Fisheries Committee on Oct. 5th, 2006

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

With any hunt, especially a hunt of this nature, we go back to the use of the gun versus a hakapik. There has to be a loss of animals. If they're shooting the animals, by the time they get to them they've either gone off the ice due to the activity or gone into the water and are lost.

Are there any numbers or any scientific knowledge on how many seals that are either shot or killed with a hakapik are lost and not recovered? I've seen some of your recommendations on recovery of the killed animals.

[Dr. Alice Crook]

I'm not sure if in the CVJ article there are any numbers on that. I know there's disagreement in what the IFAW group says about the numbers that are struck and lost.

[Dr. Charles Caraguel]

This whole issue of “struck and lost” was raised this fall in a presentation by Dr. Stenson from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. He was dealing more with Greenland hunting and older animals. From my own experience, when an animal is shot in the water, or shot and then falls into the water, it is probably at the phase of its life when is has a huge amount of fat tissue. So most of the time the animal floats, if he died and was dumped in the water. I would be very surprised if an animal would sink in this condition, except if it was not well fed by its mother and didn't have a good reserve of fat tissue.

One of the sad stories I have on that is that this year we caught a sealing vessel hunting after the hunt ended. Because they didn't want to be caught with the seals, they just dumped them out of the boats into the water. We recovered most of the seals because they were floating on the surface of the water due to their huge amount of fat tissue.

Once again it needs to be verified and studied, but I really doubt that “struck and lost” is an issue in Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Just before we go to Mr. Cuzner, I have a point on taking of the seals in the water. A lot of the aboriginal hunt is conducted on the water, and I fail to understand the logic of not allowing gunners to shoot seals in the water. I've never accepted that they'd be lost. They are a fat animal, and I suspect that every single one of them would float. If they're shot properly, it should be a perfectly humane way to take the animal. They should be recoverable, although it may be more difficult to recover them. In particular, we have a huge grey seal population now in southwestern Nova Scotia, probably exceeding 30,000, that are colonizing on the coastline and the islands. About the only way you could take them would be in the water.

[Dr. Alice Crook]

The concern with the older animals, the adult animals, is that if they're shot and wounded, they will be lost because they'll swim away wounded. Whereas the beaters, the ones we're talking about, in the front, in the gulf, are so young and fat and they don't like to go in the water, so they aren't really able or likely to swim away. It's a different question when you're talking about adult animals.

When you're talking about the native hunt, I don't know what percentage of that is adult animals.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you.

Mr. Cuzner.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Mr. Chair, I have a quick question to you. This committee, whenever we're dealing with an issue, always requests a broad spectrum of evidence and balanced testimony. So I'm just wondering if the chair is motivated to invite Pam Anderson to appear before the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

It hadn't crossed my mind. But if the committee wishes, I am at the will of the committee.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Yes, we're in your hands.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

I'd sooner not give her a grandstand.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

To both presenters today, I really want to thank you for your presentation. On the fact that the work you do is very non-sexy and you stand before a cause célèbre and try to deal with this issue with a science-based, logical approach, you are to be commended. I want to thank you for being here today and for the body of work that you have presented.

I have a couple of questions. You mentioned that the IFAW captured their own video of some infractions, and you've alluded to the fact that when you viewed those videos, really they're.... What were some of the discrepancies? As they analyze a situation on the ice, it's portrayed differently from the way you would portray it.

Could you give us a couple of examples of that?

[Dr. Alice Crook]

One of the obvious ones, for instance, is outlined in the Canadian Veterinary Journal article. In the numbers they had, they talked about seals being shot and left to suffer.

The other thing that happens is that they take many hours of footage and then they put together a half an hour's or an hour's compilation, which they distribute. What they sent to us back in 2001 were all the original videotapes, so we were able to look at the original footage and see what conclusions they'd reached from it, which you can't really do from the compilation tapes.

So for things like the seals being shot and left to suffer and their culling so many seals in that category, we were able to look at those same sequences and see that indeed, the seal might have been shot, and then it took a certain amount of time for the sealer to get to the seal and give the hakapik blow. It was--I forget the exact numbers--an average of maybe 30 seconds or 37 seconds or something. So they saw that as “shot and left to suffer”. We saw the 37 seconds in which the sealer got as quickly as they could from the boat to the seal as an unavoidable delay, with the sealers still doing the best they could in the circumstances. They called that “left to suffer”.

[Dr. Charles Caraguel]

I guess what is very frustrating for us is that all these observations were done by very good-quality video and everything, and we would be very interested in having access to all this information, because all these hours of video would show us exactly what the proportion of violations is. For one sequence of violations, we probably have 30 or 35 seals properly killed.

I don't know how we would proceed to track the bad guy who is doing everything wrong, but it would be good for our scientists to have access to this information, because there's a lot of money involved. We do not have the funds to do that. It would be very interesting for us to have access to this information and to have an objective view on that.

I guess if these people really want to improve the system and avoid any suffering of animals, they should provide us with material. If we could work from there and try to improve the system to reduce the suffering, it would be nice.

[Dr. Alice Crook]

In recent years they haven't provided it.

[Dr. Charles Caraguel]

No, they never provided it to us. I guess they don't trust us.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Yes, but you do request it?

[Dr. Alice Crook]

We did last year.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

It is ongoing, yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

If you wanted us to get that information, we would certainly request it on your behalf, on behalf of the committee, officially.

[Dr. Charles Caraguel]

Okay, thank you very much.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

You make a recommendation about education and the development of strong organizations. I think you just shared an example. Sometimes the violations are not so much wilful violations; they're a result of a lack of education. For example, in the case of the .22 magnum shell, those hunters probably didn't know that it was an inappropriate shell. Could you maybe make a comment as to whether the violations are wilful or not?

[Dr. Alice Crook]

That's pretty clear. It's in the regulations, currently. It's very clear—

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Oh, it is? Okay.

[Dr. Alice Crook]

—so I don't think there's any question on that.

[Dr. Charles Caraguel]

For my part, because as I say, I'm a young guy and I believe in man and I think that everybody's good, I really have to admit that in the case of this violation, I thought at the beginning that because the guys have so many seals, they'd have just one or two regulated weapons and a rifle. And some of them didn't. First of all, they should not have a .22 magnum on board.