The young lad never fails to impress me. This is in today's newspaper.

Think About It

Why promote an industry that few people support?

By Mike Rogozinski - who lives in Port Coquitlam and always tells it like it is.

What bothers me most about the annual seal slaughter debate is that it's filled with propaganda and misinformation. Protestors still display pictures of cuddly little white pups flopping around on the ice even though the outcry from the European Union led to a ban on killing newborns almost 20 years ago. The seals that are now being crushed by participants in the annual make-work program aren't the fuzzy little critters we see on postcards and tourism commercials. The rules were changed to ensure the victims are at least a couple of weeks old.

How does the fact that an animal is no longer fuzzy make the world's largest wholesale slaughter of marine mammals somehow more acceptable? The babies are still too young to eat, swim or defend themselves. The helpless critters can wiggle their plump bodies across the ice in an attempt to avoid a brutal death, but when they reach the edge they can't dive into the safety of the ocean because they're still too weak to swim. They just stop, look up to see a club crashing into their faces and then writhe in agony as they get peeled like a twitching banana. How can something so grotesque be repeated enough to become a tradition?

The people opposed to the killing justify their protesting because they care about the lives of animals and understand that leaving hundreds of thousands of fleshy carcasses rotting on the ice isn't good for the environment. What's challenging to rationalize is our government spending buckets of money to promote an industry that very few people need or want.

Newfoundland politicians have to cozy up to voters and take up their cause, but now that the global protests and boycotts are starting to financially affect people who aren't even involved in the killing, it would make sense for sealers to finally be knocked off their pedestal. That isn't happening, so I'm starting to think a sealer must have embarrassing pictures of powerful people playing hide the hakapick after they've charged a few too many cocktails to their expense account. Other than a scandal, I can't think of any reason for tax dollars to be used to ferociously defend something that is staining the character of our entire nation.

If baby seals were wiggling into coastal communities and abducting children I could understand the barbaric call to arms, but the fact is the seal pups aren't doing anything more than sitting around on the ice.

Until 2001, our tax dollars were used to support the seal killing industry. Even though it was more beneficial to direct tax dollars towards building schools and hospitals, the government decided to promote, sustain and defend an industry that caters to a select few. It doesn't make sense that such a small minority would be given elite status, but apparently they are so worthy of support that governments must kneel before them with their jaws dropped in awe.

When I think of the seals, the slaughter and the shame, my jaw drops too, but it's because I need to vomit.