Canada's seal shame

[CHIMO]

The seal hunt off Canada's east coast makes for hard watching, even for the mainland Canadians who wince along with the rest of the world when the surreptitiously filmed footage comes out each year. We are horrified by the sight of the little creatures sliding along the pristine white ice like quicksilver, still quivering after the first smash to the skull.

Given the cost of regulating and monitoring the hunt, plus hating ourselves, it seems insane not to throw $7m at the outporters to make them stop. Especially since a probable EU ban on all seal product imports will pretty much kill the industry. But we're never going to do that.

It's a shame. We're trashing our reputation internationally with great vigour. Our national police force tasers helpless harmless foreigners to death in Vancouver airport. We just banned George Galloway from giving a speech here. Our prime minister, a wooden-headed nasty named Stephen Harper, is trying to re-create a northern George Bush World, years after the Bush scam was discredited.

My country is embarrassing me, and a lot of Canadians feel that way. I don't know what the official emblem of that embarrassment is. It might be Harper's deeply strange hair or our unfortunately named "beaver tail" pastries. But a large spreading bloodstain will do just as well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/27/canada-newfoundland-seal-hunt