Fisheries Committee on March 9th, 2023

[Yoanis Menge, Co-Chief Executive Officer, Reconseal Inuksiuti]

Good afternoon.

We are really very happy to have been invited by Ms. Desbiens and to be here today. I am very pleased to be able to speak in French, and I am eager for the day when I or my friend Ruben Komangapik will be able to speak in Inuktitut.

My name is Yoanis Menge and I come from the Magdalen Islands. I am a photographer and president of the Association des chasseurs de phoques intra-Québec, and, with my associate Ruben Komangapik, who comes from Pond Inlet, Nunavut, co-founder of Reconseal Inuksiuti.

In the fall of 2021, Ruben Komangapik and I founded the company called Reconseal Inuksiuti, which is based in the Magdalen Islands. "Reconseal" is a play on words, combining "reconciliation" and "seal", the English word for the French word "phoque". The word "inuksiuti" means "food for humans" in Inuktitut.

Our innovative project proposes to give breathe new life into the seal industry, while changing the image of the hunt through reconciliation of our various cultures of hunters, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Reconseal Inuksiuti is made up of Magdalen Islanders and Inuit who work together, hunt grey seals on the Magdalen Islands, and then distribute the meat and skins to urban Inuit through organizations such as Tungasuvvingat Inuit, or TI, Isaruit Inuit Arts, which is based in Ottawa, and Makivvik, which is based in Montreal.

A number of studies show that when an Inuk is cut off from their traditional food, such as seal, their mental health and sense of identity suffer. While Inuit history is undeniably marked by the consequences of colonialism, it is also shaped by the efforts of Inuit today to reappropriate their sociocultural, economic and political destiny. As a vector for intergenerational transmission, seal is an opportunity to absorb the traditions while acquiring know-how and developing self-esteem.

In addition to tackling the food insecurity experienced by Inuit living in urban environments and providing them with a basic food that is important for their physical and mental health, our initiative advances knowledge, culture and traditions, through the complete use of the animal. When I say "complete", that really is accurate. The only parts that are discarded are the genitals and stomach. To give you an idea, I can tell you that the intestines, all of the organs, the brain, the eyes and the tongue are consumed. Even the skins are used in sewing and tanning programs.

The seal hunt represents an essential aspect of the living culture, for both Inuit and Magdalen Islanders. That is why our project aims to encourage the reappropriation of traditional practices, and to restore the value of those practices for our communities, which are distinct in many regards but are united by this common tradition. We love it with all our hearts. With our own funds, so far, we are feeding human beings. Reconseal Inuksiuti is proof that it is possible for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, Magdalen Islanders, even Newfoundlanders, to work together. We aren't just talking about reconciliation; we are doing reconciliation.

If we have managed this on a small scale and with our own resources, imagine what we could accomplish with the financial support of the government.

I will now yield the floor to Mr. Komangapik

Thank you.

[Ruben Komangapik, Co-Chief Executive Officer, Reconseal Inuksiuti]

[Witness spoke in Inuktitut]

[English]

First of all, I'd like to say thank you, Chairman, for having me here.

My name is Ruben Komangapik. I'm from Pond Inlet, Nunavut. The first time I ever killed a seal, I was three years old, and it was a baby, too—a whitecoat. My father brought it back to teach me how to see the animal whole.

For the past three years I have been living in Ottawa and working to feed my relatives in the city. With Yoanis, we founded Reconseal to address the problem of constant access to seal meat while living in the cities.

It's time to take care and protect nature by hunting seals. By not just taking the seals, we're actually feeding the oceans too. It goes right back to the very small creatures. We need the government to help us change the image of the seal hunt, and reconcile with all of the different seal hunting cultures in this country. We need to educate Canadians through electronic billboards or commercials to show Canadians that the seal is not a bad thing. It's a great resource that we can utilize.

Effects on the body and the mind are renewed in abundance when you are fed with the right nutrition. We must regain our nourishment and economic freedom by hunting seals. Food insecurity is really a problem, both in the south and in the north, so do not rely on science alone. You should rely on Inuit and aboriginals—I don't know what you call us these days—and the fishermen out there who are doing the actual work in front of what's going on around them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I'm sorry. I have to stop it there. We've gone about a minute over the five-minute opening statement. If you have it in writing, you can submit it, and we'll make sure that's included. However, I have to get to some rounds of questioning.

We'll go to Mr. Arnold first, for six minutes or less, please.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to split my time with Mr. Perkins. I'll start off with Mr. McAllister.

Thank you for providing your document to us. There are a few things in here I see. I'll talk in some other language that I've heard in other fish and wildlife management channels. Basically, that's “predator swamping” and “predator pit”.

Some of your charts seem to indicate that some of the west coast salmon populations are now so low that the high number of seals is having a compound effect on those salmon. It is to the point where they're in a predator pit, and they're having difficulty getting out of it. When we have a high abundance of salmon populations, it's called predator swamping. There's so much feed going out that the predators are swamped, and they have very little effect on the prey species.

Would you be able to elaborate a little bit on that?

[Dr. Murdoch McAllister]

Yes. Fraser River sockeye is a good example of that. Once every four years, there is a very large return. That's been consistently large, once every four years, since the 1940s or thereabouts, after the Hell's Gate fishway went in. That's been consistently strong in the order of approximately five million to 30 million salmon coming back.

Those juvenile salmon go out to sea, en masse, and the analyses suggest that there are so many salmon and so relatively few predators per prey item—like the seal population, for example—that they just get swamped. They can't actually have as big of an impact on those migrating sockeye salmon. As well, the Steller's sea lion population—the adults—would get swamped in terms of the short time they come by.

The much smaller populations of sockeye salmon, between those dominant years—the three subdominant lines—were actually quite abundant, up until the 1980s. Then we saw subsequent declines, and those off-cycle lines have been decreasing progressively. The abundance of Steller's sea lions, for example, is high enough, such that when there are only a couple of million salmon coming back, they could easily eat 6% of them. That's what our study has suggested.

What happens is that you get a much lower stable equilibrium. Even with no fishing at all, you might get 10 million salmon coming back, but with seals and sea lions, it's like another fleet. It's holding those sockeye salmon at a very low level, maybe one to two million; we don't know. Those trends are worrying because they're going down and down. It could be either a stable or an unstable equilibrium, such that it's maybe stable at a low level, or unstable and maybe going to extinction. We can't distinguish at this point.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you very much.

I'll turn it over to Mr. Perkins.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you.

Thank you, witnesses.

For my friends at Reconseal, it's nice to see you again.

Dr. McAllister, I wanted to talk to you a bit about the study from 2017 that you released with regard to seals and northern cod.

In the abstract part of it, it says that the collapse of the northern cod 31 years ago, which started before then—in 1991—does not appear to have been caused by seals, but mainly by other factors. I'm assuming that one of the reasons for that conclusion is that the numbers of seals were a lot lower then than they are today.

[Dr. Murdoch McAllister]

Yes, that's correct. Stock assessments suggest the fishing mortality rates were high, but the data are good enough. We have so much data that we can estimate the natural mortality rates as they vary from year to year. With northern cod, it appears that there's a consistent finding that in the natural mortality rate there was a really big spike. We don't know why. There's no explanation. There may be some correlation with oceanographic variables, but back in 1990 there was a very big spike.

This paper that you're looking at is focused on the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence cod stocks. I don't believe that we actually made much reference to the northern cod stocks. We haven't studied that so we can't make a statement.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you.

You go on to discuss that grey seals, starting in the late 1990s, were clearly the number one issue in terms of predation. You referenced growth as the reason, in terms of the seals growing “over 60 years”, I think it says, “from 8,000 animals in 1960 to 500,000 by 2014”. That number just for that area seems a lot higher than what we hear from DFO on its official counts overall of the grey seal population.

[Dr. Murdoch McAllister]

Yes, that's an estimate, I think, for the entire east coast. Our study focused just on the localized population of grey seals in the area, I believe, where the Gulf of St. Lawrence cod southern stock is known to overwinter. We weren't using a big number. We were using a much smaller number. It's in the paper. We had collaboration with Mike Hammill and Doug Swain, who helped to focus our analysis on just the right components of the grey seal population.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Mr. Hardie for six minutes or less, please.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll be splitting some time with Mr. Kelloway.

Mr. McAllister, was the research, the work you did, subject to the CSAS process or was this totally independent of DFO science?

[Dr. Murdoch McAllister]

Which work are you referring to? Is this the Gulf of St. Lawrence...?

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

The one that you cited off the top and some of the work that you have done.

[Dr. Murdoch McAllister]

This peer-reviewed published paper for the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences was separate from CSAS, and let's say that the harbour seal work was also separate from CSAS, although I did collaborate in a CSAS process on stock assessment of yelloweye rockfish, where we actually included pinniped predation from three different pinniped species inside the waters of the yelloweye rockfish. That analysis suggested exactly the same thing as we'd been finding. For example, with the Gulf of St. Lawrence cod, with no fishing at all, abundance of this rockfish would continue. That was a CSAS process, and it was peer-reviewed and accepted, yes.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you for that.

A couple of years ago, we had a witness from Norway. We happened to ask him about the fact the seal population in Norway seems to have been managed down. He kind of smiled and just said, “They went away.” Do you have any insight as to what actually may have happened to make them just go away?

[Dr. Murdoch McAllister]

I'm not familiar with that study. I'm sorry.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Okay. Well, we're trying to get to the bottom of that one.

We were looking at some of the issues with fish stocks, etc., and I'm sure you're familiar with Alexandra Morton. We asked her about seal predation. She issued the caution that seals eat hake and hake eat salmon, so in fact, other than the killer whales, obviously, are there competitors that also have an impact on our salmon population?

[Dr. Murdoch McAllister]

Yes, of course there are. It is known that Pacific hake do eat salmon.

I'm familiar with an ecosystem modelling study that investigated the potential interactions between the abundance of seals, the predation on hake and so on. If seals are reduced in abundance, could that lead to an increased abundance of Pacific hake? My colleague, Carl Walters, has done that analysis and basically found that in this ecosystem model of the Strait of Georgia, absolutely not. If you reduce the abundance of harbour seals, Pacific hake would not increase enough to have any effect on the Pacific salmon species that he had included in his model, which I believe were coho salmon and chinook salmon.

Yes, of course there are some other species. Salmon sharks are perhaps increasing. They're known predators on salmon in the Pacific Ocean, but the data are quite sparse.

Of course, northern resident killer whales have increased in abundance. We do know that they're major predators of chinook salmon, but that's just one species out of many. There are some negative correlations between them and chinook salmon stock productivity, as well.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Have we seen an increase in the population of the transient killer whales? They do eat seal?

[Dr. Murdoch McAllister]

We see an increase in local abundance of transient killer whales. The range is known to be very wide, so it could be just a localized response to increased harbour seal abundance. We do know that a favourite prey item in the Strait of Georgia is harbour seals, so there are a lot of observations of those predation events.

The harbour seal increased up until the late 1990s and then levelled out. The most recent stock assessment of harbour seals, which was just released a week ago, suggests that the abundance of harbour seals has just plateaued. It has not decreased or increased; it's stayed approximately the same since the late 1990s. That could be a result of, let's say, transient killer whale predation and a numerical response in terms of attracting them from other parts of the range.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Mr. McAllister, I'll turn the rest of time over to Mr. Kelloway.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Hardie.

Hello to the witnesses.

My questions are for Reconseal Inuksiuti.

First of all, thank you for coming today. It's great to see you. The last time we saw each other was at the seal conference.

I wonder if you could tell the folks who are here today and the folks who are watching what a return to a successful sea harvest would mean for coastal indigenous communities for whom sealing has been a way of life and an important part of livelihood and culture. That's the first part of the question.

For the second part, can you speak to the importance—you alluded to it—of using the full seal?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You have 20 seconds to answer the question.

[Ruben Komangapik]

Infrastructure's always the main focus. Infrastructure to make one animal into a lot of pieces and then utilize it is one big factor that we need to address in Canada.

The resources really.... If we do it the right way, this country could have a really successful seal hunt as we do in fisheries.