Fisheries committee  Absolutely. I don't mind throwing them under the boat, either. I sat down with the provincial fisheries minister and said I could pay the sealers an extra $25 or $30 a skin, or I could throw the skins into the landfill. I said it's an extra $250,000 to each sealer, or I could throw them into the landfill.

Fisheries committee  For the value-added, if you cut off rough chunks of meat and you throw it in a box, it looks terrible and it's not going to sell. If you take bedlamer ribs and you vacuum-pack them and put them in a box in the same way that you see your pork ribs at the grocery store, everybody wants them.

Fisheries committee  I'll try to make this as fast as possible, which means that I'll skip some details. In 2006, there were three existing processors. Combined, they were doing over 300,000 seals a year. Two of the processors were sending their skins abroad to be tanned, and in 2006, a law was passed such that all skins leaving Newfoundland had to be tanned first.

Fisheries committee  I missed a lot of details there.

Fisheries committee  The quota hasn't changed in many years, and DFO has been perfectly open that they'll move the quota. If we hit 4,000, they'll move it to 5,000 or to 6,000. There's no point in moving it if we take out just 25,000 or 30,000 seals a year. DFO says that just to maintain the population now, it's 425,000 to 450,000, and to start bringing it down, the number is about 600,000.

Fisheries committee  There's a lot, so I'll talk quickly and see what I can do. The three processors that are there right now can very easily, between them, handle 400,000 seals. In the heyday back in the early 2000s they were doing over 300,000 regularly, with space to spare. It's easy to keep going.

Fisheries committee  The question was why. A DFO regulation was put in. When everybody was harvesting 300,000 seals, they wanted to make sure that there were enough seals for the inshore harvesters to get as well, and not just for the people who had all the money for a big boat. That was the reasoning.

Fisheries committee  I would say it should be at least 25 to 30 kilometres away.

Fisheries committee  I think nowadays everybody recognizes the need to have a workplace where you're not constantly harassed. That's the same for sealers, especially in such a dangerous environment. This is not sitting in an office; they're out on the ice. Imagine slipping on the pavement in a parking lot.

Fisheries committee  I know you said “other than”, but federally, DFO has been fantastic to work with from start to finish. CFIA has been fantastic to work with. They've helped us tremendously. We are nine years in the making, but we're brand new to getting going. CFIA has been extremely helpful. Honestly, our headaches have been more on a provincial level.

Fisheries committee  It would take longer than this meeting to get through all of it. The one that is the most painful and is happening at this exact second is that as of now, over 38,000 beater seals have been landed. The existing processor only asked for about 35,000, but they ended up taking 38,000 seals.

Fisheries committee  Good day, Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for the invitation to speak before this committee. I listened to much of the testimony already provided to the committee and to those who spoke or presented at the seal summit in St. John's last fall. It seems to me that most everybody is in agreement that there are too many seals in the water.