Canada Fights Back

Canada's recent stance on sealing is brilliant.

The anti-sealers are wrong. They're wrong to attack traditional hunting, wrong to attack the environmental hakapik, wrong to imply that sealing is less ethical than raising commercial livestock, wrong to overpromote this cause just because cute big-eyed white seal pups (which aren't even hunted) are effective in money-raising campaigns.

When our Governor General went on camera and ate raw seal heart - wowee! That was great stuff. After years of protests and boycotts against Canada, we're finally doing something to fight back. (Or at least thumb our noses.) In the long run our side will prevail because we're right.

Seal hunting is the traditional sustenance of small portions of our population, both aboriginal and non-aboriginal northerners following long-standing traditions. We're not talking about giant Japanese harvesting ships. We're not talking about Americans with semi-automatic rifles flying in helicopters. These are men who walk the ice floes with a stick with a hook on the end, just as their forefathers have for hundreds of years.

I don't wear fur or like fur. I don't support sport hunting. But we don't all live in cities. We don't all buy our food in plastic wrap. There is nothing environmental about the anti-sealing movement. It's an attack on a traditional way of life. Unfortunately, it's a tried-and-true way for organizations to raise a whole lot of moolah. So let's keep up the public displays of our Inuit culture.

My other musings on the anti-sealing movement

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Polar Bears

It's sad but true that environmentalists and animal welfare groups are not a very credible lot. Many of them spread misinformation in alarming ways; media prints their claims without sufficient research; and the public is left not knowing what to believe. The real shame is that environmentalists have framed several issues in such unrealistic ways that there is little hope now that the public will ever grasp the reality of the situation. And increasingly, the target is animals in northern countries: seals, polar bears, whales.

For example, this article is a fascinating discussion of the framing of the anti-whaling debate. The author says, "Environmental and animal welfare activists often speak about the whale in the singular. We are told that the whale is the world's largest animal, that it has the world's largest brain, that its brain is large in comparison to body weight, that it is social and friendly, that it sings, that it has its own child care system, and that it is threatened, etc. It is true that the blue whale is the world's largest animal and that the sperm whale has the world's largest brain (although it is small in comparison to the animal's size), but most of the other assertions are difficult to prove. Those that do hold some truth are rarely true for more than one or two of the more than 75 different whale species which exist. When one speaks about the whale they are combining all the characteristics found among the various species, such that the whale has them all. But such a whale does not exist; it is a mythical creation, a "super whale"..."

Part of the lack of credibility is due to the pressures for funding. Environmental organizations (like poverty organizations) need something catchy to put in their TV ads and flyers because that's how they attract donors. And funding requires the appearance of effectiveness, so they can never back down, never admit they were wrong, rarely even lay off on a topic. When it becomes clear that most whale species are not endangered, they just switch tacks and oppose whaling on moral grounds. When the Canadian government made it illegal to hunt those doe-eyed white seal pups, they just keep on fighting to save them - even make them the centerpiece of their anti-sealing campaigns for decades after they were protected.

At last week's polar bear summit, a new fight started to take shape: scientists and environmentalists argued that polar bears are endangered and need protection from hunting; and Inuit representatives claimed that polar bear populations are rising. Environmentalists relied on models that project the effect of global warming decades into the future; Inuit spoke with first-hand knowledge of bears, both current and based on oral history. Both points of view had merit, and it's unfortunate that the groups are polarized - but in terms of credibility, I'm with the Inuit.

It's not just the Inuit who oppose protection of polar bears. A pattern has emerged: people who live in the north tend to oppose protection, while those who support moves like the recent US endangered species designation for polar bears are largely from the south. For example, see this NYT op-ed by Sarah Palin.

Why the difference? Here are some possible reasons:
* Many populations of polar bears are increasing. Some in northern Ontario have increased by 50% in recent years. Only a couple of populations have decreased yet.
* Polar bears are one of the most dangerous predators in the world. In communities that have polar bear incursions, there is virtually no way to keep them from attacking houses, short of building the house up on stilts and putting spikes on the steps. In such areas, every person - even co-op students - must have gun training and be armed at all times.
* Global warming is wreaking havoc on the north in all sorts of ways. The cause is all "from away" but the lifestyle of northerners is being affected negatively, and it must seem to them like adding insult to injury for southerners to first cause the pollution that's messing things up in the north, and now to try to curtail the activities of northerners because things are messed up.
* The Inuit have a long oral history and the north has seem plenty of change. Animals adapt, and the Inuit believe that polar bears will adapt to global warming.

Two-thirds of the world's polar bears live in Canada. It looks like polar bears may become the target of environmental organizations just as whales and seals have, and we may be in for a lot more disinformation.

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Canada and the Arctic

In his latest book, A Fair Country, John Ralston Saul argues that Canadian culture is fundamentally different from US or European culture because of the strong influence of aboriginal civilizations on all aspects of Canada - our art, history, constitution, justice system, government, foreign affairs and collective unconscious.

I was thinking about Saul's thesis while reading about the recent European Union attempts to usurp Canadian sovereignty on issues of traditional hunting and fishing.

In November the EU released a report called The European Union and the Arctic Region. The report has some troubling aspects. As a recent CBC article put it, "the EU says it supports indigenous populations — except where their activities give offence to Europeans concerned about animal welfare." In particular, the EU report targets Inuit whale hunting as an area where Europe may try to impose restrictions. The report also proposes a ban on imports of seal products from Canada. While the affected sealers would not be aboriginal, Canadian sealers are following a traditional lifestyle that their ancestors have lived for 500 years.

To put all this in context, the EU doesn't protest Alaskans who hunt wolves from helicopters with machine guns. They don't protest slaughterhouses that hang pigs by their back legs and bleed them to death. They don't protest German commercial kills of wild boar and deer for restaurants and butcher shops. Yet they are absolutely up in arms about seal hunters who use the traditional hakapik to kill seals, and now they have aimed their sights at Inuit who hunt caribou, whales and other animals.

Harper is failing us in a number of ways. The CBC article says that under Harper, "Canada is being slowly pushed aside as the rest of the world sets the agenda for opening up the rapidly melting Arctic." Harper seems interested in only two aspects of the arctic: building up our military presence so we can patrol the newly opened northern passage, and extracting resources.

By not dealing with climate change, pollution, sustainable development and healthy aboriginal communities, Canada leaves the door open to groups like the EU to try to set the policy. Further, by giving in to EU pressure over the traditional use of the hakapik, he deserts traditional ways of life when he should be protecting them.

The Canadian arctic has a permanent indigenous population. The Inuit know more about arctic ecology and wildlife than anyone else. We should be working with the Inuit to create Arctic policy, not giving in to ignorant far-away protestors who are squeamish rather than rational. We should be doing much more to improve living conditions in the north to create more sustainable communities. We should be preparing for the changes to Inuit lifestyle that will come with global warming. Over all else, we need a Canadian policy on the arctic that includes a vision of the arctic as a fundamental part of Canada, not a little-populated place with diamonds that might make some southerners rich.

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Beatles and beards

So now Paul McCartney is going on Larry King Live to talk about the seal hunt. What a great publicity stunt for the aging rock star. It makes me almost wish I hadn't blogged on the topic (was I just playing into some PR rep's scheme?) and makes me gladder that I was pretty brutal in my characterization of Paul (something I have been feeling a bit badly about).

It's sort of like talking about Al Gore's beard. One couldn't help but notice back in July 2001 while he was on vacation in Europe that Al grew a beard, and it might have been interesting to speculate about if the media hadn't jumped on the topic and thrashed it convulsively for months and months and years till it made one's head want to explode. On March 17, 2002, when Al shaved his beard, it merited front page news and started a whole new cycle of bearded Al articles. It may quite possibly never, ever stop. Oops. I guess I'm not helping much.


The Seal Hunt
My Obsession with Al Gore (Part 1)
My Obsession with Al Gore (Part 2)

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The Seal Hunt

A headline in today's Globe & Mail declares, "Former Beatle urges Harper to stop seal hunt."

The article describes Paul McCartney and his entourage arriving at the Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island airport in a black Lincoln and boarding "at least four helicopters" and a fixed wing plane to fly to Iles de la Madeleine.

What irony. The seal hunters are not wealthy people. For most of them, the annual seal harvest is a major source of income. They are participating in a traditional practice that has been part of their culture for hundreds of years. McCartney's high tech publicity stunt probably caused more pollution than any of the hunters could cause in a year.

The Canadian Veterinary Association, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and Royal Commission on Seals and Sealing in Canada have all found that the method used to kill seals is humane. Sealers use a traditional spiked club called a hakapik that they hit the seals with, and the seals die quickly and painlessly. Like many animals, seals sometimes continue to move (making instinctive swimming motions) after they have died, and this can give the appearance that they are being skinned alive when they are not. Yes, it's gross, but try going to a stockyard sometime.

I remember reading an interview years ago with Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, who was friends with McCartney and his first wife Linda. She said that when their kids were little, Paul and Linda told her they wouldn't let their kids associate with children "who had digesting meat in their stomachs"---in other words, who weren't vegetarians. This tells us a couple of things about McCartney. One: he is very intolerant. He demonizes small children for doing the most natural thing in the world, eating. Two, he is violently opposed to all killing of animals. He would probably like to outlaw all meat, leather, fur, and other animal products.

All over the world there are hunts that should be protested. There are hunters who hunt from helicopters with machine guns. Endangered species are hunted. There are hunters who kill just for fun. Why focus on seal hunts? Because environmental and animal rights groups rely on cutesy-pie big-eyed seal babies as a key fund raising tool. Think of the uproar if tuna were cute.

It goes on year after year: protests on the ice floes, boycotts of Canadian fish. The celebrities who have harassed sealers include Brigitte Bardot, Pierce Brosnan, Richard Dean Anderson, Yvette Mimieux, Sean Penn, Loretta Swit and Paris Hilton. The amount of money spent on anti-sealing propoganda is incredible, and much of the anti-sealing propoganda is completely false. Meanwhile people are being demonized who are carrying out a traditional activity that is not inhumane, not harmful to the environment, and not illegal. Just leave them alone.

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