Fisheries committee  First, to clarify, this is the grey seal pupping area. The population of grey seals arrives there in the winter time. They do their pupping, their breeding, and then they disperse. There are also new pupping areas around the Bay of Fundy and around Cape Breton, and into the gulf as well.

Fisheries committee  The grey seal is a very intelligent animal. It's an opportunistic feeder that feeds on what is most available. It can certainly displace commercial fishermen, taking the food that we take out of the ocean, especially groundfish. We feel that this is taking place. We're seeing it in western Nova Scotia now.

Fisheries committee  Yes. In the U.K., I understand the grey seal population—this is from a report I have from the High North Alliance of about a year ago—was somewhere around 100,000 animals. In Norway, the estimate was there were 6,000 to 7,000 grey seals. They thought that was a bit low, but their target is to try to keep the grey seal population below 10,000, I understand, in Norway.

Fisheries committee  You have to bear in mind the seal numbers in Iceland. We're talking about 300,000 harps harvested in Newfoundland. In Iceland, as I said, they talk about 3,000 or fewer seals. What I did see over there is that they feed seals to mink. The carcass is frozen, and it's mixed in at about a 20% level.

Fisheries committee  We've had a couple of training programs for sealers. I think we're in the neighbourhood of 20 to 30. Most of them are from your area, the North of Smokey group, but we do have some young fishermen from the South Shore area, Mr. Keddy's riding, who participated in the harvest this year.

Fisheries committee  I think there's a feeling by some people that Sable Island should be a kind of Garden of Eden, without any human intervention in it, even though I had a birder in Southwest Nova tell me that he's very concerned. For example, the grey seals have taken over some of the islands where you find puffins and other fairly rare birds, and of course puffins don't stand a chance against them.

Fisheries committee  As I said, it's a new product. Just to give you an example, Mr. Matthews, the first year we got $37 a pelt. As you know, from Newfoundland, that's not the average. This past year we got $50. So we're improving the quality of the pelt as our sealers.... Newfoundlanders are very experienced in sealing; in Nova Scotia we're not.

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and also the members of the committee, for the opportunity today. To give first of all a bit of introduction, I work as the executive director of the Nova Scotia Fish Packers Association, which is an association of over 60 processing companies and exporters on the mainland of Nova Scotia.