Evidence of meeting #20 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was seals.
9:35 a.m.
General Manager, Carino Company Limited
I don't have a summary. However, of course, as Mr. Byrne said, everybody has a copy. I guess I do not necessarily have to read it in its entirety.
9:35 a.m.
General Manager, Carino Company Limited
Okay, thank you.
I'll start just down the page.
The result has been that when the system is operational and running again, sealers have already, through no fault of their own, overrun sector quotas, and that in turn has led to quota transfers.
These transfers have penalized some sealers while being advantageous to others. The 2006 season is a prime example of this, in which sealers from the front zone were penalized because of overruns in the gulf zone.
I note as well, from the minutes of your meeting of June 15, 2006, that Mr. David Bevan, Assistant Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, alluded to the problems with the hails. He said:
They may have 100 animals on board and we may be told there's 50; they only upgrade it later on. We have to deal with that so that we can have a better handle on the number of animals being killed on a daily basis.
One of the main ways that DFO deals with this issue is to expect processors to provide them with their best estimates of the number of animals that have been landed at various locations. At this time of the year, processors are extremely busy with their own work, such as procuring animals, arranging transportation from port of landing to their processing plants, processing of animals, and paying sealers in a prompt manner.
Processors have been required to provide DFO with this information no later than 10 a.m. daily. Failure to do so will result in warnings or prosecution under the act for failure to provide requested information. To tabulate this information requires considerable person-hours, to the point where it has become necessary to have at least one employee dedicated to providing this information to DFO.
We have seen in the past that this information is often misinterpreted by DFO staff, such that numbers are double-counted, etc. The harvest is shut down because the quota has been reached, yet when the numbers are re-checked, it becomes obvious that there are considerable numbers of animals remaining to be taken.
DFO prides itself on having a well-managed sealing program, and maintaining adherence to the established quotas is paramount. Yet our experience has been that at critical times during the harvest the DFO hail system is shut down.
During the 2006 sealing season, harvesting on the front opened on April 12 at 0600 Newfoundland daylight time and closed at 1930 hours Newfoundland daylight time that same day. The TAC was not taken during that period, so the harvest reopened on Thursday, April 13 at 0600 and closed at 12 noon that same day. Sealers were advised that DFO would compile catch information and advise further whether the harvest would reopen.
The next day was Good Friday, April 14. DFO did not operate that day; nor did it operate on Saturday, April 15, Sunday, April 16, or Monday, April 17. A significant portion of the 2006 sealing activity on the front took place well north of Newfoundland, off the east coast of Labrador in Groswater Bay. The majority of sealers were not prepared to wait out this time for the possibility of the harvest reopening. Many would have waited until Saturday, but not until Tuesday.
We would recommend that for the upcoming season and for future sealing seasons, DFO have sufficient staff on hand to cover weekend and holiday periods to ensure that this kind of thing doesn't happen again. Alternatively to this, DFO could consider contracting out the handling of the hails and the tabulating of the results from the hails to the private sector.
Aside from being costly to sealers and processors alike, these overruns are often misrepresented to the media by animal rights groups and have played a negative role in the ongoing battle to establish that the Canadian seal harvest is well run and well managed.
Another aspect that deserves DFO's attention is the fact that the present “first come, first served” approach to taking the quota leads to a “race” mentality, as each sealer tries to ensure he or she gets a fair share of seals. This race mentality can lead to less than careful attention being paid to proper killing procedures, and that in turn leads to misrepresentations of the humaneness of the harvest.
We need to consider ways in which we can eliminate or reduce the effects of the race mentality to ensure that all proper procedures are adhered to. One possible way would be to follow up on the veterinarians' suggestion, that following the killing of a seal by either rifle or hakapik, all sealers be required—and this is especially when the hakapik is used—to palpate the skull to ensure that the skull is completely crushed and that the animal is rendered irrevocably unconscious, and then to “bleed out“ the animal. This procedure would have the effect of slowing things down; as well, it would vastly improve the quality of both the meat and the pelt.
Obviously, the concept of boat quotas could be a way to ensure that the race mentality would be eliminated, but there are a number of problems with this solution. Trying to implement boat quotas that are fair and equitable to all sealers would be very difficult.
With a TAC that would have to be subdivided among so many sealers or boats, the number of animals each sealer or boat would be permitted to take may be too small to make it economically viable to participate at all. Subdividing the TAC into many small components may very well lead to many seasons when the entire TAC will not be taken. Industry assumes and expects that the entire TAC is going to be taken during a particular harvest.
Sadly, I do not have the perfect solution to this problem, but we all know that the race mentality is a problem for the sealing industry, and we should all give serious thought to it with the goal of finding a solution that ensures that both the conservation goals and the humaneness of the harvest are maintained.
The second area I would like to address is the continuing efforts of the animal rights groups to end the harvest through their campaigns of misinformation, misleading facts, and, equally important to most in the sealing community, the portrayal of us as a people who are somehow barbaric and subhuman because we kill seals.
For decades, the Government of Canada has waged a losing battle with these groups because it--the government--has consistently tried to fight using facts and logic to counter emotion, and has consistently taken the approach that it is the role of DFO and DFAIT to simply defend our management practices. They consistently emphasize that it is not their role to defend the sealers and sealing per se. The ban in the early 1980s showed us this tactic does not work. The recent ban passed by the German parliament only reinforces this truth. And you must realize that this ban was passed subsequent to an address to the German parliamentarians by one of DFO's very best experts in which he presented all the Government of Canada's arguments to no avail.
This ban has major implications for the Canadian sealing industry in two ways. It was passed despite the fact that the EU Commission has asked the member states not to pass unilateral bans, and therefore opens the doors for the Dutch, Belgian, British, and Italians, all of whom have ongoing ban discussions in their parliaments, to take their own unilateral actions. A series of bans like this only legitimizes the animal rights arguments and makes it easier for them to sell their viewpoint to others, including Canadians. In terms of business, these kinds of bans make the logistics of moving seal products to market more difficult and more expensive. Why? Because most of the major transportation lines go through various points in Europe, thus forcing us to find more expensive and more difficult ways to get the product to the buyers.
We in the industry have understood for years that European politicians and citizens are not interested in the facts. They do not care if we are right or wrong in terms of conservation and humane killing. Their politicians only care that they have been told there is a constituency in their ridings that will vote for them if they take action against the dastardly Canadians. Their citizens recoil in horror when presented with the falsehoods spread by the animal rights groups. These are emotional issues, and the only way to fight this kind of attack is to undertake an aggressive campaign, aimed at showing all those in the EU, U.S.A., and Canada that they are being misled, misinformed, and downright lied to. In other words, we must back up our facts with emotion.
Proposed bans being put forward by EU governments oppose a commercial harvest, yet do not condemn the harvesting of seals by aboriginal peoples. We should demand that the EU government not be racist in the seal issue. Instead of putting forward a ban on the importation of seal products, they should put forward what they would consider proper killing methods. After all, there are many animals being killed inside EU countries, as well.
In the past we have all seen films showing what may well be staged incidents of seals not being killed in proper ways. It is also worth noting, from the minutes of your meeting of June 15, that during Mr. David Bevan's presentation he indicated there were approximately 14,000 sealing licences, but only 50 charges for non-compliance to the regulations in 2005, and about 30 charges in 2006, with 37 warnings. He also stated:
In addition, we have seal hunt observation licences. There were 73 licences issued this year from 97 applications. We declined to offer licences to 24 applicants. There were 60 licences issued in 2005, and 42 in 2004, so the interest is obviously going up.
He went on to state:
In 2006, seven Humane Society of the United States members and a Reuters freelance photographer were arrested. The investigation on that is ongoing. Charges have not yet been laid. That remains an open investigation.
In 2005, 12 unlicensed observers were fined $1,000 each after being charged and convicted. It is obvious that the main focus of such protesters is to bring attention to their cause by disrupting the harvest and being arrested and charged by Canadian authorities.
Protest groups and the media should not be issued permits to visit the annual seal harvest.
The animal rights movement is a huge, multi-million-dollar business on an international scale, and none of us should be naive enough to think that they are going to abandon the single biggest fundraiser they have--sealing. To think that we can win them over with facts is more than naive; it is tantamount to abandoning the Canadian seal industry and all Canadian sealers and leaving the sealing families of Quebec, Nunavut, and Newfoundland and Labrador with the epitaph that the animal rights movement has written for them--that sealers are subhuman barbarians.
The October 30, 2004, issue of the weekly magazine Der Spiegel, published in Hamburg, Germany, contained a story on Greenpeace written by Sebastian Knauer. This story goes into various facets of Greenpeace, from their finances, reported to be 170 million euros worldwide in 2004, to their proposed areas of protest.
One item of interest concerns Greenpeace Canada. The article states:
In the founding country of Greenpeace, a fundamental argument about the seal hunt is being held. According to Greenpeace campaigner Steven Guilbeault, these marine mammals are no longer a “threatened species”. Therefore, up to 350,000 of them should be permitted to be clubbed annually. The international management ultimately demands, however, that for the coming season, massive protest campaigns on the ice are to be prepared. “This is using up our credit”, German Greenpeace spokesman Fouad Hamdan, says, “We are becoming incredible if we watch the slaughter without acting. The seals may no longer be threatened, but the pet-like creatures are good for the image.” ln order to cajole the Canadians back into line, manager Leiopold will be tough: “We cannot tolerate our principles not being adhered to.”
To achieve their goals, the animal rights movement does not simply attack the sealing industry; they attack many different aspects of Canadian life, from fishing to tourism through boycott campaigns targeting purchases of Canadian fish products and the Canadian tourism industry in Canada, the United States, the U.K., and Europe. If the experience in these countries is anything to go by, their next goal will be to eliminate otter-trawling in Canadian waters through similar types of boycotts.
Animal rights, posing either as conservation-based or ecological-based actions, are the single biggest threat to the economic well-being of rural coastal communities in Canada. In forty years these people have gone from the lunatic fringe to being the centre of attention. They have successfully created a divide between rural and urban people. They have created the illusion that they are the greenies and we are the barbarians. The issue at its most fundamental is not about sealing; it's about the rights of Canadian citizens to act within the laws of Canada, and that is what the Canadian government and Canadian politicians should always remember.
Surely the Government of Canada and the provincial governments have seen that their tactics over the last forty years have been a dismal failure. Yet from the meetings we have attended we see that they are reinventing the wheel and simply doing new versions of what did not work and spending a lot of money doing it. The dignity of Canadian citizens in Quebec, Nunavut, and Newfoundland and Labrador deserves better.
During the Cuban crisis in the 1960s, Bobby Kennedy, then Attorney General of the United States--and I have to paraphrase here--said that you can count on Canadians for all possible support, short from actual help. If the Government of Canada and the provincial governments involved do not change their tactics, Canadian sealers and the Canadian sealing industry will, sadly, have to say the same thing.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gerald Keddy
Thank you, Mr. Kearley.
Gentlemen, that was just a little bit over 15 minutes. I know we have three other presenters at the table. I think that was fairly in depth, but if someone has something to add to that, you can just paraphrase your comments. We do need to keep it a bit briefer.
Jean Richard.
9:50 a.m.
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
What format did you want to follow? Did you want each presenter to give their presentation?
I know that Mr. Genge, Mr. Aylward, and Jean Richard have presentations.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gerald Keddy
I just asked.
The other gentlemen have time to give their presentations, but I would like to keep it a bit briefer, less than 15 minutes, in order to have time to ask questions.
9:50 a.m.
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
Do you want to go ahead, Rene, and give your presentation?
9:50 a.m.
Wilf Aylward Independent Sealer, As an Individual
I don't have very much to say. I think John pretty well covered it off.
I'll go next, then. I'm going to get back to the management part of it. John covered a big part of it; I'm not going to repeat all of that.
I'm not going to read my notes. I'll tell you who I am.
I'm representing the small-boat group in area 5. Area 5 runs away up to Labrador, up to Hawke Harbour, to Harbour Deep. I'll be speaking on those guys.
We have a problem with management of small boats. We've got no identification on our boats. We don't have any identification, so If you've got a sealer fishing in area 6 or area 5, or sealing--whichever you want to say--you're not going to know. If area 5 is closed, you can get aboard your boat and go out; how are you going to know where he's from without going aboard the boat, stepping up, and asking to see his licence?
We have the problem that when the larger fleets get their quota in, they go ahead and take part in our quota as well. That's not fair; that's not right. We need some kind of management put in place so that when the larger boats get their quota in, they're finished for that season. If you go and kill your moose, you're finished for that season; your hunt is over. That's the way it had to be to be fair. That's why it was brought in in the first place.
We had problems a few years ago. Seals went up offshore; boats went out, and when they came in, all the seals were taken. There were no seals for small boats, so we were left with no seals. I think Gerry would remember that; we had a little go with DFO and stuff, so we ended up getting our own quota. What's the point of giving us our own quota if they're going to continue to take the seals? That's no good; that's not working.
We talked about it and had meetings on it, beating it around. It's a pretty hard one to enforce, but what we thought we might do or suggest is a colour code. If I'm out in a 34' 11'', my licence is different from an offshore. I'll probably have a green or blue or whatever; the colour doesn't matter. When mine is in, I'm finished. When the small boats are finished, they can't go out. When our boat's quota is in, we're finished. We can't go out, but when the large boats' quotas are in, they can seal away. That's not fair. That's not right. That's got to be managed. That wasn't put there for that. That's double dipping. You're going to hear this again. If you're going around the island, you're going to hear this; this is the big one.
That's why I'm here today, pretty well. If there's any way, boys, we can get those regulations in, so we can.... There are all kinds of boats coming in under 34' 11'' with no registration, no nothing. They don't need a thing. There are all kinds of boats coming in.
You want to stop the boats? Freeze, right away. We want to ask for a freeze on boats, but what's the good? You can't freeze the boats if there's no registration; if you've got to register your boat, then there's a limit. There's a cut-off point. You say no, you're not reaching any more boats for sealing. I can't see another way to do it. Everybody now...they're building boats for going sealing on a 34' 11''. We've only got about 60,000 or 70,000 seals. There's only about a seal and a half each when we share it up. That's true. That's about what it is. With the licence as it is, if you count the licences and count the seals, it's about a seal and a half.
We need that. Our resources are pretty limited, boys. We don't have any big resources, I'll tell you that. It's pretty limited. There's a little bit of cod and a little bit of crab. They dealt with the seals a lot differently than they dealt with the crab, I can tell you that right now. The last fellow into the crab fishery never had a lot of crab; he only got a handful. But the last fellow into the seals got the same opportunity or better than a fellow who was in it all his life. There's something wrong there. That's not right. We were the ones who kept it going in the first place. Now everybody jumped in when the prices went up. That's not right.
If there's any way at all to enforce this regulation so that the small boats have their quota and the big boats have theirs, it would be greatly appreciated. In terms of the management side of it, that's it.
We talked about the hakapik; you touched on the hakapik. I think there's a proposal, Johnny, to ban the hakapik. We in the small boats talked about that. We said it's not a good idea to ban the hakapik. We don't use the hakapik anyway; we never used it up here, pretty well. But if you ban the hakapik, what's going to happen? Next you're going to ban the gaff as well. If we're going to give in to animal rights like that, and you ban the gaff, that's a safety issue, boy.
The hakapik is a wonderful thing to have on the ice if you fall on the ice or if your buddy goes out loose on a pan or something. What better thing would there be to hook him with, to haul him in, or something like that than a hakapik or a gaff?
If they get away with banning the hakapik, the gaff is going to go as well. You're not going to be able to gaff a seal. If you don't gaff the seal.... You won't be allowed to have it on the boat. It would be like a .22 magnum. You could bring a .22 magnum, and all of a sudden now you can't have one on your boat. You won't be able to have a hakapik or a gaff on your boat. What about if a fellow falls overboard, or if you get down on the ice? I wouldn't be on the ice without a gaff, and I'm a sealer. I've done a fair bit of it. I was sealing when I was throwing away the pelt and bringing in the meat. I was at it back that far.
This hunt has been pretty safe, I must say. We've been successful with regard to not having many deaths on the ice. Keep your fingers crossed. But with all the bullets that were fired and all the people running around the ice with gaffs and hakapiks and everything else, by God, boy, we pulled her off good the last few years, I've got to say. We had one little incident last year, I believe, down in the gulf, where a fellow hurt his hand, but that was because of a bad bullet in the gun, wasn't it?
Well, geez, boy, you know, that's pretty good. There were over 300,000 animals killed. Don't go fixing something that's not wrong. Don't try to fix it. Leave the gaff there. Leave the hakapik there. You know, there's a safety issue. It's not for killing seals. I wouldn't have it aboard for killing seals. I don't use it for seals. I use the rifle. Most people use the rifle because it's late now when it opens anyways, so you mostly have a rifle if you want to get them. I might go on the ice, but a lot of them get off, and some of them go like a fox, so you're better off. It's a lot easier to shoot the seals and hook them with a gaff. Don't ban the gaff, and don't ban the hakapik. Please, keep it in mind before any regulations draw down--because I know this proposal has gone in to ban it.
Now, that's our point of view on the small boats. I know there could be different views on it, but I think most people support the gaff and the hakapik. Yes, that's my greatest fear.
And one more thing too I want to say before I get off is about the processing. I don't know if it's federal, but I'm just going to touch on it--exporting pelts to be processed. Now, that sounds good for a few jobs, but by God, it's not going to sound good for a sealer, I don't think. The sealer is going to have to pay. The sealer is going to have to pay for processing those seals. He's not going to get the price. I think what they've been doing till now is shipping them out and getting them processed. That happened with the crab. You're going to see that; it's what happened with the crab, sure. You couldn't sell the crab off the island, and all of a sudden the price went down.
I think we'd better watch that one. I know legislation is probably coming through now for, I think it's 2008, is it? It's going to be, I think. So we're not too happy about that one either. We had a meeting to talk about that.
10 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gerald Keddy
Excuse me, sir. Can I just ask for a point of clarification here on the processing? Can you not sell your pelts on the open market the same way you sell fur?
10 a.m.
Independent Sealer, As an Individual
You're not going to be able to sell them. You'll have to sell them on the island to be processed. That's my understanding of it. Is that true? Will that be in 2008, or am I misled there?
10 a.m.
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
Mr. Chair, I understand the provincial government has passed or has enacted a policy using their section 92 right under the Constitution that indicates that all seals landed in Newfoundland and Labrador must be processed--I should be careful about “all” seals--a significant proportion of the seal landings, if not all, must be processed in Newfoundland and Labrador.
So I think that's the point, Wilf, that you're making. Yes, okay. And what Wilf is suggesting, I think, is that this will lower the price to sealers. Is that what you're suggesting, Wilf?
10 a.m.
Independent Sealer, As an Individual
Yes, there will be only about two buyers here: Rieber and Bill Barry.
I've got nothing against you, John, but I just had to break it up here. It's sad that I had to say this, but our committee had a meeting, and I was asked to bring it up, and I think I should. I can't change it now, just because John is sitting next to me. We thought that the competition would go right out of it. There would be only two buyers. John and Bill would get together and say let's pay $50 a seal this year. We've got to give them. We can't go anywhere. We can't go to New Brunswick. We can't go to P.E.I. We can't go to the Magdalen Islands. The Magdalen Islands processed some seals for us a few years ago, not last year, but the year before they did some. We can't go.
10 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gerald Keddy
I'm going to ask you to wrap up, because we do have another witness to hear--or two more, if they want an opportunity--and I know the group will want questions.
10 a.m.
Rene Genge Professional Sealer, As an Individual
Most of it has been covered, but I will go through what I've got here. I might overlap some of it, but I'll go through it.
The seal hunt off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador is a very profitable hunt for all, not only for the value but also to help protect other species in our waters by keeping the seals from overpopulating. The seals reproduce at a rapid rate and they also eat three times their weight every day. If this species is not controlled, it will take over and help to destroy the food chain, which would not only be devastating to the people but to all the other species that live in our oceans.
The protesters in the southern gulf, where I do most of my sealing, are one of our major concerns. Protesters are a major concern for the people who are involved in the seal hunt in any way.
In the spring, as sealers are gathering their things to participate in one of the most dangerous fisheries in the world, the protesters are out taking videos of the seal hunt to help them to entice the rich and get money to come to the seal hunt. They show films, and falsely inform people who do not have any idea of how this hunt works. They tell them how barbaric we are, which is not true.
You'll meet them on the ice. They'll come at you--and I've had experience with this--with goggles on, eyes covered, and long sticks with sharp ends shouting vulgar language and putting video cameras in your face for footage that they will later show to other people who were not there. They'll get the name of your boat, then they'll find your phone number and find out where you live, post your name on the Internet, and get people to call and threaten your family, threaten to kill your family, to skin them alive, and so on.
I think those are the barbaric people. Do you think such people should be allowed either on the ice or in a helicopter flying over while sealers are at work? No, they should not. Anyone caught doing so should be prosecuted.
Once last year I was listening to an open-line show, and this caught me off guard. Our federal fisheries minister, at that time, got on the open-line show. He said that we should ignore those protesters. Ignore--I think that's a cowardly way for any federal minister to try to get around this. How do you ignore someone who's coming at you with sticks and pointing video cameras in your face? I think it's the easy way out, but it's not going to help. Ignore--no, we can't ignore those people. We've got to face those people front on. Even the safety of the families is involved here. When you get caught in it, it's like I've been caught into—
The pupping of the gulf seals happens in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, close to the Magdalen Islands and close to P.E.I., in the Northumberland Straits. This is the place those protesters--P.E.I. mainly, because they're probably scared to go anywhere else--are using for a base. They've got the motels there and they've got their helicopters there. I don't think they'd dare try it anywhere else. P.E.I. is probably used more as a tourist attraction than for business. I don't know, really, if they've got any sealers in P.E.I., or it's a very small amount. That's some of our problems right there, with those protesters.
The Magdalen Islands hunters have an earlier opening date than that of the Newfoundland and Labrador sealers. Therefore, they have to go and pick their seals, because they can't have the whitecoats on. So they go and pick their seals. They still kill mostly beaters. But there are more white seals around.
If they had a later opening date, an opening date similar to that of the Newfoundland fleet, then you wouldn't have as big a problem with those protesters. If the opening date was later, the ice heats up and you wouldn't have those big sheets of ice where you can go around with a Ski-Doo and have somewhere where they can pitch their helicopters. By that time, most of the seals are black anyway, or beaters. So you wouldn't have quite the same problem with the protesters if you had a later opening date, the same as we do. What I'm saying is that you wouldn't have those big sheets of ice that they could go out and run around on and put your helicopters on.
You know, you have a bunch of people there, going around with high-powered rifles, water hunting and stuff like that. Then you have this crazy bunch of people running around, lying down in front of seals, coming and shaking cameras in your face and shaking sticks at you. If someone doesn't soon do something, you know, something's going to happen. I hope there's something done before it's too late. Because it's serious, you know. You have people out there. I've been running without incident. Here on the front, we don't have it so much. But when you get up with a rifle, and you're far from the seal, probably you won't see that guy.
I'll touch on the hakapik, although Wilf touched on it too. But I will touch on it.
The hakapik was introduced to the sealers partly to replace the gaff. The gaff didn't have this knob on the end of it for killing the seals. So they pretty well came up with this new idea with the hakapik. This is mainly used on the larger sheets of ice in the southern gulf, close to P.E.I. This weapon would not commonly be used for sealers if there were a later opening date, as Newfoundland and Labrador sealers have.
In the hunt by the Newfoundland and Labrador fleet, I would say probably 95% is with rifles. The only thing we use the hakapik for is to sometimes make sure you finish killing the seal if it's not killed, or to retrieve the seals if there's a seal beyond the pan. At least you can get out there and retrieve one. By banning the hakapik, you're only giving those protesters more fuel and taking the safety away from the sealers. Please do not ban the hakapik, because it's used more as a safety feature in retrieving the seals, not for killing the seals. That's in the Newfoundland and Labrador seal hunt, even in the northern gulf, where I'm from, although our hunt is a little bit earlier than the front hunt.
On overcapacity, we have a problem with overcapacity. I remember years ago that there were probably only 10 or 15 large boats in the seal hunt, when the seals weren't of any value. There weren't that many under-35-foot boats when they weren't of any value. Now there are 200 larger vessels plus, probably. I don't know what it is. Right now, to me, DFO cannot control it any longer. They don't know how to control it, because there are too many of us.
I think the hunt should be open only to people that have fishing licences and a CFV number, not to people who do not rely on the fishery for a living, because we all know that it's very valuable to those people. Probably, with help from the fishermen staying back home, we'd never have quite so much out-migration. I don't know. I think it should be strictly for the people that rely on our fishery for a living.
Now to HST and EI. How did it come about that the sealers have to collect the HST from buyers, when we all know that it is the place of the buyers to retrieve any HST that has to be collected? If it was to happen that we started doing this, it would be an added expense that would have to come from the sealers' pockets, because who will ever get the money from those small companies? No one.
I'll touch on EI for a bit. Is the seal hunt a job? When you are on the ice floes from daylight until dark and return only to have an hour or two of sleep, to punch in a couple of hours at rest, and start again, it sounds like a job to me. So why is it that any income made from the seal hunt is not insurable? I don't know the answer, but I would like to get a reply from someone who can inform me of what's happening during those days. Maybe if we were counting this as insurable earnings it would prevent some of our out-migration if it would help people to qualify for EI.
These issues are some that we all need to think about, get answers to, and not have put on the back burner. Because we have a really good fishery here for everyone involved, and we do not wish to see such a good thing come to an end.
Thank you.
10:10 a.m.
Jean Richard Joncas President, Multi Species Fishermen Oldfort-Blanc-Salbon
Good day.
I wasn't aware of this committee until late Friday. I see that the next place you are going to sit in Quebec is in the Maggies, and for me to go to the Maggies is $3,000, plus a four-day trip. So I will try to do some kind of presentation now.
I've been sitting on the Quebec and Newfoundland and Magdalen and P.E.I. committee, that sharing committee--quota committee, sharing committee. Before last year there were no original shares, but late last year--let's say two weeks before the hunt--the minister decided to give regional shares. As we see, we're four to five months from the next hunt and we still don't have this issue solved. What's going to happen next year?
We were supposed to discuss it through the winter. I see this year even the seal forum is not until late January or February. It's a late date to have a forum just before a hunt. We have many issues. As other people said here today, we have the hakapik issue, the small-boat registry, and some people talk about EI. There is EI there in the Maggies; seal is insurable. On the upper north shore of Quebec, seal is insurable. They found a way to get around it. We're trying on the lower north shore, like the province of Newfoundland, to get it insurable. The same office that represents me in Sept-Îles represents the upper north shore. They found a solution for them...I think it's 50% of the seal earning is insurable, the other 50% is not.
These are all issues that we have to discuss together. What I find is that we discuss the fishery just prior to the fishery opening, and then everybody is in a rush to go either fishing, hunting, or things like that. Can we discuss the fishery maybe a month or two months after the fishery is over, to see what the problem is? We had a problem with the overrun of quotas last year. I know in my area, if the cellphone doesn't work I don't have a cellphone, so I have to get a cellphone from Newfoundland. But I can't call the 800 number in Quebec because they don't accept the 709 area. So I can't register my seal.
I call the coast guard, but the coast guard can't call Fisheries and Oceans to give them my number, so there were overruns maybe in my quota last year. Who is to blame? Maybe the fishermen, maybe the system. I live in Quebec. I have a minority English-speaking area and the answering machine is only in French. So when I have 20 questions to answer...the questions are too long. What is your boat number? How many crew members? What date did you want? This message should be read every day, so if you read a message every day, do I have to report which date? That is one question you could take off.
Last year we had a weekend hunt, so who keeps track of what happens on weekends, the answering machine? In my area there is an 8,000 seal quota, 400 hunters, and the machine can take maybe 20 messages. So what happens to the rest?
These are all things that I think we should discuss, maybe, after the hunt and try to solve it through the forum. Last year, for the regional share that we tried to do to solve a later opening date, as Mr. Genge was saying, the big problem we had in the the gulf all along was that the Maggies want the opening date on March 28 and we in Newfoundland want it on April 8. That was the issue. Last year we got a regional share and the Maggies opened, maybe March 30, which may still be too early. But with regional shares, at least we went ahead with something. We had less raggedy jack killed last year in the hunt. The price was better.
I think the more time goes by, the more the Maggies will realize that if they go at a later date, they'll get a better price.
The only way to solve it is the regional share. Boat quotas would be the ideal situation. I have 200 core fishermen in my area, and there are maybe 600 sealers licences. Everybody over the age of 14 or 15 has a seal licence. Wives have licences too.
How do we deal with the seal licence? Do we freeze this licence? If I'm 90 years old and I die tomorrow morning, and my kids want my licence, I have no way to transfer the licence. Now we have a freeze on the licence, but what happens? Is it only the dire situation that...? This is the fishery with the least consistent rules. You can't find a good rule to follow. We all live in Canada, and we all should have the same rules, all of Canada.
People are talking about small boats and big boats. I represent both groups. In our area there is no small-boat quota and there is no big-boat quota. The problem we're having is that when a hunter goes around in what's called a big boat, but he goes around with four outboards, is he hunting from the big boat or is he hunting from the small boat? That's what we're having to solve. If you're hunting from a big boat, and your boat is 65 feet, don't put an 18-foot boat aboard. Are you a hunting boat or a collecting boat?
On this issue, it might take a year to discuss it, but we have to sit down and decide: do my four small boats have the same number as my big boat? All the crew members are aboard this boat, because I can have four permanent sealers aboard my boat with one guy who registers. The day the hunt is finished, the other three can take me aboard his small boat. I can take all the hunt myself, 8,000 seals on the lower north shore. If I have a good boat, I can take 8,000 seals myself.
Thank you.
10:20 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gerald Keddy
Thank you, gentlemen. I think you've given forth some very pertinent information.
Before we start our line of questions, I just want to say to members that we do have another group on boat stability. They are supposed to be in here at 11 o'clock, and it's now 20 minutes past 10. I know that everyone has questions. I'm trying to give an opportunity to everyone, especially while we're travelling, to ask questions. We can go over our time a little bit, I believe, or maybe the boat stability will take a little less time.
So I'm wondering if we want to try a round of five-minute questions for each member, and go right around the table. That way everyone would get to ask some questions. Are we agreed on that?
10:20 a.m.
Some hon. members
Agreed.
10:20 a.m.
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
Thanks.
On behalf of all committee members, I want to thank all four of you gentlemen for your very sound presentations.
You've touched on what seems to be a common thread. We're all saying that we want a viable sealing industry, that we want seals taken out of the water. I think this committee would agree that sealing is a viable, renewable natural resource that can sustain healthy harvests, and we can do so ethically and sustainably. One thing that seems to be common throughout all the presentations is that we're not helping ourselves actually achieve all of that.
A number of issues have been raised here. For instance, because of regulation, we have confusion on opening dates, which is leading to problems on the ice. We have DFO failing to actually act on sharing principles within provincial shares in the gulf. DFO has actually created the potential for quota overruns, because they don't appear to be adhering to the official language law. As well, the information provided here about the answering machine is just incredible, as far as I'm concerned. There's also the issue raised about the HST. Revenue Canada now, I understand, after years of this not being an issue, is going after sealers to collect HST from sales dating back, I think, to over five or six years ago.
It seems to me that to actually make the sealing industry viable, in addition to our international issues we have to tackle our domestic issues. We have to make it whole lot easier.
Rene, you mentioned the harassment that sometimes comes to sealers, and that you had some personal experience in that regard. You spoke about the Internet, and about telephone calls. Can you tell this committee about some of the things you went through personally?
10:20 a.m.
Professional Sealer, As an Individual
I had an incident on the ice with those protesters. The next day, they had my name posted on the Internet, phone numbers, and whatever, and it went on for about a month, probably--phone calls, phoning my home, phoning my wife. They kept on coming, saying “Kill the grandkids” and “Skin you alive”, and things like that.
10:20 a.m.
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
Could you say that again? What did they say as to your wife?