03-05-2006, 12:11 AM
Actually, a significant proportion of the people in my province are actively involved in the seal hunt. The UN officials who determined the seal hunt was conducted in a humane and professional manner noted the statistic that over 90% of the seals were killed with rifles.
Seals being skinned alive is hardly the practice. Some people do it, most don't. The footage you see is merely what journalists opposed to the seal hunt decided to film. Sensationlist media are only interested in the facts of a story that serve only to further their causes. What good would it be to abolish the seal hunt if they followed a group of hunters that killed with rifles?
And since this crops up quite often around here as a social issue, more people than you might think have a very good idea about what goes on. It's part of our economy, just like how other economies rely on exploited slave labor in Taiwan, Mexico, Indonesia, and China and you don't see people getting all up in arms about that.
It has nothing to do with being cold-hearted. It's how a lot of people here make money to live during the off-season. These aren't people who hunt for sport. If they don't do this, they starve. Do I like the seal hunt? No, not particularly. Personally, it does nothing for me, and I don't use any of the products obtained from it.
But until people can come up with a viable option of obtaining income for these people, as both the McCartneys' ideas, starting up a slew of "seal watching" business, or the government footing the bill for the off-season workers' needs, are insufficient and ludicrous, respectively. They were under the misinformation that businesses here that conduct whale-watching tours are quite lucrative. The truth: they aren't. There are only a few that I know of that aren't continually under the gun for money. There are only so many government grants for tourism, and I can guarantee you that the feds up in Ottawa have no interest in what's going on out east when there so much oil to be had in the west. Also, the government does not have the kind of money to offer about a hundred thousand Newfoundlanders and Labradorians enough money to make it almost 7 months without any supplementary income. If they were geologists in Alberta, it'd be a whole different kettle of fish. Nobody gives a damn about this province.
People who aren't from here just don't understand how things really stand, and it's insulting to have an acid-casualty who happens to be a super-star and his shrew of a wife come and call us "barbaric" for it when they don't have all, or even ANY of the figures.
Seals being skinned alive is hardly the practice. Some people do it, most don't. The footage you see is merely what journalists opposed to the seal hunt decided to film. Sensationlist media are only interested in the facts of a story that serve only to further their causes. What good would it be to abolish the seal hunt if they followed a group of hunters that killed with rifles?
And since this crops up quite often around here as a social issue, more people than you might think have a very good idea about what goes on. It's part of our economy, just like how other economies rely on exploited slave labor in Taiwan, Mexico, Indonesia, and China and you don't see people getting all up in arms about that.
It has nothing to do with being cold-hearted. It's how a lot of people here make money to live during the off-season. These aren't people who hunt for sport. If they don't do this, they starve. Do I like the seal hunt? No, not particularly. Personally, it does nothing for me, and I don't use any of the products obtained from it.
But until people can come up with a viable option of obtaining income for these people, as both the McCartneys' ideas, starting up a slew of "seal watching" business, or the government footing the bill for the off-season workers' needs, are insufficient and ludicrous, respectively. They were under the misinformation that businesses here that conduct whale-watching tours are quite lucrative. The truth: they aren't. There are only a few that I know of that aren't continually under the gun for money. There are only so many government grants for tourism, and I can guarantee you that the feds up in Ottawa have no interest in what's going on out east when there so much oil to be had in the west. Also, the government does not have the kind of money to offer about a hundred thousand Newfoundlanders and Labradorians enough money to make it almost 7 months without any supplementary income. If they were geologists in Alberta, it'd be a whole different kettle of fish. Nobody gives a damn about this province.
People who aren't from here just don't understand how things really stand, and it's insulting to have an acid-casualty who happens to be a super-star and his shrew of a wife come and call us "barbaric" for it when they don't have all, or even ANY of the figures.