Thank you.
Ms. Redfern, I was very struck by your eloquent description of the polar bear hunt and the relationship between the polar bear hunt and the preservation of the culture. Some day I'll have enough money to do that myself.
Again, this is to the government members on this committee. Because polar bears are a very contentious issue under the Species at Risk Act and the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, I think we should take the side of the Inuit on this particular one, unequivocally support the hunt as strongly as we can, and fight all those forces who would do their best to put this culture out of business, because that's what they would largely do. Here we have a success story. Let's continue it.
I'd like to quote from the testimony of Mr. Peter Williamson, who spoke at the indigenous affairs committee hearings on suicide rates. This is in relation to culture, land, and wildlife. He says:
I want to talk about a couple of issues I think will make a difference. One is I really started noticing a difference in how many young people committed suicide after their parents and their aunts and uncles and their grandparents could no longer afford to go hunting, because living the traditional lifestyle and being brought up in a community and in a family where the traditional lifestyle is the way you are brought up really does make a difference. We started losing that in the 1970s, and the 1980s too, but it started in the 1970s. Once that happened, more people did commit suicide. There was what were called the seal wars at the time, when Greenpeace and other environmental activist organizations who wanted to raise money started to attack the sealing industry, which Inuit were a part of. They really relied on seal hunting to make a living.
He made the obvious connection between the pride of retaining a culture and providing for a family in a sustainable manner, but also, I think, the appalling connection between these rich outside groups who basically, even though they didn't say it, worked their hardest to destroy a culture.
Could you comment on this particular episode and how you see this playing out?