Court upholds restriction on animal rights activists pursuing seal hunt
Protesters' rights to free expression deemed secondary to sealers' rights to livelihood

Canadian Press
Published: Saturday, December 10, 2005

GEORGETOWN, P.E.I. -- Animal rights activists have lost a legal challenge of Ottawa's right to restrict their movements during seal hunts.

Judge Nancy Orr of the Provincial Court in Georgetown, P.E.I., ruled Friday against a Charter of Rights challenge launched by Captain Paul Watson and 11 protesters from the Sea Shepherd Society.

The protesters filed their Charter challenge after they were arrested in the Gulf of St. Lawrence last spring and charged with violating the buffer zone around sealing ships.

The protesters and Watson argue that federal regulations requiring them to stay half a nautical mile from sealing activities is an infringement on their right to freedom of expression.

Orr said their rights were infringed, but she said the infringement is justified because the sealers have a right to earn a livelihood without disruption.

"The applicants' right to freedom of expression has been infringed in this case by ... the marine mammal regulations," Orr concluded in her decision.

"But the respondent [the federal fisheries department] has shown that these are are demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

Charlottetown lawyer John Mitchell, who represents the protesters, said his clients now face a trial on Thursday on charges of violating federal regulations.

Mitchell said he expects prosecutors will call witnesses in the case, but is not certain whether there will be defence witnesses.

Watson was in Melbourne, Australia, on Friday and was unavailable for comment.

However, at the time of the incident on the ice floes near the Magdalen Islands, Watson said the protesters were simply trying to take photographs and did not violate the buffer zone.

Watson was angry that the RCMP did not lay charges after one of his crew members was beaten in the face and had his camera smashed.

The only charges laid were against the protesters.

Animal rights activists say they want to observe the annual hunt.

They object to the way the hunters, predominantly on the Magdalen Islands, club the seals, and have called on the international community to boycott all Canadian seafood products.

Most of the protesters involved in the case are Americans.

The Canadian government bowed to anti-seal hunt pressure in the 1990s, but has since endorsed the hunt as a cultural right for many Newfoundlanders and Maritimers.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005

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Suspect identified in abandoned puppies case

Maureen Gulyas, Delta Optimist
Published: Saturday, December 10, 2005

DELTA

A 23-year-old Ladner man has been identified by Delta police as the suspect behind the abandonment of five newborn puppies last month. Only three of the five puppies survived after being found in Ladner Nov. 26 and one may lose a paw to frostbite injuries.

Const. Kim Sheridan said the Ladner man has not yet been charged, but that police are "running a parallel investigation with the enforcement section of the SPCA."
© The Vancouver Sun 2005