wants to see any animal completely destroyed and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. If we can harvest and utilize the entire animal, that is what we should be doing.
My colleague from Tobique—Mactaquac is absolutely correct when he says that two things will need to happen. Either the seals will naturally die out due to a disease of some sort because there are too many of them or we will need cull them.
My hon. colleague from Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte was also absolutely correct. As many Europeans fish off the nose and tail of the Flemish Cap, if they suddenly realize that the seals are destroying their livelihood when it comes to the fishery, they will ask us to do something about the seals. That is the irony and hypocrisy of this. They may eventually move another resolution that we need to cull three million or four million seals because they are affecting their livelihood.
I do not think that the EU made a very sound decision. What it made today was a political decision. It had nothing to do with science and it had nothing to do with facts. The unfortunate part is that when a decision is made based solely on politics, it ends up screwing up the lives of thousands of people and their families.