­­"For entrepreneur Samuel Bilodeau, there's no need to look far and wide to explain the stagnation of the seal industry: as long as exports to key markets such as the United States and the European Union are not possible, we won't develop this manufacturing sector here.

Bilodeau, a small business based in Normandin, Lac-Saint-Jean, makes sealskin coats and accessories, including boots and mittens, which it sells mainly in Canada, as it is unable to market them elsewhere.

Even if hunting and processing methods have greatly evolved, the industry is caught up in an enduring image of beheaded seal pups on white ice floes and European activist fronts in Quebec from the 1970s to the early 2000s. The voices of Brigitte Bardot and Paul McCartney were loud enough to shut down key markets, which are still double-locked."

Read the article here : https://www.lapresse.ca/affair...