The Senate Fisheries committee was told that Canada's remaining source of exports for seal products is now quite limited.“It’s very hard to sell a product that tugs at the hearts of people,” said an executive with a Nunavut authority representing Inuit hunters.“Inuit source exemptions have failed to counteract the negative impacts of trade bans on the practices, lifestyles and livelihood of Nunavut Inuit,” testified Paul Irngaut, vice-president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. Seals are now hunted mainly for protein, he said.“I think the image of the harvest on the East Coast really hurt our cause to some extent,” said Irngaut. “I just want to point out that we harvest seals to eat them.”In 2009, the European Union enforced a ban on importing Canadian seal products. This led to a sharp decline in sales, reducing the value of the Atlantic harvest from $34.3 million annually to just a few thousand dollars.According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the first ban by the European Union allowed for the export of seal products from Inuit hunters. Still, Irngaut said that this exception did not have a significant impact as sales plummeted. “Trade bans have been in place for a long time on seals,” said Irngaut.“These were emotionally driven efforts by the animal rights groups.”“As we all know, these are highly emotional campaigns animal rights groups like the International Fund for Animal Welfare and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have done in the past,” said Irngaut.“We went directly to those people and we talked to them,” said Irngaut. “We showed them the impact it has on Inuit and on ordinary Inuit families. For them, it’s easy to just open their fridge and have anything that they want or go to a restaurant or order online and order what they want. Inuit families in these small communities don’t have that option, so it had a huge impact on Inuit in terms of feeding their families.”In a report from 2020, the department of fisheries stated that the boycott by the European Union had turned Arctic sealing into a weekend pastime.“Few hunters are hunting seals,” said the Evaluation of the Certification and Market Access Program for Seals. “As a result, there is a low supply of raw material.”“In Inuit culture, men hunt to provide raw material, which is then processed further by the women,” wrote auditors. “For men, time and costs are barriers to hunting. As communities move to wage-based earning, time to access the land becomes limited to weekends and vacations.”The fisheries department said the boycott waiver had little benefit for the Inuit since “buyers in the European Union stopped purchasing seal products because they did not understand or were unaware of the indigenous exemption.”
