The notion that European finance ministers will be politically discomfited by the presence of seal meat on the menu for the G7 finance ministers' meetings in Iqaluit is a stretch. The European Union ban on seal products specifically exempts seal products that result from hunts traditionally conducted by Inuit and other indigenous peoples. It is not the cultural practices of the Inuit that have offended European sensibilities, it is the brief annual slaughter of young seals on Canada's east coast by hunters from Newfoundland and the Magdalen Islands that has.
The fact that seal meat and fur products will be prominent at the G7 meetings is unsurprising. It would be an odd omission, were they not. What is disturbing is the misleading manner in which the federal government has played the Inuit card.
The federal Minister of Health, Leona Aglukkaq, an Inuk who represents Nunavut in the House of Commons, complained on Monday, “I'm frankly sick and tired of being a target of international organizations.” She must know that her people are not being directly targeted. Anti-sealing organizations target instead the hunt on the east coast: a commercial hunt that serves as a lurid attraction because of the quota-driven bloody rush to slaughter, and the persistent use of hakapiks.
Instead of confining its strategy to an ill-conceived, costly and likely futile World Trade Organization challenge, and hiding behind facile gestures and statements about defending aboriginal lifeways, Canada needs to get smarter about the east coast seal hunt or lose it altogether.
To begin with, federal politicians need to stop conflating the Inuit hunt with the east coast hunt, which has not fooled animal rights activists, European legislators or many Canadians.
The EU laws may smack of paternalism to the Inuit, and have undoubtedly harmed the market for the pelts, but the laws are clearly targeted at the east coast hunt. The federal government needs to make the case for the value and benefits of the east coast industry.
In addition, Ottawa should show it takes concern for humane treatment of animals seriously. It must institute a full ban on the use of hakapiks, the long, sharply hooked metal clubs used to bludgeon seals to death. Advocates for the hunt argue the weapon is humane. That is impossible for most people to imagine, and the seals cannot be polled on their views. The hakapik may only be used by a minority of sealers in certain circumstances, yet they invariably feature prominently in anti-sealing campaign literature. It is time to retire the gruesome instrument that looks as if it belongs in the Middle Ages.
The federal government also needs to do a better job in publicizing and enforcing recent regulatory changes that will make the hunt more humane, including measures that are intended to ensure the animals are in fact dead before they are skinned.
Animal rights activists have had a heyday at Canada's expense as a result of what can now only be termed a marginal industry. Their success is in part due to a failed federal government strategy of deliberate opaqueness, coupled with regulatory laxity and incrementalism.
