No, not at all. In fact, when you get the endnotes to my presentation, you will note that many of the sources I cited are papers authored by DFO scientists.
There isn't nearly as much scientific controversy about the current situation as there is conflict over values. If the estimate of sustainable yield, and that's DFO's estimate, is 250,000, and if you set the total allowable catch above that, it follows—and I don't think you'll find a scientist in Canada who would disagree with this—that if the models are all right, that population has to drop. That's what the sustainable yield level is.
The only one specific example you gave me of a gross difference of scientific opinion was this comment about sustainability. Every time you use that word, of course, you have to define it. So what I'm saying, and I don't think you'll find a scientist who would disagree with me, is that—and I was very careful in the wording in my presentation—the current TAC is higher than the sustainable yield; therefore, the population should decline.
If you look at this over—what was the timeframe I used—15 years, there will still be seals out there. So in that sense, if you want to define it, it's sustainable in the sense that you haven't wiped the population out yet.
You know as well as anybody that scientists tend to use technical terms and things like this, but I worked very hard in my presentation to give you examples where Canadian government scientists are saying exactly the things that I've been saying.
I think it's very interesting, your comment about my presentation perhaps not being very different from 1999. Well, the science has changed qualitatively since 1999, but the Canadian government's management of that hunt has not kept up with the developments in modern conservation biology. It hasn't been sufficiently precautionary.
If you're suggesting that I might have some arguments with Canadian government scientists—who I also talk to, by the way—yes, we'd argue on the details. But when we first suggested in 2000 that the Canadian government should adopt a precautionary approach in the paper on conservation biology, within a year or two the Canadian government or the DFO scientists were putting forward something they called precautionary. Now the scientific argument is on the definition of “precautionary”.
So I don't see any big conflict. I'd be quite happy to sit down with my colleagues in DFO in front of this committee, and I think you'd be surprised at the level of agreement among us.