June 15, 1999 SEA SHEPHERD CONDEMNS CANADA'S COMMERCIAL WHALING BID Government's collusion advances worldwide "native whaling" scheme The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is outraged by the Canadian government's open support for the return to commercial whaling and an international trade in whale meat. The details of the federal government's involvement with a commercial whaling lobby group appeared on the front page of the June 14 Globe & Mail. "In financing the World Council of Whalers and advising them on the promotion of their agenda, Canada is actively working against widely accepted conservation regulations as set down in both the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species," said Sea Shepherd International Director Lisa Distefano. "In light of this revelation, the government's statement of 'official' opposition to commercial whaling is no more convincing than Canada's 'official' denial that they issued a license to the Makah tribe to hunt whales across the U.S./Canadian border last November -- a month after they in fact issued the Makah a license to do just that." Sea Shepherd has long maintained that the claim of a subsistence need to hunt whales by the Makah tribe of Washington state was part of an international ploy by Japan, the Makah's primary international trading partner, to undermine the ban on commercial whaling via exceptions granted to indigenous people for aboriginal whale hunting. "In recent years, the strategy of the whaling lobby has been to re-cast commercial whaling as subsistence whaling, and re-write international conservation regulations in order to blur and eventually eliminate the categories," said Sea Shepherd President Paul Watson. "The support of the U.S. government for the Makah tribe's 'cultural subsistence' whale hunt and the support of the Canadian government for the World Council of Whalers' openly professed goal to return to an international trade in whale meat is all of a piece. Changing the name of commercial whaling to 'aboriginal whaling' is not acceptable, and the citizens of both nations need to make that clear to their governments." The World Council of Whalers is headquartered in British Columbia. Sea Shepherd supports the principled stand of British Columbia's premier that whale hunting will not be a negotiable item in upcoming land claims talks with Vancouver Island tribes, but notes recent statements by provincial government officials attempting to soften that stance. "British Columbia has shown signs of back-pedaling on this issue," Watson said. "The provincial government and the people of B.C. need to take heed of their federal government's collusion with the whaling lobby. All parties need to know that this is Japan's international game plan, and ensure that they do not fall into the same trap." Sea Shepherd will closely monitor any future moves toward the expansion of whaling in Canada, or Canadian support for the international whaling lobby. ### ===================================== Sea Shepherd Conservation Society P.O. Box 628 Venice, CA. 90294 USA e-mail: [email protected] Web Site: http://www.seashepherd.org Tel: 310-301-SEAL(7325) Canada: 604-688-7325 Fax: 310-574-3161 =====================================