Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm not here as our selected spokesperson to promote the written declaration that was signed by a majority of members of the European Parliament. That's partly because I haven't signed it, but I'm not surprised that a majority of members did.
To be precise, it calls on the European Commission to draft a regulation to ban the import, export, and sale of all harp and hooded seal products. It doesn't specifically say we call on Canada to end the seal hunt, because that's not within our power of remit. I presume in some ways it could be considered that a ban on the trade and products could be, although that's a matter of opinion, I know.
I'm not surprised that a majority of members signed this declaration, because it was accompanied by a very high-profile and well-organized campaign of pressure, shall I say, or contact being made with members of the European Parliament. In my particular case, and I suspect we were all in the same position, I had hundreds of contacts from my own constituents demanding that I sign this written declaration, and these requests from constituents were very often accompanied by some of the graphic images that I'm sure you're very familiar with in terms of the brochures, and websites, and so on of animal welfare organizations. That's really the context in which that declaration gained the necessary majority of signatures.
As I did yesterday, I'll raise this particular newspaper, which is from last Saturday in Scotland. The Scotsman newspaper's front page says “From the killing fields of Canada to the shops of Scotland”, with coloured pictures of a young looking seal about to be thumped with a club. That is the context as far as our constituents are concerned, although I have to say that The Scotsman, at least, in the two-page story that was inside the paper, did devote a quarter of a page to the viewpoint from Canada.
One of the reasons I didn't sign it, apart from the fact that I'd been to Newfoundland and Labrador before and had had a certain amount of background on the other side of the story, is that I knew we were coming here on this particular mission, and I am here again--and I think we're all here--in full listening mode in terms of hearing not just your views but those directly involved in the industry's views, so that we can properly weigh up the evidence that was put to us by those who promoted this written declaration with the views of those directly involved in communities affected and involved in the hunt or the harvest of seals.