The blame for smouldering unrest and the latest blowup in tensions between native and non-native fishers, most recently in southwestern Nova Scotia, can be laid at the feet of the federal government.
Ottawa has had 21 years, since the Supreme Court of Canada’s Marshall decisions in late 1999, to negotiate moderate livelihood fishery agreements with First Nations. But here we are, in 2020, with no such deals having yet been struck with a number of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw bands, including the Sipekne’katik.
No one should fault the Aboriginal side for being fed up with waiting and instead going ahead and setting up their own moderate livelihood fisheries management plans.
Commercial lobster fishers also have good reason to be fed up with Ottawa. They’re frustrated, they say, that longstanding complaints about illegal lobster catches and sales have largely gone unpunished by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The alleged culprits are unproven, though there are plenty of accusations.
When Sipekne’katik fishers started dropping lobster traps out of season in mid-September, the commercial side decided to take matters into their own hands.
Regardless of rationale, however, there’s simply no justification for vigilantism. The violence, threats and provocations — including reports of flares being shot at people, attempted boat rammings, trap lines being cut and wharfside physical altercations — must end before someone gets seriously hurt.
The priority — besides ensuring everyone’s rights are being respected — should be conservation. No one wants to see the stock decimated. But it’s hard to take seriously that a Mi’kmaw moderate livelihood lobster fishery that permits a total of 350 traps in St. Marys Bay at this time of year is somehow a menace to sustainability, especially when there are more than 1,000 commercial lobster licences in the area, each allowed up to 400 traps when the season opens in November.
If a native band and DFO cannot come to an agreement about what a moderate livelihood fishery would look like, the issue may conceivably end up back in the courts. But the Supreme Court urged this issue be negotiated, not litigated.
Ottawa should quit dawdling until tensions blow the lid off of situations — creating dangerous conditions and setting back reconciliation efforts between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals — and get serious about concluding moderate livelihood fisheries deals with First Nations groups that have shown commendable patience.
That includes disputes in other parts of Atlantic Canada.
The federal government should also listen to commercial fishers and beef up enforcement of illegal fishing activity occurring outside regulated seasons or specific deals with native bands.
Everyone needs to accept that the Mi’kmaq have treaty rights to a moderate livelihood fishery, and it’s the business of DFO and native bands — and no one else — to define what that looks like. With conservation explicitly the lodestar for both sides, we should all be able to live with the results.
