The Fisheries Minister Diane Lebouthillier said in a letter written August 6, 2024 and addressed to the European Commission’s vice-president Virginijus Sinkevičius that Canada has been given the opportunity to “provide input” on the seal trade while the European union fine tunes its rules. The outcome is scheduled to be published online in eight weeks.

Minister Lebouthillier states in the letter that the European Union regulations have led to a drop in Canada’s access to global markets for seal products, with exports falling from $18 million in 2006 to $515,000 in 2022.

“For more than a decade, this European Union requirement has significantly restricted the trade of Canada’s sustainable, humane, and well-regulated seal harvest,” says the letter, also signed by five other federal ministers.

Full CBC NL story here:

Comment on the Canadian government’s submission to the EU seal ban review panel by Jim Winter, former CSA president:
“No mention in the Canadian government submission to the EU review panel of the damage done to Quebecers who are also sealers. A total avoidance of the use of words like – non-indigenous, settler, or those of European ancestry. The word Indigenous followed by the word coastal is confusing because by definition, Indigenous sealers are coastal people.
This submission is simply a repetition of what Canada has said over, and over, and over again for decades with no response from the EU. Repeating the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different outcome is Einstein’s definition of insanity.
While Eu politicians and bureaucrats are banning our seal products they are also discussing how to open, or continue, their own seal hunts in the Baltic and the North Sea. Seal hunts that do NOT have the science nor regulations to be as sustainably run and as ecological sound as ours. The words that come to mind to describe the situation in Europe are: hypocrisy, unethical, corrupt, and immoral.
Essentially this Canadian government submission is smoke and mirrors, like so much of the past, designed to make us think they are doing something.
As the French say: Le plus ca change, le plus chest la memorial chose.”