SPEAKING NOTES FOR
BRIAN TOBIN, PREMIER

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SEALING
Wednesday, 26 November 1997
St. John's, Newfoundland

Thank you very much John [John Efford, Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture] for your kind introduction and may I pay tribute to all of our special guests from all over the North Atlantic who share the head table here with me.

I, in particular, have enjoyed the opportunity to talk with the Minister of Fisheries, Hunting, and Agriculture from Greenland and to hear so much about the way of life there and the vital role the fishery plays in Greenland. Now in addition to all of our head table guests whom John introduced earlier, I am very pleased to see in the room as well tonight the President of the Labrador Inuit Association who is an important leader in this province and with whom I have recently been involved and engaged in important negotiations, Mr. William Barbour. William you might take a bow in the back of the room there.

Well, I know that we've got a great show lined up and I'll try not to speak for too long but there are a few words that I wanted to share with you this evening and I thank you for giving me the opportunity.

Let me say first of all, and I join with John in saying, it's a great, great pleasure to host all of you here in Newfoundland and Labrador in an international conference which is devoted to the future of sealing. The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador wants to formally congratulate the North Atlantic Mammal Marine Commission and thank the Commission for choosing to hold your conference in this Province during this year, 1997, the 500th anniversary of Cabot's landfall in this Province.

It's perhaps most appropriate that you're here this year, reflecting on the future of this great mammal resource. Because if we look back 500 years it's worth casting our minds back to what Cabot must have found when he arrived here - 500 years ago. We've all heard the legends and the stories passed on from generation to generation to generation about the Cabot landfall. About a skipper and his crew able to put down a basket over the side of a boat and everywhere find tremendous quantities of cod, and an ocean alive with a great cod resource.

Now Cabot discovered as a European that resource but he sure didn't discover the new found land. Aboriginal peoples were here first and walked this land, used its resources, long before Cabot or his navigators and crew made their way here.

And here we are, 500 years later, in the land that our aboriginal people maintained with fundamental respect for the living resources of the ocean and of the land.

And perhaps it's worth casting our minds back to the words that are used by the Haida nation, aboriginal people on the coast of British Columbia. They have a wonderful saying. They say we do not inherit the land from our forefathers, we borrow the land from our children. And if we bear that in mind always, in every decision, and all that we do, our responsibility is not to be the successors of that which has been built by those who have gone before us, but rather those who hold it in trust. Rather, our job is to hold and trust all that has been built and to pass it on whole and sound for those who will follow.

So whether it's Greenland or Norway, Alaska, the Faeroe Islands, Iceland, Finland, Denmark or Canada, all of our regions have a common basis for their evolution and for the development. And that common basis is our strong dependence on the marine resources of our respective regions. We can all be proud of our cultural and economic heritage that has evolved because of our attachment to the ocean. We can be proud of our living heritage as strong and seafaring people. Even though we have much in common both economically and culturally, however, I believe that we have perhaps, those of us who share this big ocean, share so much in terms of our history and development, we've not interacted with one another as much as we should have over these years.

When I was the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans for Canada for a number of years, together with Thornstein Palssom of Iceland, and John Henry Olsen of Norway, we had conceived the notion of a North Atlantic Fisheries and Oceans Ministers Council. And indeed the first meeting was held several years ago in St. John's and we discovered when we sat together in the same room that we had a common basis for taking a position that reflected our common interest in the North Atlantic.

Now the focus of this conference is on one of the most abundant renewable resources in our northern waters. So often, when countries in the North Atlantic when they meet in NAFO - what do they meet to discuss? They discuss the ways in which we can manage decline. The decline of our cod stocks on the Grand Banks. The decline of our turbot fishery beyond two hundred miles and within the two hundred mile limit. Our worries about the need to manage carefully the shrimp resource of the Flemish Cap. Wondering if it is going to disappear. Our worries about the kind of rules that ought not to apply to ensure that highly migratory species survive. The fact that they can be intercepted in so many places along their migratory route. So often when we come together we discuss how to manage an ever-diminishing resource. How wonderful it is then today, and over the last several days to be together to discuss a resource which is abundant in our northern waters.

The seal resource has played a critical role in the evolution of many of our coastal regions. For the aboriginal people, seals have meant survival in the most basic sense of the word. Indeed, it still provides a significant resource around which they can continue to shape their very culture. This, of course, means not only the opportunity to harvest and market the resource, but being able to do so without having to feel "guilty" about pursuing a traditional way of life.

Here in Newfoundland and Labrador the seal resource is vital. It is intricately linked to our culture, and to our economy, especially for the scores of community along the east and northeast coast of the island, and as a traditional way of life along the coast of Labrador.

That is particularly the case because the seal harvest takes place at a time of the year, in the spring, where there are limited opportunities for fishermen in traditional coastal communities to make a few dollars, to gear up for the fishery later on in the year. Dependence on our vast seal resource is deeper now than ever for the thousands of harvesters impacted by the commercial collapse of northern cod and other groundfish stocks.

It's been said a million times, but it can be said a million times again, and it needs to be -- for hundreds of communities along the northeast coast of this province, for ten of thousands of families along the northeast coast of this province, the experience of being severed from a way of life which is hundreds of years old is still shocking and raw and painful to live with. And against that backdrop, the traditional seal hunt is an important economic activity for these coastal communities. For many fishermen, it's the last opportunity to be in a boat, to be on the water, to be on the ice, to be producing a pay cheque that doesn't come in a TAGS office once every two weeks, but comes from the sweat of the brow and the commitment and determination to get up and do the hard work associated with the seal hunt.

There's nothing romantic about the seal hunt. It's hard work. It's an opportunity for a pay cheque. It's an opportunity to harvest in a responsible way a living and abundant resource from the sea.

In 1997, the seal harvest provided income for more than 3,000 sealers and 300 plant workers. The oil, the pelt and meat products of the 246,000 animals harvested resulted in a spin-off of about $20 million in rural Newfoundland and Labrador. It played a vital contribution. Now that's a far cry from the early 1980s when the strong anti-sealing lobby all but destroyed the markets for seal products, mainly fur. Since then we've seen tremendous advances and research and development, in the development of new products such as pepperoni, salami, pate, sausages, burgers and prime cuts. We have seal protein concentrate, highly valued Omega-3 oil capsules. If you want to know the most valuable oil product in Newfoundland and Labrador today -- it is not Hibernia or Terra Nova or White Rose -- it is Omega-3 oil tablets - just ask John Efford. Now if you want to know how much influence John Efford has, just last week before many of you who are visitors were here in the Province, he was on radio and he said that he's taking seal oil capsules and he hasn't got an ache or a pain anywhere in his body ever since. And Bill Barry told me that within the next three days thirty-five thousand bottles of seal oil capsules were sold in a rush. Just imagine when he starts talking about protein capsules.

But in the early 1980s, we indeed had been chased out of the market place -- but that's changed. Markets today are growing steadily, particularly in Asia. Several companies are pursuing plans to establish tanneries in the Province. Indeed, last year, last January, I led a business delegation to Asia, China, to pursue opportunities, joint ventures, in the marketing of seal products. And John Efford has just come back, within a matter of days, from a similar delegation, a follow-up delegation, to China as well. We intend in this Province to fully develop all of the opportunities for marketing seal products. We support a seal harvest and we're committed to its further development around three principal cornerstones:

1. a sustainable harvest based on solid science;

2. an industry based on the full utilization of the animal; and

3. humane harvesting methods with zero tolerance for any inhumane practices.

These principles are complemented by management measures put in place by the Government of Canada to regulate the harvest of the resource. The commercial harvesting of seals is more tightly regulated today then ever before in our history. Humane harvesting practices are supported by industry and are strictly, as they should be, enforced. The commercial harvesting of whitecoat harps has been banned since 1987. The number of seals that may be harvested is based on science and sound conservation principles.

It is clear to all who care to see the facts for what they are, that we all want a prudent and orderly development of this resource.

Equally clear is the fact that seals provide an abundant, renewable resource. The numbers, with respect to seals, say it all. There are six species of seals in eastern Canada, Canadian waters. Harp seals outnumber the population of all other species combined.

In the early 1970s, the harp seal population was around 1.5 million animals. By 1994 -- (I remember this count, I was Minister of Fisheries and Ocean at the time) the time of the most recent scientific survey -- the population had swelled, more than doubled, to 4.8 million, with an annual pup production of 703,000.

Keep in mind that the 1994 population figures are now pretty well outdated. A conservative estimate places the current harp seal population at about 5.1 million animals, and growing by five per cent annually.

Now growing seal populations have given rise to concern about an imbalance in the marine ecosystem in eastern Canadian waters where the moratorium that I just talked about earlier on northern cod continues to this day. While there is agreement that predation by seals, and I think we should say that - predation by seals - was not the major factor in the collapse of northern cod stocks or other groundfish stocks, I think there is strong and legitimate evidence emerging that the size of the seal population today is very much a factor in the capacity of those collapsed groundfish stocks to rebuild. And I saw just a week or so ago in Labrador, a meeting there, an assessment of the state of the Atlantic salmon stock with much evidence being presented by those who still participate in the commercial fishery, that there is great predation of salmon by seals.

The Scientific Council of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization reported just a few months ago that harp seals consume annually 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 that they're consuming 300 million northern cod per year.

I've got a friend in the House of Commons, the Chairman of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, George Baker, and George Baker use to say to the IFAW when they said that seals don't eat cod, George would say well they sure don't eat at MacDonald's. This, in my mind, is one of the most ridiculous debates and discussions that I witnessed both in my time as Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and that I continue to hear today. This notion that seals are not eating cod. It is estimated that seals consume annually 340,000 tonnes of turbot.

Now we went out and had a slight disagreement on the high seas over turbot with our friends from Spain. And, we have some disagreement with the high consummation levels of turbot by seals. You know it is an incredible irony that since 1992 there's been a total moratorium on cod. None of the forty or fifty thousand people in this Province who depended upon cod are fishing cod today. None of the nations of the world that traditionally fish inside our two hundred mile limit for cod are fishing cod today. There is, at least under NAFO rules, that we know about, no directed fishery for cod anywhere in the NAFO zone today. So the only traditional harvester of cod, fishing cod, today are seals.

And the cod resource, in particular in area 2J3KL, despite a moratorium since 1992 has barely recovered. Ninety-nine percent of the total spawning biomass that was there prior to the collapse of 1992 is still missing. There hasn't been substantial recovery.

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. Of that, more than 50 per cent of that consumption came from Canadian waters.

So what does all this tell us. It tells us that our role as managers, as custodians of the resources is to make sure there's an appropriate balance in the ecosystem. We've got to recognize that you can't have a seal hunt that occurred for a few hundred years on a annual basis and then suddenly remove that hunt without affecting the balance in the ecosystem.

We've had challenges in bringing back this industry but we're succeeding. One of the challenges has been the presence of the IFAW, the International Fund - I pause on the word Fund - the Fund for the International Fund Raisers, Fund Spenders, Fund Users, Fund Collectors, the International Fund for Animal Welfare. I don't know whose welfare those funds look after but it's not animals.

I have never seen a more dishonest, misleading, self-serving, campaign in my life than that campaign which has been launched year over year by the IFAW. It is absolutely despicable. It is cowardly, shows no courage, no integrity, no honesty whatsoever. You know the phenomena, the phenomena where people can use the power of advertising, not the power of truth, not the power of news, not the power of fact, not the power of research, but the same power that sells new and improved toothpaste - that's the same toothpaste you bought last year and the year before. When that power of creating an image is conjured up to displace aboriginal peoples from a traditional way of life and ten of thousands of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians from a traditional way of life - that is the power of abuse.

That power has been found wanting. You know we've watched the campaigns launched in London collapse. We've watched the campaigns launched again this year. They are collapsing. They are a self-indulgent splurge of advertising dollars in my mind, and I say to the IFAW sue me and I hope you have it on video, it is a campaign designed to pick the pockets of the naive and the misinformed who have been manipulated by the IFAW.

There isn't a shred of evidence in my mind that would suggest that the people who plan these campaigns are in one iota different than the kind of people who advertise on the networks an hour at a time to call up the physic hotlines.

Well, we are here in St. John's, Newfoundland, today, at this conference, to announce that we're proud of our history, we're proud of our culture, we're proud of our heritage, and proud of a way of life. We're here to say that those who truly respect the land and the sea are those who have nurtured it. Those who have managed it wisely. Those who live from it. There isn't anybody who believes in the seal hunt who wants to see any living animal abused. There isn't any one of us who wouldn't condemn the abuse of any living animal. But all of us know that if there is a purpose to the mystery of the planet, and if the purpose is well served, it's when mankind and the resources of this planet exist in harmony. That's the kind of seal hunt we want. That's the kind of seal hunt that's being developed today - full utilization of the species, proper scientifically based quotas, and a responsible harvest with humane harvesting practices and with all of the will and the might and all of the determination to ensure that rules are properly followed. And when they're not, then the full force of the law is brought to bear.

And I believe that that message is being heard around the world. I believe that the same people that stood up in 1995 and waved Canadian Flags in Ireland, in England, in Scotland, in Norway, and Iceland, and stood with us as we tried to protect the species called turbot understand that we're not reckless predators. We're people trying to rebuild a resource that we recognized in the management of that resource we've made mistakes and we are determined to start again, to start anew, and to do it right.

Well, the same is true of the seal hunt. Prices have rebounded, markets have rebounded, research and development has produced a variety of new products, and intelligent and compassionate management has produced a new future. I am here to celebrate you, this Commission, to celebrate all you've done, and to assure you that Newfoundland and Labrador stands with you for the responsible development of a humane and profitable seal hunt for those who depend upon that resource.

Thank you very much.