Photo: Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff gives a thumbs up while eating a seal meat appetizer on Wednesday. By Chris Wattie / Reuters.

If there’s one thing that’s united many Canadians from all political stripes, it’s fighting back against the self-righteous, ignorant animal rights activists passing themselves off as the European Union. Practically all of Canada’s political establishment has spoken out for the rights of Canadian hunters to continue their long tradition of culling seals along the Gulf of St.Lawrence.

That season is almost upon us again, beginning in late March and the first or second week of April off Newfoundland. Canada’s largest export market for seal pelts has been Norway, but has also traded with Germany, Greenland, and China. As the pelts have lost their value due to negative animal rights campaigns, seal meat has begun to pick up as a strong market in Asia.

Prior to the 2009 European Union ban on Canadian seal products, total Canadian seal product exports were valued at $18 million Canadian.

On Wednesday, MPs and senators of all political parties joined for a luncheon in the House of Commons featuring seal. It is the first time that seal was featured on the menu in the 100 year history of Parliament Hill.

While the menu was meant as a means of promoting seal meat, it was also a slap to the face of the European ban. Inuit Canadians were recently snubbed at a G7 Finance Ministers summit in Nunavut when they featured a luncheon that was boycotted by the Europeans. Nunavut has since responded by threatening to ban European alcohol.

Michael Ignatieff has spoken out against the European ban before to the British media. In May of 2009 he told the Telegraph that the ban was misguided.

“We look at the culling of deer in Scotland and wolves in Europe by farmers and find it very frustrating to see this reaction to a carefully regulated and managed cull here, which is an economic mainstay of some of the poorest communities in Canada,” he said.

“Europe’s inability or refusal to see the seal cull for what is smacks of hypocrisy and misunderstanding.

“Paul McCartney, I love your music – but leave the seals to the people who know them. This is not marginal to us, this is very important.”

Unfortunately for Mr.Ignatieff, not everybody is playing ball. Liberal MP Mac Harb is taking his one-man fight to Parliament Hill in an attempt to pass a private member’s bill to ban the commercial seal hunt in Canada. Siding with the Humane Society International and a climate scientist, Mr.Harb warned that the seal hunt should also be cancelled because global warming has melted the sea ice off of the east coast of Canada.

Conservative Minister for Fisheries Gail Shea has urged Michael Ignatieff to reign in Mr.Harb.

“It is very unfortunate that the Liberal leader is allowing a member of his caucus to attack the seal hunt at a time when all Canadians should be united behind our sealers and behind our northern and coastal communities,” Ms. Shea said in the House of Commons on Monday. “I would also encourage the Liberals to take a clear stand on this issue. If they support Canadian coastal communities, then please stand up for them.”

But the seal ban has probably already done irreparable damage to the industry. Canadian seal exports were worth $9.7 million last year, nearly half the value of $18 million from 2006. This is bad news for the industry, particularly the Inuit, who have been hoping that seal meat exports would create a financial boom for Northern communities.

Photograph: John Tyman

The two-day Group of 7 finance ministers summit wrapped up in Iqaluit, Nunavut, today with all the ministers promising to make the banks bear the cost of the crises they create. They all spoke about the usual confidence of a recovering global economic recovery, and the need to continue stimulus spending.

At the conclusion of the summit, the Canadian government in conjunction with the local Inuit, offered a community feast featuring raw seal meat. Only Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, who was born in the Northwest Territories, appeared at the feast. Boycotting the dinner was the ministers and central bankers of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.

It’s one thing to have laws in Europe prohibiting the sale of seal meat on the morally feeble and fallacious grounds that the commercial seal slaughter is inhumane. It’s quite another to make a show of contempt for the Canadian Inuit and their traditional food, by refusing to attend the feast in some kind of immature, imprudent boycott. Quite literally, it’s like going to the house of a friend as a dinner guest, and then deciding not to dine because you disagree with the food choices being presented.

Not only did the Europeans display their complete disregard for diplomacy, they showed ignorance toward the realities of the staple diet of the people of the far North. By their actions they showed a strong ideological alliance with such marginal bedlamites as the ones who cavort with PETA, and the ethical vegan revolutionaries who equate the word meat with murder. But in another way, they robbed themselves of a unique opportunity to partake in the culinary palate of a foreign culture, and discover the enrichment that comes with that experience.

Of course the feast was not entirely an apolitical and altruistic one meant to delight the G7 members. Canada had hoped to raise the subject of the proposed seal ban in Europe, although it is reported that they were stonewalled on all attempts. When Iqaluit reporter Kent Driscoll asked the four finance ministers if their stay in the Great White North had taught them a lesson about the importance of the seal, there was no answer forthcoming. Just an uncomfortable silence.

As we Canadians are wont to do when something becomes too uncomfortable, Jim Flaherty pointed out, almost apologetically, that the European Union makes an exception for Inuit seal. But that’s not entirely true, since the exception is only for parts saved from the animal that are used for traditional ceremonies and art. When pressed on whether they could see the value of hunting seal in the Arctic, the four ministers remained silent.

Although they didn’t learn very much from their mothers, it appears that they took away one lesson from her. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.