Fisheries Committee on Dec. 12th, 2006

[Rebecca Aldworth]

I only have the Canadian government's estimates. And as Dr. Lavigne pointed out earlier, I believe that's 5.8 million, according to the last survey. What I would note—

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

Do you believe that?

[Rebecca Aldworth]

I don't believe that.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

Now, what would your estimate be?

[Rebecca Aldworth]

I'm not a biologist. I wouldn't make an estimate. All I would say is—

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

But your organization receives, I'm sure—I don't know the exact amount—a large number of dollars per year. Wouldn't it be in your best interest to see what the population is out there to determine for yourselves what the population would be? If you're going to argue the point of the Canadian government population, wouldn't it be good to have a counter-argument?

[Rebecca Aldworth]

We do have a counter-argument, in that we've looked at the modeling the Canadian government uses to arrive at those populations. For example, to arrive at that 5.8 million, the Canadian government surveyed about 2% of the breeding site seal population, came up with a pup production estimate, and modelled from there to arrive at the population of 5.8 million. We look at the way the survey was conducted and the fact that it relied very heavily on visual counts from helicopters by DFO staff.

We look at those problems in the population survey. I believe it is the responsibility of the Canadian government to conduct accurate population surveys. I would not rule out our conducting a population survey. What I can say is that I fly over every square inch of the gulf and the front every single year. We see adults out there. We don't see pups. It's getting worse and worse out there in terms of ice conditions. Where we used to see pack ice everywhere, we don't.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

One of the biggest issues we face in Newfoundland that's now growing is the fact that we are being told—I don't know how you count the pups, either, you can't go out running around the ice trying to count 5.8 million pups—that there are 5.8 million pups out there compared to approximately two million in the 1970s.

[A voice]

You mean animals.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

I mean animals, I'm sorry.

The fact is, we've been told, Canadians have been told, the world has been told, that this seal population has increased vastly over the past number of years. We have a total allowable catch of approximately 300,000, and we still continue to increase. So wouldn't you think that from your organization's point of view it would be money well spent to counter that argument?

[Rebecca Aldworth]

I'm going to turn this over to Dr. Lavigne in one second, but I want to answer that.

I think it would be money well spent and something we would certainly be interested in doing. However, a seal population study takes several years to complete. It's a very costly and involved undertaking, and you need to have the cooperation of the Canadian government, I believe, to do it adequately.

You mentioned being unable to go out to count these seals, but being told that the seal population is dramatically increasing. What the Canadian government forgets to mention when it uses that statistic is that the population had been dramatically reduced by the 1970s, when it was at a level of approximately two million. Some senior Canadian government scientists estimated that up to two-thirds of that population had been removed by the 1970s.

At the time, they were worried that without an absence of commercial hunting for at least a decade we could lose the harp seal population. Yes, the population has grown; I would definitely say it has grown. But it's been in a recovery.

Do I think it's at 5.8 million? No, I don't, but I'm not a biologist, and that's why I'll turn it over to Dr. Lavigne, who is a biologist.

[Dr. David Lavigne]

Picking up on this discussion, the one point I would like to make, citing my colleagues at DFO, is that the population is not in fact increasing at the present time. It stabilized a number of years ago; the increase kind of leveled off. In fact, the Canadian government scientists now believe that the population is declining—as it must do, if their numbers are right, and if we continue to remove more than the sustainable yield from this population.

I would urge you to talk to the government scientists and ask them what the population is doing right now, because it's not increasing; it's decreasing. It will continue to decrease as long as the government maintains a total allowable catch above the sustainable yield and as long as the government allows sealers to exceed the total allowable catch.

You made the statement at the beginning that we could stay in this room for 100 years and never agree on anything. But you and I are reasonable people, and I think we could agree. Between 1950 and 1970, scientists said the harp seal population is declining, and you have to do something. It took 20 years, and what did they do? In 1971 they introduced quota management. I'm sure there was a committee hearing in 1960 that said we could sit in here for 100 years and would not do anything, but at the end of the day the science and reason prevailed, and things were changed.

I think we have a wonderful analogy with the current discussion of global warming. The first paper I published with global warming in the title was in 1990. Ever since, there have been all these people denying global warming. Suddenly, in the last year or so, we've come to realize that global warming is real and that we caused it—and, incidentally, it's causing problems for seals.

I think you and I sitting in a room—perhaps for a few months, not 100 years—could agree that in the face of scientific and environmental uncertainty, maybe it would be prudent to put into place a precautionary approach that might just benefit both the seals and the people who want to hunt them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you, Mr. Manning.

Mr. MacAulay, and then Mr. Matthews.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Dr. Lavigne, what you're telling us in essence is that your information is correct, but DFO's information on the population of the seals is incorrect.

[Dr. David Lavigne]

No, I've been using DFO figures.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

It went from 2 million to 5.8 million. I would think that would be an increase.

[Dr. David Lavigne]

Yes, but the 5.8 million was back then. Don't forget that we have wide confidence intervals on the estimate, and don't forget that we've had hunts—two hunts at least—since then. I think if you get in touch with your government scientists, they will tell you that the population isn't at 5.8 million now; it's declining.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

There's no way that you people will accept a seal hunt. You do not feel that it affects other fisheries at all. You do not think it affected the cod fishery; you do not believe that it affected the cod stocks.

[Dr. David Lavigne]

That's what the scientific evidence suggests. The scientific evidence in the published literature—not by me, but by scientists in fact on the east coast—suggests that you can explain the decline of cod by one factor, and that is largely over-fishing, just as many fish stocks around the world are in serious states today because of over-fishing due to the non-application of the precautionary approach.

If you listened to my closing remarks, I did in fact suggest a way forward that would not result in no seal hunt, but would at least result in a precautionary management plan that would largely ensure that the population does not become jeopardized by continued overfishing.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Just quickly, do you have veterinary pathologists on the ice with you? Do you observe the seal hunt in Greenland and Russia?

[Dr. David Lavigne]

As early as 1973, I was an official observer for what was probably the Humane Society of Canada, but I can look that up. I worked at the University of Guelph as a professor for 23 years. They have a vet school there and I worked with veterinarians. I'm a physiologist by training. In fact, I taught veterinarians how to take blood from seals in my career.

IFAW has taken veterinarians out on the ice. One of the three veterinary reports that I referred to this morning was done by a group of veterinarians who were brought together by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and I've been observing this hunt since 1970 or 1971.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Thank you very much.

Go ahead, Bill.

[Bill Matthews, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Ms. Aldworth, with your video, you had said you hoped DFO would lay charges as a consequence of what you presented to them. You were on the ice, obviously, as an observer and with permission from DFO.

[Rebecca Aldworth]

Yes, I was.

[Bill Matthews, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Have you ever been charged by DFO?