Seal hunt has no future
Canada’s commercial seal hunt has reached its pinnacle. The markets for seal pelts and related products are disappearing. Pelts have dropped from over $100/per pelt in 2006 to barely $18 right now.
The Canadian government is continuing to subsidize this dead industry with taxpayer money and are planning to fight the European Union’s 2010 Seal Product Ban at the WTO with $10-million taxpayer dollars.
Recently, $3.6-million taxpayer dollars was used as “bailout” money to a Norwegian Company, Carino, to stockpile seal pelts — pelts that aren’t even selling because of trade bans worldwide. This happened the very same week that NuTan Furs, a Canadian-owned company, announced that it was closing its seal tannery using Newfoundland taxpayer money.
The landed value of the commercial seal hunt in the past three years adds up to only $2.9 million with only 225 sealers (out of roughly 6,000) participating in 2011, while many sealers move on to other opportunities.
It is astounding that the Conservative government continues to throw good money after bad at an industry with no future when all levels of government are talking about fiscal responsibility.
Today, Canada’s commercial seal hunt costs more to support than it earns. Fewer hunters are participating and the market is in a steady decline.
Countries around the world are waking up to the plight of baby seals, ranging from three weeks to three months old, being shot and bludgeoned; with 42 per cent skinned while still conscious. There is no longer a need for Canada’s “caveman” behaviour.
This needs to be put into the darkest pages of Canadian history books forever.