Thank you for the question, Mr. Cormier.
To me, it all comes down to really wanting to take action. I went to the summit in Newfoundland and Labrador, and I thought some of it was interesting. We need science, okay, but I totally agree with the person on the last panel who said that we've had enough science. We know that the seal is at the top of the food chain, that it eats what's at the bottom and that it's opportunistic. They are going to eat whatever is there. We could argue about this for another 20 years to get more scientific details, but we're going to come to the same conclusion: We have too many seals and that's causing a problem in the ecosystem.
In addition, the international markets are very attractive to Newfoundland and Labrador. They are much less so for the Maritimes, the Inuit and Quebec. The problem in Quebec is that we can't meet the demand for the existing market. This year, we would have liked to hunt 3,000 to 4,000 seals just for the meat, but we hunted 800. I feel we need to recognize that we have more than one problem. We have a number of problems, and the challenges vary from region to region.
We also addressed a third topic, but I don't really remember. I must say we often talk about informing people about the seal issue and convincing them we have a problem. I have a university degree in communications and I'm telling you, I've been seeing this since 1992 and there is no solution. The people who don't believe we have a problem will never believe it. You'd have more luck convincing a Muslim that there's no Allah or a Catholic that there's no God. It's never going to happen. It's high time we got on with it.