Nunavik sled dog slaughter

Excerpts from the transcript of an As It Happens podcast:

Later this month, the Federal Government will apologize for the mass slaughter of Inuit sled dogs in the 1950s and 1960s. More than a thousand dogs were shot and killed by the RCMP, employees of the Hudson's Bay Company and other government officials across Nunavik, the Inuit region of northern Quebec...

PITA AATAMI: We've tried to look into why they decided to start shooting the dogs there was never a clear answer, but there was always questions about safety and that some children had been mauled and killed by sled dogs. But these are not pets, these Eskimos sled dogs, they were used for their livelihood. Some could be very mean. And so at the same time, the stories when I started hearing about these killings, I was starting to ask, why did they shoot your dogs? They couldn't go back to their camps. They couldn't go back to their trap lines. They couldn't do anything anymore. So, then one woman that really caught my attention was a lady from [inaudible], which is next door to [inaudible]. She was talking about that when her husband's dogs were shot. They were living in a shack and they would just stare out the window, looking out the window. Couldn't go hunting any more. Couldn't go get any more wood from the tree line, Couldn't go get their ice, couldn't go out hunting anymore. It's like he lost a part of his life. So she was crying when she told us this, that the pain that people went through. And I had one lady as well from [inaudible] that talked about wanting to, telling the police, please save me one dog. They had nine dogs. And the policeman didn't listen to that lady, even though she said, leave me one dog. We're going to still need dogs. But the policeman didn't listen, shot all the dogs. Their livelihood was taken away. It's like they had to be in the community. Now they couldn't go out, do their hunting. Only a few people at that time could afford snow machines. And the snow machines that they were coming out were not reliable, were not reliable at all. So people still prefer the dogs to the skidoo at that time. And at a skidoo can get lost. But a dog can never get lost, even if they're going through a storm, they always bring them home no matter what. So they knew [inaudible] and that they were our livelihood. That was part of who we are.

The Government of Quebec apologized for the slaughter in 2011 and gave former sled dog owners three million dollars in compensation. Ottawa hasn't offered any compensation until now.

This is all new to me, and I will defer to readers from Canada as to why this program was conducted back then.  The government claim of dangerous dogs sounds phony for such a widespread campaign.  To my cynical mind the slaughter of the dogs carries undertones of ethnic cleansing.

Comments and insights, please.