Fisheries Committee on Dec. 12th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

You have five seconds.

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

Thank you very much. I know that you are very generous.

Ms. Aldworth, do the conclusions of the independent veterinarians cast any doubt on your opinion? Don't they give you pause?

[Rebecca Aldworth]

The author of the report, Pierre-Yves Daoust, is a board member and a director of the Fur Institute of Canada, which is a fur lobby group. I don't trust the report or the people who've been involved in it.

What you haven't heard from is a veterinary group that also attended the seal hunt in the same year, 2001. They observed the hunt when sealers didn't know they were being observed. They conducted post-mortems on seal carcasses on the ice, and their report concluded that the seal hunt results in considerable and unacceptable suffering. They also found that in 42% of the cases they studied, there wasn't enough cranial injury in the seals that had been clubbed to even guarantee unconsciousness at the time of skinning.

I note that none of the authors of that report have been invited to present to this committee. I believe there are several who would be happy to present to you.

I have observed the seal hunt far more than any of the authors of that report. Veterinarians have been attending and observing the commercial hunt for four decades. And to this day, the latest report, if you will, on the commercial seal hunt still contains recommendation after recommendation after recommendation about how to make this hunt more humane.

The fact is that we go up there and film this each and every year because it has never been made humane, despite 40 years of trying. It never will be made humane because of where it operates, how it operates, and how fast it operates.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Since I've let both of you go considerably over time, I just have to take some time for a point of clarification, but first a statement.

There was a veterinarian report back in the 1960s and 1970s by two American veterinarians who observed the hunt for years. I'm struggling to remember their names; I have the literature at home, and I can certainly get it. Back in the days when the hunt wasn't as regulated as it is now, they said that 99% of the seals were killed instantly and humanely, and died, I believe—I'm not a veterinarian—of severe cranial brain hemorrhage. That would have been in the days when the hunt was much more wide open than it is today.

On the question of a humane hunt, obviously part of the issue for the humaneness of the hunt is the short window of time that sealers have to actually capture their seals. Would you agree, then, just simply based on the humaneness of the hunt, that we could improve the hunt—and I'm not saying I agree with your statements at all—if we had more time, if we had a larger window of time for sealers to actually fill their quotas, instead of having this rush to fill their quota?

[Rebecca Aldworth]

I think it would be a small step in the right direction.

What I would argue is that the sealers themselves don't want to be out there for longer than they're out there. There's a deductible of a quarter of a million dollars from the insurance companies on the boats that go up into that ice. They don't want to have their boats up there for longer.

Crab opens up on the back of the sealing industry. No one who's crab fishing wants to be out getting seals when the crab fishery opens. So they have to do it in a couple of days. That's the only way it's economically viable for them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Well, that's not my question. My question is whether your organization would support—

[Rebecca Aldworth]

Oh, I would definitely—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

—an extension of the hunt, so it would give the sealers more time to take their quota.

[Rebecca Aldworth]

We would not support an extension of the hunt, but we would definitely support some way of changing the quota so that the hunt slowed down. Would that make it humane? No. Would it make it more humane? I think, maybe, yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

I'm trying to figure out what we're talking about here, and I apologize to the committee for taking some of the committee's time here, because I know I'm going to suffer grief for this later.

I'm going to go to Monsieur Blais.

Do you have a very quick answer to that? But I'd ask you to be quick.

[Dr. David Lavigne]

Yes, I would point out that the latest veterinary panel made exactly the point you're making, that this competitive rush in killing animals over a very short period of time leads to some of the problems. I think you'll find that in their report. I can point it out to you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Yes, but--

[Dr. David Lavigne]

Of course, improvement of any of these aspects--

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Of course, you're going to hurry up with your answer, because I'm taking someone else's time. So I ask you to hurry up, please.

[Dr. David Lavigne]

Okay. Improvement is an incremental thing. So, of course, anybody who is opposed to inhumane killing would support recommendations that would reduce the amount of suffering.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you.

Monsieur Stoffer.

I almost gave you another round, Monsieur Blais.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Over the years we've heard that an adult seal consumes about a tonne of seafood per year. Would you figure that statement is accurate?

[Dr. David Lavigne]

The amount of food a seal eats, when you weigh it, depends very much on the energy content. So if you're eating a very fat, rich fish, you consume less of it than if you're eating something that doesn't have a whole lot of calories in it. But yes, that's in the correct order of magnitude, but it can vary by a factor of three.

The other point I would make is that just estimating how much an animal eats tells you nothing about the potential impact on fisheries. The way we tend to think about things is to have this simple view of the world in which seals eat fish, so obviously more seals mean fewer fish. But the marine environment's more complicated than that, so let's just make it a little bit more complicated and put in a three-step system whereby seals eat the predator of a commercially important fish. When you have that situation, fewer seals mean fewer fish for fishermen. I think that's the complication that people tend not to understand, and that's one of the real problems in explaining to people just how complicated marine systems really are.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

I understand. In fact, I believe in your 1999 presentation you showed us a map of the complexity of the interconnectivity, and it looked like a Spirograph gone out of control. DFO scientists, in my view, have never said that the seals would increase the recovery of other commercial species, and they never said they were the cause of it. What they said is that there's a possibility that the increased number of seals from 1982 to present day, along with all the other factors of overfishing, climate change, and environment, may have an impact on the recovery of cod and other stocks.

They've never said conclusively that if you wiped out all the seals, the cod would come back tomorrow. They've never said that. They've said that there is a possibility that one of the factors that may hinder the recovery of the cod stocks is the abundance of seals out there. They've said that is a possibility.

[Dr. David Lavigne]

Yes. I can translate that into the science. Everything you said, I agree with. If you translate that into the science, they have generated a hypothesis, which they have yet to test. In fact, they've tried to test it, and they have yet to get any evidence that the seals are impeding the recovery, or indeed any evidence that the seals are benefiting the recovery. So the emphasis has to be on the idea that if this were true, then this might happen. I agree.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Thank you.

If I may say, Rebecca, when you talked about the stopping of the fur—that this is a fur kill and not necessarily.... I have concerns with that. I lived in the Yukon for nine years and watched various groups around the world try to put an end to the leghold trap and to fur trapping and all of that. That had quite a devastating effect on first nations people in the Yukon and those in other areas, such as the Inuit and the Innu in Labrador. That's just taking them, and not including our northern provinces with the Métis and everybody else.

Do you not feel, then, that with those types of comments, you are including or absorbing.... I know your intention is not to hurt their livelihood, but the reality is first nations people, as you're aware, have been doing this traditionally for thousands of years. By saying you're anti-fur, period—you're not just talking about seals, you're talking about all animals—do you not feel that you could be damaging their traditional lifestyle? You're basically saying, as they've said to me, you want them to assimilate into the white man's culture, when they believe that their traditional forms of trapping and hunting are what they've always done and they'll continue to do so, and they just want various groups to get off their backs and allow them to do what they do best.

[Rebecca Aldworth]

If you do the math, today the average aboriginal trapper brings home approximately $350 Canadian a year. That's according to the Canadian government's own statistics. I'm not laughing at the small amount of money, because it is some money.

On the assimilation of native cultures, the worst player in that has been the Hudson's Bay Company. Traditional native subsistence killing of any animal is not opposed by any animal protection group. International trade bans on harp and hooded seal products do not affect subsistence hunting of any animal, because the nature of subsistence involves local consumption of the product.

As to native sealing, the commercial seal hunt in Nunavut, if you want to call it that, brings in approximately $500,000 per year to Nunavut. It's a very small industry. When I went to NAMMCO and spoke to seal hunters from Nunavut, most of them do it for subsistence purposes. They don't actually sell the skins. Most of them believe the commercial seal hunt in Canada is cruel, should be ended, and has done more to destroy aboriginal native sealing in Canada than any animal protection group.

So if you actually speak to the people who are doing the hunting, the people in Nunavut, they believe the worst thing that's ever happened to native sealing has been the commercial seal hunt off the east coast of Canada, which is conducted by non-native people for commercial reasons, to produce fur coats.

I guess that answers your question. I don't want to rattle on.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Thank you.

Do you not fear then that you would be including hunters of marten, beaver, or anything else? They could be trapped in this vortex and thus lose their traditional way of life.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Mr. Stoffer, once again, when I talked to someone else for a second you went overtime by a minute.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Yes, sir. You were not paying attention.