canadian senator fires back at seal protest family

Senator fires back at U.S. family upset with seal hunt
Last updated Mar 17 2006 11:23 AM NST
CBC News
A Liberal senator has replied to a family in Minnesota upset about Canada's seal hunt with a letter denouncing the United States for executing prisoners at home and killing people in Iraq.

IN DEPTH: The Seal Hunt


Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette in 2001. (CP Photo/Fred Chartrand)
The McLellan family had written to Canadian senators to say they cancelled a vacation in Canada because of the hunt, which they called "horrible" and "inhumane," Montreal's La Presse reports.

In her response, Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette said that what she finds horrible is "the daily massacre of innocent people in Iraq, the execution of prisoners - mainly blacks - in American prisons, the massive sale of handguns to Americans, the destabilization of the entire world by the American government's aggressive foreign policy, etc."

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She said Americans are not in a position to criticize others. "They must start to look at their own behaviour, the permanent heightening of the planet's insecurity since the election of Bush," she told La Presse.

"All senators received the letter from the McLellans and I was the only one to respond," she said.

The family "did not choose a good cause," she added.

In their letter, the McLellans said they love Canada and have Canadian ancestors but cancelled a trip to Canada last year because of the seal hunt and will scrap plans for one this year if the spring hunt goes ahead, La Presse said.

FROM MARCH 8, 2006: Seal hunt will go ahead

Hervieux-Payette, a lawyer and former Liberal MP, was appointed to the Senate in 1995 by then prime minister Jean Chrétien. She last drew public attention with a private member's bill in 2004 to outlaw spanking of children.


Canadian sealers (file photo)
In defending the seal hunt, she called it a centuries-old practice and part of the livelihood of coastal residents both native and white.

She invited the McLellans to come to Canada to see a humane society that lives in safety and respects the traditions of its native people.

It is not clear whether she might pay a penalty for remarks that could be seen as anti-American. Once appointed, senators have a job until retirement at 75.

A Toronto-area MP, Carolyn Parrish, was thrown out of the Liberal caucus in 2004 after she stomped on a George Bush doll. She stayed in Parliament as an independent but did not seek re-election this past winter.

05/01/2006 printer-friendly version


Madame Baby Seal Killer Wants to Rule Canada

Canadian Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette wants to be Prime Minister of Canada and she is ready to swim through a sea of seal blood to get there.

Her only real claim to fame is her support of the annual slaughter of 325,000 baby seals on Canada’s Eastern coast.

She is now bragging how she “squared off recently against Brigitte Bardot to defend the sealers.”

The truth of the matter is that she did not even meet Brigitte Bardot when the French actress visited Ottawa in March along with actress Persia White and Captain Paul Watson. The French animal rights leader dismissed Hervieux-Payette as a “stupid woman.”

Hervieux-Payette refused to attend the Bardot media conference and held her own conference right after to attack Brigitte Bardot for her opposition to the slaughter of the seal pups.

The Senator did face off on the Mike Duffy show on CTV that evening with Captain Paul Watson who clearly had the upper hand in the debate. Captain Watson said that since she had never been to the seal hunt and never seen a seal killed she was in no position to claim the killing was humane.

Senator Hervieux-Payette said "The impression that I have is that there are a lot of people who are waiting for someone who will talk to them a little like I did in my fight for the seal hunters," said Hervieux-Payette, a Trudeau-era cabinet minister.

All the Senator said in her “fight” for the seal hunters is that the seal slaughter was humane and there were plenty of seals. She also said that the sealers are native people who need to kill seals to survive. [Note: They are not native and they don’t need seals to survive.]

Hervieux-Payette is in the running more for comic relief. There are already 10 declared candidates in the race to succeed former Prime Minister Paul Martin, with several more still deciding whether to run.

The Senator’s comments may win her a few votes from the “Neanderthal” crowd in the Magdalen Islands or Newfoundland but they won’t win her much support in the civilized parts of Canada like Toronto, Calgary, or Vancouver.

The early favorite is Michael Ignatieff who made an impressive appearance at the Quebec wing's annual convention, boasting the support of three of the 13 Liberal MPs from the province, the most of any candidate to date.

“I kind of hope she does win the leadership,” said Captain Paul Watson. “The pathetic display of pro-sealing posturing she demonstrated to us would make her one very easy opponent to challenge on this debate. In all my years of opposing the slaughter of seals, I have never met a more misinformed and pathetically-weak proponent of the seal hunt. How did she ever get to be a Senator? Oh yeah, Canadians are appointed for 75 years by the Prime Minister. She is a Senator who was appointed years ago by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in return for some service and now she is parading herself as the savior of barbaric seal killers.”

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