As Vancouver prepares for the 2010 Olympics, Canadian athletes are about to get a uniform makeover. The Parliament voted unanimously last week on a motion urging their Olympic Committee to help promote the controversial seal hunt by indigenous Canadian tribes. One possibility? Every athlete’s uniform could include a small strip of genuine sealskin.

Canada’s Olympians themselves, it must be noted, are against the idea. So is PETA. (Shocker.)

It’s natural, of course, for athletes to resist attempts to politicize their moment in the spotlight. But at a time when USA uniforms carry commercial symbols like the Nike “swoosh,” the idea of using athletes to promote more practical national emblems may not be as crazy as it first sounds.

To be sure, Canada’s annual seal hunt is divisive, even among Canadians. The European Union has voted to ban the import of sealskin and other products from the hunt, and officials in Canada and Norway are considering a showdown before the World Trade Organization. And animal rights groups like the U.S. Humane Society have spent millions of dollars portraying seal hunters as compassion-deficient Neanderthals.

Meanwhile, Olympic uniform fashion is becoming the new statement in national pride. The USA sailing team wore Ralph Lauren to the 2008 Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, and the aforementioned Nike cornered the high-tech uniforms for the Track and Field franchise. Russia contracted with Bosco Sport last year. The Aussies engaged Sportcraft and supermodel Kristy Hinze to develop their uniforms. France, which never disappoints, has worked with the famed fashion house of Pierre Balmain in the past.

Canada has opted for symbolism over style in the past: The nation’s 2008 Beijing unis, from The Hudson’s Bay Company, used natural bamboo, organic cotton, and cacona fibers (made from coconut), but were jeered for looking like pajamas.

So what’s an ethical fashionista to think? Should the land of the maple leaf feel any shame for incorporating such a polarizing feature of its national identity on such a public stage? Or should the rest of us maybe feel a little bit of shame for not trying harder to understand the seal hunt beyond our predictable knee-jerks?

I’m on the fence—which is a sea change for me. 

I used to wear a “save the harp seals” pin as a teenager. Then I learned that it’s already illegal to hunt the cute, fuzzy seals depicted in all the photos with Paul McCartney and Brigitte Bardot. (So-called “whitecoat” seals are too young to be hunted.) I also learned that seal hunting doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Without it, seals multiply to the point where they can wipe out the population of Atlantic cod. So there’s a connection with sustainable seafood too.

Sure, the whole thing is still uncomfortable, and icky, and bloody. I don’t have any intention of ever shooting a seal myself. But I’ve done a fair amount of fishing in the past, so I suppose I shouldn’t have a problem with it.

I think that if the seals weren’t so darned cute, the fashion world would treat their fur the same way it treats other fur. That is, some people are never going to buy it, and it’s always going to be a conversation-stopper. But some people will never buy corduroy either. 

And I’ve never heard much outcry about the mass-murder of silkworms, which are (literally) boiled alive to harvest silk fibers. Even Stella McCartney sells silk lingerie. I don’t know for sure, but I’d imagine at least a few Asian countries feature silk in their official outfits at the Olympic Games. 

So what are we to think? Killing animals is never pretty, and your wardrobe is likely at least partially the result of some creature’s unwilling contribution. We wear leather shoes, wool socks, silk undies, plus snakeskin and fur trim. We carry crocodile bags. We use Burt’s Bees cosmetics. 

Even if you’re prepared to go totally “vegan” and be strict about it (as Chloe Jo Berman tries to be, for instance), the cotton in your t-shirt was harvested by machines that plowed countless critters under. Your rayon, Gore-tex, and faux furs are petrochemical products, made from crude oil pumped at the expense of wildlife habitat. And every “not tested on animals” cosmetic product contains ingredients that were tested on animals at some point in their history.

Is it even possible to stake out a moral high ground here? Maybe not. So perhaps a sealskin collar on the Canadian ski jackets wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Of course, if the Japanese grease their bobsled skids with whale oil, we’ll have words.