Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans (44th Parliament, 1st Session) (2024)

THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS

EVIDENCE

ST. JOHN’S, Wednesday, September13, 2023

The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 12:50p.m.[AT] to examine and report on Canada’s seal populations and their effect on Canada’s fisheries.

Senator Fabian Manning (Chair) in the chair.

[English]

The Chair: Welcome, everybody, to our fourth panel for today.

We will be hearing this afternoon from Western Vice Chief Jenny Brake of Qalipu First Nation and Mr.Bill Penney, Business Developer of Seal Products and Commercial Fisheries, Waspu Oil.

I want to thank you for joining us today. It will be great to hear from you and bring you into our discussion. I believe that Vice Chief Brake will have some opening remarks, followed by Mr.Penney, and then we will have some questions from the senators. The floor is yours.

Jenny Brake, Western Vice Chief, Qalipu First Nation: Thank you. First of all, I would like to acknowledge our traditional Indigenous territories here in Newfoundland and Labrador and all of our Indigenous communities and our ancestors who came before us.

This is my first time addressing the Senate. I am a little nervous, so I appreciate your patience with me if I stumble. I think it’s important to also state that being nervous means that I really care about this issue— really, really care. I hope that I can express that to you in my statement.

The Chair: You are among friends here.

Ms.Brake: Kwai, hello. I am sincerely grateful to the Chair and the members of the committee for inviting me here to share with you my experience and traditional knowledge on behalf of my Indigenous community. My name is Jenny Brake, and I am the Western Vice Chief for Qalipu First Nation.

I come to you today to discuss the traditional, sustainable and responsible practices of seal harvesting by Indigenous peoples. With nearly 25,000 members spread across 67 communities, Qalipu First Nation is one of the largest bands in the country. Throughout history, our communities have held a deep connection to the land, waters and all living things. This connection is rooted in respect and understanding of Indigenous traditions and has formed a foundation for sustainable resource management practices that have existed for generations. Our core values indicate an inherent respect and responsible approach to harvesting of our natural resources.

As a strong Mi’kmaq woman from the west coast of Newfoundland, I have had the good fortune to grow up in a small fishing community and to have had experience working in the seal industry. My family and community members have long relied on the food fishery and other traditional hunting and trapping methods to feed their families. From a very young age, I was taught that we only take what we need, that our resources need to provide for the next seven generations and to respect and give thanks to all that Mother Earth provides.

As an adult, I studied fine arts and industrial trades, a unique combination of skills that was a perfect fit for employment at our local seal tannery as a dye technician. I considered myself blessed to have the opportunity to work in an environment that related to my traditional knowledge, utilized my diverse education and kept me in my home community. Sadly, my employment in this field was disrupted after our industry was affected by interference from outside organizations that spread misconceptions fuelled by misinformation. Protest organizations took on the seal harvest and used it to their benefit, profiting from false information they spread. A significant loss of employment resulted from this lack of understanding, which portrayed seal harvesting as inhumane and detrimental to seal populations.

Seals play an important part in the larger ecosystem, and for both environmental and economic reasons, it is important to keep the population in check. Currently, we have an unbalanced ecosystem and an overpopulated biomass of seals that are putting other ocean and river species at risk. Harvesting seals in a responsible and sustainable manner is a matter of proper environmental stewardship which aligns with Indigenous values and wisdom. Seal harvesting also has a profound cultural significance.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, UNDRIP, Article24, states:

Indigenous peoples have the right to their traditional medicines and to maintain their health practices, including the conservation of their vital medicinal plants, animals and minerals.

Many Indigenous communities are striving to reclaim and revitalize their traditional food systems and artisanal practices as they are essential for cultural identity, health and wellbeing.

With regard to the cultural significance of the seal harvest, the entire process, from the hunt to the utilization of every part of the animal, is performed with the utmost respect and gratitude. It is in this spirit that seals provide not only sustenance but materials for clothing, tools and crafts which are an integral part of cultural preservation. In my own family tradition, I use all parts of the seal, from feeding my family to creating fine art.

Revitalization of the seal fishery will empower members of our band in so many ways. We will allow provincial Indigenous communities to employ themselves using their traditional knowledge. We will elevate the socioeconomic status of the ecosystem of our members. We will be stewards of the environment by helping bring balance back to the ecosystem.

Qalipu First Nation is poised to embrace revitalization, and we have been focusing on actions like our seal harvesting training program, which will prepare new harvesters to work safely and effectively with proper training. We stand to benefit from the multitude of positive impacts of renewing this industry.

The fact that international markets are currently closed means that harvesters are currently harvesting less than 10percent of their allowable catch. This does not mean that there are no customers but instead means that bans are in place that limit the current market for seal products. Opening these markets is integral.

To succeed in revitalizing the seal fishery, we will need the support from federal government. We need federal marketing efforts as well as assistance in market access. These are specific efforts that will help this industry thrive. It is our collective responsibility to approach this issue with an open mind and a willingness to learn.

Qalipu First Nation implores the Senate to foster a dialogue that includes Indigenous voices. We will work in collaboration and have meaningful conversations that will see tangible actions, not just policy. By doing this, we will create a future path that respects both the environment and the rights of Indigenous traditions and values.

Wela’lin. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Vice Chief. You didn’t sound nervous at all.

Bill Penney, Business Development Seal Products, Mi’kmaq Commercial Fisheries, Waspu Oil: I am nervous, too. Good afternoon, and thank you to the Chair and the members of the committee for inviting us here today.

My name is Bill Penney, and I am the lead at Bill Penney Sales and Marketing Consulting. I am also the chair of the Seals and Sealing Network, which manages the Canadian seal products, and I have been working with Mi’kmaq Commercial Fisheries on the seal file for the past three and a half years.

I am here today representing Mi’kmaq Commercial Fisheries. MCF is an independent arm’s-length Indigenous company owned by Qalipu First Nation, and Mi’kmaq Commercial Fisheries manages all fisheries activities on behalf of Qalipu. I do want to clarify that I am not a member of Qalipu First Nation, nor am I Indigenous.

Mi’kmaq Commercial Fisheries started this seal journey because of the impact that the seal population is having on the fisheries and how it is directly affecting its members who work in the fisheries sector. As per Vice Chief’s introduction, you can see that the hunting, consumption and diversified usage of seals are interwoven into the fabric of the Mi’kmaq people’s traditions and culture.

In order to manage the seal population and avoid a cull, MCF is working domestically and internationally to open markets to seal products that have been closed. It is important to understand that the main challenges for the sales and marketing of seal products sits in two categories. But let me preface this with two things that we know: First, seals eat fish. We can’t deny that. Second, there are a lot of seals in the Atlantic Ocean.

First, on the retail side, with our two brands that we have here, the biggest objection we get is that, unfortunately, seals get bad press, so the companies that want to sell these products are nervous to take the products on because they are worried about protesters at their front doors.

Second— and this is with respect to gaining market access globally— seal products are a banned product in multiple countries around the world, and it is not based on science or conservation. It is really based on really intelligent marketing campaigns by anti-seal and anti-animal groups.

The world right now is starving for sustainable omega-3s, and we have the world’s best omega-3s and the largest sustainable resource to supply that. The fact remains that the seal populations we are discussing here today are not endangered and the harvest itself is humane and sustainable and not just good for Canadians but good for the world.

My ask of this committee and our government is threefold.

Firstly, we need the Canadian government to decide if it is in or out. If it is out, let us know because we have to go a different route. If it is in, they need to tell the world that we are open for business. A robust, well-managed seal industry will contribute more than $150million to the Canadian economy while managing a resource that needs management. Seals eat over 50times more seafood than our entire Canadian seafood industry. You have to let that sink in a little bit. The amount of seafood that seals eat is incredible, and the damage they are doing to fish stocks is incredible. If Canada decides they are in, what we need is a national and international marketing campaign focused on facts. Most Canadians do not know the facts about seals but can repeat misinformation and propaganda produced by organizations that use the seal industry for its fundraising efforts.

Secondly, we need support for market access, expanding Indigenous people’s economic and trade cooperation agreements that includes Canada, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand. Supporting Indigenous business with specific attention to Indigenous exports is important for reconciliation, and there cannot be reconciliation without economic reconciliation. Work with us to promote seal products on the global stage, but we do need to make sure we are promoting it to Canada first because this is a Canadian product that Canadians should be proud about.

Thirdly, a commitment to science. Our oceans contribute over $30billion to the Canadian economy. Annual audits show Canada’s fish stocks continue to decline. With fish populations decreasing, why wouldn’t we want to know exactly what is happening? I do know one stock that is not decreasing, and that is seals.

Finally, this should also include social science. Recommendation 5 of the Atlantic Seal Science Task Team report reads:

DFO should establish and permanently fund a social sciences research unit to capture the human dimensions of the ecosystem.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr.Penney.

We will go to the deputy chair of our committee, Senator Busson, for the first question.

Senator Busson: Thank you very much, both, for being here. It reinforces for me that the reason that we are here in Newfoundland and Labrador is to talk to people who are at the pointy end of the stick and who actually are feeling and experiencing the issues that we are trying to bring forward and deal with on the federal level.

In that vein, I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, but it must be incredibly frustrating to have so many different and complicated points of entry for the issues that you have. Vice Chief Brake, you talked about the cultural issues for your community and how important that is and the economic spin-offs that affect your community. Then we hear about marketing and the fact that so many places have banned seal products that it is almost a lost cause to try to— and, again, I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, but we get from you and other witnesses how difficult it is to champion this industry.

There were witnesses from Fisheries and Oceans that say that they in many cases invite Indigenous people to be part of their fact-finding and evidence-finding missions around how they set policy around the seal fishery. Could I get either one or both of you to comment on the complexity of your challenge vis-à-vis the numbers of people that you have to deal with and whether or not you do get consulted when these policies are being set? I would like to start with Vice Chief Brake, if you would.

Ms.Brake: Absolutely. I appreciate your comments and your question.

It is quite frustrating because when we talk about traditional seal harvesting, this is something that has existed as a means of survival for our Indigenous communities for thousands and thousands of years, so for our traditional knowledge and ways of knowing and doing to be portrayed as something that is brutal or inhumane is very insulting and quite re-traumatizing to Indigenous people in the ways of colonialism. It is very frustrating to have to take our traditions and go through many channels and come to many tables, wherever they will have us, quite frankly, because we don’t always get invited to the table, but when we do, we are trying to convince folks of traditions that have existed and allowed us to still exist. Without these traditions and without the sustainability of our ecosystems, we wouldn’t be here today. You know, that’s the reason colonialism kind of started in the first place. They came here for our fishery. They came here to harvest our natural resources, so we taught them those ways. It is very contradictory and quite frustrating. I go to every table I am invited to and anyone who will hear me speak about the importance of this sustainable fishery. I absolutely will sit at any table that I am invited to, or I will push my way into any room that I can get into to speak about it. But, yes, it is quite frustrating. I would like it to be the norm, nothing about us without us.

Senator Busson: Do you have a comment?

Mr.Penney: I do. I have 25years of international sales and marketing experience. I retired five years ago and lived in Toronto. I had to go away to work. I moved back here to Newfoundland, and my goal was to work with small businesses, to volunteer, because I know that Newfoundland needs small businesses to grow. My whole background is sales and marketing and business development. I got involved because a friend of mine was a councillor with Qalipu, and they were talking about getting into the seal industry.

It is one of the hardest products in the world to sell, but, for me and my past experience, it is the best challenge of my life, even though it is frustrating because most of the objections we get are fear-based. I haven’t heard one objection that said anything specific or real. You can deal with a real objection, but, when you are dealing with fear— and this is international, as well. We were very close to having an agreement with Taiwan to import seal oil capsules from Qalipu First Nation. Taiwan had a ban on seal products, but they have an Indigenous exemption. We had four purchase orders from companies. Just as we were getting ready to ship our first shipment, the Taiwanese government withdrew from that because they were nervous that people were not going to understand it and the government officials were really nervous about putting their support behind it. Again, they were worried about protesters and all the bad politics that comes with it.

Global Affairs and the trade commissioners in Taiwan have been amazing. I have met people from Japan, and all the other different trade commissioners have been really great to work with, but, again, the issue is market access. We have customers who want this all over the world. I get inquiries all the time from China, who wants to import but they can’t get the certificates to do it, and we don’t even have a ban on seal products in China. All throughout the European Union, we get requests all the time. The market is there, and the world is starving for omega-3s. There is no denying that there is a shortage. I think it was Chile who just had a really big issue. All the omega-3s that they were producing using krill is not happening now because their industry has tanked a little bit. It is a real opportunity for Canada and the seal industry to promote seal oil.

That is one part of the product. The fur is another side of the product. The meat is a smaller side, but, with full utilization, we do want to do that. With Qalipu and Mi’kmaq Commercial Fisheries, we are producing capsules for human consumption. The pet industry is a $20billion industry just here in Canada. My $150-million estimate is not even taking into account the opportunity on the pet side, and the pet side would allow us to move meat.

We are deprogramming people. I am also chair of Canadian Seal Products, and we have been marketing it for three and a half years. We did a survey at the very beginning, and the survey showed that there were 9million Canadians open to seal products in some way, shape or form. We started marketing to them. Our first stage of the marketing was educating them on what the seal industry actually is, what the harvest is, that they are not endangered— all of the different pieces that we have to deal with deprogramming. After one year of marketing, we did another survey, and we went from 9million people open to products to 12million people.

Now, our biggest issue is we just don’t have enough budget to market to everybody. Right now we can only market to major urban centres under the CSFOF program. Toronto and Montreal are where we have chosen because that is where the biggest opportunity sits, but if we had a national campaign, it would change the dialogue for this completely. I cannot stress that enough: a national voice on this.

Qalipu is really taking a lead on this and on the international piece as well because a lot of these banned areas have Indigenous exemptions, but the Indigenous exemptions aren’t set up for success in the way that they are done, so we are trying to figure out how to work within their rules.

Our biggest trade partner, and I think the country that buys the most seafood, is the United States, and having seals banned under the MMPA is incredibly damaging to the seafood market because a lot of the producers can’t even mention that they are in the seal harvest because then, under the MMPA, they no longer can sell lobster or any of the other seafood. We have been trying to work with major pet companies who will not take us on at all because they export to the U.S. and then they will no longer be allowed to export to the U.S. So, again, if Canada could get behind this— I know they can’t tell America what to do, but they do want our seafood, so there is a bit of leverage there.

Thank you. Sorry that was a longeranswer.

Senator Busson: Thank you very much.

Senator Francis: I think most of my questions were alreadyanswered here. You did a great job, both of you,answering the questions.

I guess currently, what would you say is the economic spin‑offs now in terms of employment and so on to your communities, for the Qalipu First Nation? How many people do you currently have employed, and do you collaborate with other Indigenous communities in Newfoundland and Labrador going forward?

Ms.Brake: Thank you, Senator Francis. I was actually thinking about your question actually before you even asked it, and some of the comments that my colleague had made.

Qalipu First Nation, as I mentioned, has a membership of nearly 25,000members, so for the economic benefit, the sky is the limit. Right now, our band, next week, is 12years old, so we are very young. I am sure you are aware there are bands much older, and they have been at this a lot longer than us.

As far as economic growth for our band, we are not involved in gambling. We don’t have a lot of the things that are commonly associated with other bands as far as economic growth. We are not in the hotel industry. This is our first foot out the door, and I am really proud of that step that we have made because it aligns with our traditional values, and it allows our membership and our neighbouring communities— the Innu and Inuit of Labrador are deeply rooted in the seal industry as well, so I think this is something that brings us together and really hits home with Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

In response to your question, we did have a training program just recently. I mentioned that in my comments. That training program allowed approximately 20 individuals to be trained in the harvesting and the safety procedures around the seal harvest. That was just our first attempt at training. As you know, when you start something, it trickles and then the ripple effect happens. I can see this growing in a way that will deeply impact and allow our band to become economically sustainable. I really see a potential there that makes me proud to be doing work that brings our community together in a way that allows them to work in their traditional knowledge. To me, that is more meaningful than any other economic opportunity we can offer them.

Toanswer your question, I don’t have the numbers. Maybe Bill could shed some lights on that. I really feel that the pride and the potential is really, really special.

Senator Francis: Thank you.

Mr.Penney: I think it partly is the effect it is having on the seafood industry, so it is about protecting some of those jobs as well. We all know when the cod moratorium happened. The rock cod is being prescribed to be extinct by 2030. Again, part of the frustration is recognizing that seals eat fish. It sounds so simple, and some of you smirk a little bit because it is simple, but for some reason we cannot get the full acknowledgement that seals are having an impact on our seafood industry.

A lot of Qalipu, under Mi’kmaq Commercial Fisheries, are employed on the processing side, actual fishing, harvesting. Because of the bans before Qalipu was Qalipu, a lot of the Indigenous people that were involved had to stop working because no one wants to harvest seals and not have a market to sell the fur and the products to. That is where the issue is.

I am not Indigenous, but I want to build a business, and then we are going to work with Qalipu to train and develop Qalipu members to take over the marketing and sales and run a real business, but first, we have to build the business in order to do that. There is going to be a tonne of benefits. Qalipu is not a reserve band, so for them to support themselves, they need to have businesses out there, and the seal industry, like I said, is a massive opportunity to generate a lot of revenue for Indigenous and non-Indigenous and rural especially.

I am working with the Newfoundland government right now to do a forensic audit so that we can figure out what one seal will generate in revenue and all the surrounding pieces, but a forensic audit takes a lot of work because you have income taxes on the seal harvesters, the harvesters get paid, they’ve got to buy equipment, seal fur itself— you saw the pelts yesterday, so that is one market. Was it Always in Vogue you went to yesterday?

Senator Busson: Yes.

Mr.Penney: So then that is the secondary market, right? So all those products get made. As you can see with Jenny, one of our crafters has made our logo for us, in seal, so there are crafters with the Indigenous groups as well. Under Canadian seal products, we also have another website that we manage, called Proudly Indigenous, and that is Indigenous crafters from all over Canada. We can market their products for them because not a lot of these crafters actually are Internet savvy or all these pieces. We take over all that and do all the sales and transactions for them. There is a tonne of opportunity for Indigenous right across the country.

Senator Duncan: Thank you very much for your presentation today.

I am a senator from the Yukon, and I must say that the messages that you gave today are very much messages that are absolutely consistent with what I have heard for all my life in the Yukon, particularly sustainable harvest and use of the complete animal and working with our natural resources, not taking more than what you need.

There are a couple of points that I would like to elaborate on today. I have mentioned before the link with Alaska, and I believe this committee has heard before that, no, the seals aren’t eating the salmon. Salmon is very critical to the Yukon and to Yukon First Nations people, and a lot of our salmon comes through Alaska. Alaskans are very concerned. The Alaska fishing industry is very concerned about the seal population as well.

I would like you to address, if you would, how the message is being spread across the country and how you are working with or able to share your point of view and your work on products and business with other First Nations at the other end of the country.

We have some unique success stories. At Old Crow, the only community that is not accessible by road in the Yukon, the self‑governing First Nation owns 49percent of the airline that serves the Yukon, Air North, an incredible success story. They too are concerned about the salmon because they are very close to Alaska, and they have been very active and very successful in the protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge because of the caribou calving grounds and the importance of the calving grounds to the First Nation and their culture and their subsistence.

How are you sharing your story with other First Nations or Indigenous people throughout Canada, and is there an opportunity to do that?

Ms.Brake: Thank you for your question, and I appreciate your perspective on this, given where you are from and your relation to the Yukon fishery.

The salmon industry is deeply impacted by the seal hunt, as you mentioned, but I am seeing it first-hand in my own communities as seals are actually in rivers now.

Senator Duncan: Yes.

Ms.Brake: This is something that has come to our attention over the last couple of years.

My son is 21 years old, and he is an avid salmon fisherman. He just lives for it. All summer long, that rod goes wherever he goes. He has come home this year in particular, and he didn’t feel safe or responsible in salmon fishing because the seals are in the rivers. He is worried about the stocks, and he didn’t want to contribute to depleting them, so he abstained this year from the salmon fishery. This is a 21-year-old man who realizes at his very young age that he has a responsibility to protect this resource. I feel that if my son, like I said, a young, 21-year-old man, can recognize this, then this is something that other First Nations communities are recognizing as well because they are growing up with core values around only taking what we need.

In my work, I travel across many provinces, and I have hadthis conversation with many First Nations, right out to HaidaGwaii. We are all having the same issues. We are all having the same concerns. We are all seeing the same issue of the biomass being so thickened that other ocean species are just struggling, and some of them are at risk of extinction.

Salmon is something that is traditionally very prominent across so many Indigenous cultures, and not just for the food and the ceremony. I have friends who actually tan salmon skins and use them in their creative arts. This is something that comes up in conversation quite often in my relations to other First Nations communities.

Like I say, our youth are noticing this as well. It is time for us. We have a responsibility to react to this problem, to be proactive to it and to try to get ahead of the curve and not allow it to be something that we wish we had done years ago.

I can just tell you from my experience within my relations with other Indigenous communities right across Canada that this is a very common conversation. I haven’t had any impact in my communications nationally in this way. You made a point around if we have had any success in that way. Maybe Bill could speak to that in terms of the marketing or that sort of piece of it, but my conversations are more around in a circle, and they are more around in traditional ceremony and just meaningful conversations of the common struggles we have.

Senator Duncan: Just before Mr.Penney addresses that question, then, if the seals are a major issue, which we are hearing they are and that is our understanding, how do we help you? What are things we could do to say, “This is the problem, Canada; one impacts upon the other.”

Ms.Brake: I think you need to include Indigenous voices. For me, it is very important that we have a say because this affects our communities and our traditions. Allowing international market access can allow us the allocation to traditional harvesters to sell their stocks. Right now, they can’t. What do they do with their stocks now? They don’t have anywhere to sell them to, so we need you to open the gate and allow us and support us in that industry.

Mr.Penney: I will start with your second piece first. If there was one thing, it would be Canada just outright showing support. Very simply put— and I will tie this into the discussion about First Nations across Canada— there are a lot of First Nations not near the ocean. In Atlantic Canada, I have been working with Membertou out of Nova Scotia because they were trying to have a grey seal harvest. They needed funding to get that. They didn’t get the funding they needed to start the program, but there was real support in Atlantic Canada. I did a presentation to the regional chiefs of the AFN a couple of years ago. But again, I am the only person doing the sales and marketing and business development and outreach, and there is limited time to do it. I have chased the opportunities first.

I will tell you a quick story about Alaska. A couple of years ago, elders in Alaska at a long-term care were asking for seal oil, traditional seal oil, because they weren’t getting it in their diet in the long-term care. I read an article, so I reached out to the home. We know we can’t sell products to Alaska, but I figured out that we could do a gift of a First Nation to Indigenous. I started talking to them about it, but then they stopped talking to us because they were told that if they do take this, there will be consequences in funding under the MMPA.

So, again, if there is one thing, it is for Canada to stand up and just be proud of this industry, because if Canada doesn’t tell the story, we are going to keep struggling. The world wants healthy omega-3 products, and we just can’t get through the door because we are fighting some 30years of programming and guerilla-style marketing, grassroots marking, in these countries and within Canada, people knocking on doors and handing out pamphlets. It is hard to market the harvest because red blood on white ice is not a great image. This is why you don’t see the beef industry or the pork industry marketing what they are doing; they market the products.

One of my biggest battles coming in here was everybody felt that we need to justify the harvest, but we weren’t spending enough time on the products that are produced by it and the fact that it is sustainable and that it is a biomass out there that is not included in the way Canada looks at our seafood industry. There is the seafood industry, and then there are seals. My biggest struggle with DFO and all that is getting the two connected, which sounds, again, so simple. The roadblocks to this business are so simple when you say it out loud, but Canada needs to push this so that all departments are on the same page.

This is a product that is sustainable and will generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the economy. It will help First Nations become economically sustainable themselves and employ rural and small communities, which in Newfoundland is super important because those communities are struggling, especially with the dangers that it is affecting the seafood industry. A lot of these fishing communities are really struggling, and this is another way for them to get paycheques. It is just for Canada to decide if it is in or out. If it is out, we have to do a different channel.

I appreciate you guys all coming here. There have been a lot of discussions. Again, I am new in this industry, so I am not coming in with any baggage and looking at past transgressions or what people didn’t do 10years ago. I don’t care about that stuff. We have got to look forward on what we can do, not just keep living in the past.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr.Penney.

I don’t like what I am going to do right now, but I am going to start limiting time for questions and foranswers. I realize this is a big discussion, but we are on a time limit here. We have 15 or 16 minutes left, and we have four senators who want to ask questions.

Senator Quinn: Mr.Chair, I will do my best to help you reach that objective. I will shorten down what I was going to ask.

You mentioned traditional knowledge. I am a believer that traditional knowledge is missing in so many aspects of development in Canada, not just the fisheries but in other areas as well. I used to run a port. Traditional knowledge was a valuable input to the modernization of that port. Having said that, we have heard about gaps in the science community’s work, and we have heard about gaps between DFO regions versus DFO headquarters. I am suspecting that that traditional knowledge gap between what happens on the ground in Newfoundland is very much tied to that and how it is considered, or not, by Ottawa. Is there a gap, in your opinion? What do we do to fix it? What would be your advice?

Ms.Brake: I agree that there is a gap because the consultation with Indigenous communities is fairly new. I haven’t been invited to these conversations, and I have worked in the seal industry as a harvester. In the recent three years, this is the first time I’ve been asked my opinion on this. I really look to government to say that you’re overdue on your ask for the input. Government breaking down this barrier and saying, “We support you,” is part of reconciliation, and very much so. You’re shaming an industry that sustained us and provided our existence. It is just a responsibility.

Nothing about us without us. That fills your gap easily. You need traditional knowledge to be a part of your science outcomes, 100percent.

Mr.Penney: I will be very quick. Actions. We had a Seal Summit last year. I think today it came out that there was funding for some of the seal science. I haven’t been able to read all the information on it. I think four people got approved to do a study on seal science, including seals and sea lions which are affecting salmon in B.C. and all the way up and around. Actions.

We know seals eat fish. We know they are affecting the seafood industry. We know all that, so we just need to get actions behind it. I am supporting Mi’kmaq Commercial Fisheries, and we have very little budget for marketing so we’ve had to become very creative. Our social media messaging is really starting to get some traction, but that takes time as well. I wish I had ananswer, a silver bullet that is going to solve this, but it is time and education for Canadians. This is a Canadian product, and we have got to start in Canada first.

I am trying not to say too much.

Senator McPhedran: Thank you, Vice Chief Brake and Mr.Penney.

My question is picking up on your reference to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Vice Chief Brake, and I want to move that to the domestic level, to the relatively new law, Juneof 2021, of the new UNDRIP Act in Canada that is very clearly about implementation of the commitments in the UN declaration. Were you consulted through any of the two-year period, from Juneof 2021 to Juneof 2023, that has ended up with a national action plan that is coming out of this act?

Ms.Brake: Thank you for the question.

I was engaged by the UNDRIP, I guess, the folks that were tasked with developing the calls to action or the implementation of UNDRIP. Our community was engaged in that. For me, the problem that surrounds this document is that I can reference it all day long, but it is not acknowledged by my provincial government. Sometimes there is the comment that it is not worth the piece of paper it is written on. If I may?

Senator McPhedran: Yes, you may.

Ms.Brake: I love that these documents exist, but unless it is going to be taken seriously and implemented by our governments— that’s a lot of work done and a lot of meaningful consultation around the rights of Indigenous people, and I am glad that you recognize my reference to it because I continue to reference it in hopes that our provincial government of Newfoundland and Labrador will adopt it. I believe right now it is just British Columbia that has adopted UNDRIP.

Senator Duncan: No, Yukon has it.

Ms.Brake: In the Yukon? Congratulations.

It is really important if we have these documents and folks from UNDRIP come into my community and ask for my feedback and engage me in these conversations, for me to actually see that they will be taken seriously by our governments. Right now, I am just patiently waiting for that.

I am not sure if thatanswers your question. I am not sure if I was 100percent clear on the question.

Senator McPhedran: Well, I was focused more on the domestic, on the Canadian act, but of course there is a huge overlap because it is all based on the UNDRIP declaration.

The next part of my question is just to ask whether you are aware of the fact that points 36 to 44 of the national action plan that was just released in Juneof this year are specific to the issues that we are discussing here today. In particular, I would just like to read into the record number 38:

Provide predictable and flexible funding that will ensure Indigenous partners have the capacity to provide fisheries, habitat, science, and oceans and marine-related services. Provide predictable and flexible funding to ensure Indigenous nations and organizations have the capacity to meaningfully participate in advisory, co-management, and decision-making processes tied to aquatic resources and oceans management.

I am hoping that the action plan will prove to be a resource that you can be using to really move to the kind of actions that you have identified for us today.

Ms.Brake: Thank you for outlining that. I appreciate that because that will be in my next address to you if we are here next year. It’s these key points and policies and these documents that we have, and it feels like it is the only thing that we have to rely on at times. I just want to see that these words that are on paper are more committed to tangible actions that create sustainable changes in our environment and our ecosystem. I really appreciate you putting that on the record, and I do look forward to relying heavily on making sure my voice is heard based on those recommendations.

Senator McPhedran: Well, as an enthusiastic convert to the Waspu omega-3 oil capsules, which I think are a terrific product, I can only hope that we get better news soon, with the kind of follow-up from both Fisheries and Oceans and Crown Indigenous Relations as the two key federal departments.

Ms.Brake: Wela’lin. Thank you.

The Chair: I am sure I speak very truthfully when I say this. Senator McPhedran, this is your first trip to our province?

Senator McPhedran: Yes.

The Chair: She has enjoyed it tremendously, including our trip to Carino processing plant, where she received her Waspu Oil.

Senator McPhedran: I have taken about 12 of them so far.

The Chair: I knew you were chipper today for some reason or other.

Senator R. Patterson: Thank you very much for both being here. Of course, the more I listen, the more questions I have, but I will be precise.

I am going to focus in on is the omega-3 industry. It isn’t just a food product; it is also a medicinal product; it is a health product. We know we need omega-3s. It is about brain health. It is about mental health. It is about visual health.

Out of traditional knowledge, we get a lot of great indicators. We use it all over the globe to develop pharmaceuticals. When we talk about the science behind this, this is science. How would you recommend that we start to close this gap? We can market whatever we like, but if people think that it isn’t based on something, it becomes very difficult to break through stigma, which is what the seal industry has. How would you recommend we try to get the traditional knowledge about the health benefits of omega-3 into science?

Ms.Brake: That is a fairly easy question toanswer, I feel, because the traditional knowledge that I have came from my elders in my community, and, if we had a marketing campaign that actually brought a camera into the kitchen of an elder over a cup of tea and just got that knowledge— I think about a conversation I’ve had with an elder of mine around the importance of the seal and what it gives to us. It warms us from the inside out, is what I am told. During a traditional seal hunt, at times, the harvesters will take the eyes and the heart and they will eat them there as a part of a ceremony. An elder of mine told me that when they were asked by a white settler, it was to see the good in the world and to warm their heart and make sure that they were honouring the animal. There is so much to be learned, and I think the campaigns need to bring us back to traditional knowledge and need to engage elders and knowledge keepers around the ceremonial practice of hunting.

That doesn’t need to be limited to seals. That is just in general, I believe. Everyone has a right to decide what they want to eat, whether they want to be a vegetarian or whether they want to eat in a traditional way or eat McDonald’s all day long, but if we inform people, if we give them the knowledge that comes from the history of why we do what we do, I feel that it gives everybody the opportunity to decide for themselves, based on time immemorial, for years to come, the things that have been done and been proven to be important and coveted in our own traditional ways of knowing and doing.

Senator R. Patterson: If I was to sort of encapsulate that, if you think about how Indigenous knowledge tells us to use an animal product, in this case seals, it should guide science in where to start looking. I would like to put that on the record.

Ms.Brake: Absolutely.

Mr.Penney: Just to quickly add to that, there is— and my mind has gone blank here. I think it is called the MBI program, marine biomass, through Memorial University in partnership with, I think, seven or eight other universities where they are doing— I cannot remember the technical term. They are doing studies on seal oil as part of this. Qalipu and some other First Nations are sponsors, so they are being interviewed and involved in all the conversations. But we do need more.

There is lots of science out there about the effect of omega-3s on diabetes, eyesight, mental health, anti-inflammatories, all that. There is not enough direct science on seal oil specifically. Under Canadian seal products, we are trying to get a couple of those. We actually have one study that will be finished in March, with Guelph University, on the effect of seal oil supplementation in pets, dogs specifically, for rheumatoid arthritis. Again, it costs a lot of money to do these studies, and we don’t have the money to provide it, so we are doing that through Canadian seal products, under the CSOF funding. But just that one study is almost $250,000. There is a lot of science we could get, but we just have to figure out how to pay for it.

It is kind of like the chicken or egg argument. Right? We can generate a lot of sales to pay for those studies, but we need the studies to validate it so that it is not just anecdotal data that people are looking at or, “I take seal oil; I feel better.” We need those studies to sell the seal products, so it is sort of eating itself sometimes, and that is the frustration.

There are plans in the works. Sales and marketing isn’t like building a fence and then it is done. It is a continuous process, and we are in education first, but the science behind it is super important. That helps us sell it— the features, benefits and all that. Honestly, people don’t worry so much about the harvest if it is educated to them about what the issues are and how good the products are for it. We have got people buying it for multitudes of reasons.

Senator Ataullahjan: Has the federal government or the DFO ever reached out to you to compare Indigenous and traditional knowledge with the scientific data that is collected by the department? We had a previous witness, Mr.Bath, who told us about what he was seeing on the ground, which seemed to be quite different from some of the scientific data. People on the ground are seeing the changes. How do I say this politely? What does someone sitting in an office in Ottawa know? I would come to you and say, “Listen, this is what I am seeing scientifically; is it similar to what you are seeing?” Has anybody ever reached out to you?

Ms.Brake: We were visited last year by the federal Minister of Fisheries, the Honourable Joyce Murray, and I was very excited because I knew she was coming to talk about seals. She stood in front of many members of our community and made a statement that was, “Seals eat fish.” We were forced to be masked that day, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed my facial expressions, but I can’t hide anything that I am feeling. I was just relieved to be masked that day because it was a statement that, when we say it, you folks have kind of the same reaction that I have. Like, of course, yes, we know this.

When we are engaged with Ottawa, I think that now I feel I am hopeful— I won’t say confident, but I am very hopeful— that they are looking to us to say, “Does the science match your traditional knowledge, and can we work together?” I feel there is an effort being made there.

From my conversation last year, I felt we were miles apart. We’ve been saying this for years, and we haven’t really felt heard. Now is the time. But again, to reiterate everything we’ve been saying, we need Canada to wrap their arms around us and say, “We are behind you, and we support you in this, and we advocate, and in the spirit of reconciliation, we want to empower you to practise your traditional ways of knowing and doing in regard to the seal harvest so we can bring balance back to the ecosystem.”

I think we are a ways apart at this stage of the game, but I am hopeful that we will get there.

Mr.Penney: I want to say that if we can get there, we will do the work. We will do all the sales and marketing and all the creating the content, making sure we are getting it out through social media and telling the story, especially the Indigenous story.

I know we are running out of time. Please visit our website, www.Waspu.ca. There is so much more information there on Qalipu itself. And visit Qalipu.ca as well, if you want to learn more about Qalipu First Nation, and also CanadianSealProducts.com and ProudlyIndigenous. If you are looking to buy some crafts, please visit that one as well. I am always selling, by the way. I think it is important. Especially visit Waspu because there is a lot of information about the benefits, but there is a lot of explanation about the cultural piece for Qalipu. I just wanted to get that on the record.

Ms.Brake: I may just chime in to say that we are a perfect example of what allyship in Indigenous relationships can do to push these subjects forward. We just need more of that.

The Chair: Thank you very much to our witnesses for another great addition to our conversation here. Your experience and expertise are very much appreciated here.

All our senators are aware, and I stand to be corrected, but I believe next Tuesday we will welcome in the newest senator from Newfoundland and Labrador, who has a Mi’kmaq heritage, from the Flat Bay Band. Judy White will be joining us. I am sure her voice will be heard loud and clear in our chamber on issues that are close to her heart.

Ms.Brake: We are very proud.

The Chair: We look forward to welcoming her.

Mr.Penney: My e-mail is on the website, so feel free to reach out if you have any more questions.

The Chair: In our next panel, we’ll be hearing from Ms.Rowena House, executive director of the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador— for those of you who attended Seal Day on the Hill, Rowena was one of the main organizers of that event. We are looking forward to next year, too—Bruno Vinhas, the outreach director of the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador, and Sherry Turnbull of Sherry’s Seal Skin Arts.

My understanding is that Ms.House will have some opening remarks, followed by Mr.Vinhas and Ms.Turnbull. The floor is yours.

Rowena House, Executive Director, Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador: Thank you very much. I just want to acknowledge that the land that we are on is the unceded territory of the Beothuk, the Mi’kmaq, and the Innu and Inuit of Labrador.

Good afternoon, and thank you very much for having and inviting us to speak to you today about our organization and how we support and advocate for our members in relation to seal-based arts and crafts. I would like to take a small amount of time to give you a little history of how I became so involved so that you can understand my background of the subject and allow for questions in relation to the many areas that I have personally been involved in.

This all goes back to public speaking. Way back when I was in high school, actually, we had public speaking, and I took on the topic of the seal industry for public speaking against an MP that you may know, Seamus O’Regan. My father was the fisheries officer for Labrador, and he did travelling up and down the coast of Labrador, and many times he came home at night and said, “I wish the scientists would understand that seals eat fish. How many more times?” So I took that on as public speaking for that particular year, and, ever since then, I have been kind of interested and have been involved in the sealing industry from my many years in not only Newfoundland and Labrador, but I spent a significant amount of time in Nunavut and then also additional time in Northern Ontario working with the Cree as well.

I am Rowena, and I am the executive director of the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador. However, previously, I was the executive director for the Nunavut Arts and Crafts Association. Through my work over the last 20years, I have been heavily involved in working to promote and find opportunities for artists to not only find places to sell their work but also to help them locate and secure the needed raw materials to make seal-based products. While working in Nunavut, it was very evident to me that the craft producers needed an outlet to sell and promote their work as well as to find reliable sources for raw materials.

All of this has been affected by Greenpeace’s involvement in protecting the seal population and labelling it as a taboo product. The market was all but destroyed and many avenues lost to sell products made in or had seal and or sealskin components, so we worked to promote and find ways to sell seal products in many local avenues, reaching out to Ottawa and the East Coast. There were considerable seal-friendly locations. The support we had territorially with the Department of Environment allowed us to sell raw materials to those who wanted to work with it, either to make accessories of their own or to work collaboratively with other makers to create sealskin clothing collections towards having beautiful sealskin fashion shows around the country and internationally. All of this helped to start to redevelop the market even though it was small.

One large part of this growth we saw was through the presentation and coordination of an annual event that we hold in Ottawa to celebrate seal products. The event started with my previous position in Nunavut and before there was a designated day. We worked with the Speaker of the House to host a seal‑friendly event that celebrated not only the fashion and the craft products but the food and medicinal benefits and supplements.

This particular event continued to gain momentum, and, when I relocated to Newfoundland and Labrador in 2017, I transferred the new position and worked with MP Yvonne Jones. MP Yvonne Jones took up the torch so to speak and worked with me and the Craft Council here in Newfoundland so the event could continue. Yvonne has helped us for the last six years, and, prior to that, it was the MP for Nunavut who I worked with there. Both worked with me personally and the organizations to continue to develop the overall event.

As you can see, I have been working in this sector and developing it for many years, and it is something that I am very passionate about overall. I am happy to have the support of many partners and businesses that provide assistance and inspiration to keep the seal-based arts and crafts growing and shifting as the attitudes and acceptance also continue to develop.

As a provincial organization, our mandate is to help and support craft producers all across this province, and that includes working with many different Indigenous groups that work in seal that they produce. We have seen an increase in the numbers of artists that work in seal skin, and the range of products has also increased and crossed many areas, including fashion, accessories, home decor and craft-based artworks. There has never been a seal-based survey or study done on the province, but within the events we work with, we can say that it is a growing material for craft and craft-based art. It has propelled many artists to develop businesses of their own and to sustain their practice in the last few years.

I am going to turn it over to Bruno, and he is going to say a few more words, as well.

Bruno Vinhas, Events and Outreach Director, Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador: Good afternoon. I am a curator, and I work as the director of events and outreach for the council. I am also a foreigner who chose to move to Newfoundland because of its arts and crafts. As a textile-based curator, I understand that, before moving here, the province had a huge Indigenous craft presentation. Working with the council allowed me to discover more of that and to understand more of that realm.

Within the council, we have three departments. We have a gallery, a shop and a clay studio. The shop currently has six seal‑product producers in stock. We have worked throughout the years, throughout the seven years that I have been there, with many more. Our gallery only recently started exhibiting works in seal skin, which had an amazing uptake both from the artists and from the community that came to see the shows. Just last year, our sales in sealskin products in the shop reached 4,891, just in small products. We don’t have any large products like coats or mitts, but mainly small keychains and earrings.

We worked together with the Labrador North chamber and the Baffin chamber on an event called Northern Lights in Ottawa. This year was the first event after the pandemic, and, within 16hours that we were open, we sold $404,000 in products. From that, roughly $165,000 was just in seal products.

It is an incredible pleasure and honour to work with those Indigenous artists and see the work they do with seal, especially when we managed this year to have internationally known fashion designers that have cat-walked through Paris Fashion Week and Milan Fashion Week with seal products.

To understand a little bit of that traditional knowledge and change that into a contemporary craft is an amazing benefit to working with seal. Also, we need to understand that a lot of the traditional knowledge in seal has been at risk of disappearing because of the taboo in the industry in that people cannot work with the material and cannot export the products that they make.

Another project that we worked with— and I think Rowena can speak more about that— is a pan-Northern Indigenous clothing product that we did with the National Research Council for clothing, through Parks Canada and through the—

Ms.House: Federal agency.

Mr.Vinhas: Federal agency, yes, of Western Ontario.

Ms.House: We were approached by the National Research Council to help in putting together a project called the Indigenous clothing project. It is a pan-Northern event, a pan‑Northern project, and the whole idea behind the project was that we would be gathering and collecting garments from all over Canada’s north, made by craft producers. A lot of that product had seal skin on it or in it or part of it.

This project has brought together a lot of Indigenous knowledge and western science in order to identify the components of traditional clothing ensembles that are most suitable for operational activities in cold climates. The overall objective was to investigate the ability of Indigenous clothing to protect the wearer according to its construction and purpose, providing guidance for its use in harsh weather as personal protective equipment. This will lead to increased personal safety and security in Arctic environments. This project also had many elements that were made from seal and helped in securing higher clo value rating for products that were tested. This was a way for Parks Canada, the RCMP, Canada Coast Guard and all of those groups and organizations that are working in the North to be able to have the science to back up why they need to have those particular types of garments in their uniforms. We did the first level of this project, which indicated most of the garments that were tested had a higher clo value, which is the higher warmth value, when they had traditional knowledge and traditional raw materials included in those garments. That was a really interesting project to be part of so that we could see that the science backs up the warmth factor of all of the different clothing.

There are just a couple of more points to say, and I know I am probably over on my time. Sorry.

Our producers have mentioned on numerous occasions that access to good quality seal pelts is constantly diminishing due to the smaller and smaller seal hunts annually. They primarily get most of their materials from Carino, which I think you guys all visited, or from North Bay, but they are getting harder and harder to source. Their producers are very talented, and they use whatever they can source to make their incredibly beautiful work. However, with less raw materials, they are forced to find other materials that are more accessible in order to provide for their families and have a successful business. Also, with many of these producers coming from and living in rural remote areas, the ease of access and shipping becomes a big problem. We are hopeful that perhaps governments would put in place similar programs as the Nunavut government did, with shipping subsidies and hunter programs to allow more product to be available here in this particular province.

The last thing I would like to mention is the access to markets. I listened in on the previous session, and I kind of just want to say ditto to everything that Bill said because it was right on point. One of the biggest items that we’ve seen to be an issue for producers is that, working in seal skin, they have a very difficult time selling on certain platforms, such as Etsy. Etsy is an American-based company, and due to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, they do not feel they can promote or have producers who sell seal in their items to sell.

They also have in-person markets. I am not sure if you all knew that. Etsy has numerous in-person markets, not just only online. When they have their in-person markets— we have about three in St.John’s alone— because of the rules around their platform, they are not permitted to be part of the in-person events. They are very popular and successful, but our seal producers are not permitted to be part of that, once again limiting opportunities for market access. This happens far too often and limits the ability to be part of markets and platforms that do not allow any seal items to be part of their sales. However, in this province, it is not as predominant. Although the Etsy market does prevent sales, we have had many fairs in the past in lead-up to the Christmas Season. On average in this city, there are about four or five markets every weekend, from October20th to about December20th, and our own craft fair council has over 10producers who are seal producers working only in seals, and their sales are very good for the event that we put on here in the city.

With that, I am going to pass it back over to Mr.Vinhas to say a few final words, and then we can get to Sherry.

Mr.Vinhas: I want to thank you for the opportunity to be here today and to make sure that the value of crafts produced with seal, not only the economic value but the cultural value, is really important. The more barriers that we are facing in the industry with the production of pelts and seal leather, the more we are going to make these people suffer in their homes because that is their main food on the table. Most of the producers in seal don’t make work to keep and create a stock; they make it to sell. We just need to keep that in mind. Thank you so much.

The Chair: Thank you. Ms.Turnbull?

Sherry Turnbull, Owner, Sherry’s Seal Skin Art: Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to speak about the importance of seal products used in today’s arts and crafts industry.

I am a proud Inuk woman. I own Sherry’s Seal Skin Art in Charlottetown, Labrador, and I am the daughter of a fisherman and seal harvester. I concentrate on creating original designs in seal art. Although I have made clothing and other smaller products, that is mostly for family and friends. I work as a Natural Resources Guardian with NunatuKavut, and I also hold a Professional Seal Harvesters Licence.

Traditionally, seal product has been used for years in my Inuit culture as a very important way of life. The meat was used for food, the oil to heat our homes, cook our food, and for light for our lamps, but the fur was used for clothing. I started creating my first piece of art in 2016 out of curiosity, and then it became a very busy hobby and a passion. Today it keeps me busy as time permits outside my daytime employment. My work can be found in private collections in every province and territory across Canada. My pieces have been sold through galleries, trade shows, gift shops, word of mouth and through my Facebook site, “Sherry’s Seal Skin Art.” I have also had a solo exhibition at the 30th anniversary of the Craft Council Newfoundland and Labrador gallery for my piece, “Home,” remembering the discovery of unmarked graves in residential schools across Canada. I have been invited twice to participate in the Northern Lights Conference and Arts Exhibition in Ottawa. That was mentioned previously.

Today, seal products used in art and crafts have become very popular and sought out by locals and visitors to our area. I have had numerous times when people from the U.S. wanted my product, but I couldn’t ship it or they couldn’t take it back. Many artists and crafters use seal skin to produce beautiful products for their main source of income or to supplement other income sources. Personally, with the abundance of seals in our coastal waters, I would like to see the market open up to allow seal products to enter other countries. I would love to see this become a bigger market for me and all of us.

I purchase my seal pelts already processed and ready to work with. I use almost every part of the pelt in my work. I think you visited Carino yesterday, and that is where most of my pelts come from. This is how our ancestor taught us: Use everything and waste nothing.

I want to thank you today for giving me this opportunity, and if you have any questions, I will try toanswer. Thanks.

The Chair: Thank you to all of our witnesses for those remarks.

We will turn to question from senators, starting with our deputy chair Senator Busson.

Senator Busson: Thank you all for being here. I was one of the many senators who were lucky enough to attend the event on the Hill last spring and look at the amazing variety of incredibly well-done art that your associates and people that you work with made. The level of expertise that goes into those things is absolutely stunning.

You mention, Rowena, Greenpeace and the taboo that has been created. We are all well aware of the pushback and the headwind that I suspect you all face in trying to market your products. I am wondering if you, any one of you or all of you, would like to briefly comment on the support or lack thereof that you feel from the federal government when it comes to marketing. There are so many different departments that are responsible for dealing with seal products, moving on through the food chain and then into the products that you use for your beautiful pieces, and I am wondering if you could, as I have said, comment on how you think that could be improved, both nationally, throughout this country, and specifically internationally, if you would.

Ms.House: Through my work over the last 20years, it has been quite evident that there has been internal support for the seal industry within federal government and provincial governments and territorial, of course, but it falls short of getting the word out to international markets. We have successfully navigated Paris Fashion Week. We have also done Milan. I have brought a contingent and did a fashion show over in Brussels. There are locations that we have gone to that are interested in the product. It is just they don’t know enough about our product to make it something that they can put into their retail areas. I think we need to have a more concentrated effort federally to really own the industry and to make it something that is not taboo and that the senators around the table don’t have any issue with wearing a sealskin tie to an event and are not afraid of backlash that they would get, because I have seen both sides of that.

Senator Busson: Ms.Turnbull, you had mentioned that you had many opportunities to sell some of the things that you create to American tourists. You mentioned them specifically. Is that a big part of your experience? Could you comment on that?

Ms.Turnbull: Not often, but it has happened, just people and tourists coming to our communities and seeing my work. I may get a message asking about the shipping, and I can’t ship, or I can ship but I shouldn’t ship. So, no, I can’t ship.

Senator Busson: I hear you.

Ms.Turnbull: You hear me.

Senator Busson: Yes.

Ms.Turnbull: So yeah.

Senator Busson: Do you have anything to add, Mr.Vinhas?

Mr.Vinhas: I just think that in terms of the export of crafts made with seal, that is something there is a lot of locks to be jumped. If you are trying to organize an exhibition outside of the country, which is something we have tried so many times, to bring an exhibition outside of the country, as soon as you mention seal, your whole exhibition is put on hold. You cannot even consider sending the other pieces of the show because there is one single piece that is made of seal.

Senator Busson: Thank you.

Senator McPhedran: Thanks so much for making the time to be with us today.

I have a question. I want to make sure I understood something that you said, Rowena, which was that the producers of the products are not allowed to participate in person when you have— you said you have a number of markets, several times a year. I believe you said the producers or the creators were not allowed to be there in person. I am totally confused by that. Can you please help me understand?

Ms.House: Sure thing. The Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador has a fair. We have a big Christmas craft fair every year, but we are one of many that happen in this particular city. One of the other ones that happens is through Etsy. Etsy has their own fair here in the city. They have an in-person one. Because it is Etsy, they won’t allow producers of seal product to sell at that fair. We allow our producers to be there, but Etsy does not allow any producers of seal product to be in their fairs.

Senator McPhedran: I am sure that Senator Petten and Senator Manning understood exactly what you’ve just explained, but can you help me understand Etsy?

Ms.House: Etsy is a platform, an online platform, so that, if you wanted to go and buy a shawl—

The Chair: Like Amazon or something like that.

Senator McPhedran: Etsy, E-T-S-Y.

Ms.House: E-T-S-Y, yes.

Senator McPhedran: Oh, I see.

Ms.House: They have lots of in-person markets throughout Canada, and one of the things is that it cannot have any seal product in any of their platforms or in person.

Senator McPhedran: Because they are American-based?

Ms.House: Because they are American-based.

Senator McPhedran: Okay, thank you very much. I didn’t understand that, at all.

A question, please, to you, Sherry— and a big thank you to all of you for the kind of creativity that you are bringing, not only to where you are located from but in fact representing the whole country. Sherry, you mentioned about your seal skins. Is that because, at your community level, while you may have Inuit seal hunters, the processing is not such that you can really use those skins for your art?

Ms.Turnbull: Well, I am from a very small community of 300 people. My husband does harvest seals, but Carino would buy from the harvester. It may be my husband’s seal or my community’s, but it would still go to Carino to be processed.

Senator McPhedran: I see. Okay.

Ms.Turnbull: I would like to add, too, previously with the U.S., a lot of times my customers may be Canadian or even my neighbours who grew up and their culture is different. They can’t take a part of the culture back to the U.S. for them to hang on their wall. It is not just the American people; it is our own people that can’t bring their culture back with them to their homes.

Senator McPhedran: Thanks very much.

The Chair: That was an interesting comment, Ms.Turnbull.

Senator R. Patterson: I have a comment and then a question. My first comment is I find it very interesting that Etsy can do an in-person market in Canada and restrict what we can sell in Canada to Canadians. I find that a very interesting space. I realize they have choice there.

The Chair: Only in Canada.

Senator R. Patterson: That is only in Canada. That is my statement.

The next part is we’ve heard that this is a supply chain issue, and it really starts with what we are able to harvest and t moves forward through there. Every single step in the way to get to you, to get the products to make the arts and crafts side of this supply chain, there is a break everywhere.

I am going to ask, both from a smaller perspective and as a group, if you were to get one message out there in order to truly achieve in Canada and globally, what is the one message you need Ottawa to hear? If you would like, I can start with Ms.Turnbull, and then we can go to the team.

Ms.Turnbull: I think one important message is that we need the seal hunt not only for the art and craft side; we need the seal hunt as communities and as families. It is part of our diet, very big part of our diet. I know we as Indigenous people can harvest. I can harvest a seal. But when it comes to our fish harvest, they can’t go and do that harvest like they did in the past. So that is very important in that way.

As an artist, I can’t get pelts when I need them. When I am ordering from Carino, I can get two or three, and sometimes if I am lucky I can get a dozen, and I can use a dozen in a couple of weeks. The quantity is not there. The quality is there, but the quantity is not there when I am ordering because they are short as well.

Senator R. Patterson: Thank you.

Ms.House: I think the one thing that Ottawa could help us with and the message that needs to get out is that seal is a Canadian thing and, as Canadians, we should be able to hunt and sell and distribute any and all pieces of the harvested animal to anyone who wants it. If they can help and assist that in any way— through marketing, through funding, through just a campaign to say there is nothing wrong with this hunt— I think that would go a long way.

Mr.Vinhas: We are talking so much about truth and reconciliation, but still we ban people from practising their own culture. It is not something that is disturbing or changing the environment. It is something that is part of their culture, and they know what to do, so who are we to tell them no?

Senator R. Patterson: Thank you.

Senator Ataullahjan: Ms.Turnbull, qujannamiik. I hope I said that correctly. My daughter is in Nunavut. From what I understand, that is a way of saying thank you. Thank you for your presentation.

As an artist, I understand how difficult it is to promote and get your work out there. Has Global Affairs ever reached out to you to help you promote your products or seal products overseas? The embassies can play a huge role in this. They have various evenings where they promote culture and music. Have they ever reached out to you to promote seal products?

Ms.Turnbull: No, they have not. I am very small yet. I am kind of new. Newfoundland and Labrador has been helping me a lot, actually. I have many thanks to those guys. But, no, they haven’t reached out.

Senator Ataullahjan: Maybe they should. Thank you.

Senator Quinn: Thank you, folks, for being here this afternoon.

All of these things you have explained are really interesting. It seems from everything we have heard from other witnesses and throughout this study that the root problem seems to be the hunt itself and the perception internationally. Is the Canadian government involved in or are they doing things to try to change that around?

I was talking to one of the gentlemen who has been 60, 70years in the business, in the days of what appeared as the blood on the ice and the little white seals, baby seals and whatnot. My understanding is that the harvest is totally different today. Given that it is a totally different harvest, are we doing enough as a country to try to educate those people who have banned it?

I find it incredible that craftspeople cannot sell their product on a platform if the product is only being sold within Canada. Without getting into it, my colleagues will appreciate we have had great debate about large platforms and how they will be used or not used in Canada. Maybe we ought to consider doing a reversal and coming at it from a different way. I just put that as an aside.

Obviously, we need to do more. How do we cause that to happen? How can you help us cause more discussion and more action? Maybe not more discussion; we have had enough discussion. How do we cause more action to allow craftspeople and producers and harvesters to make their livelihood and, more importantly for me after being here in some of the communities, to help sustain our communities? Our communities in Newfoundland are getting smaller and gradually disappearing, and one part of that is to do with the seal hunt being decimated and the fish stocks being decimated. Surely there is a bigger issue at play here that directly ties into your challenge.

Ms.House: I don’t know if it was the last Seal Day or the Seal Day before that— we have been doing these for a while, and I have been doing them from day one— but one of the things that happened, I think two years ago, was Minister Murray at the time came out and actually said the words, “Seal eat fish.” That has helped, because a lot of people were under the understanding that the science didn’t back that up, and to have that revelation at a Seal Day, that seals actually do eat fish, was powerful.

But it does need more. We do need more. Sometimes it is not all about the funding. Sometimes it is a simple thing like the Prime Minister wearing something of seal when he is at an international event, showing that he is not afraid to wear it or something of that nature and it being a bigger piece of the economy that could be. It is a big piece of the puzzle. There is a lot that could be given into the GDP if the hunt was opened up, if we had more access and if Sherry was able to get more than the 12 pelts that she needs. There is more than just one Sherry. There are 29 fashion designers that we had at one event in Ottawa two years ago. They did 165,000 in 16 hours. That’s big numbers. That is something that we would all love to achieve. It is having the federal government back us up in not only the funding piece of it but also in showing we are proud to be able to wear this or to use this or to have it as your dinner or whatever.

Senator Quinn: Just a small point: I am wondering too if associations such as yours and others that we have heard from maybe need to be more powerful and poignant in the message that they deliver. Seals not only eat fish; they eat 8billion pounds of fish. Remind Canadians that when they go to the grocery store and they see the high price of fish, well, there is $8billion of stock being taken away that could otherwise potentially be in a grocery store with a reduced price for people to feed their families protein. I was speaking earlier with one of our witnesses to come. For big cities like Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto, this is all in the distance, if they hear about it at all. How do we collectively get them to hear that message in a more poignant way, in a way that they can understand clearly that there is a consequence to the actions that have been taken in dealing with what is now a sustainable way to harvest a resource that will benefit Canadians across the country? I am just wondering how we can do that.

Ms.House: That is a very good point. How do we do that? The seal hunt has changed over the last number of years and decades. It keeps getting smaller, and the number of pelts that come through North Bay or go through Carino keep getting smaller every year, and the number of people who are interested in getting them increases every year. You have a big contingent from China that keeps wanting to buy as many as they can. You have contingents of people that want them, and then you have the Nunavut government that goes in and buys all of their own back. It is that whole working with the hunters and making sure that you are part of the solution in allowing the seal hunt to be normalized, because right now it is not normalized. It is seen as taboo, and it continues to be seen that way because we are not advocating for it enough.

The other craft councils that I have worked with all understand the point, but, until you get them to Labrador or you get them to Nunavut or you get them to Nunavik to actually see things happening and see the garments in everyday life— then they get it. Then they come back and they are a changed person. Then they understand why the seal hunt is important.

Senator Quinn: Thank you.

Senator Cordy: Thank you so much for being here. It is very interesting. I feel with every panel we have heard today, we keep hearing new things, or things that I didn’t know about before, so thank you so much for that.

I just am going back to Senator Ataullahjan’s comments. We were both on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and we were talking about the arts, including creative arts and dance and music and all of those things. One of the suggestions that we made in our report was that the Canadian embassies around the world should be more proactive in promoting Canadian art, including the art that we have been talking about today using seal skin. Have you heard anything about those types of shows being held around the world and being promoted by embassies, or is it happening? I left the committee shortly after that report came out, and I am sorry I didn’t follow up.

When you said Etsy, first I thought it can’t be the online Etsy, and then I realized as you kept talking that it is the online Etsy coming to Canada and yet Canadian producers are not able to present their work at these events.

Ms.House: Toanswer your question, yes, the embassies have. In my personal experience, I have worked with the German embassy as well as the UK embassy. We did a show just before I left Nunavut, actually. We did a show in the UK, in London. We had a sealskin item of clothing that was made for the exhibition, a special exhibition. Bringing that into the UK was problematic. I was stopped at the border and held in their area until the diplomatic approach was taken to get the items in. I was there for two or three hours, just waiting for the diplomatic piece to happen, and the curator had to phone and come and make sure that the pieces were what they were supposed to be. So it is happening. Is it happening enough? No.I mean we did go to Brussels, to the big seafood show that they have there. I brought a contingent with me, and Inuit throat singers came with us. Because they were Inuit, they brought their own clothing. They took a risk, but they wanted to take the risk, and they did, and they had their sealskin clothing with them at that show. But could we bring in other pieces? No.

So, yes, it is recognizable as people and embassies want to do it, but they are not actively seeking it out, from my personal experience.

Senator Cordy: And there are too many roadblocks, it seems, right now.

Ms.House: Definitely a lot of roadblocks.

Senator Cordy: It goes back to things that we’ve heard about, the need for our government and other governments to work together because these are pieces of art we are seeing.

You spoke about Seal Day in Ottawa. Are you having one this year, and, if so, when is it happening?

Ms.House: Every year—

Senator Cordy: I want to give you time for a promo here.

Ms.House: Every year, but I guess it’s about this time of the year when we are trying to figure out our funding for the year. We say, “Are we doing the Seal Day?” And then Yvonne Jones comes back and says, “Of course we are doing a Seal Day.” So it is normally around National Seal Products Day, which is around May21. It is either the weekend before or the weekend after that, depending on when Victoria Day falls and what is best for the Speaker of the House because he does host the event in Ottawa. So around the 16th or the 28th are the dates we are looking at.

Senator Cordy: Thank you, and thank you for coming.

Senator Ataullahjan: You got me thinking about maybe if the Prime Minister wore something. Why don’t you send him a gift? When he started wearing those colourful socks, the sales went through the roof. Maybe send him a gift of a tie that he could wear next time, and that would be a good way to promote it.

Ms.House: Yes, we have actually done that. The Prime Minister does have some sealskin items in his wardrobe, I do believe. It is just whether he chooses to wear them or not.

The Chair: I am not going there.

Senator Ataullahjan: It was just a suggestion.

The Chair: Thank you to our witnesses. As Senator Cordy said, we are learning so much today. In pretty well every panel, we are learning something different and new. Just to comment on the Etsy situation, I just find it absolutely mind-blowing that they can have someone from their country tell us how we are going to do it in our country. Nowhere else in the world would that happen, in my opinion, but I could be wrong. Thank you for your time, and certainly I wish you all the best, and, Ms.Turnbull, certainly in your capacity in your own personal business, I wish you all the best. I come from a community of less than 300people, so we have something in common.

For our next panel, I can save a few minutes on introductions because I don’t think these two are strangers to us anymore. For the record here, though, I have to introduce you. Our next panel, committee members, will consist of Mr.Dion Dakins, CEO of Carino Processing Ltd. here in Newfoundland and Labrador, and joining Dion is Mr.Darren Halloran, store owner of Always in Vogue. We had the pleasure of visiting both of your facilities yesterday. On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for taking the time to show us around. To say colleagues were impressed with both facilities would be an understatement. I think you will hear some of that in our questions.

My understanding is you have some opening remarks, and then we are going to go to questions from our senators. The floor is yours, whoever wants to go first.

Dion Dakins, Chief Executive Officer, Carino Processing Ltd.: Thank you again for this opportunity. A couple of notes that I didn’t pass in for translation, I just want to note: I think this is my eighth committee presentation. I made three to which Senator Manning has been the Chair over the years, and this is the first I have been privileged to give in Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the first time any committee has visited our facility, and we really appreciate you taking the time to do this. Thank you for that, and thank you for this opportunity now to say a few words. We touched on this yesterday, but it will be more concise and laid out here today.

Carino has been processing seal meat, oil and hides and other by-products since 1958. We need a stable supply of harp, hooded and grey seals. The health of our business is intimately linked to healthy seal populations, particularly harp seal populations.

If we genuinely care about seals, we must come to grips with an increasingly glaring and alarming truth: Responsible management of the ever-growing seal populations is essential to protect our ocean ecosystem and the species that inhabit our waters and to conserve and protect the seal itself.

We must dispel the myth that a responsible and humane seal harvest threatens the seals’ sustainability. In fact, the seal harvest is an environmental necessity for the long-term health for the seal herd and the species on which it preys. We must treat all species equally. To sacrifice one to protect another is both misguided and irresponsible.

DFO’s own science makes it clear that, at their current numbers, grey seals will cause the extinction of four commercial fish species in the southern Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The ecosystem cannot survive this kind of imbalance, nor can the seals. We must restore the balance.

In 2002, the harp seal fishery was the first in Canada to adopt the precautionary approach to fisheries management. This means management decisions must err on the side of caution when scientific knowledge is uncertain. It also means not using the absence of adequate scientific information as a reason to postpone action or failure to take action to avoid serious harm to fish stocks or their ecosystems.

This approach is widely accepted internationally as an essential part of sustainable fisheries management, and yet for years we have used that absence of adequate scientific information to deny the devastating impact of historic seal numbers on commercial fish stocks and the marine ecosystems off our coast.

Existing DFO harp seal science tells us that, since the population has risen above 5.4million, females are on average 20 kilos lighter in February, a critical point in the gestation cycle, and 1.7 centimetres, about 0.67 inches, shorter in body length; females are on average two years older before they have their first pup; and late-term abortions have risen by 200percent. Furthermore, ice-dependent seals like harp seals are more susceptible to the effects of climate change when their populations are higher. At current numbers, grey seals will cause the extinction of four commercial fish species in the southern Gulf of Saint Lawrence.

In 2022, the report of the Atlantic Seals Science Task Team told us:

… the food, feeding and migration data for the harp and grey seal populations in Atlantic Canada to be woefully inadequate to accurately determine the role seals play in the Northwest Atlantic Ecosystem …

… the lack of current comprehensive data collection on feeding, diet and migration throughout the seasonal and spatial range of seals, especially the harp seal population, is likely contributing to the lack of credible scientific evidence.

And, third:

… the high population abundance of grey seals and harp seals, which are at or approaching historic levels, are having a serious impact on the ocean ecosystem in Atlantic Canada. The extent of the impacts cannot be determined with the limited information held by DFO Science.

Based on caloric requirements, Norwegian science estimates each harp seal consumes 3.3 metric tonnes of fish each per year. DFO estimates 1.1 metric tonnes for the same species. The herd consumes somewhere between 8.36 and 25.08million metric tonnes of fish each year. Commercial fisheries on the East Coast of Canada yield less than 700,000 tonnes per year. Regardless of who is right, whether it is the Norwegians or the Canadians, such ravenous and continuous predation by seals is threatening fish stocks. There is an urgent need to review the Norwegian and Canadian estimates, including the underpinning science, and reconcile this difference.

Inuit elders have told me harp seals are displacing the ring seal in traditional areas, negatively impacting food security and the health of individuals. At our plant, we are seeing more claw marks in young beater harp seals. Our quality control experts believe females are trying to wean the pups earlier than is historically normal.

Harp seals need sea ice to reproduce, ice that is threatened by climate change. In 2016, DFO scientist Gary Stenson etal. authored an article. The impact of changing climate and abundance on reproduction in an ice-dependent species, the Northwest Atlantic harp seal. It states that the general decline in pregnancy, including the rate of late-term abortions, is associated with increased population size. As well, harp seals appear to respond negatively to small variations in environmental conditions when they are at high population levels. It follows that reducing the harp seal numbers will actually improve their odds of surviving the impacts of climate change.

Bringing balance to our ecosystem serves the interests of all the various entities dependent on its survival, including seals, but we have to act now.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr.Dakins.

Darren Halloran, Store Owner, Always in Vogue: Good afternoon. I am the owner and operator of Always in Vogue in St.John’s, Newfoundland. Our company has been in business for over 60years. We have had stores all over Atlantic Canada, and most recently, in 2016, we opened a seal fur store in Shenyang, China.

We are very proud supporters of the seal industry. We have been fortunate enough to make seal jackets for many federal and provincial government officials: John Efford being one of the first, Danny Williams, Premier Furey, Members of the Senate, Members of Parliament, Yvonne Jones, Gudie Hutchings, Cliff Small, just to name a few.

We see ourselves as innovators, always creating and designing new seal fur products to stay ahead of the industry. We are right in the middle of tourist season and cruise ship season here in St.John’s, and I have been roughly calculating the number of sales lost to the Marine Mammal Protection Act. In Augustalone, we lost over $56,000 in sales, in-store and online, to American tourists. This is due to outdated legislation surrounding the Marine Mammal Protection Act, where even many Americans are now lobbying for change to have seals removed from the act. Our government must join this lobby. Can you imagine total sales lost in one year just at our store alone?

We have our hands tied. We are only reaching 1percent of the market. Last night alone, on my website, there were 6,700 visits from the United States, and 2,100 from Europe and Asia. We have also recently tapped into Vogue’s analytics for target marketing. In the United States alone, our reach potential is 235million people. I personally would be happy to reach 5percent of that market.

These are real numbers with real potential, with real customers who are unable to purchase seal products from our stores. I have been told many times, “Darren, if the government decided to do a project and drop 100,000 skins at your store, there is no way you’d be able to produce all this product.” Myanswer to them has always been, “Watch me.”

I was honoured last night to have members of the Senate visit our store. Everyone was so receptive and kind. I did, however, hear a few people mention, “I would never pay $3,500 for a jacket.” Myanswer for that is simple: We have programs in place to make seal products affordable to all Canadians. Instead of $3,500, how about $97 a month for 36 months with absolutely zero interest? When it comes to the sealing industry, I only know one way to be, and that is positive.

My late father, Bernie Halloran, was one of the biggest advocates for the sealing industry, besides Dion who is sitting here with me today. His famous statement always was, “This is the most bullied industry in the world. Instead of being afraid to put on a jacket for a picture, be proud of what we are doing. We are not doing anything wrong. The people who are against us and don’t understand us, they are wrong.”

I would like to thank you for inviting me here today. I am honoured and cannot wait for the day the sealing industry is booming again and I see all of you in a seal jacket from Vogue. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Dion and Darren.

Just to follow up quickly on Darren’s comments, I was very good friends with Darren’s dad. As a matter of fact, the discussion about bringing the Fisheries Committee to Newfoundland and Labrador was a suggestion from your dad several years ago. It just took a little while to get here. I regret that he is not here to see it. I promised to bring them to the store, too, so we managed to do both. He was a great advocate for the industry and certainly a reason why we are keeping this on the agenda.

Senator Busson: Thank you both for being here and for the amazing hospitality you both showed all of us yesterday on our tours of the Carino plant and your beautiful, beautiful store.

Mr.Halloran: Thank you.

Senator Busson: I really appreciate that. We felt very strongly about the seal industry before, but after hearing from both of you, I am absolutely— and I think most of us are— so convinced and probably share the same frustration with you that, from a marketing perspective and from an ecological perspective, this is absolutely a no-brainer for the Canadian government to get incredibly involved and be the champion of this industry, if not to support the fashion and art side of this, but to save the fishery around the world and specifically in Canada. I come from the West Coast, and people aren’t screaming as loud on the West Coast. I am not quite sure why, but I personally experienced the dangers and the destruction that the seals can do to the salmon fishery on the West Coast. I hear you, and I think we all hear you.

This is kind of a two-sided question. One of our other witnesses mentioned China, and you also mentioned China. Apparently it is not a ban, but there is some other reason why China is not a market. Could you perhaps explain that to me? I don’t understand why.

Mr.Dakins, you said we have to act now, and I agree with you, but I would like your comment on what we need to do and do blue sky on that, like what we really need to do.

Mr.Dakins: To take the first explanation about China, in 2010, Minister Gail Shea at the time initialled a food safety agreement with her Chinese counterpart for the export of edible Canadian seal products to China. I do have a letter that I will be happy to follow up with the committee on, from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, describing the current situation. In China, there was a political concern raised by animal rights groups, not animal welfare organizations but animal rights groups, about the Canadian seal hunt. Two questions were asked at the people’s committee congress, which happens annually on March11, and, from then, we have been unable to export any edible seal products to China. We can’t get the documents, and the Chinese cannot do the importation. E-commerce has not been interrupted, so small bottles of seal oil can be sold across the border to mainland Chinese people, but it can’t be commercial in scale. It can’t be larger trade.

To what we must act now, I believe you guys are hearing really good advice. You are hearing stories of challenges. You are hearing stories of opportunity. The problem is we have never had access to a genuine round-table environment with the greatest minds in our government respecting and working cooperatively with provincial-territorial governments and industry players to execute a strategy to educate the world on the current reality.

Seals themselves, because of their population levels, are in trouble. If we restore the balance in the size of the herd, we will be helping the seal, we will be improving global sustainability and availability of Canadian seafood that the world so desperately wants, and we will be protecting the environment. Groups that want to be detractors and want to try to tear down efforts of the Canadian government to protect its own resources and to help supply the world population with sustainable healthy seafood will actually be advocating for the destruction of the environment and the seals themselves.

This is very similar to what the situation was with the kangaroo in Australia. The Australian government worked with industry and Indigenous and non-Indigenous rural communities to formulate a strategy, and everybody worked in a common approach, in the same direction, to achieve a common goal.

Canada has not done that. We have defended the hunt bysaying that it is sustainable, that it’s humane and that it is important to the culture and traditions of Indigenous and non‑Indigenous people, but we have not acted in a strategic manner to not only defend but explain the environmental necessity that this industry occur.

Would you rather we just kill the seals and let them sink to the bottom of the ocean, or would you rather see us use it respectfully and sustainably? Our company has been active in Newfoundland and Labrador since 1958. We need sustainable seal populations. Without them, we can’t have a business for future generations. I think we need to start to tell that to consumers and other foreign governments, including the European Union and the Americans, because what we have right now is a catastrophe.

In my own estimation listening to fisherpeople, we are on the edge of collapse in the Northwest Atlantic due to seal predation. Four species, on our watch, will go extinct because of grey seal predation in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. How many species will we allow to go extinct on our watch? That is where we are.

Senator Busson: Thank you.

Senator R. Patterson: Usually, I am lower down the list so I have time to formulate, but I am going to go a bit more into some of the details about going in to market. Mr.Dakins, you and I had a brief discussion yesterday on omega-3s, the human consumption of the oils. The one thing that we do know, especially in a fairly contentious market, is that while it is currently treated as a food product, a medicinal product, in order to truly get people behind products, they want data. They want science. We certainly have heard that there are efforts with the union side doing science grosso modo, and I am curious to know what you are doing in terms of processing and manufacturing, because this will be part of your sale as you move forward. Thank you.

Mr.Dakins: We are cooperating, and we are supplying materials into the Marine Biomass Innovations project which was announced, supported by the federal government. It was led by Memorial University, Corner Brook Campus. It has since been moved to Western University. It involves five Canadian universities and six international universities. We are going to do a clinical trial, led by Dr.Sukhinder Cheema from Memorial University here, into the health effect of consumption of seal oil on type 2 diabetes in youth, both the aboriginal and Caucasian community. We have got a lot of science on the benefits of seal oil. This will be the first clinical trial. Of all the materials that are being investigated through the MBI project, seal oil is the only one with enough science behind it to go to clinical trial. We are the most advanced product in the whole system, so we are very proud of that.

Right now, we are in a global collapse on marine-based omega-3s. Prices are at all-time historical highs, being traded as high as $6,000 U.S. per metric tonne, FOB Peru and Chile. The anchovy fisheries largely have failed this year, so the supply is catastrophically low. There is a huge appetite and a requirement for these essential fatty acids because they are essential. Yet, for that market dynamic, we have not yet been successful to be able to market our seal oil.

There are efforts we are making on seal meat because people, including Canadian companies, are concerned about the brand risk to adopting this and putting it into their product lines. While we need to recover international markets because of market access restriction— there are consumers but we just can’t get to them, particularly in a place like China— we need to start at home, I think, and educate our own manufacturers and our own people on not only the value but the necessity for addressing this overpopulation issue and educate people on the economic benefit that it can provide to rural and local communities.

Senator R. Patterson: As a quick follow-up, I know we talked about the bioavailability of this particular form of omega-3. The other observation is that we know that seals have a very carnivorous side, and the fish that they are consuming also have the omega-3s, and maybe how they are storing it is quite an interesting part of the eventual story that comes out with this science. That is my observation. Thank you.

Senator Ataullahjan: Thank you. I wanted to thank you for welcoming us yesterday. It was a great learning experience.

Mr.Dakins, you talk about restoring the balance and the size of the herd. Why are voices like yours and others and Indigenous voices being ignored? I feel you are the real experts. I said to one of the previous witnesses that I don’t think someone sitting in an office in Ottawa or somewhere in the air in a helicopter looking down are the real experts. People on the ground who do this for a livelihood are the real experts, in my opinion. Just because you go and get a degree, it doesn’t mean anything. I mean we saw that with Mr.Bath earlier, and we heard his stories. Why do you think your voices are being ignored?

Mr.Halloran, you said something very interesting which kind of stuck with me, which was that you are dealing with outdated legislation in the U.S. Do you know if our government has ever raised this issue in trade talks with the U.S. government?

Mr.Halloran: As far as I know, it has been brought up a few times and kind of pushed to the side. “You know, it is the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Sorry, seal is part of it; you can’t sell to them.” For us, it is frustrating because this happened so long ago, and I think it was over the killer whales. It was that the whaling industry where that was happening, and the seal fell under that, under the act, and we have been suffering ever since. As far as I know, it has been looked at, but nothing has ever been really pushed.

Senator Ataullahjan: Never forcefully?

Mr.Halloran: No.

Senator Ataullahjan: You feel that maybe the government should push on this?

Mr.Halloran: Absolutely.

Senator Ataullahjan: You need a few champions in Ottawa.

Mr.Halloran: I need a few champions in Ottawa, absolutely.

Mr.Dakins: Captain Keith Bath has expertise and knowledge that he has built over the years that isn’t held by many people. We have people in our plant that have expertise and knowledge that has been built over generations. That soon won’t exist. Darren received a huge education from his father. Experts exist on all levels.

In Canada, my own belief is that we have the capability to do some of the best science in the world. Thankfully, this morning I received an e-mail from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans that they are awarding four projects, the ones that were announced last Novemberby Minister Murray and now by our new minister has been put forward.

The question is: What will they do with that data? Will it be buried? The initial data should send us in a direction of higher-level concern and urgency because I think the timelines on response here are extraordinarily long. Industry requested at the Seal Summit last fall that we pursue science on an urgent basis to understand what is the severity of this.

If there is no problem for fishery sustainability with this number of seals out in the ecosystem, then just tell us and let industry stand on its own and defend itself and survive as best we can on our own. But if there is an urgent problem related to the ecosystem and fishery sustainability and food security globally and here at home, then we’d best move more quickly on this. Since November, we are only about to start to pursue science now, something that industry wanted.

Why it is not embraced? People are politically fearful. It is political fear that is holding us back from responsibly managing our ecosystem. I mean, Prime Minister Trudeau had— there was a global story on it. I would be happy to share this with the committee as well. You may have seen it at the time. This was back four years ago, I believe. He had received over 2.2million pieces of correspondence to his office on seals. The next closest item was global warming, with I think 340,000 pieces of communication. Of course that is overwhelming. Of course that would create a political fear.

How do I respond? It is urgent that we identify if this is a scientifically proven and substantiated problem, that we’re addressing an environmental concern and push forward from there, following the advice and the guidance of our own industry and our own people first, enabled by government in a collective fashion and in a non-partisan approach. This is an environmental concern. Politics has no place anymore.

Senator Ataullahjan: I am from Toronto, and it has been a great learning experience for me to be on this committee. When I was first on the committee, someone asked, “Why are you on this committee?” I said, “Well, the Great Lakes have fish, too.” I am looking at this problem, and I am getting a bit frustrated because here we have something that we can promote, which speaks so well for Canada, and we are not doing it. Can you explain a little bit? When you say the females are aborting and they are not having their first pups to the age of two, what does that mean for somebody who doesn’t know anything about the seals? I am just saying this so this information gets out. Why? What is driving that?

Mr.Dakins: Yes. That is DFO Science. Every four years, Canada does a survey of the seal population to count them and then they do at-sea harvesting, and they are measuring the body weight and length of the females.

They are running out of food. There are more seals than there are fish to feed them. That is very basic. As I understand it as a layperson, that is what is going on. It would be the same as if we had too many cows in a single pasture and there wasn’t enough grass for them anymore.

The problem is we don’t see that. We don’t see it every day. People in Toronto don’t see it every day. I wonder how maybe Downtown Toronto people might feel if we put 2million of these harp seals in the Great Lakes. It would be more obvious then.

We are operating in such a vast ecosystem, from the southern tip of the Grand Banks to the Davis Straight, across to Greenland, where these harps seals are. If we look on a micro scale, you have got 500,000 grey seals in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence that we know are going to extinct four species, and we are still not acting.

Back in 2012, the committee landed on a recommendation to immediately cull 70,000 grey seals. That was the number at the time. Since 2012, there hasn’t been 15,000 grey seals taken out of the southern Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and the population has continued to grow.

I think Bill Penney said in his remarks earlier, “Is Canada in, or is Canada out?” The question is: Is North America in, or is North America out? Is Norway in, or is Norway out? We have got a full ecosystem. The Northwest Atlantic is just massive, and it is shared by provinces and territories, and we are allowing this destruction to either occur or not occur, and we are not validating it with science.

Senator Quinn: Thank you to both of you for being here and for your hospitality.

Again, this is just striking information. I am feeling the same frustration that I am hearing in your voices, certainly expressed by my colleague Senator Ataullahjan and others. I don’t know what more needs to be done in terms of gathering more data, and then, as you have said, what do we do with the data? But the real information is coming from those who are practitioners. We have heard from people who are practitioners. We have heard from people in the business. We have heard from people in the communities. There is a constant message: “We have a problem.” It is unacceptable that theanswer is: “Well, let’s do some more study and discussion.” I was talking to one of the gentlemen who is sitting in the gallery there, and this kind of discussion has gone on for decades and nothing is being done.

I guess I am just trying to get that lay of the land out there with the question. What is it that this committee can do that is tangible? Yes, we are going to produce a report in due course, but what can we do following a trip like this? We have heard from witnesses before in Ottawa, but here we are in the field, where the people are. What more can we do immediately to move this agenda forward? You’ve talked about a round table. My fear of a round table is that the wrong people lead it and then it is collecting more information and that too is like the data and it just disappears. How do we do something that is tangible? What should that be that brings focus to it so that those in charge can understand that this is an urgent issue?

Quite frankly, I say this on the record: It is about time that Atlantic Canada stands up and is heard. This is an issue for not only all of Canada but particularly here in Atlantic Canada and, I would argue, particularly here in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and my own province, New Brunswick, and indeed in Prince Edward Island.

So what is it that we can do? There has been enough time. I would like to retire at some point knowing that we have done something tangible that has improved the situation. What would your suggestions be?

Mr.Dakins: As I said, I’ve participated in, I guess, seven or eight of these things, and I wish I couldanswer that question. I don’t know what this committee can do, no more do I know what the last committees could have done. It seems like a problem postponed is a problem solved. We roll through government after government, and we don’t act fast enough.

Everything that is going on right now in the environment was projected when we adopted the precautionary approach in 2002 in this room. Okay? And the industry had a lot of trepidation about doing that with respect to seals because we didn’t trust the agenda. We weren’t sure that we weren’t going to wind up with a population that continued to grow and that we would handcuff ourselves, by the precautionary approach, to not be able to bring that population down. I am only going back to that because there are reports from that that still exist. We know. We foreshadowed what was going to happen here. We knew. We adopted the precautionary approach to managing harp seal population at the time, under a lot of duress. We felt like it could be used as a tool to help us with protection. If we were sustainable, the world would accept that we harvest seals. That hasn’t been the case.

We could get a discussion about the policy around this. What is Canada’s mandate with respect to seal populations? Do we manage seal populations strictly as a commercial venture, which has proven to be the problem? People do not like the commercial exploitation of this beautiful resource, this harp seal that is dependent on ice and has had global warming threaten its sustainability. People just don’t accept that. They don’t like it. Or do we manage seal populations in concert with our other fisheries in a sustainable manner to ensure that we have a sustainable seafood supply, monetary returns and the contribution to tradition and culture to rural communities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous harvesters?

Newfoundland has been here for 500-and-some-odd years, and we have been harvesting and depending on the seal. We stayed here, and we only survived staying here that first winter because the seals showed up and we had fresh protein. This is part of the culture and tradition and the fibre of Newfoundland and Labrador, although not as long as it is in Nunavut or as long as it may have been for some Indigenous groups, but we are intimately attached to the seal culturally and traditionally.

We need to somehow get the government, whatever government is in charge at the time, to accept this responsibility and act in real time and not say, “Darren, if you had this problem in your own business, you would have addressed it 20years ago. Your father would have addressed it 20years ago.” Instead, we are just kicking the ball down the field a yard at a time. We have no vision to score a touchdown. Right? We are all waiting for someone else to kick a field goal.

It is quite frustrating. I almost didn’t get in my car. If this committee had asked me to fly to Montreal, I would have never shown up. I went last Aprilwhen they had the parliamentary one. I don’t think I would have come to this one this time if I had to go to Ottawa. The most encouraging thing was when Sara asked to come to the plant because you get to see it and you get to see our people who depend on this. You get to talk to Rowena. You get to talk to Darren. Like, there are people depending on this.

We need healthy, sustainable seal populations, and we need a viable fishery so the same people who hunt and who fish crab and catch turbot have seal as part of the economic return. Everybody asks, “Well, how are you going to get 300,000 seals out of the water?” You make them valuable enough. Right? They have got to be worth something for these guys to go get it.

Darren shouldn’t have to charge $3,500 for a garment. He should be able to have a more stable supply, but in order for him to be able to do that, I have got to be able to sell the oil and the meat and the skins, and we have to have reasonable freight rates to the coast of Labrador as we do to Nunavut. You have to address the grey seal.

Sorry for a really long rant, but it is probably the last one I am ever going to give to a committee in my lifetime if something doesn’t happen out of this one because they haven’t gone anywhere over the last 20years. In your own private deliberations, you can probably ask Senator Manning about any of the others. You’ve got to get the grey seals out of the Miramichi River or you aren’t going to have any salmon left. Well, you have to kill 70,000 grey seals or you are going to let four species of fish extinct in the southern Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Why was nothing done with that information?

There is the root of the problem. If you can solve that, then do what your gut tells you and get Ottawa motivated to make real change. I am really encouraged that we got this science announcement. I am really encouraged. The question is how long will it take to get the science, and what will we do with the data?

Senator Quinn: Thank you.

The Chair: Someone mentioned to me earlier today that the announcement on the science research is because we are in Newfoundland and Labrador as a committee. We didn’t get any credit, but if that was the reason, we are happy to do it.

Mr.Dakins: I don’t care why, just that we got it.

Senator McPhedran: It is good to see both of you here today. I echo my colleagues in thanking you for your hospitality and generosity.

I wanted to pick up on the science theme. This is something that I feel has been a subtext. It might seem a little blunt, but I would like to understand better. Would I be correct in understanding that the initiatives that you have taken, with others, in starting to generate science from your own associations, if you will, is in fact a direct result of the contradictory reports that, for example, this committee received? One of the things that brings us here is that in Ottawa, in our hearings, we had to contend with dramatically different information presented to us as science-based and in no way really reconcilable in a logical manner. Could you tell us a bit more about not only the initiative around generating this science that has been announced, the science research, but the practical reality of why you felt compelled to take those steps?

Mr.Dakins: Going into the summit back last fall, it was industry’s collective opinion. In the fishing community and the processing community, whether we’re seal processors or fish processors, this is the first time we ever had a co-signed letter between the Fish, Food and Allied Workers, the Association of Seafood Producers, the Fur Institute of Canada and the Seals and Sealing Network to request that the summit be science-focused. The Atlantic Seal Science Task Team report came out that spring, in 2022, where Minister Murray made an announcement in Corner Brook that we needed, “Seals eat fish,” and that we had a concern. The least important recommendation in the whole ASSTT report was to host a summit, and that’s the one that came off the ground.

Thankfully, out of that summit, enough was heard at the table that the minister announced that we would start to pursue science and spend— I think now it is $675,000 that is allocated towards four projects, which is about enough to start to crack the cover on a couple of books. It is not a lot of money for the task at hand. However, it is a start.

If you guys haven’t read that report, you should really read it. It is not a long report. It says that the science we have is woefully inadequate to determine the role that harp seals are playing in the Northwest Atlantic.

So, while a single report by a single scientist could be presented with a certain finding, in a broader context, rounded out, we have to be able to appreciate that the Norwegians know a little bit about harp seals, as well. They have a million of them. Their estimates are 3.3 tonnes each per year, and the Canadian one is 1.1 tonnes per year. Meanwhile, we have four seals which we can’t get the feeding records for down in Logy Bay. We keep them in captivity for scientific purposes, and the caretaker toldme himself that, for a seal in captivity that doesn’t swim 15,000kilometres per year, that doesn’t dive up to 350 metres, so the caloric requirements to survive and to keep them at a healthy body weight in a swimming pool in Logy Bay, is 2.2metric tonnes.

We need to reconcile these numbers because, as I said to the committee that I reported to back in April, we don’t know if we are talking about an elephant in the room or a herd of elephants. If you’ve got a problem, you have to define the problem so you can find solutions. The first step is to define what the problem is.

In the meantime, we still have a responsibility to act immediately because we have science that is going to let four species go extinct in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. I’m pretty sure the Americans are not happy about the grey seals from Canada that are coming down and eating all the fish down there and nearly shutting down recreational fisheries, commercial recreational fisheries, in the Gulf of Maine.

I think it is time to roll up our sleeves, define the problem, strategize, formulate a solution and then act.

Senator McPhedran: Quite recently, the current Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has been here, and conversations have been had with her. Are you satisfied that there is a similar level of awareness and commitment as you finally saw with the former minister?

Mr.Dakins: I am really encouraged by our new minister. There is a quote in the press release around the science that I received this morning. She is from Gaspé; she knows the Magdalen Islands; she knows the issue. I think she hears it regularly.

Minister Murray, coming from B.C., was hearing a lot in B.C. about the problems we have related to seals and sea lions. One of the projects is going to be focused on the West Coast fishery and the concern coming out of there, and that announcement coming today is a shot of hope. Let’s just hope that the follow-up to whatever we begin to uncover is followed to the end. I find we don’t travel this road too long before we get off and go on another road. A change in government leads to— the overall mandate that Canada has had is that we just manage the seal hunt as a commercial fishery, and that has continued over the 20or21years now I have been in the industry, and it hasn’t worked.

We need to reflect on what the policy is, what the mandate is and then to follow that to whatever end it is. The rest of the world can either begin to accept that we are going to do this sustainably, Darren is going to produce beautiful products, Mi’kmaq Commercial Fisheries is going to produce beautiful products, Rowena’s people are going to produce beautiful products, and they’re going to support it, or it is going to become a taxpayer cost because something has to be done about the seal population because the fisherpeople are telling us so. They are seeing it. They know it.

Senator Petten: I just wanted to say to you, Mr.Dakins, from yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised. It was great to go through the processing plant and to see what you have done and developed. You made a point of telling us that you have been able to develop it with private money, not government money.

As a senator newly appointed from this province, Newfoundland and Labrador, I am concerned about what I have heard over the last couple of days and listening today to a number of the presentations. There was a time when we had more processing facilities, and now we have got one left at the level that you are doing.

It sounds like we have done some marketing. I believe you heard the presentation from Sherry Turnbull when she mentioned that she can’t get enough skins, even from you. I know yesterday you were saying that you had to kind of allocate and wait for the next ones, so it sounds like you’ve developed the marketing and you have done the promotion, but now you don’t have the ability to be able to produce it. We have got all of these problems, but I think as well we have the risk that you may not be around, which then means, of course, that Vogue is not going to have the skins or will be trying to source them from other places. From the perspective of our province, that is a bit of a concern.

Obviously, I know it all comes down to economics. Seeing the place that we visited yesterday with all these fishermen, if they could make money, they definitely would be out there doing it because that is how they think. Economics is all a part of developing the fleet. I think it is not only important to the communities but also to the province. I think it is really critical that we listen to what you are saying and that we are looking at dealing with it. The economy is really what is going to make the difference.

I am sure that you would have to try to develop a source, but it is not the same. You would have probably have to pay more to get it from other areas and then charge more.

Mr.Halloran: Absolutely.

Senator Petten: That was my observation, and it is just a bit of a concern. But it was a great eye-opener, and you have done a great job in developing the other products as well. That’s what you’ve got to do. Even then, it is still not enough because $50 for each of them is still not enough to make it worthwhile for them to go out, with the risk and the insurance and what it takes on the boats to make it economically viable. I don’t know how you see the future unfolding for a company like yours. I know it is a private business, but it is a concern. I am sure you would have a comment around that.

Mr.Halloran: Thank you for that.

I spoke to Dion before this meeting about would I rather see a store full of seal products that I could sell for $1,500 and the amount going out the door or have the ban lifted so that I could sell to the United States. Like, I am seeing this. I am seeing these people come off the boat, come off the cruise ships, and they want our product, and they want to be able to take it and be proud of it. Americans are a lot like Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. They want to show what they have, and they don’t care what other people think. At the end of the day, I am seeing this every day. For me, just toanswer your question earlier, it would be that I would love to see the ban lifted. I am dealing with it online every day. I am dealing with it in stores or in cruise ship season.

We coincide with each other. When Dion is taking more seals from the ocean, I am able to buy more products, buy more skins, and produce more products. If that is not happening, then we are out of the seal industry. That is where we are.

Mr.Dakins: Our company is not a social structure. We are not funded by government to buy inventory and put it to market. We do business like everybody else. You sit down and calculate how much you can buy it for, how much you can sell with a reasonable amount of risk, and then you go out and you procure your inventory. This year, we could have had more harvesters go hunting for the prices that were there, but we are not comfortable with the risk to bring in a product and store it long term and hold it and tie up cash flow.

So what needs to happen long term, after we get the strategy? For the Treasury Board, this needs to be a line entry for the government. You are not going to solve it. There is no silver bullet for this. It has been a 40-year downfall to get to where we are. It is going to take a little bit of heavy lifting to get out of it. We are totally 100percent committed to being a part of that.

I heard Sherry, and I know the pelts are expensive, but we are not able to move our omega-3 oils to a reasonable market because of the risk assessment and the lack of market access so we have to get the money off the pelts. I know it is not nice for them to have to pay those prices up north. I know nobody likes having to buy extra inventory from us in Novemberto carry them through the summer, but is it our responsibility to risk more to serve— we just can’t do it on our own.

We are 100percent committed to staying in this business. We have done so through some of the most difficult times. I would like to think that before we met you was the low point. Yes, I would like to think yesterday was the rock bottom of it and that, with this science announcement and you guys being here and now everybody has seen it and felt it and tasted it and been immersed in it, that you are going to go away and you’re going to force some change. Or maybe change isn’t needed to be forced anymore. Maybe there is that commitment at the political level. Maybe there will be a commitment in the DFO Science. The FFAW is going to do some science. We are going to do some on the West Coast. I would like to think yesterday was the low point and today we are just starting to decide we are going to pull back and get the plane to come up before we crash into the mountainside. I have convinced myself of that a few times before, and it wasn’t a reality.

Senator Duncan: Thank you again for an education and for your kindness, your hospitality and your patience, and certainly many of my questions.

Repeatedly, I have heard you want Canada, and where is Canada in this discussion. I have heard reference to government officials. What has occurred to me is that we are Canadians. Canadians are a wonderful people, and we support one another, we support internationally, and we rally together. I can’t help but think that if Canadians could hear even that one paragraphfrom you, Mr.Dakins, saying that these fish are going to go extinct, that this is the situation and there are this many seals and this is what they eat and all of those figures that you state so eloquently, if Canadians could hear that, perhaps they might say, “Wait a minute. This is ours, and we are not prepared to let it go.”

What is your reaction to that? How can we rally Canadians to this issue? We can lobby in Ottawa. As senators, we are lobbied by the beef industry, and we are lobbied by the liquor industry. We are lobbied by everybody. Where are all of them in supporting you? Where are Canadians, and where are other industries in supporting what you are trying to do? Have you suggestions for us?

Mr.Dakins: You are going to hear from my colleague Doug Chiasson next, so I will leave him to pick up on those points. I am sure he will address them in his opening arguments.

We have been cooperating inside the Fur Institute of Canada and the Seals and Sealing Network to educate Canadians. Bill Penney probably spoke about it a little bit. We have done public opinion polling. We know that Canadians are receptive. Again, do I feel like we have been ignored or what Darren’s dad said about the most bullied industry? Everybody has their own perspective on this.

I really appreciate you saying that I speak eloquently about it, but how are the scientists that were on the Atlantic Seal Science Task Team not being heard? Minister Thomson made the announcement, Minister Murray received the report, and now we are going to do some science. Those experts need to speak to Canadians. My voice is self-serving. Of course I want to see seal populations controlled because I make money from it. Darren’s voice is perceived or received as self-serving because he earns money from it. We don’t lobby, necessarily. We just want to work collectively to solve an environmental problem.

I don’t know if I’veanswered your question correctly. I didn’t mean to dodge it.

Senator Duncan: You didanswer it. The beef industry makes money off of their products as well, and we hear from them. I am not suggesting you form a lobby group, but my concern is that they are not out there supporting you, and other industries are not. They support one another. You will have the wine and the cheese industries pair up together in Ottawa.

I look at all of these groups, and I look at Canadians. I was born and raised Canadian and lived in the Yukon most of my life. This was all new information to me. I know my children didn’t learn about Death on the Ice or the sealing industry and how important it is. I am sure I am not the only Canadian in that position. How do we help you get this message out? How do we get other Canadian industries that have suffered similar situations, although for not as long, on side to help you?

Mr.Dakins: Our network is massive but not engaged. People look at the seal industry. I mean the whole animal rights movement is not animal welfare people. It’s not about whether you can humanely harvest seals; it’s about, “It is inherently cruel to harvest seals.” That is the position of some of the biggest detractors who have huge amounts of money flowing in towards them. They were founded on the Canadian seal hunt. That is where they started. After the seal bans, they totally killed it with the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the first ban in the EU. We have got Jim Winter in the room. I mean, Jim lived through it. We have got the fur trade. Canada Goose became an American company and took the coyote off the hoods because of the fear of promoting fur. It has collapsed the trapping industry, and now we got coyotes coming in and eating people’s pets and spreading rabies because they are overpopulated. The beavers are chewing down people’s trees and knocking over patios and washing out roads. We haven’t collectively been heard that what we do is an environmental necessity. We are animals. We are part of the planet. We have a responsibility to act as animals, with a higher level of consciousness around sustainability. That is really it.

We are inspired, and trappers and Indigenous people and myself and Darren and Jim, we will all stand up, and we will all speak for it. But we need a couple of champions who really understand what the situation is, because we have pushed the problem down the road far enough that now I think our back is against the wall and collectively, together, we will push forward and we will save the environment and we will save culture and tradition, and we will create an economy, a sustainable one. If Canada can solve the problem related to the seal, we will solve the problem about the beavers and we will solve the problem about the coyote and we’ll solve the problem about the wolf predation on the cattle. But the seal industry itself has to be able to stand up and speak; it has to be supported.

We live from project to project, proposal to proposal, little bits of money from this place and a little bit from that place, without any real strategy. And you know what? Even inside this little tiny community, where we all sleep in the same bed, we still wind up competing with each other. We still wind up with friction, and it is only because we are all trying to survive. But we’ve all got the same vision. We want to grow, but that has to happen across the board for everybody.

Anyway, I am hopeful. I am encouraged. Stay in touch with us. If there is anything we can do, if there is anybody we should meet with and talk to, we will do it. Our plant is always open. Darren’s store is always open. We’d go in there at 2:00 in the morning and open it if someone wanted to come in.

Mr.Halloran: Not a problem.

Mr.Dakins: Not a problem. You guys are just lucky that you had to face Darren, because if Bernie was there last night, every one of you would be wearing a jacket today. Darren is good, but Bernie was great.

Mr.Halloran: I am still trying.

Mr.Dakins: He went home last night and was like, “What would the old man have done?”

Senator Busson: I will be very brief, but I have to confess that, on Monday, when we were in Bonavista, we visited Discovery Collegiate junior high school and high school, and I promised a young junior high school student that I would ask someone about bounties. I can’t think of a better person to ask. I guess it ties into the comment you made about culling and certainly the comment around the control of the population and use of the product. Just for the record, I think we spoke about it yesterday. If we solved the problem around marketing and got the EU or China to accept goods, we could ramp up this industry and change the policy in Canada. Apparently you’re the last man standing when it comes to production. What would your capacity be and how long would it take you to get there?

Mr.Dakins: It is a difficult question, but entrepreneurism is a powerful thing, and when there is money around it, stuff happens, people get involved and people grow. Darren will expand. We will expand. How quickly? I guess it depends on the economic conditions at the time that we decide to do whatever we are going to do. I don’t know what theanswer is.

I know this population can’t stay at 7.6million. Maybe we need a population reduction measure, and then we need a sustainable industry built to keep that population down, because when it was 5.4million, when we adopted the precautionary approach, some of the messages coming out of DFO Science were at the time that we were harvesting beyond sustainability. That did not help us when we were trying to battle in the UE, and we were that concerned as an industry that we said, no, you can’t wait till next year to do your survey. They were telling us we were only going to be able to go out and harvest 150,000 seals between four companies. We said, whoa, hold on, that population is not that low. The sealers were saying the population is not that— there were seals everywhere. This was back in 2008.

So they did the survey a year earlier, and instead of finding what they thought was going be 4.2million seals, they found 9.6million. That was the number. And then, through retrospective science and because they used digital photography and not analog where you had to sit down and look at a photograph but they count on a computer, they did retrospective science and said, no, because the population was this, it actually can’t be that high. So they whittled it down. With retrospective science, they whittled it down to 7.6million, and we have been at 7.6million now with quotas of 400,000, which wouldn’t bring the population down at all. We have been harvesting anywhere between 25,000 to this year, the high number, of 40,000. I mean, it is not an industry. It is just we are too stubborn to give up. Right? We are still here. We’re waiting for a better day. That is the reality.

You know, it is a great little business. We are passionate about it. We love the products. I love seeing when people come in. But if we don’t develop a future, you won’t build up that harvesting capacity. I mean, we’ve got harvesters now who love to go seal hunting, and that is why they go out for the 36 bucks, because they just love it. There are only so many of those people. Right? But they don’t take their long-liner anymore; they go out in their speed boat for a day, just so they get to participate in the seal hunt. But they are not bringing in 4,000 pelts to us; they are bringing in 150. Right?

The economies will create R&D and innovation. I hear a lot of recommendations about we have got to build up plants and we’ve got to build up— that’s the easy stuff. That is the stuff that government shouldn’t do. The things that government should do are the things like we do for canola. When we’ve got China ready to ban canola, the Prime Minister gets on a plane and goes over and fixes it with a team of people from GAC. We sit there and talk to DFO about our international trade issues when they are not the international trade experts. Someone has to go down and knock on a door in Australia and say, “You’ve had relative success with the kangaroo. Only two places in the world ban it. What did you do? Could we learn from you? We are not going to ask you to fight for us, but we are happy to learn from you.” The situation is no different. It is an environmental catastrophe sitting on our doorstep, and we are not doing a bloody thing about it.

The Chair: We’re taking a lot in here, and I certainly appreciate, on behalf of our committee, you being here. I hear the frustration, and beyond the reaches of Newfoundland and Labrador, I’m sure Senator Petten and others who have travelled with us in the past couple of days were frustrated too. We hear the frustration.

I have been around politics for over 30years, and it is a tough one. When we sat down and discussed the possibility of doing this work with a study, there is a cost to doing something, but in our view, there is a larger cost of doing nothing. This is not just about the seal. You hear conversation about the seal, but this is about the community. This is about the economy. This is about people. This is about the industry. It just encompasses so much. We have had the opportunity the last couple of days now to see it first-hand and to hear it first-hand here today.

There is no doubt that your testimony comes straight from the heart. I hear the passion in both of your voices, and I know what the industry means to both of you. I am not going to say that the committee is going to knock down walls, but we will go and find some recommendations and put a foot forward in our report and take some baby steps, if that is what it needs, to move this along. We talked about international markets. Well, we have a Canadian market. You told me yesterday that if we promoted our products in Canadian markets, you could maybe quadruple your operation overnight. These are the kind of things that we will work on over the next couple of months and try to put forward.

I just want to thank you on behalf of our committee once again for your hospitality yesterday when visiting both of your operations and for your testimony here today. It adds greatly to our work, and we certainly appreciate you taking your time.

Mr.Dakins: Thank you.

Mr.Halloran: Thank you.

The Chair: For our final panel for the day, we will be hearing from Doug Chiasson, executive director of the Fur Institute of Canada, and Mr.Morley Knight, a fisheries management consultant and a former assistant deputy minister of fisheries policy at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Thank you for taking the time to join us here today. I know you have been listening to some of our witnesses. We have had some very interesting discussion, and we certainly look forward to hearing both of your perspectives on this very important industry.

We have some opening remarks as usual, and then our senators will have some questions. I don’t know if you want to flip a coin to see who goes first.

Doug Chiasson, Executive Director, Fur Institute of Canada: Age before beauty?

Morley Knight, Fisheries Consultant and Former Assistant Deputy Minister of Fisheries Policy, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, As an Individual: I must be older.

The Chair: Senior’s discount. The floor is yours, Mr.Knight.

Mr.Knight: Thank you very much. Age before beauty.

First of all, I am very happy to see you all here in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. I think it is really important. I saw on the evening news last evening that you visited communities, including Bonavista and Elliston, dild* and Port de Grave. That is really important. Getting a perspective from the people in those local areas can give you a good indication of how important seals, seal harvesting and the history is in this province. If you had been able to travel further north to where I am from, Notre Dame Bay, to communities like Twillingate, LaScie, Baie Verte and as far north as Saint Anthony, you would even see how seals and sealing are even more deeply entrenched into the culture here in this province.

I will go to my prepared notes. Thank you for the opportunity to appear. I last appeared before your committee— and the chair was the chair at that time as well, I believe— in Halifax nine years ago.

The Chair: I am aging, too.

Mr.Knight: I was the regional director general of the gulf region at DFO. At that time, Dr.Doug Swain and myself appeared on the subject of grey seals. Today, I am happy to talk about harp seals and grey seals and their impact on the fishery.

1982 was the last year of the offshore seal harvest involving large offshore vessels from Canada and Norway off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. It was my first year as a DFO officer, and I was there at the end of the season for the offshore vessels and, at the start of the activities, for the inshore vessels who were harvesting seals about a hundred miles east of St.Anthony. In the following years, the harvest declined from 186,000 harp seals to around 50,000 animals a year. During the same time, seal populations expanded to five times what they were before and ground fish stocks collapsed across Eastern Canada. For years prior to and including 1982, the harp seal herd was stable at approximately 2million animals.

2017 was my last year with DFO, and in 2017, I had the opportunity to visit Sable Island, where grey seals were congregated for their annual pupping cycle. There were thousands of these large animals on the island, and while I had seen lots of them around the Gulf of Saint Lawrence from Miramichi Bay to Cape Breton Island, seeing them in such large numbers presented a real picture of their impact on the ecosystem.

Commercial harvesting of seals and fish has been occurring in Eastern Canada since the time of the Basque. Indigenous peoples depended on seals for oil and food. The presence of commercial fisheries and seal harvesting undoubtedly lowered the number of both fish and seals, but harvesting of both fish and seals would have kept balance to the ecosystem.

After 1982, markets and seal harvest levels dropped. About the same time, the bounty on grey seals ended. Over the following years, with little or no harvesting pressure, the number of seals increased, as I said before, to about five times the previous number, and the consumption of fish by seals increased accordingly. I believe that seals were a key factor in the collapse of ground fish stocks and remain to be a key factor in preventing cod recovery as well as being major predators on lobster, crab, salmon, herring, etcetera.

In Eastern Canada and the Davis Strait, there are a total of about 9million seals, including the harps, hoods, greys and other species like harbor seals, ring seals and bearded seals. If harp seals consume 1.4 tonne of fish per year and larger species such as hooded, bearded and grey seals consume as much as 2 tonnes per year, all the seals combined would consume around 13million tonnes annually. In this same ecosystem, fisheries, including the Greenlandic and Canadian fisheries from the Scotian Shelf to the Davis Strait, and foreign vessels fishing on the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap, all told, the removals are approximately in the range of 5- to 600,000 tonnes of fish. The consumption of fish by seals is more than 20 times the total of all of the commercial fisheries. If those numbers are correct, about 22 times as much fish is eaten by seals as is harvested by the commercial fishery.

Based on my experience and observations after talking to thousands of fish harvesters, DFO employees and others from all over Eastern Canada, I believe seals are consuming a huge amount of commercial species of fish as well as important prey species like herring and capelin. Unless some action is taken to mitigate the impact of seals, there is no way to effectively manage important fish species using the precautionary approach. The seals will continue to eat them before they get to the level where they can be commercially fished. Seals are everywhere in the ecosystem and eating whatever species of fish they can find.

Seals need to be managed effectively as part of an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management. The first step in this is having a clear understanding of how much fish of each species seals are eating and what is the impact on that fish stock. At the same time, there needs to be a proactive strategy by Canada to effectively manage seal populations at sustainable levels but much less than their maximum sustainable yield. Seal population management strategies will need to include different approaches depending on the species and their suitability for utilization.

I will conclude by saying that if we don’t manage seal populations, they will always outcompete the fishing industry in accessing fish for food and nullify any efforts to effectively manage fish stocks.

Thank you for the opportunity to present today. I hope I am able toanswer any questions. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr.Knight. Mr.Chiasson.

Mr.Chiasson: Thank you, Mr.Chair, and good afternoon, everyone.

I am the executive director of the Fur Institute of Canada. The fur institute, which was created by Canada’s wildlife ministers in 1983, is Canada’s national voice for the fur sector. The institute is also home to the Seals and Sealing Network, which is a coalition of sealing-related businesses, governments, Indigenous organizations and harvesters groups on all three coasts.

As I told your colleagues on the House Committee this spring, appearing on this study is something that is not only professionally important for me put personally important as someone who grew up in a coastal community in western Cape Breton, on I would say the best salmon river in Eastern Canada, the Margaree—

Senator Cordy: I would agree. I am from Cape Breton.

Mr.Chiasson: — but just upriver from what we used to call Sea Wolf Island, a fairly significant grey seal colony.

It is no secret, as Morley said, that the Canadian seal harvest is currently in a much different state than it was in its heyday. From taking over 300,000 seals as recently as 2004, we now are more in the ballpark of 30,000 seals a year in the commercial harvest.

Pressure campaigns and weaponized legislatures, as influenced by anti-seal groups and animal rights groups, have led to Canadian seal products being banned by previously important markets and trade partners like the U.S., the European Union, Israel, India, Mexico— the list goes on.

The current offering from the Canadian seal harvest is diverse and innovative: the omega-3 oil supplements for health and athletic performance; gourmet meat preparations; high-end feed treats and supplementals for pets; and, of course, the warm, waterproof, visually striking sealskin garments and accessories that we all know and love and are available at Always in Vogue on Water Street. This full utilization of the seal not only shows respect to the animal that we are taking but maximizes value for the seal harvesters, processors, manufacturers and retailers.

Over the last three years, the fur institute has led a national and international branding and marketing campaign for Canadian seal products. CanadianSealProducts.com is a one-stop shop for information on the Canadian seal harvest as well as an online shopfront for products from producers across the country.

Over the last 40 years, there has been much discussion about the impacts of growing seal populations but little action. As DFO continues to claim it is working towards the adoption of ecosystem-based fisheries management, the role of highly adaptable predators like seals must be better addressed. Many peer nations understand and address these implications, most recently Finland, which announced in Junethat the hunting of seals in marine areas will be intensified to protect migratory fish populations and improve the operating conditions of commercial fishers.

The simple reality is that the federal government must take action to reduce seal populations. DFO’s “manage everything upwards” approach is failing. Managing near-apex predator populations upwards has led to increases in natural mortality throughout the food web, impeding the rebuilding of commercial stocks, damaging culturally and economically important species like Atlantic salmon and driving at-risk fish populations towards extirpation or extinction.

The single most effective tool to control seal populations is a successful commercial harvest. The infrastructure, in the concrete sense and in the human sense, is there today, but our window to complete this task is rapidly closing. As experienced sealers and processors age out of the workforce, we run the risk of not being able to rise to the challenge of scaling up our harvest to the levels needed to ensure proper management.

What is needed to effect positive change is dedicated leadership at the political and official levels of the federal government. Ministers saying publicly what seals eat is helpful, but Parliamentarians proudly wearing sealskin and instructing the diplomatic corps to reduce barriers to entry for seal products into priority markets helps much more.

For other sectors, investing a portion of their profits into opening new markets is a prudent investment that can lead to long-term growth. But, given the contracted and restricted scale of the current seal sector, developing those markets will require government investment. That investment must be supported by the trade apparatus of the federal government or it will be like buying the best fishing rod you can but not tying a fly on the end.

Finally, we must continue to bring discussions of sealing and seals outside of quiet corners. Creating an environment where the most significant concerns of fisheries groups, coastal communities, Indigenous peoples and the sealing sector can be openly discussed will remove the taboo that has developed around seals and sealing in recent decades. Last year’s Seal Summit was an important step, but we need comprehensive follow-up from what was discussed at that summit and commitment to another summit being held to not waste the progress that we have already made.

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

The Chair: Thank you, both, for your opening remarks. I am sure you have generated some questions because my list here is starting to grow. We will start with our Deputy Chair, as usual, Senator Busson.

Senator Busson: The questions I have are pretty much self-evident, but I have to ask them anyway, just for the record.

I was interested in the terminology that you used, Mr.Chiasson, when you talked about the sealing industry being weaponized. I hadn’t heard that term before, but I think it is incredibly poignant to what we’ve heard today from all the witnesses and the lack of action— not just lack of action, but the culture and characterization of the seal industry specifically in this beautiful province and elsewhere.

With that and some of the comments that you made and the comments that you made, Mr.Knight, I am wondering, and I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but as an ex-federal official with DFO specifically, could you offer any explanation other than just the culture that has been created, any other explanation of why DFO specifically and the government generally have ignored the evidence of the predation of seals and under-managed the species as a result? We all understand that people have gotten to feel shy or concerned that they might specifically be targeted, what politicians are supposed to do is stand up for the rights of the people in the country.

Is the science still questionable? Maybe that is a better question. Is the DFO evidence still questionable, or in your mind is it some other issue that is holding us up from doing the right thing?

Mr.Knight: That is a bit of a tough question, particularly as a previous member of DFO.

I think the science is often too cautious and in one direction. For example, when scientists can’t exclusively prove what seals eat, they fail to do the calculation that there are 9million seals eating 13million tonnes of fish. If we can’t say how much of that is cod and we can’t say how much is herring, then give the best estimate of how much of it is cod and herring and salmon and gaspereau and crab and lobster and everything else.

We know from the best information available in Canada and in other countries like Norway what the consumption is. We know it based on the size of the animal. There is some debate about whether it is 1 tonne a year or 1.5 tonne a year. The best information I have for a harp seal, for example, is 1.4 tonne a year. It is a matter of taking the facts that we know and turning that into— and I have never seen it done by DFO Science. I have to admit I have never seen the information I have presented to you— simple calculation, not hard to do— from publicly available information.

In the ecosystem between the Davis Strait, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Labrador Sea, there are 13million tonnes of fish being eaten. Now, some of that may be Arctic cod, but a very consequential amount of that is Atlantic cod and crab turbot. It’s all of the species of fish right around Atlantic Canada.

In front of my window in my house, any time now on, there will be seals there every day, feeding. They will be eating mussels, tomcod and batfish. If you go talk to someone in Shediac, New Brunswick, they will tell you the same thing. If you go and talk to people in Labrador or anywhere else in Atlantic Canada, it is the same thing.

Seals are eating 13million tonnes of fish. We need to get to the bottom of what it is and what the impact on the ecosystem is.

Senator Busson: Thank you very much.

Just as an aside, there is also a West Coast, where I am from, and they are having a snack over there too and eating tonnes of salmon and other species.

Mr.Knight: Absolutely.

Senator Busson: Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

Mr.Chiasson, do you have anything else you would like to add?

Mr.Chiasson: Just to follow up on your point, senator, yes, there are concerns. We can often get hyper-focused on Eastern Canada or even further hyper-focused on the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in these conversations, but there are very significant concerns in British Columbia that have been raised with my organization by some of our members from Western Canada, from British Columbia. It is a different issue, but it is a different version of the same issue. There are hyper-localized areas of high predation by seals and sea lions, particularly during salmon migrations, that are having very significant impacts on salmon and steelhead populations, which in some cases now are being considered for Species at Risk Act listing, and little to no public-facing action from DFO saying, “We are exploring X, Z, Z solutions to this issue in regards to seals and sea lions.”

Senator Cordy: Thank you both for being here. It has been a great few days in Newfoundland and Labrador, and we’re learning so much.

I believe that there is a lot of misinformation, if not falsehoods, about the sealing industry in Canada. I think that many Canadians would be very surprised to hear that the seal population is growing significantly, and many would believe that the seal population is declining or at least staying the same. To hear that it is growing as quickly as it is I think would be quite surprising. We’ve also heard from other witnesses, from environmentalists, that the whole ecosystem of the ocean is actually deteriorating or being destroyed because of what is happening.

We have heard it suggested that the seal industry should actually be managed by Global Affairs Canada and not Department of Fisheries and Oceans. If we are looking at trading with other countries, it is not happening within Fisheries. That is sort of not their area of expertise. What would you think about changing the department so that it is Global Affairs Canada, or even a mix of Global Affairs and Fisheries because of the trade aspect of it, trying to open up new trade markets or not even just opening up trade markets but trying to unlock markets that have been closed to us?

Mr.Chiasson: Increased engagement from Global Affairs and from the trade branch is something that we have consistently asked for.

DFO has a very small market access and trade development shop that arguably is a responsibility that was transferred to Agriculture and Agri-Food 15years ago, but because of particularly seals but also some other broader fish and seafood issues, DFO maintains a vestigial capacity. Unfortunately, that can make it very easy for Global Affairs or AAFC, when we approach them with, “We need assistance on trade issue XYZ,” to say, “Oh, well, talk to DFO. They have a market access trade development shop,” which I think is four people compared to the entire trade apparatus of Global Affairs.

Not to paint all of Global Affairs with one brush, because certainly there are folks in the trade commissioner system who are very helpful to our members, but really what we need is direction from as high up the org chart of cabinet as we can find to say that this is a priority. The folks at Global Affairs kick us back to DFO because they can. If the Prime Minister instructed the Minister of International Trade to make this a priority, I am sure that the minister would not want another department leading what is her responsibility. Much of this really comes down to we need the political will and political capital invested to support what it is we are trying to achieve, less so than organizational change, in my opinion.

Mr.Knight: I would agree with all of Doug’s points, and I think he is 100percent right. It needs to be a cabinet-level directive to both departments to work in lockstep to enhance the marketing opportunities and the trade opportunities for Canadian seal products.

That said, back to your direct question about Global Affairs managing the seal harvest, they are not really in a capacity to do it. They don’t have front-facing capacity in Canada to deal with the fishing industry. They don’t have the science capacity. Separating it out and giving them management of the seal industry would take it out of the equation and create an opportunity for DFO to say, “Oh, that is not our problem. That is a Global Affairs problem.”

I think theanswer lies in both departments being directed to move forward to pursue market access and a proper management strategy.

Senator Cordy: Direction coming from the top?

Mr.Knight: Directly coming from the top.

Senator Cordy: Yes. Thank you for that.

I am listening to you speaking about the need for leadership of government and particularly the federal government in promoting the industry and opening up new markets, but I am not sure that Canadians understand the situation. I am not sure that Canadians understand that the seal population is growing and the amount of fish they are eating. How do we educate Canadians? Certainly we will be writing a report in support of the industry. How do we get champions to stand up and be vocal and to tell Canadians— education, number one, but, number two, promoting what a viable industry we have and how much bigger and better the industry could be in Canada?

Mr.Knight: I have a couple of points about that.

First of all, for clarification, in my estimation, the seal herds grew in the 1980s and 1990s, and for the most part, in my estimation from what I have heard and what I have seen, they grew to the maximum carrying capacity. In fact, estimates, as you have heard from other witnesses, were sometimes higher for harp seals than they are today. I wouldn’t suggest that they are continuing to grow because they can’t grow any more. I have heard from scientists in Greenland as late as the late 1990s that the fecundity level had started to decline because they have reached their carrying capacity in the ecosystem and therefore the reproduction levels were decreasing.

That said, how do we get the message across about the current impact on the ecosystem? If they are currently eating 13million tonnes of fish, then we need to get that clear message delivered from DFO Science, and they need to start to tell Canadians about the impact that that is having on the ecosystem. I think that is one of the first things that needs to be focused on. There needs to be a concerted effort from DFO Science to produce their best estimates of how much fish is being eaten of each species by each species of seal. I think that will open the eyes of Canadians and open the eyes of the Canadian fishing industry and the world that we have a problem that we have to do something about. We don’t have a choice.

Mr.Chiasson: Getting at the heart of this issue has been something that we have been working towards for the last few years, mainly with the support of DFO. We have run three years of a comprehensive online marketing campaign targeted at the Greater Toronto Area and Montreal, and the first two years of that campaign were almost exclusively dedicated to informational marketing. It wasn’t, “Buy this pair of boots because this pair of boots is wonderful”; it was, “Did you know that seal products are important for Indigenous communities? Did you know that the seal population in Eastern Canada— ” the number we use is we only use the Canadian commercial fishing fleet landings “— is 53 times the amount of fish caught by the Canadian fishing fleet?”

From working with the advertisem*nt agencies that we work with and public polling with Abacus Data around this as well, these ads got more interest, 275percent higher, than the industry benchmark in terms of interest in terms of click-throughs and people actually engaging with the information that we were sharing. Certainly two years of online ads to the GTA and Montreal isn’t going to completely change the discourse, but it is actively moving the needle. We look towards how we can scale this up, how we can adapt this to other areas of the country and how do we move from information, purely information, to actually marketing the products, which is what we are now doing in kind of a second phase of the project this year.

Like Morley spoke to, having that information out there, unimpeachable science from DFO Science to underpin all of this, gives us a whole other level of defence. This really is a situation where we need help defending what it is that we are doing in the sealing industry from an ecological/environmental standpoint, and being able to point to something that is created by government as opposed to created by an industry group that is trying to sell a product provides an extra level of credibility.

Senator Cordy: Thank you.

Senator Petten: Mr.Knight, we sometimes talk the language of understanding our lingo and what it means. You mentioned in your presentation the offshore vessels, and I know that sometimes we have talked about the quotas and commercial licences and personal-use licences. I know it is just a simple basic concept, but I think it is an important concept for everybody to understand the difference between an offshore commercial licence and a personal-use licence.

Sometimes we talk about something being a problem. As a province and an industry, how can we look at taking a proactive approach and look at solving our own problem? How do we go fishing instead of saying, “Well, there are all these problems and we can’t do it.” Well, then, what is it we can do?

In this province, the crab fishery, if I could take that one as an example, started in the 1960s as a nuisance species, and yet it developed to an amazing economic driver for the province and the country and for all the harvesters and communities. Last year, it was a tremendous amount of money because the price was up. This year, it was down. It is always shifting around, so what else can they be doing? One of the incentives that happened in that industry is that, in order to do more science and to do the survey work, instead of paying the fishermen or going out and paying vessels, DFO came up with a great project, which was, “We will give you more quota to fish next year if you do this survey.” That is what they are doing, and that is a bigger incentive for the fishermen to go and do that.

Is there a way under these commercial licences that we can incentivize them from an economic, sustainability and profitability point of view with some of these species? I am sure that over your years at DFO there must have been some thoughts around the economics of how we could incentivize them to do it once we understand the basics of how it all operates.

Mr.Knight: That is three very good questions. The first two are pretty simple.

Offshore vessels, as they were in 1982 and prior, were vessels greater than 65 feet. For the most part, they were ships that were 100-plus feet at that time.

Usually, up until 1982, there were three, four, or five ships that came here from Norway every spring and harvested both whitecoats and bluebacks at the front, the front being in the area off the Labrador Sea where the seals got to that maturity stage where they could be hunted. Canadian vessels were primarily based out of St.John’s, and you have seen some of that in your travels, the history of that in Elliston in recent days, and that goes back to the days of sailing ships and progressed to steel ships.

In our wisdom— because I was part of that at the time, back in 1982— the Canadian government decided to end the offshore hunt. It is only an inshore artisanal-type fishery. It will only be prosecuted on animals that are not in the whitecoat stage anymore, so they are no longer the very juvenile seals; they have had the chance to moult at least once. That was part of the equation at the time to try to appease the protesters, which others have described at this table today as a bit of an industry. That was the end of the offshore hunt. Since that time, the harvest has been contained to only inshore vessels of less than 65 feet in length, who have much less capacity to harvest and much less capacity to navigate in the ice and much less capacity to bring a product to shore, notwithstanding that there have been years that they have harvested up as high as 400,000 animals.

The personal-use licence was a phenomenon that emerged sometime in the last two decades, where a lot of people were leaving the sealing industry through government buyouts and through attrition and what have you, and there was a significant pressure put on the federal department and the ministers to allow access to seals for personal use, for people who underwent training to be able to access up to five seals per year. It is non-commercial. They are not allowed to sell these products, only allowed to harvest them for personal use. There are quite a number of licences of that nature, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador along the northeast coast, but it is a non-commercial element versus the commercial side.

To your other very difficult point, how do we take a proactive approach to incentivizing the sealing industry, suffice to say over the last 30years there has been— I wouldn’t say every rock overturned to look for those solutions. If quota were an opportunity to incentivize people, then that would have been explored.

Senator Petten, you mentioned the crab fishery and how that was a nuisance fishery and evolved in places like Port de Grave in the late ‘60s and now is essentially the backbone of the Newfoundland and Labrador fishery. Maybe in 30or40years’ time, with any luck, we will be talking about seals and seal products in the same way and they are no longer a nuisance but a valuable product that we are producing products with for the world.

We don’t know how to incentivize on the basis of the current management structure alone. There are a number of key impediments, including markets, and the markets are being impeded by misinformation. In Canada alone, we are failing to recognize the impact on the fisheries.

There are things we could be doing in Canada. One of the earlier witnesses talked about using only speed boats, small boats of 18 or 20 feet, to harvest seals. One primary reason for that is the insurance cost, so one of the things that could be done to mitigate that. Prior to about 1997, DFO operated the fishing vessel insurance program, which created across the board a level playing field, market-based approach to insurance. Now, that was eliminated in the program review years of the 1990s, but if that were brought back, where a harvester could take a sealing vessel and go sealing and bring products to the processing plant in dild*— but today they can’t do that because I have heard stories that the deductible is $100,000. If you are going to go seal harvesting, you are putting yourself at risk of $100,000. If you do damage to the vessel, the first $100,000 is on your own.

There are things like that that government could do, not as a direct subsidy to the fishing industry. We may have to move there anyway, given the way insurance costs are rising in all sectors, but it is something the Government of Canada could do to level the playing field and is not a subsidy on the sealing industry but an opportunity for seal harvesters and fish harvesters to be able to do business.

Senator Quinn: Thank you, gentlemen for being here this afternoon.

Just a short question really: The whole question of science and doing additional science work or more science work to determine exactly what species and how much is being consumed by each of the various seal populations sounds like it would be quite an undertaking. My question is particularly for you, Mr.Knight, given your experience in the department. In today’s world, do you believe that the department would have the capacity to do that type of work in a timely fashion, or should that work be done outside of the department, by universities, for example?

I think that you said during your testimony that there is no question about it, that the seals are eating a lot of fish, and I think you were suggesting it wasn’t as important to know exactly the detail rather than to take action. My fear is that if this committee, for example, were to make a recommendation that says we need to have science work continuing to get into the detail, then nothing would be done sooner and the situation would be exacerbated.

What would be your response there? What would you do if you were here as a senator needing to make a report with a recommendation that would avoid that very issue of having the department undertake work that may, in fact, lead to inaction?

Mr.Knight: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head about the likely possibility if that were posed to DFO Science.

First of all, I think DFO Science does have the capacity. They could do it in conjunction with universities and other academia, but I think they do have the capacity to estimate, and I know they have already done consumption estimates. The problem is that when they can’t nail down what the seals are eating, they default to, “Well, they are not eating any cod.” And I don’t believe that.

What we do know is they are eating massive amounts of fish. The question needs to be posed to DFO in that general way, and they need to be given a timeline to produce theanswer because, otherwise, not to be sarcastic, but you can send them off to their labs for the next 25years and you won’t get ananswer. They need to be given clear direction to come up with how much fish is being consumed and then, to the best of their ability, to put a name on what species. There is no point in telling us that there are 13million tonnes of fish being consumed but 10million tonnes of that is turbot because 10million tonnes of turbot don’t exist, so tell us using your best estimate what it is, not what you can’t tell us. Tell us from the best information you have what species and in what area. We know where the seals are living. We know, generally speaking, how many there are of each species. We know how much they consume as an animal per individual.

Senator Quinn: Thank you for that.

This same discussion was occurring when I was in Fisheries and Oceans, and that is 25-plus years ago. I think one of our witnesses said earlier that we continue to punt the ball down the field. I think we are in danger of punting it to the next generation of people who are going to be working in the department if we don’t take meaningful action now. Do you agree with that?

Mr.Knight: I fully agree.

Senator Quinn: Okay. Thank you.

Senator McPhedran: Thank you for being here.

I have what might be a rather uncomfortable question, but I really feel compelled after this discussion to ask it. Is “cull” a dirty word? Is it something that, in Canada at least, we are not prepared to address as an effective means? I think it has only been used as a word once in our whole day of hearings, and yet, when I think about the practical implications of what we are discussing here, a planned, thoughtful and appropriate process is clearly needed. I wonder if you could address that.

Mr.Knight: Give it a go.

Mr.Chiasson: At risk of being glib, yes, it is a dirty word. The unfortunate reality of a cull, a targeted population reduction without market support, is that that would only be feasible for as long as it had support. We used to have a grey seal bounty. In British Columbia, there was a seal bounty for decades, but, when it ended, the same problem came back.

Certainly from our perspective at the Seals and Sealing Network, it would be more effective to increase the amount of seals being taken by supporting it with market forces because that would lead to sustainable growth within the industry and also a longer-term sustainable outlook for seal harvesting as opposed to a cull, which would bring with it very severe reputational impacts for the Government of Canada, severe reputational impacts for the fishing industry and obviously severe reputational impacts for the sealing industry.

To a certain degree, it becomes difficult to justify selling seal products while there is a cull. It becomes difficult for us to say, “This is something you should want to wear, or this is a nutritional supplement you should want to take; also, we are leaving three quarters of it on the bottom of the ocean because all you need is the jawbone for $25 at the DFO office.”

We don’t only see this in the seal world. We see this in regard to wolf population control to support caribou rebuilding in British Columbia, for example. The second that the word “cull” gets used, the anti-hunting, anti-sealing, animal rights groups descend upon whatever organization is behind this population reduction. From Seals and Sealing Network’s perspective, that is absolutely the last resort, at the very least, that we would like to see.

Senator McPhedran: Thank you.

Senator R. Patterson: I would like to go back to the science. We’ve heard previously that DFO works collaboratively with the harvesters to try to get the science, but there is nothing in all the testimony that I have heard that is giving me that impression. In science, as we all know, rarely will the researcher advocate a cause; it is up to decision makers to actually take that science and do something with it.

I go back to kind of the basics of what we are trying do here. What problem are we trying to solve? Is it how much is being consumed? Is it the environment? Is it about nice, fuzzy animals? What problem are we trying to solve?

One of our other witnesses talked about funding going into sociological-type science, which is science so you are getting qualitative as well as the quantitative data. We do need to know what is being eaten, but never in a silo. Is it about the seals, or is it about the cod? Who is it about? So I started to think about trying to take a broader view scientifically and create more data.

The other thing that we have also heard quite repeatedly is that Indigenous people and knowledge keepers are not being consulted. It just can’t be every single witness we have had that is saying they are not being consulted and they are all not telling the truth. That is statistically improbable.

I would like to know both of your perspectives. As we are moving forward, as we are trying to actually figure out what the problems are that we are trying to solve, do we need to expand, or would you make a recommendation for us to expand the type of science we are bringing in but try to de-silo it beyond seals— they are our sentinel animal right now— and try to create a bigger scientific profile that is well within the realm of what DFO can do? What recommendation can we add to the report so we actually put the decision back in the hands of the decision maker rather than at the call phase saying, “You’re not listening,” and the scientists saying, “We can’t give you causality.” I would love to hear what you say about that. Sorry.

Mr.Knight: You want to hear from both of us, so I will try to be brief. It is a broad subject area, and brevity is not my strong point.

On your point about fish harvesters and Indigenous people being consulted, being consulted is one thing, but listening and taking what you hear from them into consideration is a different issue altogether. I think, in many cases, they are being consulted, but when it comes to doing the science or considering the impacts on the ecosystem, I don’t believe they are being listened to, and that applies across the board in terms of seals and groundfish species.

What I will tell you is that that varies by DFO region. It is better in some regions, and it is better in some subject areas. For example, Senator Petten mentioned the crab fishery in this province. Here, there has always been a pretty good relationship between the fish harvesters and the crab scientists, and that has resulted in a pretty good overall management of the crab stock. There is not a good relationship in some other species in this region, and it varies. I’ve worked in all of the Atlantic regions. If you go to some regions, the groundfish scientists work very closely with the harvesters, and in some other regions, they don’t.

So I will go back to my key point. Being consulted and being listened to and having input into the final product are two different things.

Mr.Chiasson: I agree with everything Morley just said about consultation, but I will take the other half of your question, which is what does it give us to better understand how much of each species or each family or phylum or what have you.

I think, from where I sit, that it allows us to connect people more directly to what is actually going on. Saying seals eat 53times the amount of the landings of the Canadian commercial fleet is an impressive number, but that could be tomcod and sand lance and a whole bunch of non-commercial species. Looking at the regime shift we are going through in the Northwest Atlantic right now in terms of primary productivity and temperature and everything else, we are faced with an ecosystem that is less resilient. At the same time, we are faced with near-apex or apex predators at carrying capacity or growing towards carrying capacity, removing resiliency from that ecosystem.

The phrase that used to get thrown around a lot was that if every grey seal in the Northwest Atlantic eats one Atlantic salmon, there will be no Atlantic salmon. The Atlantic salmon will go extinct. So we need to understand from these fishers in the Miramichi Bay or the estuary of the Margaree, the mouth of the Humber, are these seals eating salmon? With advances in stable isotope research and analysis that can give us fatty acid analysis, that can give us a better understanding of what these seals are eating beyond what happens to be in their stomach at the time that they got shot, which is how far too much of our understanding of seal diets was built. It could be one salmon a year, or it could be one southern gulf cod a year.

Looking at the species that have significant unexplained increases in natural mortality, looking at things like gulf herring which is now closed or mackerel which is now closed— the mackerel has other issues— looking at these fisheries management exercises where it is like, “Oh, well, these species have these giant increases in natural mortality. Let’s not actually look into what that is from; let’s just assume it’s because of climate change and let’s go shut down the fishery,” I think that is a thought process that occurs far too often at 200 Kent Street in Ottawa.

We need to be a little bit more curious about what is causing these base-level changes for these species and better understand seals. Maybe it is not seals, but at least then we can say it isn’t. Maybe we will finally understand and say, “Okay, we can move on and figure out what else is eating these fish or why these fish are dying.” Significant increases in natural mortality have some kind of explanation.

Senator R. Patterson: Would it be fair to say that if we are going to move forward on science, we need to have both a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the whole fisheries perspective, looking at some causality as well as the impact on the humans who both live it and consume it?

Mr.Chiasson: Absolutely.

Senator R. Patterson: Thank you.

Senator Ataullahjan: I have to apologize to you. I missed your presentation. I had a bit of an emergency I had to deal with.

Just to go back to what Senator McPhedran asked about “cull” being a dirty word, I remember a few years ago in Ontario they were using it where Canada geese are concerned. I know that in Vancouver, on Vancouver Island, I think they do a geese cull. They were talking about kilograms of poop and that they were eating everything in sight. The farmers and the bird advocates said that we need to cull these geese. So why is it a dirty word when it comes to the seal population and not a dirty word when it comes to the geese? I mean, a cull is a cull, so just what is it? Is it that those who advocate for the seals are more vocal? You know how they say the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Mr.Chiasson: I think there is a fundamental difference in how targeted population reductions of mammals are treated compared to targeted population reductions of fish or birds or various other species without eyebrows. There is some deep psychology and sociology behind it, but the reality is that there is very little outcry of targeted killing of Canada geese, of northern pike minnow on the Idaho River, of Asian carp or of smallmouth bass on the Miramichi River. We blew out a fairly significant portion of the Miramichi River with rotenone to remove smallmouth bass, and there was no animal rights group showing up and saying you can’t poison the smallmouth bass.

There is something to it, and I don’t know if we really know what it is, but there is something to mammals in particular that allows for these anti-use groups— I will put them more broadly— or animal rights groups to draw more attention to attempts to kill large amounts of mammals.

Senator Ataullahjan: Maybe they have learned and they don’t let them come and photograph and show those images. One of our previous witnesses said the blood on the ice was an image that people are still dealing with. Thank you.

The Chair: I want to say thank you to everyone.

First, to our witnesses, Mr.Chiasson and Mr.Knight, and to all of our witnesses who have appeared here today, on behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for the compelling and passionate testimony. We have heard many things that we were not aware of, and I am sure many of my colleagues were not, and it is going to add weight to our work that we do here.

I want to thank my Senate colleagues for their great questions and the interest that you’ve certainly expressed here today, especially for those from outside the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. As somebody mentioned earlier today, it is an education for us all, and certainly for some of my colleagues. We are delighted with that.

I want to thank the Senate of Canada staff who helped us make sure that we kept on time, and especially the two ladies on both sides of me here who tapped my shoulder every now and again. I need someone to keep me in line. I also thank the personal staff of myself and Senator Busson. I also want to thank the hotel staff at the Sheraton for their work.

I want to thank the many, many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who we have engaged with in the last three days for sharing their stories, their concerns, their compassion and their hospitality.

I strongly believe, as a senator in Ottawa now since 2009— 2006 I went there first, and about 2009 to the Senate— that we can sit down on Zoom all day in Ottawa and hear from people— because of COVID, we didn’t have a choice— but there is nothing, in my humble opinion, that comes close to learning about industry, learning about people, learning about challenges and opportunities as being on the ground where the people are, where you hear from people like Keith Bath here this morning, with no filter and right from the heart. I think that my colleagues who are new to this process that we are part of now have all learned that over the last couple of days. It is a struggle sometimes to get permission to leave the Ottawa bubble and to go out, in our case, on the wharfs and in the communities and talk to the people, but I think that the last three days have shown us that it is worthwhile, it is educational, and we need to be doing more of it, whether that is talking to schoolchildren, to young adults in Discovery Collegiate in Bonavista who are much more engaged than what a lot of people think they are and concerned about the future and concerned about where we are headed. That is my rant to finish off the meeting.

I just want to say a big thank you to everyone involved for making sure that the three days that we had the opportunity to bring our Senate committee here were a success. With that, we are done.

(The committee adjourned.)