Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand in the House and support this private member's bill. I have a few words of advice for the member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl.

I am a little surprised, because every once in a while we get a private member's bill that every party in the House can support. Usually we take that opportunity to commend the member for bringing the bill forward, and we recognize the good and salient points in the piece of legislation. We look at it as an opportunity to reach across the aisle, instead of trying to kick someone in the teeth.

I have heard foolishness before, but this is just patent foolishness. Here is the issue. It is an issue that every side of the House can agree on, so let us find ways to agree instead of disagree.

I suspect that the hon. member is smarting a little bit. As a new member of Parliament, he misspoke. He suggested that the seal hunt should be ended and that the days of the seal hunt were over. There was not any talk about it being in the blood of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. The language used was that it was time that we moved beyond it, that the seal hunt was a thing of the past. I know that he feels a little bad about that and is trying to make up for it, so we will forgive him for his remarks. However, I will not forgive him for failing to reach across the aisle and join hands on a subject we can agree on.

I was the chair of the fisheries committee for a couple of years. I sat on the fisheries committee, along with the parliamentary secretary and a number of other people in the chamber. Some very good work was done on that committee, and some very good work was done on the seal hunt. I got to be the chair at the time of the seal hunt report.

There are a couple of facts that have to be recognized. First of all, this is private members' legislation. It recommends doubling the distance for unlicensed observers. Most unlicensed observers are in vessels. They are not on the ice, they are in a vessel. The Farley Mowat attempted to ram sealers in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Had it been successful, it probably would have killed those sealers. That is what we are talking about. We are talking about risk of life and limb.

I would go a step further and recommend to the hon. member for West Nova, who brought this bill forward, and to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans that we should look at the distance that we allow licensed observers to go. Quite frankly, there should be no licensed observers outside of the international group of veterinarians who are already on the ice during every single hunt.

This is the most closely managed large animal hunt in the world. We have RCMP officers on the ice. We have Fisheries and Oceans Canada officers on the ice. We have firearms folks on the ice. We have people from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency out there, making sure that the sealers have taken their courses on how to identify that the animal has been killed properly and how to skin the animal. We have the Coast Guard. We have the air force out there, monitoring the hunt. This is the most closely monitored large animal hunt in the world.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that we should allow anyone who is not a registered veterinarian closer than 300 metres or 400 metres. Over 90% of the seals are shot. Fewer than 10% are killed with a hakapik. They are shot with .222s and .223s. Those firearms will easily fire that bullet for 400 metres or 500 metres over the ice. That is the distance that people should be pushed back. If someone is a veterinarian who knows what is going on and how the animal is dying, whether it has been killed properly or not, and can identify that, he or she has a special license and moves up closer. That would save a lot of the trouble here.

I have pictures that were sent to me from John Levy, coming in off Georges Bank. He is 120 miles offshore. He is longlining halibut, and he is bringing his longline in with halibut after halibut. These are 30- and 40-pound fish, some of them. The skin has been raked off and the fat has been eaten, and the fish has been destroyed by grey seals.

I worked off Sable Island for nearly a decade during the 1980s. In 1980, when we flew over Sable Island we could count the seals on the spit. There were harp seals on the southeastern spit, and I think it was the southeast and northwestern spit. There were grey seals on the other spit. We could literally count them.

Today, some 30 years later, there are 300,000 grey seals. The males weigh up to 600 pounds.

What do the people who are against the seal hunt think those animals live on? What do they think the seals eat? They are not vegetarians, I can assure members. They eat fish.

It is all about balance. We do not want to kill the last seal, absolutely not. However, there is a sustainable hunt here that could be extremely lucrative. These animals are full of fat and omega-3 oil. That oil is valuable. Whether we can harvest the meat is something to be determined in the future, beyond for local consumption. The oil alone deserves to be harvested. It is healthy oil. It is good for people. It is good for everyone.

There are a couple of other points I want to make here. One of them was mentioned by other speakers and that is misleading information. The European Union, which should be our friend, has listened to misleading information. I was privileged to go with the fish committee to the European Parliament. We presented to the committee on the environment in the European Parliament on the sustainability of the seal hunt.

It was a very acrimonious meeting. We acted like professionals, we presented our evidence, but we did not get a fair hearing. Somehow, we have to move beyond that.

The other thing that all governments need to do, the provincial governments as well, is lobby the Europeans. These decisions are made in the Parliament of Europe today. They are not made in the individual member states. We have to have a presence, and we have to have a lobbying effort in the European Parliament if we are going to move ahead with any changes to the rules or any changes to the regulations on the seal hunt.

We could do it unilaterally, but we want to have their support when it happens, if we can. If we cannot, then I say we should move ahead with it.

I will give an example of how many seals there are. In the 1970s or 1980s, people sailing off the south shore of Nova Scotia might see a seal. They would probably see a whale and they would definitely see blackfish, but they might see a seal.

Three years ago, I was out in Mahone Bay and every rock had a seal on it and there were two more in the water waiting to get on that rock when the first seal got off. They are everywhere. We have to be able to bring them under control, and we have to do that in a reasonable, sustainable, and responsible manner.

We can do that if we reach across the aisle and do not treat this as a political football. This is an important piece of legislation from a member of Parliament who represents a huge piece of the fishery in Canada. It is timely and it is well meant. If we apply this, it will help to control the seal industry and help our fishery develop to the potential it has.

Gerald Keddy

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