Patronage and seals… #nlpoli

Thursday’s announcement by fisheries minister Darin King should give you a pretty big reminder that the local political scene remains mired in the past.

The provincial government is giving a private sector company a $3.6 million.  They are calling it a loan.  In effect, the provincial government is going to pay a cash subsidy directly to fishermen to kill twice as many seals as the company involved could buy. That’s according to a company official at the news conference on Thursday. 

Interestingly enough, this is exactly the type of subsidy that helped to decimate the cod stocks since it encourages fishermen to over-harvest the resource.  The excuse for it is much the same as well:  it is supposedly just bridge financing to help the industry get through some difficult times now. Things will get better in the future.

There’s no truth in it of course.  There never has been.  Those are just the official excuses the politicians need to avoid the decisions that are tough but that would actually improve the fishery.

Even more interestingly, there’s a growing international effort to wipe out these subsidies. Yet while people around the world are trying to change the behaviour that led to the loss of our fish stocks, the locals are just carrying on as if everything was just peachy.

This looming change in the fishery and the fish markets is part of the story behind the more recent fisheries crisis, by the way, but that’s another issue. 

One sentence in the seal subsidy release leaped out.  it’s down towards the bottom. It’s vague and written in the passive voice, which likely means the person who wrote the release was just filling up space.  Here’s the claim:

The value of the industry to the provincial economy has been estimated at close to $100 million in total in recent years.

“has been estimated”.

By whom?

Well certainly not the provincial government.  The fisheries department website gives information for three years.  They are from a time before the most recent collapse of the markets:

The Sealing Industry contributed on average approximately $16 million to harvester’s income, and approximately $37 million to the provincial economy in the last three years:

• 2006: approximately $30 million in landed value and approximately $55 million to the provincial economy.
• 2007: approximately $11 million in landed value and approximately $32 million to the provincial economy.
• 2008: approximately $7 million in landed value and approximately $24 million to the provincial economy.

From $30 million in landed value and $55 million in total in 2006 to a mere $7.0 million in landed value and $24 million total value two years later.

So $100 million in total value to the economy?  Only, if you add up a bunch of years and that doesn’t seem to be what they meant.

This province won’t have a viable, local fishing industry in the future as long as the provincial government sticks with bad policy ideas like doling out cash to fishermen and local companies as they did in the seal announcement on Thursday.

- srbp -

With a bit of straw and a cocoanut #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Perhaps we should do as the wag said.

Perhaps we should appoint a royal commission to find noob Bloc NDP member of parliament Ryan Cleary’s position on the seal hunt.

A couple of nights ago Cleary spoke frankly about the seal hunt. 

Ordinarily, there’d be no nationalist symbol like the seal hunt that Cleary wouldn’t monger.  There is no ethnic touchstone of its kind that Cleary would not grope, fondle or otherwise maul.

But this time he spoke frankly, as he had in 2008.

Brave thing to do in these parts where politicians seldom do genuinely brave things like have opinions of their own and voice them.  Normally what you get is lots of pledges to be a strong voice for this cove or that tickle.  They all claim they’ll speak loudly about this, that or the other. 

Fight?

Sure if you listen to the crowd of local crackies either seeking office or safely on the public tit, they’ll fight any time, any place against anyone over any thing.

Have no doubt about just how untamed and untameable these ponies are, either.

They’ll be the first to tell you, even if all that they really do is stuff a bit of straw in the belt of their pants and clop a pair of cocoanut halves together for a good show.

So after Cleary spoke frankly on a touchy subject, two things happened.

For one, Cleary’s political opponents and a whole lot more besides scrambled to shit on him everywhere and anywhere they could.  News releases from Connies in Ottawa,  John Efford on the Open Line,  Siobhan Coady on da facebook all tearing big strips off Cleary.  A hundred jobs to be lost in Corner Brook was nothing in the news coverage compared to Cleary’s words, accurately reported by the local media..

For two, Cleary issued a news release in which he disowned his frank and brave words.  He blamed the whole thing on the reporter who first raised the seal hunt issue and accused the media of misquoting him. 

Cleary even felt up the touchstone  - pledged his eternal, unquestioned and undying support for seal bashing - just so there could be no further about as to his true feelings.

But what are those true feelings? 

Good question:

I will not shy away from any issue as a federal MP. I will continue to embrace all sides of every argument in the interest of healthy and reasoned decision making.  There may be room to negotiate a better deal for our fish products generally.

Let me re-iterate, I am not proposing to ban the commercial seal hunt in any way.

If we don't do things differently, we will end up with the same result every time. We can't be afraid of the conversation.

Embrace all sides?

Yes friends, as he ran from the conversation, as he abandoned the debate, Cleary proudly clopped his cocoanuts that much harder and stuffed some extra straw in his belt to show how much of a maverick he really is.

- srbp -

Ryan Cleary on ending the seal hunt, circa 2008 #nlpoli

Update:  This is the same column Michael Connors tweeted on Tuesday afternoon, but copied to a different website

Update Update:  And then macleans.ca noticed Ryan…again.

To be fair to Ryan Cleary, this is not the first time he has suggested we need to stop smashing seals over the head and selling off bits and pieces of them.

Sure Cleary’s the guy who has never met a nationalist myth he wouldn’t monger or touchstone he wouldn’t grope, but he has been known to take a different view of the seal hunt.

A quick google search Tuesday night turned up a column of his from April 2008 from the old Spindy.  Someone posted it to an IFAW website.

Try not to giggle at the idea of Ryan Cleary using the word reality.

“REALITY CHECK: Time to Face the Fact the Newfoundland Seal Hunt is Doomed.”

The Independent, Newfoundland and Labrador Newspaper

By Columnist RYAN CLEARY
Saturday, April 19, 2008

Time to face the fact the Newfoundland seal hunt is doomed. We cannot save it, not right now, no matter how right and desperate we are to try.

The forces against the commercial hunt - dark though so many of them may be - have become too passionate and powerful. The animal rights crowd is winning the public relations war with the average Joe and Jane on the world street. The continued battle is doing more harm than good to our economy and international image.

We would be better off if the commercial hunters retreated -at least for now, until a world appetite develops such that the method of harvest is secondary to the mouths that are fed and bodies clothed.

It hasn't been that way in a dog's age. The Newfoundland hunt was once about survival, plain and simple. Every part of the animal was used to keep outport body and soul together. More and more it's about pelts and prices.

That's not enough to justify a hunt. The seal has become the modern-day buffalo in terms of waste.

Given that so many of the world's cupboards appear to be bare or headed there, a new hunger for seal (and our fish, but that's not this week's topic) may not be that far off. It was only last week the Globe carried a two-page feature on the rising prices of food around the planet and a crisis around the corner.

The world will eat seal when it's hungry enough to eat seal. It wasn't long ago lobster was the spider of the sea.

As for the politicians defending the hunt - federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn chief among them - he's been criticized in the national media for using the hunt to improve the Conservative lot in the Atlantic provinces.

It sure looks that way. At the very least, Hearn was stunned enough to play directly into Paul Watson's hands. Hearn, the poor over-his-head shagger, can't win. More on that in a moment.

On Thursday of this week The Globe and Mail ran eight letters to the editor under the headline, The many truths about sealing.

A sample of the anti-hunt sentiments:

"I will not vacation in Canada and will avoid buying Canadian products until the seal slaughter stops," writes Pat Ginsbach of Kerrville, Tex.

Anita Rutz of New York mentions the recent loss of four sealers from Quebec. "If they weren't committing acts against God's creatures, they would be alive."

Peter Bowker of Ontario says if government could find $50 million to pay pig farmers not to raise pigs, why can't the same amount be found to pay sealers not to seal? "Or must we admit that the hunt, as it is conducted, is really a cultural ritual, like cockfighting and fox hunting?"

Many Canadians who can sympathise with the economic necessity of the seal hunt can't get past the term "skinned alive," writes Birgit Van De Wetering of Ontario. "It belies the image of warmth and folksiness the Newfoundland Tourist Board is trying to sell us."

Right or wrong, an anti-seal hunt attitude has taken hold. That's the reality.

We are right to defend sealing as part of our heritage. An attack on the hunt is an attack on who we are as a people and where we come from. Remove the emotion from the debate, however, and it's clear the commercial hunt is no longer critical to our survival.

Today's hunt is as much about pride - our God-given right to hunt - as money. That attitude got us nowhere with fish. It's getting us nowhere with seals.

I would argue the hunt has marginal value. The potential loss to tourism alone may far outweigh the benefits of a continued hunt.
God knows the hunt has political power.

The Globe went after Hearn earlier this week in an editorial critical of the Canadian Coast Guard's recent boarding and seizure of the environmental vessel Farley Mowat and the arrest of her captain and first officer. The paper described the move as a "grossly disproportionate response" to the efforts of opponents to document the seal hunt.

For his part, Paul Watson, head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said the action was taken to seize graphic videotapes of the hunt. The Globe, on the other hand, noted the action was a way for Hearn and his party to redeem themselves with East Coasters.
God knows they need redeeming.

Premier Danny Williams waded into the debate with a guest column of his own in the Globe. He proposes the banning of hakapiks. But such a move will not appease anyone as long as the ice beneath the seal is stained red with blood.

Ironically, ending the commercial seal hunt may spell an end to Watson, who relies on it financially as much as any sealer from Twillingate.

The Globe also carried letters in defence of the hunt. Kyle McIver of Kingston says he finds no difference between clubbing seals with hakapiks, fish asphyxiating on decks or using high-pressure metal bolts to sever spinal cords of cattle. "If sealing is basically akin to agricultural meat production and fishing, then the primary reason to defend seals is reduced to the fact they are cute with big round eyes and soft fur, and the argument fails."

The argument may fail, but the big round eyes will always win. Until the people are hungry enough.

- srbp -

Seals!

Near Port aux Choix on the Great Northern Peninsula.

The pictures turned up in ye olde in-box on Thursday evening.

Okay, so it’s more like very near Port aux Choix.

Ice conditions at sea are obviously so bad, the animals are whelping on whatever patch of ice they can find, even if it is well up the beach (and across a road). From pictures circulating in the mainstream media, there is no ice at sea in some areas where it would normally be choked off with the white stuff.

-srbp-