I don’t envy Bernadette Jordan. As part of her new portfolio as minister of Fisheries and Oceans, she will have to navigate a path that hopefully leads to a constitutionally legitimate lobster fishery management system that proves acceptable to all stakeholders. That may turn out to be an exercise in futility, but I hope not.
My own thinking is based on two fundamentals:
- Sustainable resource management is pivotal. The rules currently governing the lobster fishery have worked fairly well. If various Mi’kmaw bands have other approaches that may work, it’s time for an exchange of ideas, knowledge, and respectful debate with fisheries scientists and the non-Indigenous fishing community. Keep the microphones away. Grandstanding is counterproductive.
- It’s time for all concerned to discuss where treaty rights end and privilege begins. Let the discussions happen soon, and again, away from the news media, please. The focus should be on finding solutions, not scoring points.
So let discussions happen, soon, but if Indigenous fishers want to fish on a more intensive scale, they need to follow the same rules as other commercial fishers, whatever those rules might be. Otherwise, we are putting the sustainability of the entire fishery at risk, and legitimizing privilege. Neither direction is acceptable.
John Sollows, Yarmouth
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