Did you know that bullfighting is subsidized in the E.U.?  Or wolf culls in British Columbia, Canada?  The whaling industry in Japan?  How about fishing where we shouldn’t be?  Fishing subsidies are estimated to be as high as $35 billion worldwide, of which $20 billion directly contributes to overfishing.  And so on.

So on what basis does your government, regardless of where you live, decide that the taxes you pay will be well utilized by supporting this industry or that one?  In many instances, if not most, it’s to preserve jobs and, OK, most of us can at least sympathize with that motivation.  No one wants to see another person lose their job.  We won’t get into whether subsidies do or don’t make sense economically, because that isn’t even remotely my point for this post.  What I’m suggesting is that we need to also consider other criteria to guide these types of decisions.   Because otherwise what we’re effectively doing is supporting an injustice of one kind or another. And the kind I want to talk about here is government support for cruelty.   

Some activities we simply shouldn’t be doing, regardless of how many people currently earn their living from them.  To use an extreme example from history, the slave trade generated jobs – it was an industry, or at least considered as such by a great many people in its time.  It wouldn’t have been a good thing for the government to subsidize it as it was winding down, to preserve the livelihoods of its practitioners for a few years longer.  What I’m suggesting is that economic questions pale in importance when stacked up against issues of morality.  That begins to suggest the kinds of principles it would be more helpful to follow!

We’ve obviously made a lot of progress in ‘bending the arc of history’ towards justice, to paraphrase Dr. King.  But there remain numerous, clear instances of tax-payer supported injustice in the world today.  Many of these are effectively subsidies to cruelty. 

Here in Canada we have an excellent example of this with our commercial seal hunt.  As many of you around the world frequently point out to us, Canada has an annual ‘harvest’ on our east coast which is frankly sickening in its treatment of seals.   Having seen the video of what actually takes place out there on the ice, I am 100% convinced that the overwhelming majority of Canadian residents would be appalled if they saw the same images, and would not support its continuation.  Even if it meant that people employed in the sealing industry will need to find a different way to earn a living.¹  And they would be especially surprised to know that the dollars they pay in taxes help to fund and perpetuate this activity!

A powerful voice for animals here at home is the Humane Society International/Canada.  They work through education and advocacy to push for more humane legislation, as well as hands-on rescue, investigation and litigation.  A long-term goal with regards to the seal hunt is to change public perceptions until elected representatives get worried enough about a voter backlash as to change government policy.  We haven’t gotten there yet, but HSI/Canada has had some notable successes on this front.

Information campaigns designed to raise awareness have turned commercial sealing into a dying industry.  They’ve shut down markets for seal products in more than 30 countries.  This year the main seal processing plant in Canada has admitted to paying less for seal fur (and to buying fewer skins), which suggests that demand continues to fall.  What’s perhaps most promising is that 90% of licensed commercial sealers no longer participate in the annual hunt.  

HSI Executive Director Rebecca Aldworth has reaffirmed her organization’s commitment to this fight over the long-term.

“The struggle to shut down this cruel industry isn’t easy. It’s a long and tough battle, but it’s important. With you by our side, we will keep fighting against this cruelty until the Canadian government ends its commercial seal hunt once and for all.”

And what’s interesting about this is that if the Canadian government simply ends the subsidies, the seal hunt will effectively be dead, even without further legislation.  Remove the support of taxpayers to prop it up, and another cruel industry will have come to its well-deserved end.

For The Orca’s Voice, 

Dani, Canadian Cetacean Alliance

Note 1 – We aren’t talking about subsistence hunting of seals in Northern Canada, which takes place in an entirely different context, and involves distinct sets of issues compared with the commercial hunt we’re describing here.