By Mike Kehoe, Newfoundland and Labrador Defense League
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Y A W N.............. Oops sorry. I always react with a yawn when I am forced to continuously watch a boring replay of a movie I have seen many times before.
So, here we go again. It's that time of year when animal rights militants make their annual pilgrimage to the cash box known as the Atlantic seal hunt. More structured footage, more taunting intimidation, more media events and more beautiful people on beautiful scenery splashed with the blood of so called "baby" seals.
More righteous indignation from the misinformed and the misled, spoon fed to them by those who see themselves and their cause of animal rights as the duty of the social elite. Greater gobs of verbal and written bile being directed at people whose only "crime" or "fault" is to pursue a legal activity.
Don't waste your time calling on Ottawa to ban anything from countries choosing to participate in this charade. It just will not happen. Ottawa will not ban the purchase of planes, wines, automobiles, meats or anything else in order to make the point it supports its people. Ottawa will say all is good and our engines are running smoothly in the voyage to deal with the damage caused by anti sealers. They have been saying this for 30 years.
Ottawa's game plan again this year will be to wait it out. To get past this season to the next as it has for the last 30 years or so. It will minimize damage to anything west of Port Aux Basque and tolerate anything east. Loyola Hearn will be no different. A sort of don't worry be happy approach. Ottawa will achieve this through controlling response to animal rights protestors by a relatively small group of sealing industry stakeholders. That group will be wined and dined, traveled and feted. There will be the token "non achievement" meetings with select groups but nothing will be designed to generate a long term solution. The meetings held are intended to provide deniability for Ottawa and Hearn when they are accused of doing nothing once again. Ottawa is ok with that.
To date no other industries have said they have had enough of the boycotts and are willing to fight back. However, some, tourism in PEI and some fisherman's groups in other Provinces are now becoming willing to throw in the towel as they feel abandoned by the sealing industry and the Federal Government. They want the issue out of their back yards. They see themselves receiving little more than the bile splatter from animal rights protest activities.
Using the Atlantic front for footage in order to fundraise while closing markets through legislation, appears to be working on some level. These tactics are not being offset in any meaningful way by a coordinated initiative to deal with misrepresentations, misunderstandings or outright lies against the seal hunt.
There is no "command central" to clearly identify the benefits of allowing sealing to continue. There has been no sign of the other Loyola here either, the newly minted Ambassador for Fisheries Conservation. How about it Loyola? You could do some good.
Until recently polls indicate that Canadians supported the rights of fishermen to pursue a legal, sustainable managed and humanely conducted harvest. After all, the slaughter houses of Alberta and canneries of B. C. will be next when these militants become unoccupied by seals. I fear this support may be slipping into lethargy though.
Has the battle been lost, should Canada continue (or as I would argue "begin") to fight?
Other stakeholders have been isolated from this fight by the Federal Government. Countries with similar problems such as Norway, Japan, Greenland, Iceland and other industries such as the meat, fur, oils, tourism etc and groups such as aboriginals have been successfully isolated and their effectiveness in the fight neutralized. They've all deliberately been kept away because their presence would cause Ottawa's bureaucrats to lose control over the issue.
The solution, if there is to be one to be found, lies with the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The Province must take control of the promotion of the rights of people to engage in this legal harvest of animals and the full utilization of the products generated through a humanely conducted and sustainable harvest.
We must cause to be established an organization of all stakeholders to proactively bring forward the rights of humans to live off of meats, furs etc if they so choose. We must get a participatory buy-in from other stakeholders. Elevate the issue to the level it deserves and, on an interim basis, fund this initiative with a view to long term funding coming from resource utilization participants.
One last point, please don't depend on Ottawa to fund such a group.
Know what I mean????
By Mike Kehoe
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