Emmanuelle Vaugier's Hard-Hitting Video Deemed Too Blunt for Canadian TV
For Immediate Release:
May 25, 2012
Contact:
Wendy Wegner 202-483-7382
Toronto -- The new PETA TV spot featuring Vancouver-born Two and a Half Men star Emmanuelle Vaugier won't be appearing on Canadian television anytime soon, thanks to a rejection from the Television Bureau of Canada, which deemed the new spot too graphic to run. In the piece, available here, Vaugier explains that the Canadian government is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize the commercial seal slaughter even as the international market for seal products has disappeared. The Television Bureau specifically objected to two moments in the video: A bloody seal gurgles after being left to die by a sealer, and a sealer bludgeons two seals in quick succession.
"If the events in this video are too harsh for the Canadian government to broadcast, they should be too harsh for the Canadian government to pay for," says PETA Senior Vice President Dan Mathews. PETA had hoped to run the spot during financial programs such as CTV's Pattie Lovett-Reid Show and CBC's Marketplace but will now look into distributing the video online.
A broadcast quality version of Vaugier's video is available for download here. For more information, please visit PETA.org.