Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague, the member for Tobique—Mactaquac, for sharing his time with me today on this very important issue.
I want again to state unequivocally that I support the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans and the statement that it made:
[T]he Canadian harp seal hunt is humane, responsible and sustainable and should continue for generations to come and the Committee strongly condemns the ban of Canadian seal products by the European Union.
I call on all Canadian parliamentarians to do the same.
Unfortunately, that will not be the case. Liberal Senator Mac Harb has already staked his ground on this issue and it is against the industry and against his fellow Canadians.
Senator Harb has chosen campaigns of fear, misinformation and emotional argument, over his fellow Canadians in the sealing industry. This is very disappointing but not entirely surprising.
Why is it not surprising? It is because this is an issue that the Leader of the Liberal Party has been silent on as well. He has not said a word, not one, none.
While the Leader of the Liberal Party has refused to tell the sealing industry what his position on the seal hunt is, his Liberal senator, Mac Harb, has run amok, working to destroy the sealing industry along with Canada's position and credibility internationally. The only person who can stop Mac Harb is the Leader of the Liberal Party, yet he has not done a thing.
For sealers in Newfoundland and Labrador and in Quebec, this must be tragically disappointing. For generations, sealing has been part of the fabric of Canada's east coast. All that these great men and women can do, who depend on the seal hunt for income, is watch the Liberal senator try to destroy their livelihood to make his European friends happy. After all, Senator Harb called these great Canadians barbaric. Shame on him!
I can tell the House that our government will do everything it can to deny Senator Harb any success on this issue. We are standing with the sealers and their families and we will be resolute in our support.
I am particularly disappointed with this ill-advised decision by the members of the European Union, because they know that it is the wrong decision. European parliamentarians are playing a political game with people's lives, fueled by misinformation and fact twisting by many people, such as Senator Harb. They know perfectly well that public opinion in Europe has been manipulated by radical animal rights organizations to the point where the public believes completely misleading and unfounded claims about Canada's seal hunt.
How do the members of the European Union know deep down that they made a wrong decision? We have told them. Over and over again we have told the European decision-makers that they are wrong to trust the information funnelled to them from Rebecca Aldworth and the Humane Society of the United States. We have repeatedly told them how the Canadian hunt is well managed and well regulated.
Sealers have come with us to talk about the importance of the hunt to their traditions and about how they respect the animals on which they depend for their livelihood and that of their families and their communities.
We have explained further that unilateral measures are not the answer and that the radical animal rights advocates will tell them anything to get this ban in place, whether it is true or not. However, European parliamentarians refuse to listen.
They refuse to listen because the environment has been poisoned by propaganda campaigns mounted by radical animal rights organizations. For over 40 years, radical animal rights organizations have maligned the Canadian sealing industry with vicious propaganda. The worst aspect is their myth about skinning seals alive.
In some circles, this myth is accepted as fact. Their multi-million dollar campaigns against the sealing industry spreads lies and propaganda to a point that no one familiar with the industry knows what is fact and what is fiction.
How do they do this? I will give an example. In 2002 and 2007, two radical animal rights organizations commissioned illegitimate studies on the seal hunt. These studies were in fact no such thing.
The participants went out to find what they were looking for, and lo and behold, they did. One concluded on the basis of an examination of 76--yes, that is right, 76 seals--that the hunt was inhumane.
Other scientists routinely examine thousands of skulls without arriving at such a conclusion. In fact, they conclude the opposite, that the Canadian seal hunt is humane.
The results of these so-called studies are now quoted routinely to perpetuate the myth that the Canadian seal hunt is inhumane. The written declaration of European Union parliamentarians use one of these studies to justify demanding a ban on seal products. Here is where the real irony comes in.
The European Food Safety Authority, which is the organization commissioned by the European commission to study animal welfare aspects of sealing, has said in no uncertain terms that the results of the so-called studies are not reliable. It said:
it is incorrect to conclude that 42% of the seals in the sample were skinned alive....
Further:
it is not appropriate to extrapolate from a small sample of 76 skulls collected in the Gulf of St. Lawrence over two days to all the animals killed during the entire hunt, which is conducted over several weeks....
Still the Europeans persist. They refuse to accept the opinions of their own experts. I do not understand it. It is beyond my comprehension.
At this point, I wish to thank my colleagues, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of International Trade and the officials who have worked tirelessly to advocate for Canada on this most challenging of issues. I would particularly like to draw to everyone's attention the efforts of the Ambassador for Fisheries Conservation, Loyola Sullivan, whose record of achievement on this file is both extraordinary and commendable.
Our strenuous efforts to communicate with European decision-makers have included letters, telephone calls, delegations, speeches, an article in the European media, position papers and advertisements. We have written letters, and when I say “we”, I mean the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of International Trade, the Ambassador for Fisheries Conservation and the 28 ambassadors who represent Canada to the European Union and to the member states of the European Union.
We have written to our European counterparts. We have written to the members of the European Parliament. We invited key members to visit Canada. They did not come. Officials of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans emailed all 785 members of the European Parliament an advertisement we had placed in the European media. This was followed up by the diplomatic missions in the member states.
We have made telephone calls minister to minister, official to official. We have made interventions in meetings with European counterparts. Most notably, the Prime Minister has spoken to European presidents and prime ministers on several occasions. We have done everything possible to counter the movement to ban seal products in Europe.
I recently read an article containing an accusation made by some members of the European Parliament. They say that intimidation tactics were used in order to secure a vote in favour of a ban. Disturbing, yes; surprising, no. If this is true, it takes this matter to a whole new level.
These radicals and professional campaigners will do anything, and I mean anything, to achieve their misguided goals. They threaten; they intimidate; they use their vast resources to pound on an unsuspecting public their version of the truth.
What I say next I do not say lightly. These radical animal rights advocates, like Paul Watson from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, advocate the use of violence and terrorist-like tactics in their campaigns. For example, Watson said, “The fact is that we live in an extremely violent culture and we all justify violence if it's for what we believe in”.
In my society it does not. That quote goes to show how deluded and out of touch these people are.
Another is Jerry Vlasak, who has been outright banned from several countries. He is a cohort of Watson and is the biggest proponent of violence of any radical. He said, “You can justify, from a political standpoint, any type of violence you want to use”.
That is sick but yet another example of the kind of philosophy that drives these people. The sad thing is that deep down they all believe it to be true.
I read something that I found quite amusing, and I would like to share it with the hon. members today. During an interview—
