Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I never cease to be amazed at the moral perfidy and outrageous self-righteousness of the animal rights fanatics. I refer to a very expensive and hysterical two page ad including a full page picture of a doe-eyed harp seal pup on a floe edge in yesterday's Globe and Mail. The international fund for animal welfare had the nerve to decry the plight of unemployed fishermen while ignoring the devastation they have wreaked on the incomes and self-sufficiency of the Inuit seal hunters of the Northwest Territories, Quebec, Labrador and aboriginal trappers across the country. That people in this country are contributing generous money to fund this kind of emotional propaganda says that the aboriginal people and their representatives must again loudly speak of the devastating effects these evil people have wreaked on a key element of the very cultural identity of my Inuit constituents.
How many more young people must be killed by suicide? How much more alcoholism? How much welfare dependency will be required before these people realize what harm they have done and are doing to the self-reliant subsistence hunters of Canada's north. Shame on you that you could put the protection of a population of seals, now growing out of control in numbers ahead of the survival of a proud way of life and source of independent income from a race of people who have always reached out a helping hand of friendship to visitors from the south.
My Inuit constituents think these well intentioned do-gooders from the friend to animals movement with their questionable scientific facts are not only patronizing but genocidal in their missionary zeal. The Inuit hunters from northern Canada, the people from my constituency struggling to make a living in a southern style wage economy on Baffin Island, in one of the most costly locations in the country, are saying that the people from Greenpeace and its descendants are committing the worst crime of all: exploitation and colonial style eradication of the subordinate culture all in the name of protecting what they call "a beautiful and trusting creature, a fitting symbol...