Canada’s Commercial Seal Hunt

ACTION ALERT: HELP END THE COMMERCIAL SEAL HUNT!

UPDATE:

As of mid-2024, an incredibly problematic report has been put together by 14 Canadian Senators, Sealing the Future: A Call to Action. This report is being used to convince the Canadian government to expand the commercial seal hunt in addition to persuading the European Union (EU), using lies and misinformation, to end its ban on the sale of seal products. If the EU does this, it would be devastating to the seals who are being scapegoated as decimating fish populations. Climate change is impacting the ice floes where they are typically born and will therefore further take a toll on their population. We are gravely disappointed in these Senators and they must be held accountable. Your Member of Parliament (MP) needs to know how concerning this report is. There is an action alert below to contact your MP.

Canada’s commercial seal hunt on the east coast has resumed so we need your help. We need to raise some alarm bells on this critical issue, an issue which should have ended decades ago. The federal government is being pressured by industry, businesses and politicians across Canada not only to continue with the commercial seal hunt off Canada’s east coast, but to increase how many seals can be killed each year.

Picture these incredible beings trying to live on the already diminishing ice flows only to have someone come and brutally take their lives, to turn them into some trinket, piece of fur or product to consume. The industry is still pushing for the sale and consumption of seal oil as a source of omegas. All completely unethical and all a tactic to continue to keep afloat an industry that has no market and
that is brutally violent.

In earlier decades the anti-seal hunt movement garnered massive, worldwide support. We invite you to join us, to show the government that we can do that again. Our colleagues at the Animal Protection Party of Canada are leading a campaign to address this hunt and you can learn more on their page. They are planning to take out an ad in Canada’s political paper, The Hill Times and are asking you to help contact your elected official.

How You Can Help

Write to your Member of Parliament (MP) and let them know that you oppose promoting an increase in killing seals and are concerned with the report from the Senators. If you don’t know who your MP is, use this link to search using your postal code. We highly encourage you to take time to call your MP or to write a polite, personalized letter, but if you’re pressed for time, you can use this link to send an email to your MP and the Prime Minister.

Some ‘talking points’ you might like to add to your communications could include the following:

•  As a Canadian I support the conservation of our native wildlife.

•  Both harp and hooded seals must have broad areas of sea ice in the Atlantic region where they can give birth. That ice is increasingly absent, especially in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, one of two major locations for the seals, and recently recognized as the fastest warming region in the Northwest Atlantic.

•  A new and more sophisticated method of estimating seal population sizes estimated there were millions fewer harp seals than the Canadian government claims. 

•  Seals, like dolphins and porpoises and also sharks, tuna and other large fish, are apex predators necessary for the health of oceanic ecosystems and all are facing significantly increasing survival risks, with many species or populations in serious decline.  

•  The Canadian government recently increased the fishing quota on codfish while claiming seals are eating them all, and in spite of scientists seeing no indication of an increase in cod in recent years, and also unable to either blame or exonerate seals for the failure of the cod population to increase.

•  The seal hunt is a highly contentious issue, in Canada and worldwide and removing the ban would again lead to civil divisiveness. 

•  Now is the time for more, not less, protection for ice-dependent wildlife species in the Canadian Arctic.

•  Most wildlife, and especially predatory animals, are overall in decline and putting market value on them equals putting a bounty on them, and now is not the time to do that. Seals are an integral part of the ecological whole of north polar waters under unprecedented decline. We must protect them.

We are very grateful for your time and support.