Thank you, Mr. Chairman and fellow committee members, for the opportunity to speak to you here today.
I don't have a formal presentation done. I'm going to speak off the cuff.
Generally, I would be reiterating exactly what the previous two speakers have said. Trevor and I are the same age. We started fishing in the late 1980s. We witnessed some drastic changes in our fishery in general.
I speak to you today on dealing with pinnipeds. I am not only a professional commercial fish harvester; I'm also a professional commercial seal harvester—a sealer. I'm also the president of the Canadian Sealers Association. I've had the opportunity to speak to you previously in committees like this.
The time has come. We don't need any more studies on seals. We don't need any more science on seals. We need actions on seals.
There was a commission back in the 1980s, with Justice Malouf at the time, with recommendations. There have been Senate standing committee recommendations to harvest seals. There have been recommendations and report after report that have been done and packed on the shelf. The time has come. We need action.
Here in Newfoundland, in those rural communities we have here, you have to drive it to see the devastation. There are communities that are no longer filled with fish harvesters and fishing families. It's mostly tourists now. Mainlanders come to buy up the properties because our locals have left. It's because of our doomed fishery.
Trevor and I were fortunate. We survived the cod moratorium of the 1990s because of crab. That is a fact. One resource survived this. The devastation we've seen in the last decade to all the other species is because of the predation of seals.
There were years when I was definitely against a cull of seals, because I was concerned and wanted to be responsible as a sealer to maintain the population that was providing me with my second-largest source of income for my enterprise, which was seals.
I can remember when I was a boy growing up hearing that the sealers in the community would go out. They would hunt and harvest tens of thousands of seals in the 1980s to rebuild markets and to rebuild an industry that we did see prosper from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s—2005 or 2006. We were harvesting from a quarter of a million to 350,000 or 400,000 animals. The market was demanding products. We had products to sell.
What happened? The politicians did not do their jobs. The Government of Canada did not do its job. We had products getting banned in country after country. We don't need work to develop new products. We don't need more science. If you have a mind to look at all the science on all the fisheries, the seal industry has been studied more than any other fishery.
I don't need to reiterate what Trevor said earlier or what Ginny was saying. I support them 100%. I'm here. I'll just tell you that I'm a fish harvester. I'm a sealer. I have grave concerns about the future of our industry and our rural coastal communities.
I welcome any questions in your question period.
Thank you.