Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

When one thinks of the Queen of England, one thinks of majesty, sophistication, courtly manners, class, good taste, and civility.

And one expects the Queen's representatives to be reflective of her Majesty's values and prestige.

The last thing that one would expect to see is a representative of the Queen holding the rank of Governor General of Canada literally eating the raw blood dripping from the heart of a seal while smiling for the cameras and wiping fresh blood from her lips and fingers.

Is there no depth to bad taste that representatives of the Canadian government will not go to defend the cruel barbarism of the Canadian commercial seal slaughter?

Governor General Michaelle Jean has lowered the standard for regal dignity to an all time low placing the image of the Queen of England on the same level as some long ago cannibal queen of Borneo.

Quite frankly, I could not imagine former Governor General Adrianne Clarkson wiping fresh seal blood from her cheeks. In fact I once sat in a tent with former Governor General Clarkson when she was a reporter for the CBC. She told me then that she was very much in sympathy with our efforts to defend the seals. And now we have a Governor General who appears to be very much in sympathy with the slaughter of seals.

But there is one thing that disgusts me more than the Governor General of my country eating raw seal heart, and that is that she is blatantly perpetuating a lie.

 

You see, the Governor General is trying to say to the European Parliament and media that the banning of seal products is insulting to the Inuit culture and that the centuries old Inuit seal hunt has been threatened by the legislated "humane kindness" of the European Members of Parliament.

In an event staged for the media, Michaelle Jean stood above a pair of freshly killed and bleeding carcasses of seals and used a traditional blade to slice the meat off the skin and to slash her way through blubber and flesh in an effort to expose the twitching heart inside.

After repeated, vigorous cuts through the flesh the Queen's representative turned to the woman beside her and asked enthusiastically: "Could I try the heart?"

Within seconds, Jean was holding a crimson chunk of blood dripping seal heart. She shoved the gory organ into her mouth, swallowed it, and turned to her daughter to say it tasted good.

Afterward, Jean grabbed a tissue to wipe her blood-soaked fingers and lips, and explained her gesture of solidarity with the region's Inuit hunters.

She expressed her dismay that anyone would call this ancient, traditional hunting of seals inhumane.

The fact is that the European ban on seal products specifically exempted the Inuit, and what the Governor General was doing was exploiting Inuit traditions to defend what she was really there to defend - the mass commercial slaughter of seal pups on Canada's Eastern coast by white sealers from Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Quebec.

The Governor General referred to the sealing as an ancient cultural ritual that, she said, is practiced humanely. She also defended the taste and nutritional quality of her snack. "It's like sushi," she said. "And it's very rich in protein"

She neglected to mention that it is also rich in methyl mercury and PCB's. There are hundreds of documented cases of gross cruelty to counter her propaganda that it is "humane."

Jean tried to explain that the sealers don't use the hooked hakapiks that have faced such bitter criticism from environmentalists. "They use guns or harpoons, and I can't understand why their industry is considered less humane than cattle farming," she explained.

The Governor General needs a bit of a geography lesson about the nation that she is representing it appears. No one has ever accused the Inuit of using the hakapik, in fact no one has ever condemned the Inuit hunting which amounts to only 5% of the overall quota of seals killed in Canada.

The white hunters take 95% of the seals in a grossly inhumane manner and then go hiding behind the parkas of the Inuit to justify their economically insignificant and sadistic industry.

An Inuit hunter named Arnaituk M. Tarkirk once wrote a letter to the Ottawa Citizen newspaper. It read:

We have been hearing all about the European vote to ban the importation of seal products from the so-called seal hunt. I am an Inuk and I would like to say what I think about this.

Member of Parliament Peter Ittinuar has been saying that this vote will put a lot of Inuit on welfare. This is stupid. The money from the hunt goes to Norway mostly and it has nothing to do with the Inuit.

We are skillful hunters who hunt adult animals for food; that is not the same as bashing a pup, which can't move, over the head.

In fact, if the hunt were stopped, we would benefit most. There would be more seals left for us to eat, when they are a few years older, and also people would not have such an aversion to sealskin products as they have after seeing the way they kill the pups, so craft work made with adult skins would be more popular.

I am an Inuk and I oppose the seal hunt.

Yet, we now have a Governor General who is of Haitian heritage going to the high north to eat a raw bleeding seal heart, killed by the Inuit in an effort to justify the slaughter of seals on the East coast of Canada.

The Canadian government has been going a little wacky these days. Eating bleeding raw seal hearts, demanding sealskin uniforms for the Canadian Olympic team, threatening to derail a $25 billion dollar trade deal with Europe to defend a $7 million dollar a year industry.

In my opinion this is all the evidence we need to demonstrate that eating seal meat leads to damage to brain tissue from mercury, lead, and PCB's.

Now Canada is sending delegations to Switzerland to convince the Swiss to host the only market for seal products in Europe. Their reasoning is that Switzerland is a neutral nation and should demonstrate their neutrality by marketing Canadian seals.

I suppose Canada can be forgiven for believing that Switzerland can be a profitable ally in their bloody war against the seals. The German Nazi's found Switzerland to be an excellent place for laundering Jewish gold and assets during World War II. Switzerland has a well-established record of doing business without ethics or morals.

If Canada has its way, seal products will be on display in Geneva alongside cuckoo clocks and watches. Maybe the Swiss will issue a new model of army knife with a little hakapik attached. The marketing possibilities are endless when morality is tossed out the window. For a country that once had no problem with supporting lampshades made out of human skin, we should not be overly surprised that the Swiss are negotiating with Canada to open a market for seal products.