: Good afternoon to you all. I would like to thank you for having travelled all the way to the Magdalen Islands. That is greatly appreciated.
I would also like to thank Raynald Blais for his excellent work in defending the seal industry, for all the meetings he has attended and all the efforts he has made to defend our industry.
First of all, I would like to inform you that a group is currently being formed with representatives of the Canadian seal and fur industries. I was told that you were given a presentation on that yesterday in Newfoundland and Labrador. That group is in great need of support.
I am the Vice-President of Produits du loup marin TAMASU, a company that processes furs and oil. A lot is being said about the seal fur industry, but there are many developments underway concerning oil, particularly biodiesel. In fact, seal oil has great potential for the future of biodiesel and omega 3 fatty acids. We produce very high quality oil that is rich in omega 3s. This year, the quality of our oil was recognized as being the best currently on the market with regard to omega 3 fatty acids.
I would like to come back to the association with the Canadian Fur Institute, which has already experienced problems similar to those we are currently facing in the seal industry. In recent years, the Institute has faced the same problem with the Europeans, in the fur sector, and has had success in meeting the challenge. The association therefore has expertise that can be very helpful to the seal industry in general. However, such an association needs financial support and other types of assistance from the Canadian government to win the battle it has to wage against those who want to abolish the hunt.
The other part of my presentation deals more with the demand for fair quotas. We in the Magdalen Islands do not feel that we have received fair treatment under the latest management plan. In fact, with regard to the sharing of resources, certain criteria were not taken into account, such as our past hunting quotas. In the 1980s, we had about two thirds or close to 75 % of seal landings in the gulf; today, we have 20 %. That accounts for some 5.6 % of total seal landings. We have not been treated fairly in this respect, because no thought was given to the fact that the seal industry was developed in large part by hunters from the Magdalen Islands.
The other criterion is adjacency. We know that much of the seal herd in the gulf comes to the Islands to calve. In all other resource industries where resources were allocated by quotas or regional quotas, adjacency was an extremely important criterion; in the case of seals, adjacency was given little or no consideration.
We know that, normally, regions that are closest to the resource should have the best access to that resource. In recent years, our industry processed from 30,000 to 35,000 seal pelts. That is a small business compared with the giants in Newfoundland and Labrador.
In addition, because our quota were insufficient to support an industry, we had to obtain part of our raw materials from Newfoundland and Labrador. Currently, the government of Newfoundland has legislation prohibiting the export of seal pelts. There is even a bill intended to increase the restriction and to ensure that pelts are processed in Newfoundland and Labrador as of 2008. By forcing the industry to undergo a complete transformation, Newfoundland and Labrador is simply intent on controlling the entire seal industry.
We find that completely unfair. Our quota should be at least 30,000 hides, which would allow us to develop a true industry here, in the Magdalen Islands.
Thank you for your attention.