IQALUIT
Although the move would be largely symbolic, Nunavut Senator Dennis Patterson hopes a new National Seal Products Day can fight against what he calls the tremendous power of anti-sealing groups.

Nunavut Senator Dennis Patterson is looking to mark May 20 as National Seal Products Day. He hopes the symbolic gesture can counter the large anti-sealing lobby. - Stewart Burnett/NNSL photo

"It would mean basically promoting Northern seal products and trying to overcome the tremendous power of the animal welfare movement, who portray Inuit as being barbaric and savage, cruel hunters of seal," Patterson told Nunavut News/North in an interview.

A proposed bill would mark May 20 as National Seal Products Day. Patterson hopes it can be passed in the House of Commons quickly enough to come into action this year. It was inspired partly from the European Union's recent willingness to accept seal products that are hunted by Inuit.

Patterson commented on the fashion status of seal products and said there is a large worldwide market for it.

In a speech on the Senate floor Feb. 23, Patterson said it is hard for him not to get emotional about the subject.

"I know from my seal-hunting friends how dispiriting it was for proud, independent, respected hunters to quickly lose the market for their pelts and be told that it was because sealing was considered to be cruel and inhumane," he stated on the floor. "This resulted in the decline of a traditional renewable resource economy of the Inuit."

He recalled his first summer in the North, where in a Pangnirtung fjord the late Meeka Kilabuk and her family took him out to a fishing spot. The group spotted, caught and cooked a seal.

"Upon eating the fresh-cooked seal meat, I almost immediately felt powerful warmth surging through my blood vessels like molten metal, warming my hands and feet and giving me energy and a great feeling of well-being," stated Patterson. "That seal meat was like a tonic, which warmed me from head to toe. It amazed me. Power food, I thought. And it is."

But from lobbying groups such as Greenpeace and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the seal hunt became portrayed in the media as a "massacre, a slaughter by reckless, gleeful barbarians," he stated.

"This has led to the dangerous over-population of seals, which are gobbling up tonnes of our valuable fish products," stated Patterson.

Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette moved the second reading of the bill.

On the Senate floor, she stated that anti-seal hunt lobby groups and their corresponding ideology about humans and animals have had a serious impact on world markets, governments and crime. She referenced celebrities joining the cause.

"Honourable senators, what is senseless is a billionaire who is polluting the atmosphere by taking his private jet to come to our country and impose his misguided morals on ordinary people, when he is not the one who will have to live with the consequences," stated Hervieux-Payette.

Patterson agreed.

"(The bill) is of symbolic importance, but it's making a statement where a lot of money and a lot of attention has been paid by celebrities and otherwise to downgrading the Inuit seal hunt, as opposed to expressing the facts," he said.