Fisheries Committee on March 23rd, 2023

[Dr. Kris Vascotto]

There's a good chance. If you just take something like the grey seal population on the Scotian Shelf and figure out how much fish they would have to eat to survive, and then you look at DFO's own research vessel survey, you'd come out to about 50% of the total fish biomass observed in the survey being potentially consumed by the grey seal herd. If you go up to the Newfoundland region for harp seals, you're at about 25%. It is quite clear that the consumptive potential of those pinnipeds is quite dramatic and can impact those systems quite substantively.

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

In other words, if we harvest every pelagic fish commercially that exists with the big biomass now, but we don't harvest the one major predator in the ocean, what happens to the system?

[Dr. Kris Vascotto]

It gets put into a pit, and it can't find a way out of it.

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

Mr. Hardy, I have one more question. I was reading an old 2020 article from The Guardian, the big newspaper in London, England. The headline is “US allows killing of hundreds of sea lions to save struggling salmon”. It goes on to talk about how the State of Washington and the State of Oregon had approved the killing of hundreds and hundreds of sea lions, to try to let the salmon and trout recover.

I'm wondering if you know anything about that, or whether you could comment and verify that it is going on.

[Robert Hardy]

Yes, I know a bit about it. It went through the U.S. legislature and was voted on and passed. Because of the problem that was identified, primarily with sea lions, I believe, they allowed for the killing of sea lions in that area.

This is true of the U.S. east coast as well. There is a lot of information available on the grey seals. Some of the commentary down there is that, well, if you take care of the population, it will only be replaced by Canadian grey seals, which are in the area.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Perkins. Your time has gone a little over.

We'll now finish up this first hour with Mr. Cormier for five minutes or less, please.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Hardy, I'll start with you and I'll use English, because what I am going to read to you is in English.

Last week, we had some DFO officials at the committee. One of the officials said this:

As a resource manager, our objective is to keep the seal population healthy. Our objective is not to reduce the seal population. Just like other fisheries where we try to keep our fish at very high and heavy levels, our objective for seals is to keep—

Blah, blah, blah, and I cut them off.

What do you think of that statement?

[Robert Hardy]

I think it's ridiculous.

It's ridiculous. How healthy does the seal population have to be? You're at record levels with grey seals in the maritime provinces. The harp seal population, in the last census, was 7.6 million animals.

The Baltic states released a report this past fall—multiple countries signed on—saying that there is an issue with their fishery because of grey seals. Their population is less than 80,000 animals. I—

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

I'm sorry. It's just because of the time.

Thank you for clarifying that. I have another question.

You talked about capelin and the impact on capelin, as you said, but what about mackerel? The seals eat mackerel, and in big portions, if I can say that.

[Robert Hardy]

Yes, it's my understanding that they do.

Actually, I have some data that was sent to me while I was on vacation last week. Some of the limited stomach sampling that was done in the winter months—I'm assuming that it was done off Nova Scotia—showed that the contents in the grey seals' stomachs were up to 47% Atlantic mackerel.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Okay.

You talked about the market a bit, and look, we all know that what we are going to do with seals can have an impact on our market. You know that we export a lot of crab and lobster to the U.S. and to European countries, but how can we strike a balance in reducing the seal population and at the same time making sure we keep our market alive? I think you know that it will be very devastating if we go ahead with the seal hunt or whatever and other countries just shut down our market. How do we strike that balance?

[Robert Hardy]

I think it is an education program, as well as a marketing program.

We need to reach out to the countries that we're currently doing trade with, not only in fish products but in all products, and educate them as to what happened to the great fishery that we had in Atlantic Canada. We were the provider of food for the world, and we're no longer that provider.

We also have to form alliances with all the groups throughout the world that have problems with seals. We need to communicate with them. If I could, if you have time—

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Yes, go ahead.

[Robert Hardy]

We're just talking about utilizing seals for the good of people and for food. We have a country in the world right now.... I can't even go there....

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Hardy. I understand.

[Robert Hardy]

I'm going to say Russia....

I'm going to say Russia: They're killing people every day, and there's no reason why anyone in Canada should be afraid to kill a seal and sell their products to the world—

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Hardy.

Look, I'm the son of a fisherman. I saw my dad fish all his life, and I can see seals in front of my house right now, which I've never seen before, so I think we all know that there's a problem and we have to do something.

Thank you for that.

Very quickly, Mr. Vascotto, you said something earlier.

You said earlier that, according to the data you have, seals eat crabs and lobsters. However, during our last meeting, some officials seemed to be saying that this was not the case, that we had little data on it and seal stomachs were not full of these crustaceans.

Do you have data on it that you could send to us? Earlier, in your opening remarks, I think you mentioned that some data was available.

[Dr. Kris Vascotto]

It really comes down to what species of seal you're talking about. I believe that the bearded seal is very much a heavy-crab-eating seal that you get off the northwest coast of Newfoundland. When it comes to lobster consumption, if you look over at Danny, in the room, he'll be able to tell you that they're seeing examples of that.

Once again, this comes down to what Bob was talking about in terms of making sure your data collection overlaps with the ability to see it, because if you don't get a chance to see it, then everybody talks about it and it never happens. There are a lot of pictures being taken by our seal harvesters and by fish harvesters, and there is evidence appearing on the shores that says this is happening. Once again, it's species-specific, space-specific and time-specific.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Cormier. That is the end of your time and of our first hour of testimony.

I want to say a big “thank you” to Dr. Vascotto, Mr. LeClair, Mr. Arsenault and, of course, a constituent of mine, Mr. Bob Hardy, for sharing your knowledge with the committee today. It has been absolutely a pleasure to hear from you.

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

Mr. Chair, I just want to comment that I think Mr. Arsenault is the snappiest dresser here, with that Leafs shirt.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

On division.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

We have to let our witnesses go. We're going to chew up time for the second hour.

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

Very quickly, Mr. Chair, it was mentioned in the committee that we would notify the witnesses that if they had further information to provide, they could provide it in writing. It would be valuable to us. If we could start doing that again with our witnesses, I would appreciate it.