Thank you very much, Mr. Blais and Mr. Chair.
This certainly is an issue that is of concern to a lot of us. Every year, certainly when the spring arrives, the first thing you see before the robins are the protestors getting out there to make sure the money continues to roll in. And again, here is where political divisions.... We might disagree on a lot of things, but when it comes to defending certain industries, all of us are in the one boat. Last year our country stood up against the Paul McCartneys of this world and the Pamela Andersons and the Brigitte Bardots. Some of us wouldn't even meet with them when requested--and boy, I tell you, that was tough.
Seriously, we have to make sure that our side of the story gets out. We have what has been recognized by world-renowned veterinarians as the most humane, best regulated hunt in the world. It is a sustainable hunt. That's the first thing we have to get out there: it is a sustainable hunt.
I use this example sometimes in talking to people. When we had the biggest wild fish stock in the world, the northern cod, we had two million seals. We now have 1% or 1 1/2% of that stock, and we have six million seals, and growing. We are now seeing seals in rivers--in fact, we're seeing them miles up rivers in some cases--and at the mouths of trout streams. Number one, from a sustainable point of view, if we don't control the seal herd, it'll control itself after a while, and we'll have all kinds of problems. So everything we're doing makes sense.
I was in Europe a while ago. I met with the minister in Belgium. He was introducing a resolution to ban seals or seal products. He asked to meet with me; I didn't ask to meet with him. I wasn't aware of it. He asked to meet with me because he was uneasy. He had inherited the resolution and he was uneasy because he was picking up little bits and pieces that there might be another side. This is the guy who said that the only grounds he had to base his resolution on, and the only grounds the people around him had were what they got from the protestors--those videos of guys clubbing little seals, the red blood on the white ice. That's when I came out with the statement that, well, you wouldn't have the freedom to do it if the ancestors of these sealers hadn't left their red blood in Flanders Fields to give you the freedom you have today. That sort of woke him up.
I said that I wasn't going to argue and that I would lay out a few things--sustainability, numbers, etc. But I told him to come to Canada, to come and visit the homes of the people going to the front, to go out with them, and to not look at videos taken around P.E.I. Now that Lawrence is gone, I don't want to be picking on P.E.I. But every time they showed it, they showed them clubbing the whitecoat, which ended 21 years ago, or people out with hakapiks in the small herd where you congregate pretty closely in the gulf. Nobody shows the hunt on the front or off Quebec or certainly in the north.
We as politicians have to talk to their politicians. We have to invite them, as I did, as many as want to come. We'll make sure they see what has to be seen. Anything that any of you can do.... These are the people who vote. We have to deal with industry and whatever, and we need more people involved.
One thing that has happened for this coming year is that the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador has been meeting with our people already in putting together a unified front. Quebec wants to get involved and will be involved. Nunavut is involved. And certainly, I'm sure, the maritime provinces that are affected will be involved. With a united front, we can get push back--push back on truth and on the facts--and eventually we'll win that battle.