Main Story
Canada doesn't take hostages
Thursday, April 06, 2006 at 12:06 PM
Leader
From CTV:
The head of a U.S.-based beauty products firm says she is prepared to raise $16 million to help stop the seal hunt off Canada's East Coast.
Cathy Kangas, CEO and founder of PRAI Beauty, issued a statement Tuesday saying she had written Prime Minister Stephen Harper to outline her offer.
"Stephen Harper says . . . it's what the people of Newfoundland are surviving on,'' she said in a telephone interview from Florida. "They need the $16 million they get from selling seal pelts.
"Why can't we pay for the seal hunt and stop it ... One would think that Stephen Harper would welcome an economic solution to the seal hunt.''
Canada has already turned down the offer, and so has done Cathy Kangas and her friends at the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Humane Society of the United States a big favour.
Imagine if Canada had taken her up on the offer.
This year it is $16 million. But with inflation, higher gas prices, and a general increase in the standard of living, next year we want $20 million, or the seals get it.
You see where I'm going with this.
Canadian communities start checking around for fuzzy cute animals in their neck of the woods. Squirrels, chipmunks, baby deer -- whatever it takes to get these wealthy Americans to start coughing up cash.
And we're not the only country with cute animals. For crying out loud, China has been milking the giant panda for two decades for foreign cash:
By the year 1984, however, pandas were no longer used as agents of diplomacy. Instead, China began to offer pandas to other nations only on 10-year loans. The standard loan terms include a fee of up to US$1,000,000 per year and a provision that any cubs born during the loan are the property of the People's Republic of China. Since 1998, due to a WWF lawsuit, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service only allows a U.S. zoo to import a panda if the zoo can ensure that China will channel more than half of its loan fee into conservation efforts for wild pandas and their habitat.
Obviously the lawsuit was prompted by the fact that the Chinese were using the money for something else.
But imagine how pleased a country would be if it discovered it was the home to some particularly cute animal with some marginal economic value. Like our seals. Nothing endangered of course. In fact, a population healthy enough to support a hunt. Go to the local concession store to pick up some magazines in order to cut out letters for the obligatory ransom note ("$50 million in unmarked bills in a duffel bag left by the lamppost or we start marketing meerkat burgers!"), mail it to Cathy Kangas, and you're in business!
But Canada has said "No thanks!"
Lucky for the meerkats.
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Angry in the Great White North by Steve Janke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
Based on a work at stevejanke.com.