Despite evidence that increasing the seal hunt quota could bring the harp seal population down the dangerous levels, the Canadian government has approved a 55,000 seal increase to quota for the upcoming commercial seal hunt.

The increase brings the total to 338,000 young seals scheduled to be brutally killed. Canada’s Humane Society said the higher quota could bring the downfall of the species, much like times in the past when the population dropped two-thirds in a decade with an inflated quota.

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In shocking news, the Canadian government has announced that two chemicals used in cosmetics are carcinogens that are severely harmful to human health. A further two chemicals found in lipstick and other personal care products have also been found to be highly toxic to the environment.

The two cancer-causing chemicals, isoprene and epichlorohydrin, have been added to the Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist to prevent their future use in cosmetics. Health Canada is also proposing that manufacturers use best-available technology to control releases of isoprene.

The cosmetics chemicals posing a danger to the environment are the siloxanes D4 and D5, which are used as emollients to soften the skin and are found in most personal care products on the market in Canada and the United States.

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On Saturday Canada issued new regulations for its annual seal slaughter, banning the skinning of live seals and forbidding the use of the spiked weapon called a hakapik on seals over one-year-old. Unfortunately, most seals killed in the hunt are under a year old so the law will not alter the cruel deaths many seals face each year.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which has confronted and interfered with the seal hunters the past several years, issued a statement condemning the Canadian efforts as merely a reaction to the European Union’s threat to ban all inhumanely slaughtered seal products.

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The ridesharing website PickupPal (as reported in a previous post) was struck down by a Canadian court in a case brought against them by bus giant Trentway-Wagar. The company took PickupPal to the Highway Transport Board complaining that the ride-matching service fell afoul of the province’s obscenely strict ride-sharing laws which were adopted in the 1970s.

Sit down, these rules are crazy (it’s like those crazy sodomy laws no one follows):

• You must travel from home to work only - nowhere else!
• You cannot cross municipal boundaries
• You must ride with the same driver each day
• You must pay the driver no more frequently than weekly

The issue is not only that PickupPal’s site allows drivers and passengers to connect for carpooling. While it is up to the users to determine compensation, apparently the site “does nothing to check on insurance, roadworthiness of the vehicles, driving history, or anything else.” This worried the Highway Transport Board most.

As we all know that carpooling or public transport can lead to things like decapitation or movies like Speed - no one wants that. So the court ruled that PIckupPal owes CAN$2,836.07 to the province and another CAN$8,500 to Trentway-Wagar.

But Trentway-Wagar says its beef was simply that it is unfair they have to meet labor, environmental, and equipment standards to haul passengers around when services like PickupPal can arrange rides without doing any of that. Hey, I can get behind that (insert sodomy joke here).

And while your inner-hippy might be annoyed by this bump in the road, know that small (and totally unlicensed) businesses have developed around websites like this, and Craigslist. And it’s these illegal ventures that have led to serious tragedies in the past.

Image: Mr. T in DC on Flickr under Creative Commons

Chinese car maker Changan announced today that it will launch electric cars in Canada before the end of 2008. The cars, developed jointly with Canadian company Electrovaya, could be the first sold by a Chinese company in North America.

The fleet of 30 electric vehicles (EVs) have been under development since May, and are based on one of Changan’s exisiting compact models, the BenBen, fitted with an Electrovaya powertrain. For the time being, the cars will be assembled and distributed in Canada, but in the long term Changan intends to develop the EVs entirely in China, before shipping to North America.

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