Things are much quieter in St. Mary’s Bay in southwestern Nova Scotia than they were at this time last year.
In 2020, around this time, when Sipekne’katik First Nation fishing boats slid off the Saulnierville pier, they faced a gauntlet of more than 80 non-native fishing boats, there to protest the launch of the moderate livelihood lobster from the Mi’kmaq gang. fishery.
This year, there are no large-scale protests, just Sipekne’katik ships setting their treaty traps, and Fisheries and Oceans of Canada (DFO) control ships lifting and confiscating them.
In this, the second year that the band has attempted its autonomous fishery, the situation is no closer to a resolution than it was a year ago. But the winds of political change may have conspired to revive the process.
On election night, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet’s first casualty came early when Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan fell in defeat on Nova Scotia’s south coast, St. Margarets riding.
His defeat means that his successor will inherit the unresolved dispute over Nova Scotia’s indigenous moderate livelihood lobster fishery. And that potentially means a clean slate for negotiations between all parties involved.
And the head of the gang at the center of that fishery says that perhaps the best way to establish that clean slate would be to recruit a minister of fisheries from the interior, rather than from the shores, where they would be exposed to pressure from their community.
“I think they threw Jordan to the wolves even giving him that spot,” said Sipekne’katik gang boss Mike Sack. “I think someone else in central Canada would be better, not so much from a fishing community.”
The Sipekne’katik initially established their fishery in St. Mary’s Bay in September 2020, citing the 1999 Marshall decision of the Supreme Court of Canada that granted them the right to fish for a moderate livelihood wherever and whenever they wanted.
That fishery sparked weeks of protests, and sometimes violence, from non-indigenous fishermen angry that indigenous boats were fishing outside of commercial seasons. Commercial fishers argued that doing so would harm the lobster population, but fishery biologists said the scale of the indigenous fishery was too small to affect populations.
Since the launch of that fishery, both the Potlotek and Pictou Landing bands have launched their own moderate livelihood fisheries.
Jordan, whose neighboring riding includes Halifax fishing communities on the province’s southeast coast, paid the price for his mismanagement of the problem when he faced criticism from indigenous and non-indigenous fishermen for failing to achieve any sort of resolution.
Shortly after the Sipekne’katik launched their autonomous moderate livelihood fishery, it announced that the Mi’kmaq gang had a right to fish treaty, and DFO scientists said there were no conservation issues with the fishery.
But in March this year, he changed his mind, saying that indigenous fishermen could only fish with DFO tags on their traps, during the trading season, citing a second Supreme Court decision by Marshall: “… the rights of Treaties are subject to regulation as long as such regulation is demonstrated by the Crown as justified on conservation or other grounds of public importance. ”
That announcement earned the praise of commercial fishermen and the scorn of indigenous fishermen, who point out that according to the decision, those limitations had to be enacted in consultation with indigenous gangs and should be supported by justifications. Talks between the federal government and Sipekne’katik broke down late last year, and the band has said repeated requests to DFO on the rationale for those conservation concerns have not been met.
From Sipekne’katik’s point of view, the hope is that a new fisheries minister will bring a new perspective, said Sack, who has argued that while the liberal government has professed a priority toward indigenous reconciliation, Jordan’s decisions seem have been improperly. influenced by commercial fishermen in the horsemanship in which he lived.
That is why he offers the idea of appointing a minister of fisheries from a non-coastal province or territory. The last time it happened was when James Angus MacKinnon, a liberal representing Edmonton West, was appointed by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1948.
(Six years later, King’s successor, Louis St. Laurent, would appoint James Sinclair from the Coast-Capilano leadership in British Columbia. Sinclair was the father of Margaret Sinclair, who would marry former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and the current prime minister’s grandfather, Justin Trudeau.)
While a fisheries minister not hailing from either coast seems like a rarity, Sack said, while everyone interested in the fishery worked to bring the new minister up to speed, the minister’s point of view could be free from the pressures involved in living in the community.
“I hope ideally we can meet with the new fisheries minister, help him see where we are coming from, and then maybe be part of a cabinet discussion to help everyone understand,” he said.
“(We would like to see) someone who is a fair person, who has nothing to gain politically and who is willing to look at him with an open mind,” he said. “Someone to take us to a meeting where we can express our concerns and someone to come to our community, see how we live, see our people. And then he goes down to the fishing villages and he sees it all. “
Representatives for the Unified Fisheries Conservation Alliance, an association representing Nova Scotia’s non-indigenous commercial fishers, did not respond to requests for comment. Members of that group were in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court this week seeking intervener status in a case in which the Potlotek First Nation was seeking an injunction to prevent the federal government from interfering in its fishery for livelihoods. moderate.
Former Fisheries Minister Jordan did not respond to requests for comment.
Reference-www.thestar.com