Madam Chairman, I have been sitting on the all party fisheries committee for the last couple of months and the first thing that we find out is that the fishery has never really been treated as an important issue by the federal government until such time as it is looking at an economic and social disaster.
Let us look back at the billions of dollars that have been spent to alleviate the plight of fishing communities hard hit by the first cod moratorium. If even a tenth of that money had been previously spent in some fisheries management, perhaps there would not have been any need for the programs that we had at that time. Maybe the province would not have lost 70,000 people that it lost in out-migration over the last decade.
Concerns are high indeed that the government would be closing down the remaining northern cod fishery. The minister has all but made that announcement here tonight. What I have been really interested in finding out is, why has the federal government cut back so much on the science associated with seals?
In 2000 for example, DFO estimated that harp seals in 2J3KL consumed 893,000 tonnes of caplin, 186,000 tonnes of Arctic cod and 37,000 tonnes of Atlantic cod. Scientists are saying that the diet data from the inshore showed that the per capita consumption of cod by harp seals did not even decline with the collapse of the cod stocks.
I am sure that the hon. gentleman has a great deal of concern about the science associated with the cod stocks and seal predation. I would like the hon. member to comment on why the federal government has cut back so much on the science associated with seal predation and cod stocks?