Could Canada have stopped the EU seal ban? Missed opportunities, poor strategies marked the war By Lee Berthiaume Published August 25, 2010

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The Hill Times Photo: Jake Wright

Stopping the European Union's plan to implement a ban on the import of seal products has come down to a World Trade Organization dispute settlement panel and a case filed with the European General Court. The battle on the streets is over, the window for swaying EU parliamentarians to Canada's side is closed, the time for negotiation is over.

But even with a victory at either the WTO or in court, the consensus among many experts and segments of the sealing industry is that severe damage has been done and, at best, it will take years to rebuild the European market, if ever.

Which begs the question: How did the Canadian government and its seal industry allies lose what was essentially a battle for public opinion with a handful of animal rights groups? Was defeat inevitable, and if not, what lessons can be taken and applied to, say, the fight over the oil sands?

In the 1980s, animal rights groups had launched a concerted campaign against the hunt based on the fact that newborn seals were being killed. The images and message struck a nerve with many Europeans, who were disgusted by the practice of killing baby seals.

Under pressure from these groups, the Canadian government outlawed the practice. University of Calgary political science professor Donald Barry, who has studied the fight over the seal hunt for years, says the issue largely disappeared off the political radar.

"They [government and industry] tried to rebuild the industry based on a hunt for more mature seals," he says. "And they succeeded in rebuilding the hunt. The groups opposing were relatively silent."

However, some groups opposed to the hunt were continuing to watch and wait. Then, Mr. Barry says, in 2003, the government announced that the three-year quota for seals would be 975,000. While that was only about 150,000 more than the previous three-year quota, "it was close enough to a million that it gave the groups a new basis upon which to oppose the hunt."

Mr. Barry says another key development was the fierce exchange between Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams and former Beatle Paul McCartney and his then-wife Heather Mills McCartney on CNN's Larry King Live in March 2006. During the show, Mr. Williams alleged, among other things, that the FBI was investigating the International Federation for Animal Welfare and other animal-rights groups for terrorism, and that the McCartneys were being used by the groups.

"The publicity propelled [IFAW] right back into the forefront of the opposition," Mr. Barry says. With IFAW's ability to mobilize support and the Humane Society's strong public relations machine, "you have a series of groups whose strengths complement each other and they're practiced at what they do."

The bottom-line, says Mr. Barry, is that the government and industry took away the groups' most important symbol—the whitecoat seal pups—and regained the initiative, until they dropped the ball.

From there, a two-pronged campaign was launched by the animal-rights groups, targeting both the European public and EU parliamentarians. The campaign used vivid imagery of dead seals lying on and blood sprayed across pristine white snow, and video and pictures of hunters bashing seals over the head with hakapiks.

Canadian sealers and the government launched a counter-campaign that largely sought to educate members of the EU parliament of the facts and dispel whatever misinformation the groups were disseminating.

"Our fight is more in terms of we have a resource that is sustainable, which is the seal population, and a lot of us depend on the seal hunt for our livelihood," says national Inuit leader Mary Simon. "And we can prove that we hunt humanely, and therefore other countries should not be telling us what to do. And that's been the premise for our [European General Court] case."

There is now widespread acceptance that the Canadian government and the country's sealing industry took too long to get the campaign underway—and to start working together. Ms. Simon blames the government for not getting involved earlier. However, Bernard Guimond, president of Ta Ma Su Inc., a company studying ways to use seal products in human hearts, is more conciliatory.

"It's not a huge industry, it's a very regional industry, so the people were not well organized," he says. "So it took us time to organize that industry, it took us time also to build the case properly."

David Barry, sealing committee co-ordinator at the Fur Institute of Canada (no relation to Don Barry), says what was missing was "hard strategic thinking in terms of putting the Europeans on the spot and asking, 'How do you harvest your seals over here?' This is the key question we wish had been asked.... I don't think their bluff was ever called."

But even now it's unclear how an earlier strategy and co-operation between the government and industry would have made a difference as the consensus is that no one in Europe was listening.

"It's a big debate, but we've never really been able to get into that debate because animal rights people are so powerful, they have so much money, they get very influential people behind them," says Ms. Simon, "and they can really turn the pages when they want in their favour."

David Barry agrees with that assessment.

"The fact of the matter is those people just don't get into public debates with people from our side because they're too smart," he says. "They know that they're going to be floored. They know most of what they're spreading is fabricated, or half-truth at most. So what do you have at the end of the day? You have a battle of the wits between diplomats or bureaucrats behind the scenes."

A key aspect of the battle was the fact animal-rights groups were using emotional messaging, particularly when talking to the European public. Canada largely stuck to lobbying European parliamentarians.

Should Canada have gone the emotional route? Some think so, but those interviewed disagreed, saying the potential short-term benefits outweighed the long-term risks.

"When the emotion is gone and people are coming back to earth, they can be frustrated or very mad about taking a decision when they took it on the wrong basis," says Mr. Guimond. "When people feel they have been mislead or the information that we are giving to them is wrong, they completely change their mind."

Besides, says Mr. Barry of the University of Calgary, "you can't really beat them at their own game because you really can't beat the visuals. The seal hunt, there's no way to make it pretty."

A missed opportunity?

In July 2008, the European Commission proposed new regulations on seal products following a request from the European Parliament, which was concerned that animals were being killed inhumanely.

The proposal included two opportunities for exemptions from the ban. The first was for aboriginal communities, such as those in Canada and Greenland, where the hunts are a vital part of the local economy. The second was for any country that met a certain list of criteria, including adequate legislation outlining rules on animal welfare, the use of appropriate hunting tools, and proper training of hunters.

Mr. Barry of the University of Calgary believes this was a key opportunity for the Canadian government to engage with European lawmakers and bureaucrats and iron-out mutually-beneficial regulations or an agreement that would satisfy all sides. That was how the two sides reached agreement on leghold traps in the 1990s.

Instead, Canada introduced its own regulations in December 2008—without consulting the EU. This, Mr. Barry believes, was a mistake.

"The Canadians wouldn't have anything to do with it because they didn't want to compromise their ability to manage the hunt in what they considered to be a scientific basis," he says. "So that door was closed and then the pressure groups kept up the pressure on European Parliament and they simply overwhelmed the commission's report and the end result was the ban."

Mr. Barry and others aren't sure what would have happened if they had tried this avenue; a European parliamentary committee ended up taking the derogation out, while the Canadian government may have had a hard time getting all sectors of the sealing industry onboard.

"The sealing community itself is so truncated that it might have been hard, politically, for the Canadian government to even get that message, that they could actually go and negotiate with the Europeans," says the Fur Institute's David Barry.

However, most agree it would have been worth a try, especially since everyone knew the European Union was intent on adopting some type of legislation vis-à-vis the seal hunt.

"Legislation in the European Union was inevitable," says David Barry. "There was a political need over there. The parliament had signed the declaration in 2006. Everybody knew that legislation was coming, including people in the government."

Many lessons learned

Mr. Barry of the University of Calgary sees many similarities between the anti-seal hunt campaign waged by animal-rights groups and the anti-oil sands campaign undertaken by environmental advocates.

"But all the tactics, virtually all the tactics they're using now on the oil sands have been used on all these other cases, and the seal hunt was the granddaddy of them all," he says.

In a media briefing last week, government officials were hard-pressed to lay out what lessons they have learned from the war over the seal hunt. But Mr. Barry says there are a number that can be taken, including ensuring government and industry are working together, and recognizing the need to take real action.

"You really do have to do something. They really have to improve the environmental record [on the oil sands]," he says. "The [Obama] administration is one of the best allies they have, but [US Ambassador David] Jacobson came out here and something has to be done."

As for the seal hunt, the matter is now up to the courts and the WTO. There's no evidence that the ban could have been averted even with all cylinders firing because, at the end of the day, the animal rights groups had more resources than the industry or government were willing or able to put forward.

"In order to really win the battle, I don't know how much it would have cost," says the Fur Institute's David Barry. "It's hard to say that we could brought the Europeans around."

lee@embassymag.ca