Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My first question is for Mr. Hardy.
Mr. Hardy, l'd like to talk about seals, surprisingly. I asked an Order Paper question in the House of Commons on the stomach content of seals.
The minister recently patted herself on the back in Newfoundland for stating the obvious, that seals eat fish. She somehow thought that was a revelation. Apparently they did at DFO; they thought it was a revelation.
I asked for the stomach content sampling by DFO, not specific to any province, since 2017 and all the details. I have 122 pages of the DFO response of June 10, and 107 of 122 pages are from Newfoundland and Labrador. There are a few pages on New Brunswick, but no sampling in Nova Scotia, Quebec and British Columbia.
I'm sure you'll be shocked to learn that, of all that sampling, on the findings pages, it says that what was in the stomachs was “not available”. It took them anywhere between three to nine months to analyze the stomach samples, and in their report to Parliament, they're not willing to disclose what's in the stomachs. Maybe they did find Alberta beef and don't want to contradict their minister that seals eat fish.
My question for you is this. On the seal task team, did you get access to any data on the stomach contents of seals?