Fisheries Committee on Nov. 7th, 2006

[John Gillett]

Around the coast of Newfoundland, usually you're somewhere where you can get to a coast guard radio, but there are places in Newfoundland and Labrador where you wouldn't be able to hail in because your VHF radio or some other means.... There are going to be isolated cases where you won't be able to hail in because there's no cell coverage and no VHF coverage, or you mightn't have a big set on your boat. There are going to be times when you're not going to be able to hail in, but generally, you'll pass the information along to a second party who'll be able to hail in.

The other thing is that probably what you got from St. Anthony is the same thing we've been talking about here today. It is that we have to hail in and then we have to remove the seals from our boat. DFO doesn't have anybody counting seals on weekends. We have to wait from Saturday to Monday or Tuesday for them to count the seals that have been killed. That means we're out beating around in the ice. I have a 34' 11'' boat--she's not called the Comfort Inn--with five people on it out there for two weeks or three weeks. I'll tell you that, now.

I'm saying that the excuse by DFO last year was to slow down the hunt, but you must realize that seals, when they're going north, they go at 25 miles a day, usually 25 miles in a 24-hour period. Like Mr. Brown was saying, you stop that for four days, they've gone 100 miles. That's 100 miles you have to steam to get to those seals again. Our season should be open earlier. It should be open around April 8, because the seals are in the water. Once they get in the water, you have a very, very hard job to kill them, to get them, a very, very hard job.

Premier Williams said to ban the hakapik. There was no consultation with sealers before he made the statement. Mr. Williams is not a sealer, that's the bottom line. I don't tell a farmer how to grow something, because I don't know how to grow a stinging nettle. Do you know what I mean? A lot of things have been said about the seal industry by people who don't understand the industry.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

I guess that's the purpose of our visit here, trying to find out so we can make recommendations.

One more question--

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

A quick question, a very quick question.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

In regard to your TAC, Mr. Winter talked to me and we've seen incredible growth in the seal herds for the past number of years. Last year, 2006, I think it was 325,000. In your view, can we sustain a larger TAC or is it environmentally and economically okay at the level we're at? What's your view on the TAC?

[John Gillett]

My view is that we can probably kill even more if the market is there, but we should maintain the market.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

We don't want to dry out the supply and demand.

[John Gillett]

We don't want to dry it out, but I think we certainly can take more seals out of the seal herd that's there. Most of the studies that are done are done on harp seals. We have a lot of grey seals, we have a lot of hooded seals, we have a lot of bearded seals, and what we call dotards or jar seals. We have a lot of those, but they're not included in the equation. When you count seals, you only count what's on the ice. You don't count what's under the water, because you don't know what's under the water. If he says there are six million seals out there, I say double that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you, Mr. Gillett, and thank you, Mr. Manning.

Gentlemen, we do have another group to hear from. It is 10:20, and I know that everyone has more questions. We can go overtime with this group and the next group. But if we take another half-hour and allow a five-minute round for each member, would everyone agree to that?

[Bill Matthews, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

I'd like to suggest that in the interest of time, if those out-of-province members want to ask our sealers some questions, I think they should be afforded an opportunity. I'm willing to forfeit some time to my colleagues who may have questions that may be more obvious to me than to them.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

I agree, and I think that's a good idea.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Good show, guys.

I know that Monsieur Blais will take his five minutes.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

I'm ready. Thank you very much.

I'll try to be as generous tomorrow back home, on the Magdalen Islands.

I'd like to hear your comments on something quite specific, the training of seal hunters. First, does the association, or another group, provide you with training?

Mr. Gillet, would you like to answer?

[John Gillett]

Yes sir, we've had training. We have fellows who have been sealing for 50 years, who could teach the instructors, doing training courses. We know our work, we know how to pelt a seal, we know how to kill a seal, and we don't need any more training. Seeing some of the videos that are on television, maybe there should be some training for some people.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

That's precisely the problem. Earlier we were talking about images, emotions and information campaigns.

In my opinion, with all due respect, you know what to do, and so on, but in dealing with propaganda, you have to provide verified and verifiable information that hunters have the opportunity to take several hours of adequate training so that the hunt is less cruel. That's one way of proceeding. That will also make it possible to counter that image that the hunters are only hunting for pelts, for the economic aspect or what have you.

[John Gillett]

I have on my vessel assistant sealers. When one comes aboard the boat, we teach him the right way to dispatch a seal, the correct way to pelt a seal. We want people there who are professional. We want to get the maximum from the seal that we can.

You can have a training program. I didn't benefit from the training program--I took it, but I didn't benefit--because I had the time in. If the government would see this as a benefit, which I doubt--if anything, they want to get clear of the seal hunt--you can do what you like.

The bottom line is that they want to get clear of killing seals. Maybe I'm wrong in saying that. Maybe they don't want it. Maybe they want to make more money from it. I think the worst thing that could ever happen is that the seal hunt would disappear, and I guess they would just turn it off on kangaroos or something else, I don't know, on bottom trawling, or something like that. It's not going to benefit me by adding that.

[Hedley Butler]

It's not going to benefit me either, because my best trainer was my father when I was only a boy. It's nice to bring in training on safety--not a problem. But when it comes to training us old fellows again, as John said, we can teach some of the instructors how to do it.

As I said in my presentation this morning, red on white doesn't look good, no matter what you kill. If you kill a moose in the snow and cut his throat, red on white, that's not a nice thing. But you didn't see any cameras when I got my moose.

That's the problem we've got. These people are going out there, and one of these days...until somebody says they are not allowed out there. But when somebody gets killed, the Government of Canada or Newfoundland will say “No more permits”. That's what it's going to come down to. The fish harvesters right now are pissed that much. There's going to come a time when someone gets hurt over this. I don't want to see it. It's far from my mind, but when that happens you'll say there'll be no more cameras allowed and no more news media. That is what's going to happen.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Butler...

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you, Mr. Blais and Mr. Butler.

Mr. Lunney.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for coming today. As committee members, we want to give first line to our Newfoundland colleagues here because they're representing your interests first. However, I want to say that your views have been very well put forward today. Some of the things you've said are news to me, although we've had hearings on this before.

Mr. Winter, you put your case forward very forcefully and passionately. You raised some good questions about letters that seem to have gone unanswered. We are very interested in the things we're not discussing this morning about how we might move forward on this with the Fur Institute and DFAIT to actually form a strategy to combat this more forcefully.

We face similar issues here on the coast in the nose and tail of the Grand Banks with lack of enforcement. Now we're starting to take these issues much more seriously, and I think we're making headway on that front. There is hope on moving ahead on this file, but we obviously need to come up with a more effective strategy. For the record, I just want to let you know that message has been heard.

I am concerned about comments from fishers like Mr. Brown that he has to steam all those miles out there, sit idle for several days, put his life at risk because it's stormy out there, and then have to wait while other boats come along. It seems to me that when this season is as short as it is and you're trying to participate in the crab fishery as well, we have to look at management strategies that allow you to do what has to be done as quickly as possible. That might be helpful in keeping some of these other concerns at bay.

We've heard your message that science supports the use of the hakapik. I probably shouldn't say this on the record, but doggone it, I live on a hobby farm on Vancouver Island. It's about as far as you can get from here, frankly. If anybody had been around when that mink got in my chicken house and we were confronted by six dead chickens.... At the end of the day only one of us came out alive, but it was quite a battle, I'm telling you. It would have been handy to have had a hakapik or something. Those critters are fast.

I want to ask about incidents. You mentioned that you've been worried about people getting hurt. We were in St. Anthony the other day and we heard about fishermen being harassed. They're supposed to be 30 metres away. Have there been incidents here of people being in your face violating that? We had fishermen talk to us the other day about people attacking them with sticks, making threatening phone calls, naming their boats, publishing names, having people phone their homes and threaten family members, and so on. Is that part of your experience here as well? Can you elaborate on those concerns?

[Jim Winter]

It's happened to me. I've had death threats. I've had people threatening to skin my children alive, when they were much younger, so that I would understand how a mommy seal feels.

I've also seen people confronting sealers on the ice, when we've been there. But that goes back a few years.

I think Hedley's point about observers is well taken. There are no observers and there never have been. There are simply protesters who go under the guise of observers.

It is inconceivable to me how a man like Jerry Vlasak--a man who is banned from entry into the United Kingdom, who is banned from entry into Norway, because of his well-known, clearly espoused views that it is perfectly acceptable to kill human beings--could be endorsed by the Government of Canada and given a permit to be out confronting sealers in the Magdalen Islands. I don't understand how that could happen.

I think you have to look at the sealing operation as an outdoor abattoir, as Hedley has referred to it and as all the guys do. We know what it is. It's an outdoor abattoir. In Canada, abattoir workers work inside walls, on private property, and are protected from confrontation with anybody. I think, as do many sealers in Quebec and Newfoundland, Canadian sealers deserve the same protections.

There are examples in Canada of public lands and public properties being closed to the public for reasons of public safety or reasons of ecological concern--i.e., don't walk on these daisies; they're the only ones in the world, so we can't let you in there. There is absolutely no reason why the Magdalen Islands, an area that unfortunately, from the point of view of the Magdalen Islanders, is extremely accessible to all these protest groups....

The people on those islands are the ones who have to put up with an awful lot of stuff, even more than we do. We have the advantage of being a little bit harder to get to. Of course, that's not to say we haven't had to put up with our own amount of crap--excuse the language--over the years.

Can anybody explain to me why Canadian workers, obeying the laws of Canada, should be subjected to this type of harassment? Because I don't understand it.

On the other hand, I do think it is imperative that we have international veterinarians--independent veterinarians, not sponsored by animal rights groups--observing what we're doing. We do, like everybody else, want to do it properly. We would like to improve.

To my mind, and I think most sealers in the Magdalen Islands and in Newfoundland would agree with me, the whole concept of permitting these protesters under the guise of observation is just leading to disaster. As Hedley has said, and I agree with him, it's going to be a big problem one of these days; somebody is going to get hurt. It's like the old intersection where they don't put the darn stoplight up until after somebody's dead.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you, Mr. Winter.

Thank you, Mr. Lunney.

Mr. Kamp.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think most of my questions have been answered, but let me ask a question or make a comment or two.

To Mr. Winter, you haven't said much in terms of our relationship with the United States with regard to sealing. Have we lost that battle, do you think, or should we do anything more there? That's one question.

As well, you've said that you can't approach an emotional issue with just facts; that's a losing battle. However, I still don't think I've heard an answer in terms of what approach we need to take here. If we try to approach it emotionally, don't we just play into the hands of the media-savvy folks you refer to? It's an argument that's difficult to win no matter how we approach this, it would seem.

Maybe you could just recount for us what you think that strategy should be.

[Jim Winter]

On the first question, the original branch in America came under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which has been superseded by ICES and so on. But the Americans haven't changed their perspectives, or their attitudes. There was a small activity going on in the Senate prior to this last election, with about 10 or 15 senators basically pushing a “we're the good guys and these are bad people” kind of thing. It's not really a very serious thing.

However, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which exempts us from marketing in the United States, is a big problem. In all the areas where these bans went into place, whether it's the EU or America, the market didn't go away; the market is still there. The people who were buying before will buy again. They are prohibited from buying by their state. We, the state, know what's good for you--it's as simple as that--and we're going to tell you that you can't have this product.

I think that whatever action the Government of Canada is undertaking in terms of America, it has to be around the Marine Mammal Protection Act. If I understand it correctly, there is a lot of discussion going on in the United States right now around the Marine Mammal Protection Act. I wouldn't just write that off. I certainly would keep the focus on that.

As to your second question, as I said to Mr. Manning, I don't particularly want to go into too many details of my particular ideas of what needs to be done. But I do think there's one thing. There are a lot of very, very capable people in Canada who can deal with issues like this in any kind of a forum you choose, whether it's with the general public, media, or political people. Some of those people are politicians. Some of them are lay people. I would not undersell our abilities, and I certainly wouldn't oversell theirs. Just because they've had a free reign for 40 years is no reason to keep giving them one.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

A question for Mr. Peddle. You said you had trouble getting licensed sealers. I think you mentioned that part of the problem was that you weren't a level-2 fisherman. Can you tell us what that means?

[Larry Peddle]

The problem I had getting licensed sealers was that I was not allowed by the regulations to pick up a sealer, other than a sealer from a particular area. I agree about giving local preference, but if I can't get them locally, I should be able to go to Bonavista Bay, or somewhere, and pick up a sealer. But I wasn't allowed to do that. On the other end, prior to the sealing season opening, DFO did say that you could permit a sealer. A non-sealer without a licence could go, but you had to be a level-2 fisherman before you can permit. Although, if I was a master mariner, for example, I wasn't allowed to sign on that sealer.