Madam Speaker, I am glad my hon. colleague raised that point. When he and I were in Paris, we made what we thought was a compassionate argument. The word “barbarians” was thrown around. However, some members of parliament who were there expressed concern and asked that another look be taken at what we do. We cull animals. In other words, we take nuisance species out of the population. How do we do it? Nobody knows.
I do not know if the member remembers, but one British member of parliament actually stated to the rapporteur, “You know, in my park in my constituency, in my riding, we kill deer. I don't know how we do it, but if we ran into this park with clubs and started clubbing them to death, we'd probably have a big situation on our hands”. Maybe that is what they do. They just do not know.
However, I want to talk about the hakapik. Even the Independent veterinarians' group has stated that the hakapik is a humane way of hunting. When we talk about the Europeans using this, a small part of the hunting population does use hakapiks, but at the same time it has been proven to be humane.
We must remember that these animal rights groups want to eliminate the hunt, period. It has nothing to do with the type of mechanism. It will keep using words likes “hammers” and “baseball bats” and it is absolutely ludicrous.