On our sealing committee we have representation from the Inuit communities, who've made it quite clear that an attack on sealing is an attack on their culture and the cultures of the commercial and so-called subsistence or non-commercial hunting activities. It's critical that we as a nation start to better understand the value of the meat and the oil of these animals in the communities to maintain the health and the natural diet. Certainly, from Îles-de-la-Madeleine to Newfoundland and Labrador to Iqaluit, the hunters share a common view that the attacks against the activity of hunting seals are unjustified and that the European Union is hypocritical, because they do hunt seals within Europe because, apparently, their seals eat fish and they have a problem with the maintenance of the population. So it's critical that as a nation we formulate a plan to educate the world on the functioning of our ecosystems and the roles played by these hunters, who are very professional people with a huge cultural attachment to the use of the resource.
It's going to be critical to do that to protect the cultural integrity of Canada.