The European Union's ban on seal products is being reviewed for the first time, 15 years after it was put in place.
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Some groups in the N.W.T. and Nunavut say the ban is too restrictive, and hope the process ultimately results in it being lifted.
The EU's European Commission is accepting submissions until August 7 in a "call for evidence" that will be compiled in a report to European Parliament. Greenland, Nunavut and the N.W.T. are all invited to take part.
The EU has banned the import of seal products since . In , however, it introduced two exceptions to the ban that allowed Inuit and other Indigenous people to sell products made from seal, under certain conditions.
Those exceptions say that hunting methods must take into account the welfare of the animal and hunting must be part of community traditions, in addition to contributing to its subsistence. A certificate proving these conditions were respected must accompany each product sold.
Since then, the commission has done two reviews of these exceptions, but they have not reviewed the ban in its entirety.
Although they appear to be less restrictive at first glance, the ban's exemptions for Inuit are highly contested in the Canadian North.
"The exemption that they put in place isn't working because we have seen a drastic drop in the sales in the [European] market," said Johanna Tiemessen, the manager of arts and traditional economies at the N.W.T. government's Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment.
Johanna Tiemessen deplores the lack of information around the EU's ban on seal products and says it has a negative impact on people living in the Canadian North. (Julie Plourde/Radio-Canada )According to Tiemessen, this can be attributed to several factors, including fear from Inuit artists of violating European regulations, confusion around the regulation process itself, lack of experience in international trade and misinformation surrounding the industry.
The standing senate committee on Fisheries and Oceans described these challenges in a report on the sealing industry last month. The committee noted a "worrying" lack of data on seal populations in the Arctic.
"Whose responsibility is that marketing campaign and the impacts that it's had on Indigenous residents of northern Canada, and how can they help to make sure that the exemption is known?" Tiemessen said.
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"We're happy that there's an exemption in place, but we'd rather that there just wasn't a ban in place."
Fashion designer Taalrumiq, originally from Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., sells almost all of her pieces to Canadian clients. She said she's refused several orders from Europe because of the administrative burden linked to certifications for seal products.
"It would just make it so much easier if there was a more straightforward way to go about selling our products," she said.
Zoya Martin, the director of fisheries and sealing with the government of Nunavut, is also critical of the consequences of the ban on Inuit artists. Martin said Nunavut is currently working on an information kit to help make Nunavummiut aware of the commission's process to review the ban and give them the opportunity to provide comments.
Zoya Martin is the director of fisheries and sealing with the government of Nunavut. She said the government is working to let Nunavummiut know about the review and how they can participate. (Matisse Harvey/Radio-Canada )The Nunavut government is also working with the N.W.T. government and the Greenlandic government to co-ordinate responses.
"If the regulations were reviewed and, let's say, repealed, then the hope is that the Canadian government will put in a significant investment into the sealing economy," Martin said.
The commission's report is expected in .
In the s, a sustained campaign convinced much of the world that protesters were saving cuddly seals from murderous killers near the Arctic Circle. Before long, people around the world became accustomed to seeing images of hunters with clubs, looming over a fluffy white-harp seal pups.
Europe was the primary market for seal products at the time. After a public outcry, the European Economic Community banned the import of white-harp seal pup furs in , and then the EU later extended the ban to all seal products in , citing &#;moral concerns&#;.
The campaign against sealing succeeded in destroying European interest in seal products, but there was a lot missing from the story. For example, in contrast to the commercial hunt that image depicted, subsistence sealing had sustained generations of coastal people in north-eastern Canada and the Canadian Arctic over centuries.
Today, non-Indigenous hunters in Canada are permitted to take six seals a year for personal use. Subsistence hunters and their families eat the meat and, when possible, sell the fur for a small income during the lean winter months when the main fishing seasons for species like cod, crab and capelin are closed. In contrast, commercial hunts historically left much of the animal on the ice after the fur was removed.
While protests in the s targeted the commercial harp seal-hunt on the north-east coast of Canada, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec and the Gulf of St Lawrence, some hardline protesters didn&#;t distinguish between the two different types, and wanted all hunting stopped.
The result was the EU import ban, which, even today, lumps commercial and subsistence hunting by non-Indigenous peoples together. It only permits import into the EU of items produced by Inuit through traditional hunting and deprives other subsistence sealers of an economic and cultural lifeline. As we shall see, the anti-sealing cause has left deep wounds in Canada.
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