TORONTO – Hollywood producer Sam Simon and Canadian actress Pamela Anderson will be in Newfoundland on Tuesday to make an offer they hope sealers can’t refuse.
Simon, one of the creators of The Simpsons, will pledge $1 million to the Canadian Sealers Association (CSA) if it can arrange a federal buyout of the East Coast seal trade.
“The Sam Simon Foundation will pay $1 million to the Canadian Sealers Association for distribution to its members as a year-end bonus on December 31, 2015,” Simon explains in a letter he will hand-deliver to CSA president Eldred Woodford.
UPDATE: Pamela Anderson gets a frosty reception from Newfoundland sealers
The offer comes with several conditions. The CSA must secure, by the end of this year, bipartisan agreement to enact legislation ending the commercial seal hunt and to compensate sealers. The legislation would have to permanently dismantle the commercial seal fishery license program, including revoking existing licenses, by the end of 2015.
Simon also says the government must agree to stop fighting overseas bans on seal products and its efforts to establish new markets for Canadian seal products.
Native people can continue to hunt up to six seals each for personal use.
“This money would go directly to Canadian sealers,” Simon says of his $1 million offer.
The CSA represents more than 6,000 sealers, so each would receive less than $165 of the $1 million from Simon.
Anderson, a B.C. native, has long been an animal rights activist who has called for an end to the commercial seal slaughter.
“Nothing shocks me any more than that we still have the seal hunt and awful government officials not protecting the way they should,” Anderson told Global News in 2012. “It’s really time for politicians to face the facts and end this thing for good.”
In July, 58-year-old Simon revealed that he was diagnosed in November 2012 with terminal colon cancer and vowed to spend his fortune before he dies.
Simon and Anderson plan to spend two days in St. John’s.
Neither Woodford or anyone from the CSA could be reached for comment.
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