A2 - Sanday, March 20, 1983 - North Shore News

strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

The bashing ends

THERE SHOULD BE a science that deals with
the ecology of politics, never mind the politics of

ecology.
What I mean is: our
political systems, on a

country by country basis, are
getting more and more
tangled up in each other's
affairs.

And nowhere is this more
obvious than in the realm of
environmental issues.

The case of the harp seal
slaughter off the coasts of
Newfoundland and Labrador
is the most spectacular
example at hand, apart from
the disarmament movement
itself.

In Brussels, at the
beginning of March, some
hardball politics got played
that had the result of ef-
fectively removing all the
hands of all the sealers, as
surely as if they had been
seized and thrown into the
sea.
For the first tame in nearly
four centuries, nursing harp
seal pups are not — repeat
not — being bashed to death
on the ice.

It would require a book to
detail the convoluted, often
bizarre, history of the anti-
sealing movement. Suffice to
say that a decade of protest
culminated in Brussels when
the European Economic
Community voted March }
to extend a temporary ban
on the import of seal pup
skins for two full years.

The EEC had been bitterly
divided on the ban, creating
a stalemate between the
forces for and against the
seal hunt. What tipped the
balance in favor of the pups
was a change of heart on the

part of the West German
government.
The simple reason for

Bonn's sudden concern for
seals was the emergence of a
Green Party that was given
half a chance of electing
members to Parhament

SPRING SALE

Politicians in West
Germany were afraid to
antagonize the animal lovers
and environmentalists on the
eve of a general election.

Not only had the seals
become a political issue in
Germany, the change in
official attitude there
produced definite political
effects throughout the EEC
and, of course in Canada.

Who'd have thought it a
few years ago?

The Canadian = govern-
ment, betraying the totalitar-
ian streak that has marked
the career of Pierre
Trudeau, succeeded in
bashing itself over its own
head by trying to hide the
seal hunt from the eyes of
the world.

The moment Ottawa
decided to start clamping
down on the media and
inventing repressive laws
whereby only the people
who killed seals could ac-
tually go near them,
Canada's credibility began to
collapse.

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If there was nothing to
hide, why such an effort to
keep cameras and reporters
away?

As I write this, it is not yet
clear whether federal
subsidies will be used to
keep the sealers in business
— which would put every
taxpayer in the country into
the position of being a
stockholder in the sealing
industry.

Nor is it clear whether the
pups are only being allowed
a few extra weeks of hfe
before being shot anyway,
which would scarcely be an
improvement at all. Or
whether in fact shooting may
cause more deaths in the
long run?

But there is one salient
fact: the seal-hunters are in
retreat. And that is

ultumately a result -of the -—

emergence, across. the
Atlanic, of an_ ecology-
onented politcal entity.

It must be remembered
that the “hunt” was _ per-
petuated mostly because of
political games being played
in Canada, with all three
national parties vying for
votes in the swing ndings of

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What lives by politics can
probably only be killed by
politics. I've never bought
the argument that there was
any good cultural purpose to
be served by the slaughter.
I've seen it. It IS barbaric.

Pardon me. It WAS
barbaric. May the world
never have to look upon
such a grisly spectacle again.

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