Seal lunch another tacky effort to support hunt

[Animal 0]

Seal lunch another tacky effort to support hunt
March 4, 2010


By Bob Hepburn

Editorial Page


At lunch next Wednesday, Liberal Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette and 30 of her guests will sit down in the exclusive Parliamentary Restaurant in Ottawa and dig into a meal of seal meat and fine wine.

Almost gleefully, the senator is telling everyone who will listen that she loves seal meat, that it tastes great and that she wouldn't have any trouble serving it to friends and family.

The meal is certain to win Hervieux-Payette a few new pro-sealing friends and some favourable media coverage in Newfoundland where most of the controversial hunt takes place.

But the seal meat lunch is more likely to backfire on Hervieux-Payette, sparking a wave of negative publicity in Europe and elsewhere by once again highlighting Canada's stubborn refusal to ban its controversial seal hunt.

Indeed, the luncheon is just another in a series of tacky efforts to show support for Canada's seal hunt by politicians wanting to thumb their noses at countries, especially members of the European Union, that have banned most Canadian seal products.

In February, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tried to serve seal meat to G7 economic ministers meeting in Iqaluit. The meal bombed, with not one foreign diplomat taking up Flaherty's offer.

Last August, Harper and his cabinet dined on seal in support of the industry and last May while visiting Rankin Inlet, Governor General Michaëlle Jean gutted a freshly killed seal, pulled out its raw heart and ate it. "It's like sushi," she said.

While such stunts may make Ottawa feel it is "doing something" to support the seal hunt, they are all futile. The reality is they are a waste of time and an international embarrassment that have had zero impact on reversing bans on seal products from the East Coast.

Indeed, it's time Canada faced the obvious and ended the seal hunt.

The slaughter no longer makes economic sense and, despite banning the killing of those cute baby whitecoat seals in 1987, Canada lost the public relations war surrounding the hunt long ago.

Unfortunately, with rare exceptions, our politicians are afraid to speak out against the seal hunt.

This year, barely 5,000 sealers will participate in the seal hunt, which is scheduled to start in about two weeks near the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and in early April off the east coast of Newfoundland.

The total harvest is worth just $15 million, a figure that has been plunging almost every year for the past two decades.

Prices for seal pelts have plunged over the years, initially after the U.S. banned such imports in 1972 and especially after the EU ban last year. The best seal pelts sold for $100 in 2006. Today they fetch $15 – if a buyer can be found at all. There isn't much of a market for other seal products, such as meat.

Even in Newfoundland, the seal hunt is hardly worth saving. The income amounts to barely 0.05 per cent of the provincial economy, and that doesn't take into consideration the costs spent patrolling and promoting the hunt.

To counter the European ban, Ottawa is turning its focus this year to China and other Asian countries as future markets for seal fur, leather and meat. So far, there's little opposition in Asia to the hunt, but that's likely to change once international animal rights groups start organizing in that region.

And yes, it's true Europeans are hypocritical when they oppose the seal hunt on humanitarian grounds, but retain their own objectionable practices. For example, the French love their foie gras, created by force-feeding geese so much food that their livers expand grotesquely.

But they have won this fight.

If anything, Ottawa has spent too much effort and money propping up this dying industry. And media-hungry politicians like Senator Hervieux-Payette have spent far too much time staging gimmicks that do nothing to help the sealers.

It's time for the senator and the rest of the politicians who dine with her in the Parliamentary Restaurant to surrender, end the senseless slaughter, and compensate and retrain the few sealers who still rely on the hunt for a little extra income.

Bob Hepburn's column appears Thursdays. bhepburn@thestar.ca

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/article/774638--seal-lunch-another-tacky-effort-to-support-hunt