N.L. outlines anti-seal protest expenditures

By Rob Antle

FOR THE SOU’WESTER

Transcontinental Media/The Telegram



The Williams administration in Newfoundland and Labrador spent $167,000 over the past two fiscal years as part of a pro-sealing, anti-protest campaign.

The cash investment - allocated at $100,000 per year - was unveiled in the 2006 budget, as a "sealing industry communications strategy to counter the fiction and fabrication with facts."

Transcontinental Media’s The Telegram newspaper obtained details of how the province spent the cash using access-to-information laws. A fair chunk of the money – $26,880 in 2006/07 and $42,720 in 2007/08 – went to the Fur Institute of Canada, a non-profit lobby group for the fur industry.

That total of nearly $70,000 helped organize two anti-protest events held in the past year and a half.

Those included the 2007 "Up the Anti" pro-sealing rallies held from Ottawa to the Netherlands, and the 2008 "Swilers Ball" in St. John's.

According to government documents, the province paid the Fur Institute for costs that included "transportation for both national and international seal industry representatives and organization of meetings with federal government members."

The documents reference a contract between the government and Fur Institute, but provide no further details.

Other provincial anti-protest expenditures over the two-year period include: $50,000 for a manual and quality practices video for sealers; $10,000 for photography of seal-hunt activities; nearly $10,000 for the production and distribution of media kits throughout the European Union; more than $20,000 in travel expenses, both within the province and to Europe; and more than $4,000 in local magazine advertising.

In 2006, while condemning actress Pamela Anderson for her anti-seal hunt comments at the Junos, Premier Danny Williams said there would be "a definitive strategy that will be developed over a period of time" for the $100,000 annual allocation.

Earlier this year, then-fisheries minister Tom Rideout attacked Ottawa for what he called a "defeatist attitude," and took credit for victories on the pro-sealing front.

The European Union is expected to vote this fall on a bill that could ban the import of Canadian seal products.