To deal with it through the WTO will take forever. I met with Ed Fast and I met with Gerald Keddy, who's the parliamentary secretary. When they were talking about the free trade agreement with Europe, I asked him when he's going to deal with the sealing issue, and he said, “We're going to do this later”. I simply said to him, “In our mind, later never comes”.
Government has to sit down government to government. After the fact, it's too late. The Marine Mammal Protection Act in the United States was brought in 1971 and it's been in force for 44 years. Do you want to know what the purpose of it is? It's to protect endangered species. The lowest the harp seal population was ever at was 1.8 million. Right now they're at eight million and growing.
It has to be done government to government. How large do you want the herd to get? The rule of thumb, according to scientists, is that the population will double every seven years.