Mr. Chairman, the whole seal issue started some 40 years ago when it became known that Brigitte Bardot went out on the ice flows, and it just became a very emotional issue. At that time, the stocks were very strong and we stopped harvesting in a major way. We can see what has happened.
There is no question that on the west coast we have a huge and growing seal population. They are just as devastating to the salmon as they are to the cod stocks. As my colleague said earlier, a seal takes a bite out of the cod's stomach and off he goes. He gets the liver and maybe a little more. They do the same thing with the salmon. One seal can knock off 30, 40, 50 salmon a day. That is devastating to the stocks. When hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of seals are knock off these salmon every day, it is a huge problem.
On top of that, they sit at the mouths of the rivers. Seals are pretty smart little guys and they know where the food is. They sit at the mouths of the rivers. When the fish go up to spawn, they knock them off. In the spring when the fingerlings, the little salmon, come out, the seals sit at the mouth of the river and fill their stomachs. They will have thousands of little fish in their stomachs. I have seen it when they have been cut open.
It is devastating to the fish stocks. If we are to have a fishery on either coast, we have to deal with this problem.