The European Union should reconsider its plan to go ahead with a ban on the import of seal products, says Newfoundland and Labrador Fisheries Minister Tom Hedderson.
Hedderson is in Ottawa this week to hold discussions with EU representatives, to urge them to reconsider the sealing ban.
Nordic EU countries such as Denmark, Sweden and Finland oppose the ban but a European Parliament committee recently endorsed a bill that that would prevent member countries from importing seal products.
The proposed ban would only allow for some exemptions, including products from Inuit or other indigenous communities who practise small-scale, easily monitored hunts in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Siberia.
To become law, the bill will still need the approval of the entire EU assembly and EU governments. That could come as soon as April 21.
Hedderson says time is of the essence if Canada is going to convince the Union to scrap the bill.
Premier Danny Williams has already written to the ambassadors of EU member countries to make them aware of the province's support for the sealing industry., but Hedderson says Ottawa needs to step up its efforts too.
"We feel strongly that we need a stronger presence from the federal government," Hedderson told Canada AM Tuesday. "We are in the 11th hour, we want them to pull out all the stops."
Hedderson says if the bill is passed, the onus will be on our federal government to begin actions to challenge the ban before the World Trade Organization.
"We've been asking them for the last couple of years to make sure they are ready to go forward with WTO action. We feel that this is the only leverage we have left. It's time now for them to do it," Hedderson says.
Newfoundland and Labrador says the proposed ban is a serious threat to the province's 6,000 sealers and their families who depend on the province's $30-million sealing industry. The economic downturn is already hurting the Canadian seal industry and if the EU ban goes ahead, it could decimate it.
"But there is a bigger picture here and that is that not only are we looking at the viability of the commercial hunt, we have to look at marine resources and the effect that seals have if we let them go unchecked and the devastation it would cause to other stocks," Hedderson added.
As for opposition from animal welfare groups that the hunt is cruel and that the hunting methods are "inherently inhumane," as some groups have maintained, Hedderson says he's confident that all regulations are in place to ensure a humane hunt.
"That's been done and we're satisfied. And we would hope that the opponents would be satisfied as well."
Canada's seal hunt is the largest of its kind in the world. For this year's hunt, the federal government set a quota of 280,000 harp seals, out of a herd of more than 5.5 million. About 30 per cent of the quota is taken in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, while the rest comes from the major hunt off Newfoundland's northern coast, known as the Front.
