Hon. Joyce Murray, P.C., M.P., Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard: Thank you for that very important and compassionate question. My heart goes out to the families of the fish harvesters that you referred to whom we were not able to assist in time.

I’ve asked the Canadian Coast Guard to give me the model on which search and rescue stations are based. It is about the diameter of coverage and the time it would take to be in place to assist. The Canadian Coast Guard optimizes the resources it has to provide the best possible coverage on the coast. The St. Anthony base is the one that provides service to the Labrador coast, but it’s not just search and rescue. There are many resources on the Labrador coast that are auxiliary Canadian Coast Guard teams, as well as other resources that complement major search and rescue and the helicopter.

Hon. Joyce Murray, P.C., M.P., Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard: Thank you for that question. I am very aware that seals eat fish and I have been quite public on my views on that. It’s why I hosted a Seal Summit in St. John’s last year and brought together Indigenous communities, seal harvesters, fish harvesters, as well as the product developers and marketers to explore how we can actually harvest the sustainable natural resource which is the seal population.

As the senator is probably aware, a cull creates a great risk of having the United States apply the Marine Mammal Protection Act and block imports of our seafood and fish from going into the United States. The U.S. is a very important market for our fish harvesters, so we cannot take measures that risk that market.

What I am doing is encouraging that we develop the seal harvest and product industry. That’s why I joined the seal celebration in Gaspé just a few days ago, where I met with some of the seal harvesters, including a young emerging group of seal harvesters, and enjoyed a seal hamburger in their celebration of the seal harvest.

Hon. Joyce Murray, P.C., M.P., Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard: Thanks for that question. Firstly, my approach included going to the Yukon and spending several days there visiting and listening to the committees of fish harvesters that include Indigenous harvesters that provide advice to my ministry.

I went to remote communities like Little Salmon Carmacks, where community members spoke with me about their grief at not being able to harvest any fish, not being able to conduct their fish camps, not being able to conduct their ceremonies that are so important to their communities and their teachings.

So I have a great deal of concern about the state of the salmon stocks in the Yukon of various species, and that’s why I took the opportunity to contact Dr. Spinrad, who is the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and current NOAA administrator, and expressed my concern about potential overfishing by U.S. fleets at the mouth of the Yukon River and expressed my desire to see the United States adopt a precautionary approach to their management of fisheries as we have done here in Canada. I hope to see benefits from that.

Many of the First Nations in the watershed in the Yukon have been funded to help with the data collection and science and are working very closely with my ministry officials and providing their advice as to what can be done to recover the salmon.