Fisheries Committee on Dec. 12th, 2006

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

I will now tell you why. I would like to take another tone. I prefer the tone of exchange and dialogue, rather than that of provocation. However, you say things and write things which are outrageous lies. Further, you say it to the public. You have a certain degree of credibility. Unfortunately, I do not understand why you are taking advantage of the credibility you have, and I don't even want to imagine why. I am extremely disappointed.

When I hear your organizations describe the seal hunt as a massacre, I believe you are lying. When you refer to baby seals, you are also lying. It just doesn't happen. It's just a way for you to sell an image and an issue. Any communications expert will tell you that you have chosen an excellent subject, namely baby seals. When your supporter, one Brigitte Bardot, gives a press conference with a poster in the background showing a baby harp seal or a seal on the ice being battered, these are lies too. That is why I unfortunately feel caught in the vice of demagogy and disinformation. Congratulations, you've done a great job.

Here is my first question. You said that you saw a seal which was left on the ice for 90 minutes. When you realized that it was probably still alive—in my opinion, that would have taken three or four minutes at the most because you said you have a lot of experience in this area—why is it that you waited 90 minutes?

[Rebecca Aldworth]

First of all, there is a lot there, and I'd like to address a couple of things. I don't know if this was the translation, but if you're saying the concept of baby seals is a lie, then you, sir, need to go to the ice floes and visit these animals. There are baby seals out there.

Sealers will tell you that these are very young seals. They will tell you they're pups, some will even say baby seals. The fact that I choose the word “baby” is my own choice. Our organization alternately uses the word “pups”, “juvenile seals”, “very young seals”, “babies”. The word “baby” is an applicable term, in my opinion and my organization's opinion. The fact that you don't agree doesn't make us liars; it makes us having a difference of opinion.

I also want to say that the actions of any other animal protection group are not controlled by me. If Brigitte Bardot chooses to use certain images in her publicity, she is not a part of the Humane Society of the United States and she doesn't work for me and I don't tell her what to display or not display. Brigitte Bardot runs the Bardot Foundation in France, and they choose their own images. That's not the Humane Society of the United States.

So to answer your question, no, it didn't take me three to four minutes to realize the seal was alive. I realized the seal was alive the second I saw this seal crawling, breathing out blood. It was very clear this animal was not only alive, but conscious. We had no way to humanely euthanize this animal.

As I have witnessed over eight years, it is very difficult to kill a seal. I see so many of them left behind after they've been clubbed. These sealers are strong and they're out there with heavy clubs, with long wooden clubs with metal ends on them, with wooden bats. They hit them hard, and still these animals are revived. They regain consciousness when they're left in piles on the ice floes.

I am not a veterinarian and I am not qualified to euthanize a seal. This was very heartbreaking to live through, because this animal was in a lot of pain, and there were no enforcement officers anywhere out there, because there never are. All I could do.... I had a satellite phone and I called the United States and I asked them to see if they could find a marine biologist or a veterinary college to see if we could move this animal, if this animal could survive a helicopter trip, if there was something we could do.

We had just got the Atlantic Veterinary College on the phone when the sealers came back and stabbed the seal through the skull with a spike and then proceeded to cut the seal open as it continued to move its upper flippers and show signs of response to pain.

This is not easy to live through. And if this were one incident, that would be one thing, but it's not. Because when I went to the next pile of seals, there were two conscious seals there. The year before when I was up on the ice floes, I filmed a seal that was there for 60 minutes, and this is not easy. It wouldn't be easy for a sealer. It wouldn't be easy for you. You're a human being, and I'm sure you have a dog or a cat at home, and you care about animals.

The problem is this happens on the ice floes every year, and it can't be stopped because of the physical environment in which the hunt operates and the speed at which it has to operate. That's why it needs to end.

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

Now please explain to me briefly why you maintain that the seal hunt is a massacre.

[Rebecca Aldworth]

To me it is a massacre of wildlife. I believe this population should be left. It should not be hunted commercially for fur coats. I believe this hunt is a very large-scale, very intensive hunt that occurs over a couple of days during the year. This is the world's largest slaughter of marine mammals. In the past three years, more than one million seals have been killed. Yes, it is a massacre.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Merci.

Mr. Stoffer.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank both of our witnesses for appearing before us today.

I want to start out by saying that, in the end, I know what IFAW's main goal is, not just within the seal hunt but within all animal welfare—that is, the protection of animals in their environment, which leads to the protection of the human species. In many, many ways, such as the Sable Island Gully and many others, you should be congratulated.

But where I have differences of opinion is on the seal hunt. And, Rebecca, you're right. If that footage was passed on to DFO and if they have refused to move on it and charge, then the charges should be appropriate. The reality is, you are correct, this committee has unanimously accepted the commercial seal hunt, based on the evidence that is before us, in many, many years of observation. I, like many others, have observed the seal hunt, although I have not witnessed the rapid, as you call it on the footage.... I have seen others, so I have experience in that regard.

One of the things that I have, though, is that I speak to DFO scientists on a regular basis on behalf of our party, right across the country, Mr. Lavigne, and they say things differently than you're saying them. You appeared before us in 1999 and you're appearing before us now in 2006, and scientifically, you haven't changed your wording at all. Basically, you said the same thing before. But the scientists at DFO are saying something completely different—and not just one scientist, but several scientists.

I'm just wondering. It's like you get 100 lawyers in a room and you get 100 legal opinions. You get 100 economists, and you get 100 different economists' points of view. But in the scientific view, not just within DFO but within various universities in the Nova Scotia area and others, they're saying things differently, that the hunt can be sustained at 250,000, or the current TAC that is there now of 330,000, I believe. But obviously if global warming and serious things do take effect, there will be other mitigating factors that affect not just the seals but other species.

Are you saying, then, that DFO has its science incorrect, or are they telling us something that is not factual?

[Dr. David Lavigne]

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.

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

I tend to agree with you that DFO has failed repeatedly over the years to exercise the precautionary principle with this species and other species--in terms of cod, salmon, and every other species.

Rebecca, on the issue of the—I can't even say that word—the hakapik—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Mr. Stoffer, quickly.

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

—the instrument called the hakapik, there have been a lot of recommendations about shooting the seals instead of using that. Obviously, that still wouldn't satisfy the concern with ending the hunt, but would it satisfy the so-called humaneness of it, if, instead of using the hakapik, they used a heavy-gauge rifle in order to kill the animal instantly, if at all possible?

[Rebecca Aldworth]

No, it wouldn't, from our perspective.

From my observations, and also studies by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, if you look at the commercial seal hunt, these guys are shooting at seals from moving boats, they're shooting moving animals on moving ice floes. It's very hard to kill a seal with one bullet in those conditions, often in extreme weather conditions, big ocean swells.

I was just at a North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission meeting in Denmark. They noted struck and loss is very influenced by environmental factors. We have a hunt that occurs far offshore, on the ocean, on these ice floes. So when sealers are shooting at animals, they often don't kill them with just one bullet. What I observe up in the Front, where the Canadian government claims that 90% of the seals are killed, is that sealers will immobilize seals with a bullet, pull the boat up alongside, climb over the side, hop onto a very small ice pan and finish the animal off with a club, hook the animal, drag the animal onto the boat. Sometimes they don't bother clubbing before they hook the animal and drag them onto the boat.

It's a very inaccurate way of killing animals. The Canadian government admits that 5% of the young seals that are shot at on or near ice floes are struck and lost, which means they're wounded and they're allowed to escape. They're recovered and they die slowly. If you do the math, that 5%, plus the 50% of adult seals that the Canadian government estimates are struck and lost, translates to an average of 26,000 seals per year. That's a tremendous number of animals dying slow and painful deaths. So, no, we don't believe that shooting is a good way to kill these animals.

As a final point on that, processing companies take off money for every bullet hole they find in the skin, so sealers have an incentive not to shoot seals more than once. So if you immobilize a seal with a bullet, you don't want to shoot that seal again, because the company is going to take off money for that extra bullet hole. That's why you will wait and go and club the animal to finish it off. That is the reality of the commercial seal hunt. It's because of the physical environment in which this hunt operates that shooting and clubbing are both inherently inhumane.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Mr. Manning.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I welcome our guests. I have a couple of quick questions to begin.

Does your organization, Ms. Aldworth, agree with the killing of any animals?

[Rebecca Aldworth]

Do we agree with the killing of any animals? I would find it very difficult to answer that question. Does anybody agree with needless killing of animals? No.

Do we recognize that there are industries that use animals? Yes. Do we work to improve conditions for those animals in those industries? Yes.

We work in factory farms and laboratories to improve conditions for the animals that are involved in those industries.

We don't agree with the killing of animals for fur coats. We don't agree with the killing of marine mammals for commercial reasons. So I would say that we're opposed to commercial sealing and we are opposed to other industries that use animals. Whether we're opposed to all use of animals in industry, I would probably have to say no, because we work with those industries to improve conditions.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

So you work with those industries in the laboratory, but it happens that the ice floes off our province is our laboratory.

[Rebecca Aldworth]

It's certainly not a laboratory. It's the wilderness.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

In a chicken house, where they're cutting heads off the chickens, or at an abattoir, or whatever you want to call it, the fact is that any killing of animals is a messy game.

[Rebecca Aldworth]

The one thing I would argue about—

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

What I'm trying to get at, if I could, is that you work with these other organizations to improve on the way they kill the animals, but there doesn't seem to be any leeway in working with the government or the people who are involved in the sealing industry on how they kill animals. It's a carte blanche, cut it out, we don't want anything to do with that.

In that regard, why wouldn't you assist in addressing that concern? Or is it the fact that a baby seal on a video clip is more eye-catching to the general public than would be a chicken getting its head cut off in the chicken house?

[Rebecca Aldworth]

Our largest program area in the Humane Society of the United States is factory farming. So I would state that clearly.

I guess I have three points in answer to you.

First, of course we support any effort that will make this hunt more humane. But we believe, as Dr. Mary Richardson does--she's a Canadian veterinary expert in humane slaughter techniques--that this hunt is inherently inhumane. It can never be made humane according to Canadian standards of humane slaughter because of where it operates and how fast it has to operate. So yes, we support any effort to make it more humane, but we don't believe it can be made acceptably humane.

This is not a laboratory setting, nor is it an abattoir. This hunt occurs far offshore, on unstable ice floes, in extreme weather conditions. I would, I guess, argue in terms of whether we work to make it more humane. There is a reason we submit this footage to Fisheries and Oceans Canada year after year. It's because we want it to crack down on the worst offenders out there. Unfortunately, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, in my experience, has not lived up to that task. That's why, having been involved in submitting over 700 instances just like these, just as shocking as these, just as heart-wrenching as these, we still have not seen a single charge laid by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. So yes, I certainly do support making the hunt more humane in any way it can be. But no, I don't believe it ever can be made humane.

I would also argue that this is not a hunt for food. This is a hunt that produces fur coats. The Canadian government itself—Ken Jones—describes this as primarily a fur hunt. The carcasses are dumped out there on the ice floes. Blubber is a by-product of the fur trade. This is a hunt for skins that are used in the fashion industry.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

In your opening remarks you mentioned the fact that your concern in coming here today was to discuss this with us as a committee, but I guess if you stayed here for 100 years, you think you may never convince us of your belief. And I guess if we stay here for another 100, we'll never convince you of ours, because you're fixated on your side of the equation, and you believe that we're fixated on our side. So I guess it's a situation that is going to be competitive going forward, because we're not going to change your mind anyway, no more than you believe you can change ours.

[Rebecca Aldworth]

I'm not here so you can change my mind. I'm here to hopefully change yours.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

Yes, exactly.

[Rebecca Aldworth]

But I would argue this one point. As a politician in Newfoundland, I know how hard it would be to ever take a stand to end the commercial seal hunt, politically. It would be almost impossible. I'm not saying the people in here have personal biases. I'm saying that politically it would be very difficult for many of the members sitting around this table to take a stand against the commercial seal hunt. That's what I'm saying. Perhaps it sounds cynical, and I apologize for that, but I have been to a number of these hearings, and I understand the constraints within which you're working.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

As an organization, do you have estimates of what the seal population is at the present time?