He says Canada violated international law when it allowed Inuits to kill two bowhead whales without the commission's approval. One of the whales belonged to healthy stocks in the western Arctic. But it's the killing of a bowhead whale in the eastern Canadian Arctic that has U.S. and IWC officials riled. The eastern group is thought to number only about 450 whales. The whaling commission's Michael Tillman.
Canadian officials disagree.
Bill Doubleday is Director General of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. We have both traditional knowledge and scientific studies which indicate the eastern Arctic bowhead have increased since the 1920s when commercial whaling stopped, despite the occasional harvest of one whale in some years. So there's no threat to conservation there. In response to the illegal whale harvests, U.S. President Bill Clinton in March ordered that a current ban on the importation of seal products from Canada be continued. Our Inuit are opposed to this.