Fighting over shark fin ban at city hall

TORONTO, Ont. - The proposal to ban the sale and consumption of shark fins in Toronto attracted some passionate and frustrated people to Friday's Licensing and Standards Committee meeting at city hall.

Although a final decision is still months away, that didn't stop people, including some celebrities, from sharing their views on the controversial practice of selling and eating shark fins.

Les Stroud, best known as TV's Survivorman, has travelled the world and swam through shark infested waters multiple times, and he told those at city hall Friday that more than 70-million sharks are killed yearly.

"We have the opportunity now, like in California, and soon the rest of the world we hope, and like the whales before, to stop the slaughter of sharks," Stroud said.

Sherman Chan, who runs the Crown Prince Restaurant in Toronto, spoke through an interpreter and told the committee a ban on shark fins is an attack on his culture.

"The shark fin, this dish is from Asian times, it has a long, long history," Chan said.

Some members of the Chinese business community said they believe the city is harassing them, and insist a ban will mean lost jobs around the city.

"Why are we singling out the Chinese people consuming shark fin, usually at a celebration, something that has been in our culture for thousands of years," said one man at the meeting.

Rob Stewart, the award-winning director of the documentary Shark Water, told the committee that culture is no excuse for the consumption of fins.

"It was a cultural right to kill elephants for ivory, a cultural right to eat panda bears, all of these things have had to change for a culture to survive, especially on the plant we exist today, it needs to change," Stewart said.

The licensing committee has decided to schedule and hold a special meeting a later date, dedicated solely to debating the shark fin ban.

A specific bylaw has yet to be drafted as the committee and city staff are still in the information gathering stage, and it will likely be three months before we see a draft bylaw.