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Mr. Chairman, members, good morning.
I'm going to switch my speech from English to French to apologize for the fact that although e do have a French version, but we don't have it here on the laptop. So I'll switch to French.
The Independent Veterinarians Working Group on the Greenland seal hunt has reported a total of 11 recommendations, four specific and seven general.
The first specific recommendation refers to a three-step seal killing process to be carried out in sequence as rapidly as possible. The three steps are stunning, checking and bleeding the animal. The purpose of the first step, stunning, is to cause an irreversible loss of consciousness and death. The two methods used are rifle and hakapik or club. All of the specifications on the use of both weapons are found in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans marine mammal regulations.
One of the first problems, as Dr. Crook mentioned, is the conflict between IFAW veterinarians and the article published by veterinarians in the Canadian Veterinary Journal in 2002. Watching the same events and videos, the IFAW found 55 violations out of a total of 116 observations, whereas Pierre-Yves D'Aoust and Alice Crook, together, agreed on only 27 of those 55 violations. That difference of opinion over the same images stems from the problem of interpretation of the swimming reflex.
Is the swimming reflex fact or fiction? It is defined as a stereotyped, disordered and lateral movement of the seal's hind end. It is an involuntary movement. It is often compared to the paddling movements of livestock killed in laboratories with a stun gun.
The video was shot by IFAW members during the 2001 Gulf hunt. It shows a young beacher trying to escape and being fired on by a hunting boat. After 10 seconds of immobility, the seal begins to display completely irregular and involuntary lateral movements. That is the swimming reflex, and the animal feels nothing and does not suffer at all. The swimming reflex lasts over 15 seconds, and certainly far longer. That is what it's all about.
This swimming reflex is supposed to be a medulary reflex, not a cerebral reflex, i.e., it does not go through the spinal cord. Given that this was merely a hypothesis, we wanted to put the theory to the test in the field, expecting to find that the duration and amplitude of the swimming reflex were independent of brain integrity. So there was no connection between the medulary reflex and brain integrity. The methods used were observational and qualitative methods.
In 2005, Dr. D'Aoust and myself took a helicopter to the area of the hunt. We boarded a hunting boat. We observed how many hakapik blows the animal received and whether or not there was any swimming reflex and how long it lasted. Finally, once the animal was brought on board, we were able to observe skull and brain integrity.
The results showed that out of 63 detailed observations, 36 of the seals, or over 57 per cent, displayed a swimming reflex. The duration of the swimming reflex was on average nine seconds, ranging from two to 35 seconds. In addition, of the 63 skulls examined, 51 showed severe injury, 11 showed partial injury and one showed minimum injury.
The case of skull no. 28, which presented minimum injury, involved left jaw and muzzle fractures. In addition, a small piece of the frontal bone was detached from the right orbit. One might think that the hakapik blow connected only with the muzzle and that the brain case was perfectly intact. However, closer inspection of the brain revealed a diffuse sub-durable hemorrhage in the left hemisphere and ventral surface of the brain, which means the animal was certainly in a state of irreversible unconsciousness or perhaps even death.
Let's come back to the discussion of our findings. So you can see that the swimming reflex is a common phenomenon during the hunt and is unrelated to brain integrity—it is definitely a medullary reflex—but also that the hakapik appears to be an effective method for killing or, at the very least, producing irreversible unconsciousness of the seal.
Another problem, which is part of the discussion around stunning the animals, is the calibre of rifle used. In 2004, Pierre-Yves D'Aoust and Marc Cattet did a ballistics report comparing use of the 22 magnum and 22-250 calibre.
I have that report here. Perhaps someone might like to take down the information and distribute it among committee members.
The report first describes the case of an animal being hit directly in the brain. So two seal heads with direct hits to the brain are compared. Both calibres hit the mark by causing severe injury to the brain.
However, if you take the case of a muzzle hit, the 22 magnum does not cause enough injury to debilitate the seal brain, except perhaps for a minimum fracture of the frontal bone, whereas the 22-250 calibre completely damages a whole part of the muzzle, in addition to causing fractures and severe injury to the brain.
This study was done at the request of hunters who wanted to reconsider using the 22 magnum during the hunt. Following the report, the Department of Fisheries and Ocean disallowed the use of this calibre and continued to allow more powerful calibres.
During the observations in 2006 at the font, off the shores of Labrador, I had the opportunity to take part in an observation session aboard one of the Coast Guard icebreakers, the Henry Larsen, and I followed officers from Fisheries and Ocean Canada who were monitoring the hunt. The hakapik is not used much at the front; they use rifles instead. As you can see from this image, the hunters are quite happy to be monitored.
During the first inspection where I was present, we had—fortunately or unfortunately—a case of an animal that was still alive and suffering on the boat. The officer asked the hunters to finish the animal off with a regulated weapon. Unfortunately, there was no hakapik on board; there was just this piece of wood that had apparently been used in the past to finish an animal off and that was not included in the regulations.
The two officers present began an investigation. They discovered that the hunters on this boat were not using the right calibre, they were using 22 Magnums, which are not included in the marine mammal regulations.
So we took samples of seal skulls from this case of violation. We took dorsal and ventral, right and left photos. Here, this is just one case. You can see that this skull is perfectly intact and that there are only two small injuries to the upper jaw. That means that the trajectory of the bullet clearly went through the muzzle.
We tried to find out whether this mussel had been hit by a 22 Magnum calibre bullet. By doing an X-ray, we found no bullet in the skull. In this case, we therefore cannot ascertain whether the animal was hit by a 22 Magnum or another calibre authorized by the regulations, such as a 222 calibre. That is why, as an independent veterinarian group, we want to go further and are calling for a ballistic field study of the 22 Magnum.
The second specific recommendation has to do with checking. The purpose of checking is to confirm irreversible loss of consciousness or death. Previously, what was checked for was the absence of a corneal reflex, which is a very difficult reflex to apply and interpret. Our group asked that this check be replaced by palpation of the skull, which anyone can do. Right through the animal's skin, it is easy to feel whether the skull is damaged or not.
The third step of the process is bleeding. When an animal is in a state of irreversible unconsciousness, bleeding will cause it to die. This is a very important step in our killing process. We have called for the marine mammal regulations to stipulate that bleeding should occur after irreversible unconsciousness rather than after death, because bleeding causes death.
The last specific recommendation has to do with shooting animals in the water. A lot of animals are shot in the water. According to the report of one of the scientists from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the carcasses are often lost in a region that is not of concern to Canada, but is of concern to the island of Greenland.
Through my observations in 2006, I have found that animals very rarely sink and can often be recovered, even after being shot in the water. This recommendation will definitely be revisited in the next report.
Let's move on to the general recommendations, of which there are seven. The first general recommendation has to do with managing the hunt so as to reduce competition and haste.
We are also calling on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to improve supervision, monitoring and enforcement of the hunt.
We would also like the industry to seriously consider striving for full utilization of each seal killed.
We would like hunters to join together and form a professional organization to promote appropriate treatment of the animals.
We hope that observers and researchers will cooperate with hunters with a view to fully understanding the impact and importance of the hunt in coastal communities.
We recommend training and education for sealers, as well as regularly updated information. That should be available and required for a hunting licence. The training could use video footage to illustrate the right ways and the wrong ways of doing things.
Finally, we would like research and observations to be updated regularly, for example, to better understand the swimming reflex.
As part of this work and the discussion, in the near future, the group would like to set up a ballistic study of the use of 223 and 222 calibre rifles in the field, and promote training and education for sealers. For example, during the hunt, the three essential steps to killing an animal could be printed on a laminated poster that sealers would have on their boats.
We also want to revisit the issue of area 4, where use of the hakapik is not required for reasons having to do with Aboriginal people. We want the use of the hakapik to be mandatory in this area.
We want to organize a new task force workshop in order to make a new report.
Finally, we wish to remain open to any opportunity to observe, improve or alter the appropriate treatment of animals during the seal hunt.
I indicated here our group's Internet link. You can access our report in English or in French.
If you have any questions, Dr. Crook and myself would be more than delighted to answer them.