Seal hunt protesters who claim their ship was intentionally rammed by a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker, will be the ones to face charges, said Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn.
Crew aboard the Farley Mowat, a vessel owned by the conservation group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said the icebreaker Des Groseilliers smashed into their vessel twice last weekend in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
On the society's website, Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson claims Hearn is "weaving a very tangled web" with his version of events and crew have captured the incident on video, proving they were not at fault.
"The Canadian government is abusing their authority," Watson told CTV Atlantic Thursday, adding that if his ship had rammed the coast guard vessel, action would have been taken immediately by the authorities.
The video does not seem to confirm or deny either side's interpretation of the events. Both vessels are traveling at low speeds and when the ships scrape into each other, it is not clear which ship's direction instigated the minor collisions.
Watson said that the Farley Mowat suffered some hull plate damage and they were considering legal action against the Canadian government.
Hearn said the ship ignored Coast Guard warnings to stay away from sealers on the ice north of Cape Breton, and thus broke the law.
"They've been very cute. These people are smart. They've been around. They know the law. They know how they can flaunt it,'' said Hearn in an interview with radio station VOCM.
"However, they push it and in some cases, recently, they've broken it. They cannot approach within half a mile of our sealers. They have done that.''
'Insensitive comments'
In his phone interview with CTV, Watson repeated and defended his controversial comments about the deaths of four sealers, who died when their boat capsized during a coast guard tow last week.
In a statement made shortly after the men's deaths, he said sealers are "baby killers" . . . "who are seeking sympathy because some of their own died."
Watson defended those comments, saying seals are no different than human beings.
"The deaths of the sealers is a tragedy but I do believe the deaths 325,000 seals overall is far greater tragedy," Watson said. "That's like saying the murder of one person is less a tragedy than the murder of a million."
"When I went to biology class, I was taught we were all animals."
When asked if he thought his comments were insensitive to the families of the perished sealers in the Iles-de-la-Madeleine, he said "those people haven't exercised much sensitivity towards us or seals."
"The last time I was (there), those people beat the crap out of me."
The confrontation
The Coast Guard's version of the clash is that the Farley Mowat "grazed" the 98-metre Des Groseilliers twice, but that no major collision took place.
Hearn has said the group was trying to provoke a confrontation.
"They have endangered our sealers. We are aware of that. We have these facts documented,'' said Hearn.
Prior to the clash, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society was warned by Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon they would be in violation of international maritime laws of they entered Canadian waters to protest the seal hunt.
But the ship came anyway, with the society claiming the 54-metre Farley Mowat is a registered European yacht and not subject to the same laws as commercial vessels.
"As long as we stay outside the 12-mile limit (of Canadian waters), we have a right to be there," Watson said.
