Evidence of meeting #64 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was seal.
A video is available from Parliament.
Managing Director, B.C. Commercial Fishing Caucus
I think it would be a very good idea to hear how they're doing. I bet there's a much broader approach to ecosystem-based management there.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
What have you been hearing about what's taking place down there, as far as results in increases of returns or any changes in that way to fish stocks?
Managing Director, B.C. Commercial Fishing Caucus
I haven't been following it as closely as I should be. My understanding is that it is going in the right direction.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you.
If we fail to restore our fish stocks—and particularly salmon stocks—on the west coast, how will local communities and first nations feed their people?
Managing Director, B.C. Commercial Fishing Caucus
The last 30 years is an example of what's going on. The graphic I showed of the decreasing salmon population is pretty dramatic. You can put that against...and it's an inverse relationship to what's going on with the population of seals and sea lions on our coast. They're eating them and a whole bunch of other species. They're having a major impact.
I don't think it bodes well for fisheries in the future, if we're not going to manage them somehow.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you.
It appears the management system in place is all for managing human harvest or human impact, but it fails to manage the other apex predators that might be in the system. Would you agree? Would you say anything further about that?
Managing Director, B.C. Commercial Fishing Caucus
I totally agree. That's exactly what we're doing. We're only managing people. We're not managing the other apex predators. What we did in 1970 is that we changed the complete dynamic of our coast and fisheries.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you.
I want to switch to Mr. Blackwood now, if I could.
Mr. Blackwood, you were questioned earlier about other departments that might have input for this issue, as far as markets, approval and issues around the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act.
In your opinion, should this issue be referred to other federal departments, such as International Trade, Foreign Affairs, Crown-Indigenous Relations or Indigenous Services? Would it be beneficial for those departments or ministries to be aware of what has taken place here?
Vice-President, Memorial University of Newfoundland (Retired), As an Individual
I think so. As I said, there's not a conservation issue with respect to them. These aren't endangered species in the case of harp seals or grey seals. They're actually species that have reached historic population levels.
Earlier Mr. Stehfest talked about the range of diet and the items found. I think he said 57. It's very comparable to harp seals and grey seals. The difference is that we may be reaching a carrying capacity with respect to both of our species. Somebody talked earlier about how they're shifting diets and shifting range. Grey seals are expanding from traditionally Sable Island and are now populating the Northumberland Strait, the islands and down to southwest Nova, with colonies established in Newfoundland and Labrador, we were told, and also in the Cape Breton area. These new rookeries start up with a few animals, but they quickly grow to several thousand.
The numbers are the biggest difference. When we look at Norway or we look at somewhere else, with 7.6 million harp seals, whatever the impact is, 7.6 million multiplied by anything is fairly large. There's evidence of opportunistic feeding. Cod and capelin are our two key species. Capelin is the base of the food chain. Cod is an iconic historical harvest. Those two species are probably in what I call a “predator pit”—that's what Carl Walters would call it—where the populations may not have been knocked down by seals, but seals, I believe, are....
I tell you, I've worked on whales—you can see my pin here—and on whale bycatch and dolphin bycatch with the World Wildlife Fund in Mexico. I'm not going to go out and say let's go kill seals or kill whales and blame them for it, but at our population levels, I truly believe that our traditional fisheries are at risk and that these ecosystems are in the predator pit. Everything that comes up in terms of growth or new recruitment gets cropped off.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Mr. Arnold. That was a little bit over, but I wanted to allow the answer to get put in as testimony.
We'll now go to Mr. Hanley for five minutes or less, please.
Liberal
Brendan Hanley Liberal Yukon, YT
My greetings to everyone.
To the witnesses, thank you for your presentations and your thoughts.
Mr. Blackwood, I think I'd like to continue with you for now. With regard to the recommendations from the Atlantic seal science task team, I'm wondering if you could comment on the third one. I think you reflected a little bit in your opening remarks on how, somehow, after 30 or 40 years of grappling with this problem, we still don't seem to know enough.
Recommendation three is about “better understanding the relationship between seals and the dynamics of important fish stocks and the marine ecosystem as a whole”. I'm wondering if you could flesh that out a little bit.
Vice-President, Memorial University of Newfoundland (Retired), As an Individual
The first three recommendations were about understanding better what the impacts are, but at the same time we documented impacts, I think that.... It's very difficult to go cause and effect. There's a great correlation between drownings in Canada and popsicle sales. The two aren't related, even though they're strongly correlated.
The thing that I found most interesting was the gap between DFO science that said.... About 50 other scientists looked at the data and verified that it was correct, but the data they were looking at was from stomach samples taken in late fall and early winter on the northeast coast of Newfoundland, in places like La Scie and St. Anthony and Wild Cove. If you sample seal stomachs there....
George Rose is a groundfish scientist and cod expert. I asked George to look at where the sampling was done and the time of year. Most of the seal population is 80 miles to 100 miles offshore from there. All the cod and capelin are 80 miles to 100 miles away from there in winter. Because of the Labrador current, they can't survive near shore, so you have a situation where seals, as was mentioned, are almost like.... They're not man-made structures, but there are areas of cod spawning, and the seals know those areas over evolutionary time. They show up at those areas. They may not feed on cod for six months of the year, but they may feed intensely during the spawning period, when the cod are vulnerable, the same way they'd be vulnerable if they were trapped by a fishway on the Columbia River.
The number of seals is what is striking on the east coast of Canada as compared with elsewhere in the world. There's a huge controversy in Australia over 100,000 animals. Every time we talk about 7.6 million, and the scientists from Norway talk about the impact on their coastal fisheries when the seals invade....
I apologize if I'm going on, but with the sheer number of grey seals, the size of the animals and their geographic expansion, and with the sheer population size of the harp seals, ideally it would be a harvest that would bring some balance to the ecosystem. It seems to be out of balance now. I do think there's a predator pit, as I mentioned earlier.
I'm sorry for running on.
Liberal
Brendan Hanley Liberal Yukon, YT
Thank you. That is very helpful.
There are two themes you mentioned that I want to pick up in my remaining time.
I'm from a public health background, so association versus causation is very important. Seals are abundant. Fish are scarce. Seals eat fish. It's association, whereas the causation.... Picking up on what you said about the uniqueness of the east coast, is that the reason we have some differing points of view, even in this hearing today? Are there differences between the dynamics on the west coast and the east coast?
One thing I think Mr. Stehfest mentioned is that the seal population on the west coast is stable, but that's not what I'm hearing on the east coast.
Are the solutions potentially different on the different coasts because of very different ecosystem dynamics?
Vice-President, Memorial University of Newfoundland (Retired), As an Individual
I think in the ecosystem—if you look at how these work and the ecosystem on the east coast—there's a certain amount of productivity. There's phytoplankton, which turns into zooplankton, which turns into capelin or sand lance, and it finds its way somewhere into the ecosystem.
What we're seeing is that there's no extra food or extra growth in the system, so we probably have a question of balance with very large marine mammal populations at a time when it's probably due to overfishing. I'm not blaming seals for the decline, but I think they're preventing a recovery.
I've been around fisheries as a marine biologist, and I've set up scientific organizations for the past 45 years. I don't say that very lightly, because I don't have a lot of scientific evidence, but seals are impacting cod and capelin. In the two years I spent studying the science and identifying where the gap was, and in the 45 years I've spent watching this fishery collapse, rebuild and collapse, I believe there is an impact.
Our recommendation was that DFO science focus on the offshore areas, throughout the range of harp seals and grey seals and throughout the season. It's that important. If it is having an impact, it needs to be identified, and the current sampling won't identify it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Mr. Hanley. You're a bit over.
We'll now go to Madam Desbiens for two minutes or less, please. I'll do the same for Ms. Barron.
Bloc
Caroline Desbiens Bloc Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île dOrléans—Charlevoix, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Stehfest, earlier you said that we need to set objectives. If the committee were to recommend to Fisheries and Oceans Canada that it should work on establishing a sustainable and ethical hunt and on providing training to bring back an ethical and sustainable hunt in the context of a balanced ecosystem, what would your objectives be? What does setting objectives mean to you?
Marine Conservation Specialist, David Suzuki Foundation
For me, the objective would be how DFO approaches seal harvest management right now, which is to ensure that the populations remain healthy and that the ecosystem maintains its function. That in itself is counter to the idea of engineering the ecosystem by removing large proportions of one species, for example.
We also have very specific policy tools. For example, on the west coast, there's a proposal for a seal harvest, but we don't have one, so I don't see why we shouldn't follow the new emerging fisheries policy, which we've had since 1996. The concern I have is that by promising these unproven benefits to fish stocks, we're hoping to circumvent or undermine some of those sustainable management tools that are in place and that should be followed.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you for that.
There's only about 20 seconds left, Madam Desbiens. You won't get in a question and an answer.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
You'll be punishing Ms. Barron if you do.
Ms. Barron, you have two minutes or less, please.
NDP
Lisa Marie Barron NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Nobody wants that.
My question is for Mr. McIsaac.
We've heard quite a bit about fishers out on the water and their observations of what's happening being different from what DFO is reporting. I'm wondering how you feel or think, or what you're hearing around how those two can be reconciled.
How do we better provide the observations of those out on the water and ensure that they're being used alongside information being compiled by DFO?
Managing Director, B.C. Commercial Fishing Caucus
That's a big question, and it's not just to do with seals and sea lions. There are many different observations happening on the water that are not reflected in policy and management.
There needs to be a better way to work with the department and harvesters. What we're facing on the water right now is rapid change in our ecosystems. We're facing rapid change in our social systems on land and interactions with other nations. We need a management system that is able to be more nimble as our ecosystem changes to be able, when a harvest is possible, to allow that and to curtail that when something goes down the other way.
We're not there. There's the example of bocaccio on our coast. We've known for six years that the population was going right through the roof. It took management five years of harvesters yelling and saying, “We need to deal with this,” to actually look at the stock assessment and then change it. We need a way to manage in the face of rapid change.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Ms. Barron. We're a couple of seconds over.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for our first hour, Mr. Blackwood, Mr. Stehfest, Mr. McIsaac, for sharing their knowledge with the committee today.
We're going to move on to our second hour of testimony, but you're more than welcome to stay online if you want to hear the proceedings from the second hour, or you can sign off, whichever you choose.
We're going to suspend for a few minutes. We have some testing to do for the video conference, and then we'll start up again.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
I would now like to welcome our witnesses for the second panel.
As an individual, we have Jen Shears, owner of Natural Boutique, in person. By video conference, from the B.C. Wildlife Federation, we have Jesse Zeman, executive director, and from the Lower Fraser Fisheries Alliance, we have Murray Ned-Kwilosintun, executive director.
Thank you for taking the time to appear today. You each have up to five minutes for an opening statement.
We will start with Ms. Shears for five minutes or less.
Jen Shears Owner, Natural Boutique, As an Individual
Hello. Bonjour. Kwe. Thank you for the invitation to present to you today.
My name is Jen Shears, and I'm from Newfoundland. I'm here with the title of owner of Natural Boutique, but I have a lot of other hats that I wear as well. Natural Boutique is a business that specializes in seal fur products, but I also own several tourism businesses. I'm an activist and writer. I'm a professional fish harvester and seal harvester. I'm an outdoorswoman. I'm a mother. I'm a target of animal rights activists. I'm a conservationist. I'm an indigenous woman of the Mi'kmaq Qalipu First Nation.
I grew up on the land with great reverence for creatures, lands and seas. My post-secondary background is in environmental biology, and I care deeply about animal welfare and about our role as stewards. Some of these roles might seem contradictory, but all of them land me in the same place when it comes to seals. I support seal management because I care about the environment, conservation and animal welfare—not despite it.
We have a major predicament with the seal population. As you heard from Professor Rose in a previous committee meeting, their biomass is greater than that of lower trophic levels, and that's indicative of a very unhealthy ecosystem. We need to lower the seal population for the sake of other marine species and for the seals themselves.
We have two options to do that. First, the government spends money on a cull. They pay people to reduce the population, and there will be no other economic generation or spinoff. The government would need to spend money on carcass disposal. Second, we could enable and empower people to take care of the issue and to make a living for themselves, generate tax revenues and not waste the resource in the process. In my opinion, government money would be better used on the latter, but that can only work if the government is educated and our markets reopen.
My recommendations vary widely in scope and intent.
First of all, I think every MP should watch My Ancestors were Rogues and Murderers by Anne Troake and Angry Inuk by Alethea Arnaquq-Baril. These documentaries are poignant and highlight the injustices brought on by ill-conceived, racist and deceitful animal rights campaigns.
Second, I believe that every MP should take the humane seal harvesting course that all sealers need to take. It covers the three steps that sealers must follow to ensure that they're dispatching a seal in a humane way. The main issue we have with the sealing industry is that it's perceived as being inhumane, but taking that training is really eye-opening, because you see that what we do to ensure that it's humane looks to be the opposite. It would help clear up that misperception.
Third, I firmly believe that there should be a bipartisan statement from the highest level of government condemning those who campaign against the highly regulated, monitored, humane and culturally important seal harvest on all Canadian coasts. Doing this would ensure that this important ecological and economic activity would not be used as a political ploy between parties.
Fourth, we're using the precautionary approach for seals, but what about the rest of the ecosystem? Why can't we apply it to the idea that seals are devastating fish stocks? There's no ecological risk to lowering the seal population—we've seen lower levels before—but there's everything to gain, potentially, for other marine species. I've heard people say that they're afraid other countries will cut our market access, but if we don't do something about the seals, there will be nothing to fish. We will have nothing to market. Let's worry about the resource first, and let's put the horse before the cart.
Fifth, we must begin challenging as a country other countries that are contravening international conventions by banning Canadian seal products, including hypocritical countries that actively manage their own pinniped populations as they see fit. I guess it's always great to turn the spotlight away from yourself.
Shane Mahoney of Conservation Visions in Newfoundland is an invaluable, internationally renowned expert on this topic, and if he hasn't been an expert witness, he should be at the top of your list. He talks about how Canada, the EU and the U.S. are all signatories to the conventions on biodiversity and migratory species, and that commits us to the principles of these conventions. One of the three pillars of the convention on biodiversity is the sustainable use of living resources for the maximum benefit of people. Challenge these countries on why they are in violation of international conventions to which they are signatories.
There's also the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. More and more, that includes local people. It's about justice and making sure someone from afar does not impose unjust practices on people, which is happening with the seal products ban. The Government of Canada and others are already committed to principles that should apply to the management and markets of seals. Somehow, that's been missed.
The United States Marine Mammal Protection Act is a well-intentioned piece of legislation that is grossly misapplied to harp seals in particular. We need to work with the United States to get a seal exemption for the sake of the seals themselves. Reducing the population is protecting this marine mammal.