Thank you, Mr. Chair.
That's my official job title, I just retired, but over the past two years I took on the challenge—a bit reluctantly at first—of looking at a seal science review through a process that created the Atlantic seal science task team.
We were seven people who participated in that, and I've sent a package that will be translated and passed to you later. Unfortunately, during COVID we couldn't have public meetings and we actually never met as a committee, but we had great representation from Nova Scotia, P.E.I., and Newfoundland and Labrador, and a representative from the Magdalen Islands, who unfortunately, due to work commitments, wasn't able to complete the process and left us after a few months. I should mention that we had representation from New Brunswick as well from the Atlantic Salmon Federation.
What I'm going to talk to you about today is basically a short summary of that report and how it changed some of my views with respect to seal populations, and some of the challenges we faced in looking at lots of science. This was science in which, in some cases, there's enough evidence, if you will, that seals are having a major impact, like on 4T cod, and in other cases, the samples taken by industry are completely different from the samples taken by DFO science in terms of geographic area, time of year and stomach contents. I'll talk about that a bit later on as well.
I grew up on the northeast coast. I've chaired the Canadian Centre for Fisheries Innovation. I was an ADM of fisheries, and my family has a long history of making a living from the sea. I'm no stranger to seals, but I had been away from it for a while. I find it a very polarizing issue, and one that people take sides and dig in on. A friend of mine once said the fishery is dog eat dog and vice versa, and seals can be just as polarizing and just as controversial.
In chairing the committee, I had to balance the very passionate pleas from the industry that something be done right away.... Also, what we were doing wasn't making recommendations on the size of seal population or what they feed upon. What we were doing was identifying why DFO science at the time got different results from what the industry got.
Over two years—unfortunately it took a bit longer than we thought, largely because of the COVID restrictions—we did come to agreement as a group, and we did nine recommendations to hopefully close that gap. I understand that DFO is working on those recommendations, but they will take a while to implement.
As I said, in other areas like grey seals, we have a lot of evidence already, and where the industry is and where DFO is on this is not that far apart.
I think that's close to five minutes, Mr. Chair.
Thank you.