The Government Is Doing The Right Thing

There is an editorial in the Globe and Mail published on February 3rd criticizing the Canadian government for "conflating the Inuit hunt with the east coast hunt, which has not fooled animal rights activists, European legislators or many Canadians".

The editorial then proceeds to tell us that the current World Trade Organization (WTO) challenge our government has launched is "an ill-conceived, costly and likely futile" effort. The Globe argues that the better decision would be to ban the use of hakapiks to, we assume, placate the Europeans into changing their minds.

Let me address those two points.

First, it is impossible not to discuss both Inuit hunting and the east coast seal hunt in relation to the European Union ban. If the seal product ban is allowed to stand the entire market will be destroyed. This is not a speculative statement, it is based on experience. There have been previous bans with "Inuit exemptions" and that is exactly what happened.

Secondly, the idea that if the hakapik was not used the European Union would look more favourably on the seal hunt is, at best, ridiculous. There is no evidence that the seal hunt, with or without the hakapik, is inhumane, cruel, or unsustainable. The EU was in fact warned by their own lawyers that the ban contravened existing trade and treaty agreements. The simple fact is that there is no basis for a ban. The European Union bowed to emotional pressure from animal rights groups to institute a ban. It would not matter how this resource was harvested. The same pressure would have been brought to bear. Eliminating the hakapik would not have changed that.

As I have said many times, we have experienced bans with Inuit exemptions in the past. Those exemptions did not work then and there is no absolutely reason to believe that they will work now.

Inuit fully support the Government of Canada in their WTO action, and further to that Inuit have launched our own legal challenge against the legislation.

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