The Seal Hunt - An Environmentalists Perspective

In no way would I ever try to equate the current seal hunt ban to the terrors of the Holocaust but in some ways the words of a well known poem by Martin Niemoeller seem appropriate in the current context.

With a pending ban on seal products in the EU, can it be long before the industry is on death's door? Then, who will be next? What industry will serve as the next target for activist groups once the revenue generated from anti-seal hunt supporters has dried up and the cause itself is no longer a factor?

In the immortal words of Mr. Niemoeller:

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews, I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

Any politician who is concerned about the future of the cattle, pork, poultry or fishing industries had better take note of what has happened and any who represent districts or regions where logging, mining or oil and gas developments exist had better be careful where they stand on the sealing issue.

Once the animal rights activists have effectively destroyed the sealing industry they will have lost their prime source of revenue and reason for existence. Do you think they'll just stop being activists?

More likely they will, coming off this triumph, begin searching for the next cause to fight for. Your region's industry and your people's way of life may be next.

With the recently approved EU ban on Canadian seal products capturing headlines across the Country and with anti-Newfoundland and Labrador columnists like the Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente callously recommending that displaced sealers simply move on and buy themselves some laptops, I thought it timely to re-publish an article from two years ago that speaks to this very subject.

The article was written by a member of the environmental and animal welfare community (note I refer to him as being involved with "animal welfare" not "animal rights", there is a big difference).

I believe this article cuts through lot of the myths and misperceptions that those living outside of Atlantic Canada often accept far too readily. It also highlights the sad reality that the anti-sealing movement is itself far more harmful to the protection of our planet than any sealer could ever be.

Cuter than cod
By Terry Glavin
March 7, 2007
Re-published on Web Talk with the kind permission of the author

I saw something the other day that made me sick to my stomach. It was in the February edition of The Grocer, a British retail-food magazine.

There was an article about a campaign that a group called Respect for Animals is waging to convince consumers to boycott Canadian seafood products. The magazine also carried two huge advertisements from the same outfit.

One of the ads consisted of a photograph of a masked man on an ice floe, and a seal lying prone at his feet. The man was brandishing a club with a spike on the end of it. The words "You Can Stop This" were superimposed upon the picture. The other advertisement proclaimed, "Boycott Canadian Seafood and Save the Seals," with a picture of a can of Canadian salmon.

The Canadian fishing industry exports more than $100 million worth of products into Britain every year. The point of the campaign is to squeeze those sales until the industry begs our government to end the seal hunt.

Here's what makes me sick.

The Newfoundland seal hunt is transparently and demonstrably sustainable and humane.

There are roughly half a million people in Newfoundland and Labrador, and nearly six million harp seals, which is almost three times as many seals as when I was a kid.

Free range seals

Roughly 6,000 fishermen, mostly Newfoundlanders, but some are from Quebec and the Maritimes, take slightly more than 300,000 harp seals annually. The fishermen share more than $16 million from the hunt at a critical time of year when there's little in the way of fishing income to be had.

The seals are harvested for their pelts and their fat, for a range of products, mostly for clothing and for Omega-3 vitamins. The killing is as about as clean as anything you're likely to find in an abattoir.

Seals don't spend their lives cooped up in paddocks or feedlots. They live free, and in all but the rarest cases, the ones that die at the hands of a swiler (a sealer) die instantly.

The hakapik (a spiked club) is an effective instrument. Even so, most seals are first shot with rifles.

The killing of nursing whitecoats was banned 20 years ago.

Exploiting empathy

Here's one of those obligatory disclosures: over the years, several environmental organizations -- the Sierra Club, the David Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace, etc. -- have subsidized my preoccupation with things that move in the water by having me do research projects for them and so on.

With that out of the way, I can now say, if it isn't obvious already, that it's the seal hunt's opponents who turn my stomach.

It's not just that anti-hunt crusades like this are especially foul in the way they dishonestly misrepresent facts. It's also that they dishonestly manipulate one of the most redeeming traits the human species has inherited from hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection and cultural evolution -- our capacity to expand the embrace of our empathy to include other forms of life.

But far worse than all that, boycott campaigns like this muddy the important distinction between sustainability and sentiment, and between broadly co-ordinated acts of social responsibility and mere lifestyle choices.

When we fail to make these distinctions we undermine everything worthwhile that environmentalism has accomplished since it emerged in the early 1970s.

As citizens and consumers in free societies, we are burdened with the duty to make important decisions at the ballot box, in the work we do, and also in the marketplace. Boycotting Canadian seafood to try and stop the seal hunt is the consumer-choice equivalent of deciding to buy a tie-died shirt, move into a Volkswagen van and subsist solely on lentils and tofu.

Serious stakes

Just as the excesses of postmodernist relativism have enfeebled the left over the past quarter-century or so, a corrosive strain of fact-distorting, science-hating, Gaia-bothering obscurantism has enfeebled environmentalism.

It was there from the beginning, and it persists most noticeably in animal-rights crusades.

It is the environmentalist equivalent of anti-evolution, rapture-seeking Christian zealotry. It has to be attacked wherever it rears its head. There's too much at stake to pretend we can be innocent bystanders here.

This is a fight we all have to join. Here's why

The last time the planet was in the throes of an extinction spasm this cataclysmic was when the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago. One in every four mammal species, one in eight bird species, one in nine plants, a third of all amphibians and half of all the surveyed fish species on earth are threatened with extinction.

When Greenpeace was born in Vancouver in 1971, the single greatest cause of species extinction was understood to be habitat loss. Now, the greatest threat to biological diversity is global warming.

The last time the atmosphere was accumulating greenhouse gases this fast was 650,000 years ago. The prospects look exceedingly grim -- broad-scale ecological disruption, crop failure and famine, desertification and the mass dislocation of some of the most heavily-populated regions of the world.

A key reason environmentalists found themselves so ill-prepared to convince the world to take global warming seriously was that their movement had been corrupted by precisely the same trippy sentiment-mongering that has animated the holy war against the Newfoundland seal hunt, which now turns its sights on Canadian fisheries products.

Where was Greenpeace?

When the founders of Greenpeace were being born, back in the 1950s, the world's fishing fleets were taking roughly 40 million tonnes of marine biomass from the world's oceans every year. By the 1980s, it was 80 million tonnes. Then the seas just stopped giving. Fully 90 per cent of all the big fish in the sea -- the tunas, the marlins, the sharks, the swordfish -- are now gone.

Of the many fisheries collapses that have occurred around the world in recent years, it is sadly ironic that the greatest single collapse occurred in the seas around Newfoundland, where the bulk of Canada's Atlantic seal hunt takes place.

The Grand Banks cod fishery was the largest and oldest pelagic fishery in the history of the human experience. The cod were mined from the sea by the same big-boat offshore fleets that had caused such devastation everywhere else. A way of life disappeared, and by the early 1990s, tens of thousands of workers were reduced to welfare.

While all this was happening, what were environmentalists doing on the Newfoundland coast, in the country where Greenpeace was born, at a time when Greenpeace was at the height of its powers? They were out cavorting with rich hippies and snuggling up to harp seal pups on the ice floes. They were meditating cross-legged in the snow and posing for the television cameras and demonizing the good people of Newfoundland, while the seas around them were being emptied of cod.

Rational agreements

When you go looking for the good that environmentalism has accomplished, you'll find it in such covenants as the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, the Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances, and the Kyoto Accord.

It's in the sustainability provisions of elaborately negotiated efforts such as the Brundtland Commission on the Environment and Development, and the UN Code of Conduct for Responsible Fishing.

The toughest global instrument to protect biodiversity is the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Fuzzy eco-drivel has already severely damaged CITES by forcing non-threatened species, such as North Atlantic minke whale, onto the CITES appendices. Now, in Germany and Belgium, animal-rights activists and their friends in the European Parliament are attempting to override CITES, and the European Union's own rules, with an outright ban on products from Canada's perfectly abundant harp seal population(Web Talk note: This article before the ban passed its vote in the EU Parliament this week).

Similarly, seal-hunt opponents are dangerously undermining the historic victory that flowed from the Brundtland Commission.

The commission established a commitment to sustainability as the key universal value to guide natural-resource harvesting policies for all the peoples of the world, regardless of their distinct cultural practices and sensibilities. The whole point of sustainability is to ensure that people can exercise the rights and accept the responsibilities that come with sustainably harvesting the natural resources of the ecosystems within which they live.

The harp seal hunt is a living embodiment of that principle. That's why environmentalists should not just give the boycott a pass, or stay neutral, but should actively support and defend the seal hunt.

The one consolation we can take from the recent hullabaloo is that it's faltering.

Last year, when animal-rights activists in the United States boasted that they'd convinced more than 200 restaurants and seafood retailers to boycott Canadian products to protest the hunt, it turned out that only a small minority were doing so. Most of them didn't even know they'd been listed as boycott-compliant.

Also, the European Commission, citing the absence of evidence to support contentions that the hunt is inhumane, has refused, for now, to enforce the European Parliament's proposed ban on seal products. (Web Talk note: the EU later reconsidered and voted for the ban.)

Contested Council

But the consumer boycott campaign that's just begun in Britain is particularly insidious. Its aim is all Canadian fisheries products, and its targets are Tesco, Sainsbury's, Somerfield and other major retail chains that have already made a commitment to eventually carrying only those seafood products that have been certified by the Marine Stewardship Council.

The MSC standard remains hotly contested by responsible environmentalists, but its coveted "eco-label" holds out the hope of forcing improvements to fisheries-management policies around the world.

In Canada, those improvements are increasingly driven by the fishermen themselves, because they want the MSC label on their product.

British Columbia's halibut fishery was turned down once, and has since re-applied, because groundfish management has significantly improved -- thanks in no small part to halibut fishermen.

Other fishermen are now lobbying federal fisheries officials to improve stock-assessment research to give B.C.'s dogfish fishery a shot at the MSC label. British Columbia's sockeye salmon fisheries have just undergone an arduous certification examination, and a decision is imminent.

If the cuddliness of a particular species harvested in a particular country is allowed to become the factor that determines whether that country's products are considered environmentally acceptable, then everything we won at CITES and in the Brundtland Commission is lost.

If those are the kinds of choices we present to everyone from major retailers down to ordinary seafood consumers, then we'll have wasted all our efforts to marshal consumer power to force the sustainable use of the oceans.

It's long past time for conservationists to make a clean, clear, open and unequivocal break with crystal-gazing animal-rights eccentrics and all their camp followers. For them, the conservation of wild resources was always just a flag of convenience. They're dead ballast, so over the side with them.

On the question of the Atlantic harp seal harvest, there's only one defensible and honest position for a conservation-minded citizen to take.

Support the swilers!!!

Once again Terry - Thank-you for your very enlightening article.

With the EU ban now well on the way toward implementation I believe it's only right to remind those political figures who made the decision, and those who secretly support them within Canada, that the road we are now following is a slippery one indeed.

Sealing the Fate of the Atlantic Seal Harvest

The following appeared in yesterday's Chronicle Herald and presents a clear case for why the anti-sealing movement and the planned EU ban on seal products is so ludicrous.

Unfortunately none of that matters. Regardless of what the article says about the federal government's position, because of a lack of any real action on their part, the anti-sealing movement is succeeding in its misguided quest. An EU ban will soon be going ahead.

Seals, science, sentimentality and 'brutality'
Chronicle Herald (Halifax)
By CHARLES W. MOORE
Thu. Mar 26 - 6:18 AM

The mock baton attack on a stuffed seal during an anti-sealing protest in Halifax on March 14 by a Metro Transit bus driver was a bit bizarre, and not professional behaviour for someone in his position while on duty, but I can empathize that the relentless and obnoxious stridency of anti-sealing activists is provocative incitement to extraordinary expressions of frustration.

I think many Atlantic Canadians, upon hearing of this incident, might join me in pumping a fist in the air with the sentiment, "Yes!"

As for demands that the man be charged by police for expressing his opinion, get a grip! He didn’t hurt anyone, not even the stuffed seal, damage anyone’s property, and in the past, anti-sealing groups themselves have staged much more graphic mock seal clubbings, complete with fake blood, in attempting to dramatize their point.

I was pleased to learn that the federal government thumbed its nose at anti-sealing factions, and a European Parliament committee recently voting to recommend a bill that would ban imports of seal products to the European Union, with Fisheries Minister Gail Shea last Friday increasing the allowable harvest quota for this year’s East Coast hunt by 55,000 to 338,200 seals, from last year’s 283,200, based not on emotionalism, but rather "the advice of scientists to ensure the seal population is maintained."

Sentimentality, in the form of sappy animal rights ideology, is all the anti-seal hunting movement and money machine are based on, with no scientific fact or conservation reality supporting their contentions that seals are either endangered or treated less humanely than livestock killed in slaughterhouses to stock supermarket shelves.

As the European Commission’s own ambassador to Canada, Dorian Prince, observed during an official visit to New Brunswick last year: "Most people in Europe live in urban centres far removed from hunting, whether in Newfoundland and Labrador, Russia, Greenland or Finland ... As we get further removed from the realities of agriculture and hunting and so on, we get more sentimental."

In the rational world, at least two compelling arguments support seal hunting in Atlantic Canada:

1) Seals are an abundant, valuable, and renewable resource in a fishery beleaguered by declining stocks of many traditional catch species.

When whitecoat seal hunting was terminated 22 years ago, there were an estimated two million seals off Canada’s east coast. Today, the federal Fisheries Department estimates those harp, grey and hooded seal herds number about 6.4 million animals.

2) Abundance of seals is not coincidental to stock declines of other species, and the seal population must be diminished if there is to be any hope of saving some currently threatened fish species.

The marine ecological balance is indisputably out of whack, but allowing one species whose natural predators (eg: sharks) no longer exist in numbers sufficient to sustain a healthy balance to proliferate unchecked is not going to improve things.

Aside from sentimental idiocy fostered by the cuteness of whitecoat seal pups (which, as noted, haven’t been hunted in Canada since 1987), there is no rational reason not to hunt seals, and bringing the seal population down from its current record levels is ecologically beneficial. Besides predation of vulnerable and valuable fish stocks, seals also damage fishing gear and are an incubator for worms that infest other species.

Of course, none of these logical conclusions will ever convince the fanatical animal rights zealots of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the Humane Society of the United States and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) who routinely misrepresent facts, disseminate half-truths, use imagery calculated to press emotional buttons, and outright lies to gull well-meaning but ill-informed folks into their web of deceit and ideological extremism, diverting energy, attention and resources away from legitimate ecological and conservation issues toward what is essentially an animal rights hobby-horse and powerful lever for prying money out of the pockets of well-meaning but ill-informed urbanites.

According to Ottawa, sealing is an important source of employment for about 12,000 Canadians, and while fashion is of course one important market for seal products, just as it is for leather goods made from cowhide, seal meat is also a valuable source of food protein, and one of the richest and most bio-available sources of marine Omega-3 fatty acids for nutritional supplementation.

Seal oil supplements are 20 to 25 per cent richer in Omega-3 polyunsaturates, including docosapentaenoicacid (DPA), which is minimal to non-existent in fish oils.

Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung once observed that "Sentimentality is a superstructure covering brutality."

"Brutality" is a term the anti-sealing crowd like to fling at hunters, but arguably real brutality characterizes those who would sacrifice the livelihoods and well-being of 12,000 sealers, their families and communities, by banning the harvest of a renewable resource currently experiencing a population explosion to the tune of 12 per cent annually.

Of Mice and Men (and Women)

Editor's note: I originally published the following in the June 1, 2007 edition of the "Current Magazine" and a couple of weeks later here on Web Talk.

With the current discussion regarding a "bloc NL" party and what it could mean for the province I thought it might be a good time to republish it, with a few updates, for those who may not have read it the first time around.

Myles Higgins

Of Mice and Men (and Women)

Newfoundland and Labrador, to put it simply, is a bloody mess!

We’re represented by seven puppets in Ottawa.

Our people are second class citizens in Canada and everyone is looking toward the latest provincial savior to guide us into a future that’s a crap shoot.

What can we do?

Here’s a novel idea. Let’s get off our collective butts and fight back for once!

Enough is enough!

Our situation reminds me of the legendary tale of “Mouseland”.

If you’ve never heard of it, Mouseland is a parable once told by Saskatchewan political dynamo and father of universal health care, the late Tommy Douglas.

Mouseland tells of a society of mice who go about their daily routines, working, raising children and so on, just like we do every day.

Every four years or so these mice elect a new goverment to lead them.

The funny thing is, for years they always elected a goverment made up of cats, black cats to be precise.

To paraphrase Mr. Douglas, the black cats made wonderful promises.

One time they promised smaller round mouse holes so cats couldn’t stick their heads in and eat all the little mice.

They delivered, but in doing so they made sure the holes were just big enough so they could still get their paws inside and pull the mice out.

After years of suffering the mice decided it was time for a change so they elected a new government.

They threw the black cats out of office.

This time the little mice elected a government made up entirely of white cats.

The white cats promised to get rid of the round mouse holes that had been causing so much trouble for the helpless mice.

“That’ll fix the problem”, they said.

Once elected the white cats were true to their word. They closed up all the little round mouse holes and built square holes, but the square holes were bigger than the round ones had been so the cats could get their entire heads back inside again.

The moral: Cats, no matter their color, are still cats. They aren’t mice.

It’s not that cats are inherently bad. In fact they actually do good things, for other cats, not for mice.

To paraphrase Mr. Douglas once again, what’s good for a Nation of cats isn’t necessarily good for a Province of mice.

Just as in Mouseland, it’s time we do as Senator Baker suggested and elect 7 independent or Bloc style "mice" and sent them to Ottawa instead of the usual purring gang of red, blue or even orange cats.

I can almost see the usual curmudgeons and party faithful shake their heads and ask, “What in God’s name can 7 independent MPs accomplish in a parliament of 308?”

Don’t listen to them.

Canada is facing a string of minority governments for long time to come.

A bloc of 6 or 7 "mice" who aren’t obligated to toe ANY party line can do a lot in that sort of environment.

They certainly can’t do any worse than our usual 7 (fat) cats.

What do we have to lose?

We gave away the upper Churchill for the benefit of Canada and the glory of another almighty savior, Joey Smallwood.

The fish are gone, the railroad is gone, mills are closing, unemployment is rampant and people are leaving by the plane, bus and boat load.

We have to do something or by the time the oil runs out the locks will already be on the door.

Ben Franklin once said, “Those who give up liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

In 1949 our Nation was sold into confederation for baby bonuses and the old age pension.

According to Ben, we got exactly what we deserved.

It’s time each of us did something to get ourselves out of the mess we’ve fallen, gotten pushed or were forced into, depending on your point of view.

The Ode to Newfoundland contains the line, “Where once they stood we stand”. Sadly the circumstances we find ourselves in today make me realize that most of us don’t stand for much of anything anymore.

Dismiss me as nut, a crackpot or worse, I really don’t care.

I’ve been called far worse, including a Liberal, PC and NDP.

I’d prefer the former names to the latter.

Tommy Douglas noted at the end of Mouseland how one little mouse called on his fellow citizens to stop electing cats. He was dragged away to shut him up.

That prospect doesn't bother me much either. Whether a local lockup or an entire Country, one prison is the same as another, it's just a matter of scale.

CPAC Presents Joey Smallwood on Sunday Night

For anyone interested, CPAC, the Canadian Public Affairs Channel, takes a look at some of the most influential premiers of Canada beginning Sunday night with Newfoundland and Labrador's Joey Smallwood.

According to the creator, "If you want to understand the politics of a province you need to look back to its past, specifically to its most transformative leader."

The Premiers, a 10-part documentary series beginning Sunday on CPAC, looks at the lives and politics of some of the most prominent provincial leaders in Canadian history.

Over the two-year course of making The Premiers, the creator said "the project morphed into something different -- something beyond political biographies. The documentary evolved into a "reflection of political culture."

". . . What the documentary series tries to do is hold a mirror up to each province and show people there, and people in the rest of the country, why they think and act the way they do politically in those regions," said Doan.

"If you wonder why Danny Williams of Newfoundland seems inflexible on his position of protecting his province's resources just go back and see what happened with Smallwood. If you wonder why Alberta always seems dissatisfied with what's coming to them from the centre, just see what happened to them during the Depression and what happened to (William) Aberhart and you'll start to understand why more Albertans think the way they do."

"The Premiers veers off into territory viewers may not expect. Rather than the usual talking heads of historians and political scientists, it is the family, friends, colleges and those who witnessed history, who share their stories about the famous -- and sometimes infamous -- politicians. Friend or foe, those who knew the leaders well provide unique insight that goes beyond common, documented facts."

"Each of the 10 leaders featured in The Premiers made a historical contribution in shaping this country. Having created such an everlasting impact, how do these past leaders compare with the leaders of today?
"Maybe they were still pioneering in those days, but they were really strong . . . and there's not one among them whose strengths compares with the leaders of today," said Doan, pausing briefly to consider the roster of current provincial leaders, "Except maybe Danny Williams."

The first episode about Joey Smallwood, if not all the episodes, might make for some interesting viewing. If for nothing else than to provide some insight into the creator's perspective about this place we all love, Newfoundland and Labrbrador.

Williams Talks Tough on Canada / EU Trade Discussions

A press release was issued by Newfoundland and Labrador premier, Danny Williams, on Friday outlines his province’s concerns with plans for a new Canadian / EU Trade Agreement and withdraws his province’s support for upcoming negotiations by Ottawa.

The release states that, “While Newfoundland and Labrador fully supports improved trade with the European Union, any actions taken in that regard must address priority areas of concern for the province. In particular, the province is extremely hesitant to allow the Federal Government to head these negotiations, given past actions that question their commitment to issues of importance to the province.”

It goes on to say that "At this point, we are not willing to sign on to support the negotiation of a new and comprehensive economic agreement with the European Union.”

“This decision should not be confused with a lack of support for an improved trade relationship between Canada and Europe. Indeed, Newfoundland and Labrador values and respects its trade relations with Europe which have existed with the province for over 5 centuries…However, other concerns prevent the province from giving unqualified support for the Canadian Government’s process as it moves forward

"The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is unable to support this at this time on the basis of very genuine concerns that our province’s issues may not be safeguarded or dealt with in an appropriate way by the Federal Government.”

“In particular, long standing issues such as custodial management of our fishery, a proposed ban on seal products into the EU and prohibitive tariffs on seafood products entering the EU represent significant issues of concern that have been left unaddressed by the Federal Government for far too long.

Newfoundland and Labrador has not received any assurances that a Canada-EU agreement would include protection for measures such as the Atlantic Accords and Fish Inspection Act. Additionally, a track record of a lack of substantive and inclusive consultation on federal-provincial issues gives Newfoundland and Labrador great cause for concern, particularly in light of the far reaching implications of a possible Canada-EU trade agreement."

The official press release comes at a time when Newfoundland and Labrador is being challenged under NAFTA for the expropriation of provincial timber and hydro leases once held by U.S. registered paper maker Abitibi-Bowater.

It’s difficult to determine whether the province’s position on Canada / EU trade carries any real weight in Ottawa or not since it is the federal government that is ultimately responsible for international trade agreements. However the position taken by the Province serves to highlight a number of important issues for the province on both the national and international stage.

While the federal government does not officially need provincial support to enter into international trade agreements, actually making them work without the support of all the provinces is a problem.

Any agreement signed by Ottawa cannot infringe on provincial jurisdiction or legislative abilities.
A clear example of this can be seen in the case of the Abitibi-Bowater expropriation itself.

Newfoundland and Labrador has the legal right to expropriate the resources in question. It is up to Ottawa to defend the action under the NAFTA agreement and, should Canada lose that challenge, it will ultimately be the federal government, not the province, which is required to pay any penalties imposed.

Throne Speech a Triumph of Political Double Speak

It never ceases to amaze me how easily political leaders can talk from both sides of their mouth at the same time. It must be genetic or something.

During last week’s throne speech the Harper government made a point of telling the nation how important it was that Ottawa find innovative ways of securing Canada’s energy future, tackling climate change and building the economy.

That’s what the speech said but what it really meant was: “The Harper government will find innovative ways to secure our political future, pretend we are tackling climate change and build voter support.”

In that speech the government of Canada specifically said it would accomplish it’s publicly stated objectives by supporting nuclear energy projects and by developing the natural gas potential of the North, including the building a natural gas pipeline.

According to the Prime Minister, “Energy is vitally important to our country…The development of our rich energy resources is an important source of wealth and Canadian jobs…Our Government has committed to reducing Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020.”

Sounds great doesn’t it?

Sure it does but anyone living on the East Coast of Canada (the REAL East Coast of Canada) can tell you Harper's motives are not what the Prime Minister says they are.

The people of the Atlantic Provinces have suspected for decades that somewhere in Ottawa there is a map that depicts the Country as Ottawa truly sees it, with the border ending at Quebec.

Atlantic Canadians have been unwavering in their disgust each time they have been forced to bend to the will of Ontario, Quebec and more recently, oil rich Alberta.

It’s gotten to a point where the average citizen in Newfoundland and Labrador simply shakes their head and walks away knowingly when a politician announces anything that’s supposedly good for “Canada”.

The most recent throne speech and government actions have done nothing to change this reality.
A few years ago Stephen Harper, upon catching a glimpse of the attitude adopted by long time Atlantic residents, referred to the region as having a “culture of defeat”.

Personally I don’t see it that way at all. What I see is a people that have come to understand that in Canada the cards are forever stacked against them.

When Ontario, Quebec or Alberta strives to accomplish their objectives in Canada they usually win.

When Atlantic Canada strives to accomplish its objectives in Canada, Ontario, Quebec and increasingly Alberta, usually win.

In fact, with successive minority governments constantly on election watch the task of pandering to the big three has become an art form.

No matter the political party or the issue of the day, Quebec is still Quebec, Ontario, even as a have not province, is still Ontario and Alberta has become the newest member of Canada’s political elite.

In reality the desire to protect the environment, provide secure energy and create jobs in the North are little more than fluff for public consumption.

The truth is that massive quantities of natural gas are needed to keep one of the most environmentally destructive projects on the planet, the Alberta tar sands, humming along smoothly. Without it they would grind to a stand still.

Score one for Alberta.

On the nuclear front, yes nuclear power is cleaner than coal or oil generation, but there are other options out there, including wind, solar and good old fashioned hydro.

An example of this is the power potential of the Lower Churchill River in Labrador.

For decades Newfoundland and Labrador has been fighting an uphill battle to develop the massive energy potential of the Lower Churchill River. The project is in the planning stages but not one word was mentioned in the speech from the throne about hydro power in general or the Labrador project in particular, a project that has the potential to create thousands of jobs while providing clean dependable and low cost energy.

If at this point you are asking yourself “why wouldn’t the government support this project?” then you might want to go back and read the first few paragraphs over again.

It’s Canadian politics 101.

Forget the fact that Nova Scotia and New Brunswick need and desperately want the clean power this project would supply (I say forget those two provinces because, once again they are in Atlantic Canada and well…I’ve already shown that they just don’t matter to Ottawa).

Putting Atlantic Canada’s concerns aside, politically important Ontario has also expressed an interest in Lower Churchill power so shouldn't that mean it will move forward?

No.

It doesn't matter because another politically important province, Quebec, doesn’t want the project to move forward unless they can profit from it.

Even though the Harper government has the ability to assist with the development of the Lower Churchill, through loan guarantees or other forms of federal assistance, they won’t do it.

The Harper government has also walked away from its plans for the “East/West power grid” we all heard so much about a couple of years ago. A project once touted as “a nation building exercise to rival the building of the continental railway”.

What was hailed as critical to Canada’s energy future such a short time ago has now been abandoned.

Why?

You see developing the East/West Energy Grid or supporting the Lower Churchill hydro project would:

A) Require a part of the grid to pass through Quebec which might upset some seperatists; and
B) Mean Newfoundland and Labrador could reach waiting markets with their clean energy without having to hand over most of the profits to, you guessed it, Quebec.

Score 1 for Quebec.

But hold on you might say “doesn’t that mean Ontario won’t get the clean power it needs”?

“Doesn’t it mean that by pandering to Quebec and denying Ontario this power Mr. Harper has hurt himself politically?”

Not so.

I don’t know anyone who has ever said Stephen Harper was politically stupid and I’m not about to be the first.

In a brilliant move intended to head off any political fallout (while perhaps trading it for the nuclear kind) the Harper government will appease the voters of Ontario by assisting that province in moving forward with building more nuclear capacity.

Yes, the public may have a lower opinion of nuclear, it may be more dangerous and it may even be more expensive for consumers than hydro, but in political circles it has two far more important things going for it.

Unlike the Lower Churchill development, which would create thousands of well paying jobs in the region of Canada with the highest unemployment rate, nuclear will create jobs in vote rich Ontario and it doesn’t tick off vote rich Quebec.

Score one each for Ontario and for Quebec on that one.

So, to recap, the Harper government plans to improve Canada’s energy supply, create jobs and protect the environment how?

By:

Constructing an environmentally risky and potentially insecure gas pipeline across Canada’s North;

Using somewhat clean natural gas to extract extremely dirty and highly polluting tar sands oil in Alberta;

Building nuclear reactors in Ontario (no word yet on where the waste will end up but somebody is probably scouting locations down East); and

They’ll do it all while ignoring Newfoundland and Labrador’s efforts to develop the largest untapped hydro electric reserve in North America. A clean energy project capable of lighting well over a million homes across Canada and creating thousands of well paid jobs in Canada’s highest unemployment region.

Score 0 for Atlantic Canada.