Mr. Speaker, once again, I would like to thank my colleague for presenting this very important bill. It brings clarity to a problem we are all aware of, namely that there are obstacles, problems and even safety issues in the marine environment, on the ice, for the fishers who hunt seals. This can be a very dangerous undertaking. If we wish to improve conditions for fishers, it is an admirable idea to propose a measure such as we have here today, which will probably help them. Once again, I would like to thank the member who introduced this bill.
On the other hand, let us be clear that what the bill is changing is that people with a seal fishery observation licence will not be able to approach a seal-fishing site closer than one mile, rather than a half-mile. In itself, it does not change much, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.
The real issue is to determine how well we can ensure the safety of our fishers involved in the seal hunt, whether in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the north Atlantic or the far north. Communities that depend on the income from seal hunting deserve even more support than they will get through this bill. It is a step in the right direction but we really must take it further.
Not all the fishers asked for this bill as the first step. There were really a lot of discussions. The Senate did a study on grey seals and on the fact that their numbers are increasing dramatically. There are 30 times more grey seals now than there were 30 years ago. Their population is growing rapidly, probably because their predators have been eliminated. The region's ecosystem is out of balance, and all the governments involved and the members of this House must do something to restore this balance.
There is still a moratorium on cod fishing; it was once the major source of income for most fishers in the region. However, they still cannot fish for cod in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. That is very worrisome and many fishers wonder why. Even 20 years after the moratorium was imposed, is the population explosion among grey and harp seals the reason the cod population is not increasing? This question really needs to be asked.
Once again, I will refer to the Senate report. Unfortunately the senators were not able to determine exactly what measures should be taken. They proposed several measures on a trial basis, to see whether the species imbalance problem in the region could be solved. Even after its study, the Senate was unable to make any practical suggestions that everyone could agree on. I hope that we will continue to have a much sounder, more intensive debate on this issue.
However, let us not forget that first nations have been hunting seal for hundreds of years. Depending on the community, European settlers in Canada have been hunting seal for decades or hundreds of years. In my riding, in the Magdalen Islands, the seal hunt adds to people's winter income. There are not very many ways to earn money during this period. In winter, very few industries operate in my region. The tourism industry is in full swing in the summer, but almost non-existent in winter. People cannot fish for groundfish in the dead of winter. The Gulf of St. Lawrence is mostly frozen over and is not accessible. The seal hunt is an alternative. It is a way to earn extra money. That has always been the case in the Magdalen Islands.
That is the case in Newfoundland and the far north, where people try to find revenue where they can. This government should work with the people in my region, who are now being denied employment insurance, which was a source of income for the winter. They are having significant financial difficulty and need a lot more assistance.
If the government really wants to help the people of eastern Canada, it should think about the seasonal industries in that region, particularly seal hunting, which is paired with the groundfish fishery. It would have been worthwhile to commercialize the seal hunt, but nothing was done.
As for European free trade, we should have forced a debate with the Europeans. They wanted to open their market for other commodities to Canada, which would have been a golden opportunity to remedy the fact that the European market closed its doors to seal products. There are even barriers between provinces in Canada. People cannot transport seal products, including oil containing omega-3s, because there are a lot of interprovincial barriers. We should have this debate and help people in eastern Canada earn money in the winter.
This bill helps us keep our fishers safe, but it has to be profitable for fishers to go out on the ice. We can safeguard our fishers all we want, but if there is no market for their products, they will not fish. Fisheries and Oceans Canada allows the hunting of thousands of seals each year, but since it is not profitable, only hundreds are hunted. Licences are useless because the product cannot be marketed.
We must remember that sales of this product grew quickly because of European seal hunts. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Europeans hunted thousands of seals and were more numerous than sealers from eastern Canada. With the resurgence of the issue of cruelty to animals, a hotly debated topic, people hesitate to hunt seals.
I believe that people have good reason to be concerned about this, but it is the reason the Europeans abandoned us and stopped hunting large numbers of seals. Once again, they were the ones who took large numbers of seals, not us. Animal rights activists should be criticizing the Europeans, not us, for seal hunting. We have always believed in sustainable hunting. Unfortunately, the Europeans abandoned us by closing their market. The seal hunt has a bleak economic future because there are no markets for this product. We need to find ways to help the sealers in eastern Canada and the far north market the product, but the bill is silent on that.
Keeping sealers safe is very commendable. Let us work on that. We have to find ways to help them. However, the government closed the marine rescue sub-centre in St. John's, Newfoundland, it wants to close the maritime search and rescue centre in Quebec City, it wants to cut positions at the vessel traffic management centres throughout eastern Canada, and it cut the Canadian Coast Guard's budget. How can we say we are going to improve the safety of our sealers when they do not have the tools they need?
Even if their safety during the seal hunt were guaranteed, we still need to find a market for the product. Unfortunately, the bill before us today does not address these issues. Let us go ahead and improve the safety of our sealers, but let us find the economic tools to help them. That should be the next step.