| Montreal, 29/08/2007 – On 23 August 2007, the Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) received a revised citizen submission in which Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental A.C., Conservación de Mamíferos Marinos de México, and Humane Society International (the “Submitters”) assert that the Canadian government is failing to effectively enforce its law with respect to the harp seal hunt that takes place in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and along the Newfoundland and Labrador coast in Canada every year in the spring.
Submission SEM-07-003 (Seal Hunting) was filed with the CEC Secretariat on 26 June 2007. On 13 July 2007, the Secretariat determined that the submission did not satisfy all the criteria listed in Article 14(1) of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) and granted the submitters a period of 30 days to file a submission meeting those requirements. In the revised submission, the Submitters assert that Canada is failing to effectively enforce sections 8, 28 and 29 of the Marine Mammal Regulations (MMR) adopted under the federal Fisheries Act, and that these provisions, which prescribe methods and instruments for killing seals, do meet the definition of environmental law under the NAAEC. According to the Submitters, regardless of the killing implement used, the commercial seal hunt is inherently cruel because of the environment in which it operates. They cite the large number of fishing vessels, a territory of hundreds of thousands of square miles, and the killing of over a hundred thousand seals in two or three day periods. The Submitters state that their position has been that the Canadian commercial seal hunt should be permanently stopped, based on their belief that the hunt cannot be carried out in an acceptably humane manner regardless of the level of enforcement. The Submitters add that they also believe that the CEC citizen submissions process could result in enforcement action which could, in turn, result in fewer seals suffering from cruel treatment at the hands of hunters.
The CEC Secretariat will now analyze the revised submission to determine whether it meets the requirements of Article 14 of the NAAEC.
The CEC citizen submission mechanism allows citizens to play an active “whistleblower” role in matters related to environmental law enforcement. Pursuant to NAAEC Article 14, any person or nongovernmental organization may file a submission with the Secretariat asserting that a NAFTA partner is failing to effectively enforce its environmental law. After reviewing the submission, the Secretariat may investigate the matter and publish a factual record of its findings.
For more information, please visit the CEC's Citizen Submissions on Enforcement Matters page. |
