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Speaking points for
John Efford
Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture
To The Rotary Club of Ottawa
February 9, 1998


THE SEALING INDUSTRY OF NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR

I want to thank the Rotary Club of Ottawa for the opportunity to speak to you today. I am delighted to be here.

My topic is the sealing industry in Newfoundland and Labrador. To have a full appreciation for what this industry means to our province, it has to be viewed in the context of our entire fishing industry and its role in our economy.

  • The impacts of the moratoria on our principal groundfish stocks, especially northern cod, have been profound.

People's livelihoods disappeared overnight

The shock waves were felt throughout Atlantic Canada, but the crisis was centred in Newfoundland and Labrador -- more than 70 per cent of the impacts were in our province.

Groundfish landings that had exceeded an annual average of 370,000 tonnes in the late 1980s, dropped by 93 percent by 1996.

The collapse of major stocks put 27,000 people out of work

  • Since the first moratorium was announced in 1992, Canada's national employment level increased by almost four percent.
    The employment level for Newfoundland and Labrador dropped by close to eight percent.

In 1996, our unemployment rate was double the national rate and almost three times the lowest recorded provincial rate in Saskatchewan.

At least 75,000 full year equivalent jobs are needed just to bring our employment and unemployment rate on par with the national average.

  • Out-migration is a significant factor in rural communities, particularly those impacted by the groundfish crisis. Pickup trucks leave the province filled with a life's worth of personal effects.

  • In the first nine months of 1997, the net out-migration was more than 8,500 -- higher than the total recorded for all 12 months of 1996 (which set an annual net-migration record of 8,380).
    If this trend continued in the last quarter of 1997 it is very likely that annual net out-migration exceeded the 10,000 mark for the first time.

  • Between July, 1993 and October, 1997 the province has lost more than 32,000 people to interprovincial outmigration. The population has declined by 25,000 or 4.3 per cent.

  • The youngest and brightest leave in search of economic opportunity

  • Newfoundland and Labrador still has fisheries.
    There are many success stories showing how we are diversifying the industry, developing underutilised species, and creating new market opportunities.
    However, the employment and economic activity generated by these does not replace what has been lost in the groundfishery.

  • That is why the sealing industry continues to be so critical to our rural areas.

  • The seal harvest takes place at a time of year when there are very limited opportunities for harvesters to earn income from other fisheries.
    Income from the seal fishery is often the only way many harvesters have to raise money to get their fishing boats and gear ready for summer fisheries.

  • The harvest is nowadays essentially a small boat harvest, conducted by fishermen from coastal communities where employment opportunities are scare. Some of these communities have less than 100 families.

  • The 1997 seal fishery provided income for more than 3,000 harvesters and 300 plant workers. The oil, pelt and meat products of the 246,000 animals harvested had an export value of about $20 million.

  • Changes to our sealing industry have been revolutionary.
    Tremendous research and development efforts have revitalized the industry since the early >80s when a strong anti-sealing lobby all but destroyed markets for seal products, mainly fur.
    New products have been developed -- seal oil, protein concentrate, meat products such as pepperoni, pate, sausagesburgers. There is also growth in the area of leather and fur products.
    About five months ago, Omega-3 seal oil capsules became commercially available on store shelves in Newfoundland. Now they are available as a health supplement in drug store chains throughout eastern Canada.
    Within six months to a year, expect to see the commercialization of another new product, seal meat protein concentrate -- also as a health supplement.

Several companies are interested in setting up tanneries in the province.

With the development of new products, new markets have been developed. And they are growing, particularly in Asia.

  • The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador fully supports a seal harvest. We are fully committed to its further development around three principal cornerstones:

a sustainable harvest based on solid science;

an industry based on the full utilization of the animal; and,

humane harvesting methods with zero tolerance for any inhumane practices.

Our position is complemented by management measures put in place by the Government of Canada to regulate the harvest.

Humane harvesting practices

Strict enforcement

Ban on commercial hunt of whitecoats

Number harvested based on scientific information and sound conservation principles.

POPULATIONS

We have an abundant, renewable harp seal resource.

  • In the early 1970s, harp seals numbered around 1.5 million animals.

  • A 1994 scientific survey (the most recent one) put the population at an estimated 4.8 million - with an annual pup production of 703,000.

  • The 1994 population figures are outdated.
    A conservative estimate of the current harp seal population is around 5.1 million animals - growing by five per cent annually (taking into account pup production, harvest and natural mortality).
    These figures do not include five other seal species in eastern Canadian waters.

IMBALANCE IN MARINE ECOSYSTEM

  • Growing seal herds give rise to concerns about an imbalance in the marine ecosystem in eastern Canadian waters where a moratorium on fishing northern cod has been in place since 1992.

  • Not one of the 27,000 people impacted by the groundfish moratoria is permitted to fish for northern cod.

5.1 million harp seals can harvest them. This raises concerns about the impact this is having on efforts to rebuild groundfish stocks.

HARP SEAL CONSUMPTION OF FISH

  • The Scientific Council of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization last year reported that harp seals consume every year 108,000 tonnes of juvenile northern cod less than 40 cm in length.

Given that the preferred cod size for seals is actually less than 25 cm, this would mean they are munching on 300 million baby northern cod per year - more than 12 times the size of the Canadian population.

More recent information indicates that with the and the percentage of cod in harp seal's diet remaining stable or increasing, and in view of the fact that the weight at age of cod has decreased, the total consumption of northern cod could be much, much higher. How high that is differs with the models scientists use to arrive at their estimates. One preliminary estimate puts the total consumption as much as 140,000 metric tonnes.
This is most disturbing, particularly in view of the fact that the weight at age of cod has decreased. It means that number of juvenile cod consumed by harp seals is much higher than 300 million.

  • Seals consume annually 340,000 tonnes of turbot, also a valuable commercial resource in Newfoundland and Labrador.

  • Seals have voracious appetites for other species as well, not the least of which is capelin - a very significant species in the marine food chain. A `96 estimate indicated that harp seals were consuming more than 800,000 tonnes of capelin.

Other 1996 estimates for harp seal consumption:
- close to 600,000 tonnes of Arctic cod, more than 85,000 tonnes of herring, around 11,000 tonnes of redfish.

  • As early as three years ago, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans indicated that harp seals were consuming 6.9 million metric tonnes of marine species annually....More than 50 percent of that came from Canadian waters.

  • The Atlantic Salmon Federation has expressed concern that seals may be a factor in the failure of salmon to return to rivers in the numbers anticipated.
    Seals have been observed in some areas swimming up rivers after trout and salmon.

  • With salmon and cod and others, seals will consume whole very small fish (30 cm or less), but with fish bigger than that they bite through the belly section to get the liver for its oil content.

  • In short, the marine ecoystem on Canada's east coast is out of whack. It is unbalanced. Overfishing of stocks by man may have started the problem. Now, man must fix it. Nature alone can not restore species balance to our marine ecosystem.

IFAW CAMPAIGN

  • The International Fund for Animal Welfare claims it is against the commercial seal hunt.

However, their misleading propaganda campaigns have been economically devastating for aboriginal people who have a profound dependance on seals.

The President of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference said recently:

"Although Inuit were never directly a target of the anti-sealing campaigns, we became perhaps their biggest victims...With the collapse of the world markets for seal skins in the 1970s and `80s, our world changed forever. This loss had devastating and enduring impacts on the Inuit of Greenland and Arctic Canada."

  • The IFAW propaganda campaign has become an annual circus of deceit.
    In 1997 they enlisted the support of 25 members of the Canadian arts community...a group calling themselves Canadians Against the Commercial Seal Hunt.

Renowned author Pierre Burton is clearly not among them. In a letter to the Globe and Mail, Mr. Burton said he was appalled that a group of people in the Canadian arts community had signed an IFAW newspaper ad demanding an end to the Newfoundland seal hunt.

"Do these members of the arts community," he asked, "who put their names on that advertisement realize the legacy they are leaving behind? In the Arctic the former seal hunters are living on welfare and lapsing into alcoholism, suicide, family breakup, and drug abuse. That, not the killing of seals, is the ultimate immorality."

  • The IFAW claims that Canadians subsidize and industry that kills baby seals. THIS IS FALSE. The commercial harvesting of whitecoats has been banned since the 1980s.

They claim half a million seals were taken in the 1997 hunt. ALSO FALSE == 246,000 were taken.

They claim the harvest provides few economic benefits. FALSE....The `97 fishery had an export value of about $20 million....It provided income for more than 3,000 sealers and 300 plant workers.

They claim Canadians paid $3.4 million in subsidies in 1996 for a seal harvest. FALSE. The total federal and provincial subsidies in `96 were $1.7 million. This was reduced to just over $1 million in 1997, will be reduced again in 1998 and `99. By the year 2000 it will be zero.

The subsidy was for meat alone, while we were developing meat products and markets. The seal oil and other products are already self-supporting.

They claim the harvest is cruel. IN FACT, commercial licences are limited to professional fishermen. Humane practices are supported by the industry and strictly enforced by DFO.

Penalties are among the toughest in the world.
The harvest is tightly regulated. Violations of the regulations are not tolerated.

The IFAW has been trying to give the impression that more than 100 sealers were charged with cruelty.
What these sealers were actually charged with was SELLING blueback hood seals. IT IS NOT ILLEGAL TO HUNT BLUEBACKS.

  • The IFAW campaigns distort. They are deceitful. In the process, they inflict injury upon humanity.

They use graphic details to get an emotional response that will bring cash to their coffers......splatters of bright red blood on a field of virginal snow.....blood dripping drop-by-drop from the business end of a hakapik...a wide-eyed young seal.

  • The seal harvest is not a pretty sight. Neither is the killing of chicken or cattle or pigs or anything else in a slaughterhouse.

The only difference is that the seal harvest is conducted in a public arena == an open-space abattoir.

IN CONCLUSION:

The commercial harvesting of seals on Canada's East Coast is more tightly regulated than ever before, humane practices are strictly enforced, with penalties for violations among the toughest in the world.

Seals are an abundant, renewable resource. The harp seal population is one of the healthiest mammal populations in the world. It is a resource that allows people in our coastal communities to pursue their livelihoods with dignity. It provides a significant resource for aboriginal people.

With the commercialization of new seal products such as Omega-3 oil and protein concentrate and the expansion of markets for both new and traditional seal products, the seal resource offers significant economic benefits in coastal communities where other employment opportunities are very limited.

The industry is expanding and is providing a measure of hope to individuals who have seen their lives shattered by the collapse of the groundfish sector.

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador fully intends to continue expanding solid market opportunities so we can increase the economic benefits from the seal industry. The misguided activities of the IFAW will not weaken this resolve.


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