Supreme Court out of date on moderate livelihood fishery: MP
The committee tasked with recommending next steps on implementing a moderate livelihood fishery isn’t revisiting the Supreme Court of Canada decision on which it is based.
“Not that I know of,” said MP Ken MacDonald, chairman of the standing committee on fisheries and oceans, on whether legal analysis would be part of the anticipated testimony.
“Unless someone has proposed a legal mind to give it their best shot. I think it would be relevant but on any decision, if you get two lawyers in a room, they can both argue on the opposite side.”
“The Court did not hold that the Mi’kmaq treaty right cannot be regulated or that the Mi’kmaq are guaranteed an open season in the fisheries,”reads the Supreme Court clarification known as Marshall II.
“… The Court was thus most explicit in confirming the regulatory authority of the federal and provincial governments within their respective legislative fields to regulate the exercise of the treaty right subject to the constitutional requirement that restraints on the exercise of the treaty right have to be justified on the basis of conservation or other compelling and substantial public objectives,”
The court went further to say the federal fisheries minister not only has the authority but the responsibility to regulate fisheries for conservation, substantive public policy objectives or out of fairness to a long-term existing user of the resource that may include non-aboriginals.
Recommendation Number 1 was that access be provided by buying up commercial licences and transferring them to First Nations.
The federal government accepted the recommendations and created the Marshall Response Initiatives.
According to a 2009 audit of the program, $589.6 million was spent buying commercial licences, providing training and equipment. By the time the programs wrapped up in 2008, Maritime First Nations held over 1,200 commercial fishing licences representing 10.5 per cent of all the licences available.
https://www.thechronicleherald.ca/ne...ery-mp-513580/