Natural Resources Minister John Efford wears a sealskin coat as he talks to reporters after attending a cabinet meeting at Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Saturday.

CREDIT: The Canadian Press

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OTTAWA - Natural Resources Minister John Efford attended his first cabinet meeting Saturday wearing a sealskin coat and was promptly clubbed down by animal rights activists.

"They were hunted off Newfoundland ... and the coat was made in St. John's," Efford said, as he proudly modelled the silver-grey, thigh-length jacket. "I think it's a great industry in Newfoundland. I've promoted it for years and years."

Rebecca Aldworth, seal campaigner for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, condemned the minister's fashion choice.

"It's in very bad taste," said Aldworth, whose group numbers two million members worldwide. "He's promoting the largest and cruelest slaughter of marine mammals in the world."

Since the time he was Newfoundland's fisheries minister in the 1990s, Efford has been one of the brashest boosters of the commercial seal hunt, blaming seals for eating millions of tonnes of fish.

Efford butted heads with the IFAW in 1998, when he was seeking to have Ottawa increase the allowable seal cull, while activists went on a high-profile campaign to shut the hunt down.

"I would like to see the six million seals, or whatever number is out there, killed and sold, or destroyed or burned. I do not care what happens to them," Efford said in the Newfoundland House of Assembly on May 4, 1998. "The more they kill, the better I will love it."

Efford won his battle against the IFAW, and the seal cull has increased steadily since the 1990s. This year, Ottawa announced the largest seal quota ever, allowing 975,000 animals to be harvested over the next three years.

Still, animal rights groups are fighting back. In June this year, the U.S. Humane Society took out an ad in the New York Times calling on American tourists to boycott Canada. In November, 159 members of the British House of Commons signed a resolution condemning the seal hunt. And just two weeks ago, nine U.S. senators backed a resolution calling on Ottawa to stop the "cruel and needless" hunt.

"I'm surprised that John Efford's been included in the cabinet. As far as we're concerned, he's an embarrassment," said Andrew Plumbly, director of the Montreal-based animal rights group Global Action Network. "The fact of the matter is that the seal hunt has given Canada a black eye internationally."

Efford said he'll continue to wear his coat and support the sealing industry despite the protests.