A U.S. businesswoman who offered to raise $16 million last spring to stop Canada’s seal hunt now wants Ottawa to buy back sealers’ licences and says she will pay the hunters a matching amount.

Cathy Kangas, founder and CEO of PRAI Beauty, is asking to meet with government officials to discuss her new offer, which she says would directly benefit East Coast sealers.

"It’s not about animal rights; it is about the dignity of the sealers," Ms. Kangas said in an interview Monday during a brief business trip to Halifax.

"It’s about the dignity of asking a man to risk his life for very little money to go out on ice floes that are dangerous, to beat up their fishing boats that cannot cope in those waters when it’s icy (and) risk their lives to kill seals."

The 42-year-old Connecticut woman said she has received no direct response from government but has been inundated with hundreds of letters of support and suggestion from sealers since her original offer.

"They’re furious," she said.

"They’re the ones with anger in their voices saying, ‘Hey, we weren’t even offered this. Nobody talked to us . . . and we would have jumped all over it.’ "

A spokesperson for federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Heard said in April that the government wasn’t interested in the $16 million and questioned the ethics of offering to pay large sums of money to change government policy.

Ms. Kangas said conversations with sealers and their families persuaded her that she’s on the right track.

"The biggest thing that they keep pushing on me is: ‘Cath, we are not better off with the hunt . . . we are scraping by to live.’ "

Last month, fisheries officials said this year’s seal hunt is expected to be the most lucrative ever, with a landed value of $25 million to $30 million, almost double last year’s $16.5 million. The department is still compiling a final tally, but estimates show that 327,000 seals were killed, with buyers paying up to $105 a pelt, according to The Canadian Press.

Ms. Kangas said she hasn’t estimated how much a licence buyback program would cost and that the amount per licence would have to be set by the government. Some people have told her it could be as low as $2,000 each or as high as $5,000 to $10,000. The eventual cost doesn’t matter, and various friends, private citizens and animal protection groups are ready to donate to cover the total, she said.

Last year, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans issued over 14,000 commercial sealing licences.

Ms. Kangas said an ecotourism program could be put in place with features like seal-watching tours and public nurseries to replace the lost income from the hunt.

"We all know that the seal pelt market is going to close. It might be in two years, it might be in five years," she said, adding that sealers would then have nothing.

Ms. Kangas met with three sealers from P.E.I. in Halifax later Monday afternoon. She said afterward that the men did not want their names made public and had begun negotiations. She also plans to go to Charlottetown to meet with Premier Pat Binns.

According to The Canadian Press, there are 22 active seal licences in that province.

Ed Frenette, president of the P.E.I. Fishermen’s Association, said last month that fishermen want to curb an exploding seal population that is consuming commercial fish and fouling lobster gear, and the group is pressing for increased access to the hunt.

Ms. Kangas feels population control, if really necessary, could exist through means that don’t kill animals for their fur. Like SpayVac, she said, referring to a contraceptive vaccine developed by Dalhousie University researchers and now under the umbrella of ImmunoVaccine Technologies Inc.

Ms. Kangas said she never expected to become so invested in the Canadian hunt.

"It’s just so interesting that very often the blame is put on the men who have to carry out the hunt and it’s not their fault," she said.