Fisheries committee  Thank you for that. A lot of what I said—I'll ad lib also here—was statements that were already made about the effect it has on the social and economic well-being of the families of, actually, hundreds and thousands of harvesters out there. I shared my experience of growing up in a family of 14 and what it meant to get out there and harvest animals in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s at a time when there were somewhere between 2.5 million and three million seals.

Fisheries committee  As quickly as I can, on the ground, we have to get at the fundamentals. Science is the fundamental function of where we need to go. There was a milestone achieved in St. John's last November, not necessarily because the minister said, “Seals eat fish,” and I would hate to think that she said that under duress, by the way, but she did say it.

Fisheries committee  Absolutely. We have to utilize that information. It's not being properly utilized. Obviously, there are more parts to the equation than just the fish harvesters, but that's a piece that's missing. We have simply eliminated that from the equation. The idea, the science, that we have is predicated on our having to prove that it has no impact on fish populations, so we have to develop the proper terms of reference for the kind of science that we're doing.

Fisheries committee  Look, I may not have the perfect solution to this, but I understand from the motion that this committee has and the terms of reference, that, basically, to do the work you're going to do to solidify the report.... You're going to be travelling internationally.

Fisheries committee  It was turned down, was it? Well, find some other way to ask Norway how they managed to do that. Ask Iceland. Ask other countries that seem to have the fortitude to stand up and say they're going to do what they have to do to harvest their seals, and to do it on behalf of their fish harvesters and the people of their countries.

Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  Look, if you want to go back to.... I go back too far, I think, as I'm 70 years old as of this year. I grew up in a family of 14 people who depended on the seal and sealing, and the kind that came from that. It was common throughout the 1960s even, and the 1970s and 1980s, to harvest half a million seals, so it's not rocket science to harvest it and to bring it ashore.

Fisheries committee  Well, we're not doing it now because we have no marketplace.

Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  Not necessarily. We still use the same vehicles. For the vehicles we use now—if you want to use “vehicle”—or the vessel that we use, it's customary, in fact, for lots of them now to have the kinds of facilities on board that can sustain sensitive products, as they do, whether it's crustaceans, pelagics—no matter what it is.

Fisheries committee  Yes, I absolutely do. Look, we can talk about the leverage that we have available to us to bring the seal population under control, and you can talk about culls, but I think before proceeding on that path of culling, we have to give a fair chance to developing the marketplace.