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The Politics and Propaganda of the Seal Hunt

The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) is Canada's Central Propaganda Arm in Promoting Sealing

Sealer clubbing seal. (c) IFAW

The DFO manages the seal hunt (which it refers to as the 'seal fishery') and true commercial fisheries, recreational fisheries, and indigenous fishing and sealing. It promulgates rules and regulations for sealers and is tasked with enforcing those rules. However, the DFO has failed to lay charges in hundreds of cases of violations of seal hunt regulations that were documented by independent observers (including those from IFAW and HSUS).

As the manager of fisheries, the DFO created and enforced regulations that eventually led to the collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery. The DFO has been cited for mismanagement of this and other fisheries. Read more about DFO failures here.

The DFO's scientific research has also been criticized. "It is no good at all looking at fin fish and ignoring the rest of the ecosystem; it is especially useless to look at cod and haddock as if they are not related to the rest of the ocean. That science failed. It failed miserably, not because the scientists did not do their job but because of the context, because of trying to operationalize a science that was not actually rooted in all of the things it needs to know." Read more about this critical look at the DFO here.

It is in this context that the DFO has created a political and propaganda campaign to promote sealing. This campaign, paid for by Canadian taxpayers, involves DFO propaganda ministers, such as Phil Jenkins, opinion polls of Canadians, pressures on members of Parliament, trade missions, and challenges to trade bans.

Do Canadians Support Sealing?

Whitecoat harp seal pup. (c) IFAW

According to a poll sponsored by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans, most Canadians support the seal hunt. According to polls conducted by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), a large majority of Canadians oppose the seal hunt.

What accounts for the difference? The DFO poll asked the following two questions:

Using a scale of strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree, please tell me whether you agree or disagree with the following statement: Hunting animals for commercial purposes is an acceptable practice, when it is carried out in a humane manner?

Under the current federal policy, seal hunting is only permitted under the following conditions: no nursing seals are hunted, the hunt is done in a humane manner and quotas are set to ensure that seal populations are sustained. In general, would you say that you strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose the current policy?

The first question does not mention the seal hunt, and the second question includes conditions that do not exist in the real seal hunt.

On the other hand the 2005 IFAW poll consisted of 8 questions, including the following:

In fact, a commercial seal hunt in Canada which has killed about 975,000 seals over the last three years still takes place. Now do you support or oppose the commercial hunting of seals off Canada’s Atlantic coast? Would that be strongly or somewhat support/oppose?

If Canada’s commercial seal hunt were ended, would you be very, somewhat, not very or not at all upset?

The IFAW poll thus focused on the seal hunt and directly addressed public attitudes about it without adding conditions. Read more about these two polls and the DFO agenda here.

More recently, IFAW conducted a poll of Canadians to determine the level of support for the Canadian government's efforts to promote and defend the seal hunt. This poll found that the vast majority of Canadians oppose government efforts and expenditures to promote and defend the seal hunt. It also found that few Canadians would be upset if the seal hunt were eliminated. Read more about this poll here.

Seals and Cod

For many years, in the 1990's and into the 21st century, the DFO spread propaganda all over the Maritimes, blaming the harp seals for the collapse of the cod fishery. This propaganda continued despite evidence from marine scientists, including DFO scientists, that the seals' diet consists of only about 3% cod and that seals also consume squid and other predators of cod.

Why scapegoat the seals? Because admitting that the real reason for the collapse of the cod fishery, overfishing during the second half of the 20th century, would be admitting abject failure on the part of the agency tasked with the management of the fisheries: the DFO. Instead of accepting blame, the DFO decided that the seals would make a convenient scapegoat as well as a source of income to replace some of the income lost when the cod fishery closed.

As DFO scientists began to openly contradict the government propaganda, DFO officials began to change their tune. Instead of claiming that the seals caused the collapse of the cod fishery, they began to claim that the seals were preventing the cod population from rebounding after the commercial fishery was shut down. Still, this claim was refuted by the DFO's own scientists, so finally, in 2005, the DFO began asserting that the seals did not cause the collapse of the cod fishery or prevent it from rebounding (though some government officials have continued to claim that the seals are affecting the recovery of the cod).

Unfortunately, the DFO has been much less diligent in correcting prior false propaganda than it was in spreading the propaganda in the first place. Consequently, most people in the sealing provinces still believe the old lies.

Read more about the seal-cod relationship here.