Fisheries Committee on Dec. 12th, 2006

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

All we're talking about is whether we can do this humanely. We have testimony from veterinarians who have said that at least for the killing, the hakapik is the best.

We recognize that this is an abattoir on the ice. We know it's not a picnic out there. It's not a Sunday school picnic; we recognize that. But I think where we want to get to, if there are infractions taking place and you're submitting this film to DFO, is to know why these people who contravene those best practices are not being taken.... That's serious—

[Rebecca Aldworth]

Because it's all of them.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

—and it's something we want to know, as a committee.

[Rebecca Aldworth]

It's because you'd have to shut down the hunt, if you were going to shut that down, and DFO knows it too.

In terms of what I've said when I've come in here, I want to make the point that I was observing this committee when the European delegation appeared. And excuse me for being cynical, but members of this committee informed the European delegation that the seal hunt accounts for 50% of the income of the people who do it and that the footage we show is 20 years out of date.

You embarrassed the Canadian government in front of that delegation. I had to explain to a committee of European parliamentarians how the footage I was showing them was in fact not 20 years out of date, and that this was a PR talking point for the Canadian government, because they have no way to defend what appears in those images.

Excuse me for being cynical, but HSUS and IFAW are the two groups you've had come in. Notably absent are the Animal Alliance of Canada, Environment Voters, the Nova Scotia humane society, the Animal Rights Collective of Halifax, the Atlantic Canadian Anti-Sealing Coalition, the Vancouver Humane Society, the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, the World Society for the Protection of Animals, and the Green Party of Canada—all organizations that oppose the commercial seal hunt and support its being phased out.

And you're hearing from two. You've heard from dozens of sealing industry spokespeople, government scientists—

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

We've heard from others as well.

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

I am sorry, but you have no time left. I allowed Ms. Aldworth to go overtime because she needed time to answer your question, which you took too much time for.

Mr. Stoffer.

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

And then Monsieur Blais.

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

And Monsieur Asselin.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Yes. And Mr. Lavigne had his hand up. I didn't allow him to interject the last time, so I need to allow him to do so this time.

[Dr. David Lavigne]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Very briefly, Dr. Alice Crook, who you've referred to several times this morning, in their latest report says, in answer to your question, “The Canadian...seal hunt has the potential to be a humane hunt”. That's what they've put in writing.

I've been working on this since 1969, and the only observation I would make is that since that time, report after report—which the chair might have referred to—has said it has the potential. We have not, in the last 35 years, achieved that potential.

Certainly my organization would support anything your committee can do to help this hunt achieve the potential that is recognized by veterinarians, that's recognized by people who have been observing this hunt for 30 years or more.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Monsieur Asselin.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I represent a riding on the North Shore of the St. Lawrence River. A large part of my riding is located between Kegaska and Blanc-Sablon and reaches up to the border of Labrador. The villages there live exclusively off of the only industry in the area, which is fishing. The families living in these villages along the coast went there for the sole reason that they could fish.

Seals are marine mammals which live in the water and feed on fish at the seabed level. One can only conclude that seals are a major predator of cod or any other ground fish. These same fishermen today must deal with a cod moratorium. They are not allowed to fish cod because of this moratorium, which is in place so that the cod can regenerate.

Because of dwindling numbers of ground fish, these fishermen must also deal with lower fishing quotas. Indeed, some species are on their way to extinction. However, the seal population has increased considerably, but fishermen cannot exercise their profession, namely fishing, because of the growing number of seals, which eat ground fish. As you can understand, this has created a certain degree of frustration.

Some fishermen are even asking for sports licences to hunt seals for their own survival.

So since these villages live exclusively off fishing—which is the only industry on the lower North Shore—it is only normal for them to ask us to regulate the seal hunt and to provide them with more seal hunting licences in order to protect the ground fish.

A little earlier, I was watching your video on cruelty to animals. For people who are sensitive to the killing of animals, you presented several scenarios. In one, you showed the seal hunt with an image of red blood on white ice. You then showed an image of a pig being bled and crying out, squealing for 15 or 20 minutes until it bled to death. You also showed images of a chicken with its head cut off, which was thrown into boiling water, and then put on a conveyor belt, and was plucked but still moving. You also showed a sheep being led to the slaughterhouse with tears in its eyes and which meekly obeyed because it could not defend itself. A child or a person sensitive to this type of situation would of course be sensitive to the killing of any animal.

You show the seal hunt, but I also want to let you know what happens when a pig, a chicken or a sheep are killed. Please rest assured that people are also sensitive to those types of situations.

[Rebecca Aldworth]

We do that. The largest program area of the Humane Society of the United States, as I said earlier, is factory farming. We work in factory farms to improve conditions for animals and stop cruel factory farming practices. I could go on and on, but you can see it all on our website.

We do talk about cruelty to all animals, but this is a hunt for fur coats for the fashion industry. It brings in very little money for the people involved and could be replaced by the federal government in a heartbeat, if it wanted to do so. This hunt does not need to occur. It should have been ended half a century ago.

Global markets for seal products are closing fast. The European Union is going to shut down. The Council of Europe has just passed a recommendation for all of its 46 member countries, including Russia and Turkey, to ban seal products. We are seeing markets shutting. There is no future in the commercial sealing industry, just as in 1972 there was no future in commercial whaling in Canada. The government reacted then; it paid the whalers for their licenses, and whalers were able to reinvest in other opportunities. That's what we're asking for, for the people of Atlantic Canada. There is no future in the commercial seal hunt; those licenses are worth something today to those people, but they won't be in ten years.

We believe the government should act now for the people involved in the seal hunt, for the seals, and because Canada's international reputation is suffering every day it continues.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

Excuse me, the time is up. I'm sorry. You make statements before the questions, and you have to give them a chance to answer. You're over five minutes.

Mr. Stoffer.

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

Rebecca, I'm just going to read this out as I have it:

After the 1982 collapse of the international sealskin market, Inuit hunters were no longer able to support their families by selling sealskins. This led to a measurable dramatic rise in alcoholism, suicides, and family violence as the role of the father became obsolete.

Do you really think that the killing of the international sealskin market does not affect Inuit hunters?

[Rebecca Aldworth]

I do not believe the closing of international markets for seal products will affect native communities in Canada. I think that is one of the most offensive pieces of text I have ever read—and I've read it too.

We live in a nation where so many injustices have been committed against native people. For the Canadian government, or for any person claiming to represent native people in this country, to blame native suicide rates on the closure of global sealskin markets is offensive to an extreme that I can't even begin to sum up in this hearing. It is offensive to the people who have lived in those communities, who have dealt with being transplanted from their homes, who have dealt with their land being taken away from them, the erosion of their heritage and traditions—which is subsistence hunting, not commercial hunting. Those things are very real.

To blame suicide rates on any factor involving the closure of seal product markets is trivializing the very real problems that are facing native communities today, just as it is trivializing the poverty that is faced in rural outports in Newfoundland.

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

I'll just say I got that comment from someone who represents the national Inuit organization. I didn't make this up.

Has your group, the HSUS, had a chance to speak to Phil Fontaine, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations?

[Rebecca Aldworth]

We haven't spoken to Phil Fontaine, but we have spoken to the head of the Greenland seal hunters association. We've spoken to the head of the Nunavut seal hunters association. I met with a very large number of industry people out at the NAMMCO meeting in Denmark. We're very committed to working with those communities.

One thing native people can do is label native seal products. That is a very obvious thing that they can do in the wake of closing markets. When we work on international trade bans, we are always very clear that those pieces of legislation will exempt native products. So if you look back to the 1980s ban of whitecoat and blueback seal products, you'll see it clearly exempted native products. Those particular seals were not actually hunted by native communities.

So, no, I don't believe the impact was as high as people try to make it seem. Today, the piece of legislation that is being considered by the European Union specifically exempts products caught by traditional native hunters.

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

I have another question.

Dr. Lavigne, if the seal hunt were stopped tomorrow.... And for Mr. Byrne, who was here earlier, there was a women's organization in the States that last February offered $25.5 million to the Canadian government to buy off all the sealers, and that was turned down. So there was an offer at one time. But the reality is, sir, if the seal hunt stopped tomorrow, as your organization would like done, the fear is that the seals themselves would increase to a point where they would implode. There's a risk that there would be too many animals out in the ocean, and they would implode—either through disease or something else—that they would die with a fairly high mortality.

The final question for you is how many seals should there be to have a balance in the ecosystem in our oceans on the east coast?

[Dr. David Lavigne]

That question is frequently asked, and no scientist can answer it. There is no ideal level. There is in ecology no balance of nature. That was rejected by ecologists about 70 years ago. So this is one of these things that kind of carries on. We can see it today; you just have to look at the Arctic and what's happening to polar bears. There is no balance. The world is in constant flux, sometimes because that's what the earth does and sometimes because of our activities.

If there were no seal hunt tomorrow, what we know about the biology of seals is that they would in fact eventually limit their numbers through the availability of food and competition between individuals. Technically, it's called a density-dependent response. We would never predict that a seal population would simply explode.

There's just one more brief point. I would like to refer to density dependent. What it basically means is that as the population goes up, individuals have to compete more for food, they get less food, their birth rate does down, their mortality rate goes up, etc.

In response to a question earlier and to your question, I'd like to refer you to a paper that was recently published, co-authored by a person at UBC and by two Canadian government scientists in Mont-Joli. It's called “The Trophic Role of Marine Mammals in the Northern Gulf of St. Lawrence”, and it talks about the role that marine mammals play in marine ecosystems. The last line talks about--this is the last line in the paper—“This beneficial predation effect is even greater than the predation itself, leading to an overall positive impact of the predator on the system.”

In other words, this complex system, which I did show and I actually referred to in this year's presentation, is structured and ordered by the feeding interactions that occur in it, and harp seals eat all sorts of prey, as you noted in that figure. The end result is a positive impact on the system. If you start to remove predators, it reminds me of what Victor B. Scheffer, one of the grand old fathers of American pinniped biology, said in 1972: “If you remove seals from the system, what sorts of holes are left?” We can't answer that question.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

I would like to thank our witnesses for appearing here today. I think everyone had a chance to ask questions.

I would ask if you could follow up in writing on a couple of points that were made, and I have one comment before we close.

You held up a book there. Could you follow up with the peer review of the scientific community on that book, on what other—

[Dr. David Lavigne]

Every chapter in this book was reviewed by a peer, as with most books. I was the editor of the book.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

I appreciate that.

If you could just give us the names of the organizations, we could follow up on that.

[Dr. David Lavigne]

Mr. Chair, may I present you with a copy?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

You may, as a matter of fact.

The other issue is the aboriginal hunt. I think the record has been corrected a couple of times today. I don't pretend to be the expert on every aboriginal community in northern Canada, but I've been in a number of them. The truth has to be told about when the fur moratorium came into place and the leg-hold trap was nearly banned totally in the country. The aboriginal first nations suicides went up 250% and alcoholism increased dramatically. There was a lack of a sense of place and self-worth. Anyone who has been around the aboriginal culture at all would understand that. It was a terrible thing that happened. When you shut down the sale of fur, you don't just shut down the sale of fur for non-aboriginals, you shut it down for everybody. You close off a marketplace.

I have a real concern. You mentioned whaling. We have a huge first nations whale hunt. It's a huge hunt, probably the largest whale hunt in the world. Are narwhal and porpoises and belugas next on the list? And then what happens?

I don't think, on the one hand, you can hold the aboriginal community up and say we're going to protect this interesting group of Canadian society, when, quite frankly—and this needs to be said—I think they're simply next on the list. When it's more convenient and they have no one else standing with them and they're standing alone.... It's a very, very difficult life in northern communities for people who are not attached to a southern lifeline. There are all kinds of people who have that southern lifeline and who travel south and live south, but they don't have to subsist in that environment.

I think there are some recommendations made here today that we'll follow up on: lengthening the hunt and making sure there are more observers out there. There are other recommendations for which I think the record, especially with first nations, needs to be corrected.

Again, I apologize for taking too much time for my comments.

I appreciate both our witnesses coming.

The other comment I wanted to ask you to follow up on.... You made a comment. This is important. You said your fundraising doesn't come from anti-sealing, that it was a very, very small portion—