This guy sure pics his battles. Personelly I think seal should be open season, every season.
Hearn accuses group of despicable behaviour for planning anti-seal rally using kids as 'props'
Peter O'Neil
Vancouver Sun; with files from CanWest News Service
Monday, March 05, 2007
CREDIT: Canadian Press Files
Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn has lashed out at tactics proposed for a protest.
OTTAWA -- Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn is accusing a Vancouver group of despicable, immoral and exploitive behaviour for planning an anti-seal hunt protest for later this month using children as "props" to attract media attention.
"Please get the day off work/school," urges the notice from a group called Liberation B.C., which included in its e-mail notice the website link for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).
Protesters, urged to wear black, are asked to meet at the Vancouver Art Gallery on March 15. They are to walk single-file, carrying black coffins, to the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans headquarters on Burrard Street. "We need children dressed in black to lay flowers on the coffins in front of the DFO.
"It will draw a lot of media attention if we can get the children," urges the notice, which was posted on the Discover Vancouver website.
Hearn's office sent out an e-mail to the media Friday with the subject line: "HSUS Resort to Using Children as Props to Attract Media Interest."
Hearn, whose government is in a tough battle in the U.S. and Europe against campaigns to boycott seal product imports, said the tactics go too far.
"To me it's utterly despicable and shows they have absolutely no morals when they stoop that low," he told The Vancouver Sun.
"It's sick. Exploiting children and involving innocent children in something like this is completely and utterly shameful."
Hearn, a Newfoundland MP, said the "supposedly Canadian" protesters are against a "legitimate, sustainable, humane hunt."
Rebecca Aldworth, the Montreal-based Canadian spokeswoman for HSUS, said her organization has led the global initiative to declare March 15 an "international day of action" against the hunt. She said she can't comment on Liberation B.C.'s tactics because "this is not our event," but added that it's Hearn who should feel shame. "I would argue that Canada's seal hunt is the slaughter of baby seals."
Joanne Chang, who said she runs Liberation B.C. by herself and has an e-mail network of about 800 people, said she has never had any contact with HSUS. She put the Washington, D.C.-based lobby group's website address on her e-mail notice because "everybody knows them."
Chang, 32, an administration employee with a Vancouver company, said it's legitimate to urge children to get involved. "They see these images [of seals being harvested], they just have nightmares and they want to do something about it."
Meanwhile, in Quebec, filmmaker Raoul Jomphe said animal rights activists are outraged they were caught on tape ignoring a dying seal for more than an hour and then were featured in a documentary. He said the activists were filming a promotional segment for a fundraising campaign when the incident occurred.Jomphe said Canadian HSUS director Aldworth called him to complain, after she discovered he had captured the incident on film. "She was really mad at me," said Jomphe. Phoques, le film (Seals, the movie) is scheduled to air later this month on the CBC's French-language all-news network, RDI, and local Atlantic Radio-Canada stations.
poneil1@hotmail.com© The Vancouver Sun 2007
Author
Topic: Minister attacks B.C. anti-seal protesters (Read 4259 times)