Thank you for the question.
I think that, like you say, this is really around reframing the conversation. We have seen witnesses appear at this committee representing large fisheries organizations who I'm sure would not have accepted the invitation if this study had been held 10 years ago, because there was a time when it was impossible to have these conversations. The conversation itself was the kind of thing that might get the Americans' backs up.
Certainly, as somebody who grew up in a town with plenty of lobster and crab fishermen—my cousin is a crab fisherman—I don't want to see anything happen that will hurt market access for all Canadian fish and seafood products, but seal is a Canadian seafood product. We need to be a part of broader conversations that involve fish and seafood. Maybe we aren't the focal point of every conversation and certainly, looking towards the Americans, CBSA doesn't stop the grey seals from Sable Island at the border. Those grey seals are swimming into Maine waters, New Hampshire waters and Massachusetts waters. They are seeing impacts from predation by grey seals that come from Canada. There absolutely is a large constituency within the U.S. that would ask why they are blocking the Canadians from doing this.
There are the follow-on impacts in other markets that we see. We go and speak to other countries halfway around the world, and they say that they don't want to put themselves in a situation where the Americans might take a harder look at what we're doing and accidentally run afoul of what's now a 50-year-old piece of legislation—the MMPA—which is not particularly nuanced.
That's the unsolvable question, I would say, of the seal industry. How do we find a way to make the Americans, at the very least, clearly say what they take issue with and what they don't? The Americans do allow for the killing of seals and sea lions under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. They are doing it right now, funded by the state of Idaho and certain northwestern states. They're removing sea lions and seals that are predating on salmon and steelhead trout. How do we talk to the Americans and say that they're doing this much, so we're going to do this much, that this is what we're going to do, and we're going to manage our fishery the same way they're managing their fishery? For far too long, that has been a third rail. That conversation can never and will never be brought up with the Americans.
I think the relationship between Canada and the United States is strong enough that, at the very least, we can have an honest high-level conversation. We can't send some director general from DFO—no offence to the director generals at DFO—to Washington to have this conversation. This conversation needs to be had by the minister—and not only the Minister of Fisheries, but the Minister of International Trade and the Minister of Foreign Affairs—to impress upon the Americans the reality we're facing.