THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, June 1, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met with videoconference this day at 9:05 a.m. [ET] to discuss the government response to the fourth report of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, tabled with the Clerk of the Senate on July 12, 2022.
Senator Bev Busson (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: Good morning, everyone. My name is Bev Busson, I’m a senator from British Columbia and I have the pleasure of chairing this meeting this morning.
Today we’re conducting a meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. Should any technical challenges arise, particularly in relation to interpretation, please signal this to the chair or to the clerk and we will work to resolve the issue. Before I begin, I would like to take a few moments to allow the members of this committee to introduce themselves, beginning with the honourable senator immediately to my right.
Senator Kutcher: I’m Stan Kutcher from Nova Scotia. Welcome.
Senator R. Patterson: Rebecca Patterson from Ontario. Welcome.
Senator Osler: Gigi Osler from Manitoba.
Senator Francis: Brian Francis, Epekwitk, P.E.I.
Senator Ataullahjan: Salma Ataullahjan from Ontario. Welcome.
Senator Cordy: Jane Cordy from Nova Scotia. Welcome.
The Deputy Chair: On March 7, 2023, the government response to the committee’s fourth report, entitled Peace on the Water, was deposited with the Clerk of the Senate under the order of reference to study the government’s response referred to this committee on February 24, 2023.
Today, under this mandate, the committee will be hearing first from Michelle Glasgow, Chief of the Sipekne’katik First Nation. Thank you for bringing some cultural attire. It really adds to this conversation. On behalf of the members, I want to thank you for being here. I understand you have some opening remarks. Following your presentation, members of the committee will have questions for you.
Michelle Glasgow, Chief, Sipekne’katik First Nation: Good morning, senators, and thank you for having me here. It’s nice to have a lot of Nova Scotians here too. It makes me feel at home.
It has been over 20 years since the Supreme Court Marshall decision and still we are made to feel like we do not have a voice. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ — DFO — response to us exercising our rights as Mi’kmaq people has not been peaceful or friendly and is not in keeping with the Crown’s treaty obligations. For over 20 years, the Marshall decision has passed and still no changes have been made to the Fisheries Act or its regulations respecting our rights to livelihood fisheries. The denial of Indigenous livelihood fisheries is a continuation of the government’s systematic oppression of our Indigenous people. The Senate provided a report on Indigenous fisheries entitled Peace on the Water. The report specifically made reference to the fact that Sipekne’katik should not be dealing with DFO on these matters.
If your members of Parliament do not respect the words and wisdom of its Senate, how can we possibly feel respected and heard as Indigenous people? This report says that we should not be dealing with DFO on these matters, and it says we should be dealing with Marc Miller, the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, but when we wrote to Minister Miller, we were told to deal with the minister of DFO.
We are cautiously optimistic, but truthfully, how can we mend our relationship with DFO? Each year we go through our consultation process. It involves our community members, and it is in regard to our management plan for food, social and ceremonial fisheries as well as our livelihood fisheries.
We consult with our fishers, our elders and our community members alike, because all their voices are important, as our treaties are collective rights. We draft our fisheries management plans and provide them to DFO and Crown–Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada — CIRNAC — and DFO always sends their plan back, stating that the Sipekne’katik fisheries plan is without consultation with them.
I recall about eight years ago when we created a newer version of our food, social and ceremonial plan. We sent it to DFO, and DFO sent it back to us saying they were mirroring our plan, but the lack of trust has been building up over the years and it has prompted Sipekne’katik to send a letter back stating that we do not need their approval and that we are capable of managing our own plans. Still, DFO totally disregards our process and our rights and, as a result, they charge our harvesters for not fishing under the DFO-approved plan, and yet they are fishing under our approved fisheries management plans.
DFO will often write to us to consult on issues; however, they provide short timelines for response. Once, it was 12 days, and another was only several days. This does not provide adequate time for the required research, fact gathering and, most importantly, community engagement, which is the core to our decision-making process.
We have written to DFO and CIRNAC and have received no responses, or we have received a response more than half a year later. It has been over 20 years, and still DFO constantly harasses our band members. DFO follows our band members around when they are fishing on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, racially profiling them and assuming that they are breaking the law when, in fact, they are not. They make our band members feel like they need to fish at night because there’s no respect for our right to fish for our livelihood.
DFO has been charging our band members with whatever they can, for example, having too many lobsters according to the limit that DFO placed on us, or fishing without authorization even though we are authorized by our treaty, which was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada in Marshall and also by our Sipekne’katik management plan. DFO never respected our right to fish for our livelihood, even after we submitted lobster livelihood plans to them and created our own livelihood tags, which we provided to our band members.
Right now, there are over 20 separate court cases in provincial courts involving our community members who were fishing for a moderate livelihood. In each of those cases, they were all charged with fishing without authorization, even though they were authorized to fish by our chief and council and by our management plan.
Our people are being treated like criminals, and the people really committing the crimes are given special treatment. For example, consider the charges against 23 non-Indigenous arsonists and one non-Indigenous person charged with assaulting one of our elected leaders. They all were given restorative justice, which is an Indigenous process, yet when one of our members was alleged to have obstructed justice, the Crown refused restorative justice in his case.
How do we move forward when we feel like we are stuck in a system that is unjustly oppressing our people, and our oppressors are the ones that have the authority over us? Our rights are not respected by DFO, even though Indigenous rights are communal-based rights recognized by the Supreme Court. DFO continually misinterprets Marshall II in regard to the power of DFO to regulate our fisheries. What they will not accept is that, according to Marshall II, DFO’s right to regulate is limited to either conservation or public safety purposes.
In 2022, DFO set a limit to our food, social and ceremonial lobster fishing. It limited our catch of lobster to 45,000 pounds for the year. When DFO placed limits on our food, social and ceremonial fishing, there was no true consultation with Sipekne’katik, nor could they prove why it was just to do so.
Last year in Lobster Fishing Area 34, over 45 million pounds of lobster were harvested by commercial fishers, and this is just one area. If we include the rest of the lobster fishing areas in Nova Scotia, it would be over 100 million pounds that were harvested last year, and this is not by our people.
Considering how many commercial licences there are and the number of lobsters being harvested by commercial fishers, there’s no justification for infringing on our rights to fish lobster, but we have a limit on how much our community can catch.
Moreover, the Supreme Court of Canada has been clear in a number of cases that Indigenous rights take priority over commercial fisheries; however, DFO has placed commercial privilege above our individual and treaty right to fish. This practice is biased and is the cause of conflict and division. Actions against Indigenous or treaty rights must be justified. Even after the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, reached Royal Assent in 2021, which affirms our right to manage our own fisheries, DFO does not respect our management plans. It has been over 20 years, and still we are fighting for our right to fish and we are fighting for our right to manage our own plans.
Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much, Chief Glasgow. I appreciate your input.
There are a number of senators who want to ask you some questions.
Senator Francis: Chief Glasgow, the harassment and violence endured by your harvesters and the broader community in 2020 garnered domestic and international attention, but it seems that little has improved. Why do you think there is such reluctance from the minister and the department to respect the ruling of the highest court in the land?
Ms. Glasgow: With 2020 and everything that happened, DFO had two years to charge our members, and I feel that they waited for everything to cool down, per se, and just recently, probably at the end of 2022, they came into our community and they charged about 20 members of our community.
So throughout those two years, there was no word that they were going to be charged, and then I think it was 23 months later that the charges were laid. I think they were just hoping we’ll go away or hoping we’ll stop, but this is our way of life. For many of our people and their families, this is how they provide for their family and for their children.
Senator Francis: What would you say the relationship is like today with DFO?
Ms. Glasgow: When they came into our community, I got a lot of messages. What we did was we had an emergency council meeting and we made a motion that DFO is not allowed to freely come into our community, because we noticed that it seems as if DFO intentionally causes conflict with our members so that charges can be laid more easily.
When you’re coming into our community, you’re coming in as a guest, but they’re coming in forcefully, so we made rules and regulations. When they come, they come to our RCMP and give the RCMP their paperwork, and then the RCMP will contact the members, because we have a better relationship with the RCMP within our community.
Senator Francis: Thank you for that, Chief.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Chief Glasgow.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you very much, Chief Glasgow, for being with us, and congratulations on your appointment.
Ms. Glasgow: Thank you.
Senator Kutcher: I have three questions, but, of course, each question has multiple components, and Senator Ravalia did give me his time. Thank you.
The first question is about the rights-based fisheries and education. Are you aware of any education programs that DFO has created to teach Nova Scotia citizens about what a rights‑based fishery is? Have you and your people been asked to co-create any educational programs that teach the larger community what a rights-based fishery is? The third part of that question is: Have you noticed any change in understanding of what a rights-based fishery is amongst Nova Scotians in the last five or six years? That’s the first question.
Ms. Glasgow: Thank you, senator, for your questions.
I’m not aware of any rights-based fishery education developed by DFO. We have not been asked to co-create anything to educate anybody on our rights-based fisheries.
What was the last part?
Senator Kutcher: Have you noticed any change in Nova Scotians’ understanding of what a rights-based fishery is over the last 5 or 10 years?
Ms. Glasgow: It depends on the community, I would have to say. If you go into Halifax, many more people are understanding, willing and open to learning. If you go down the South Shore, it’s a little bit of a different atmosphere which we have to deal with.
One of the main things across Canada, and especially within Nova Scotia, is that everybody needs to know what the treaty rights are and what exactly Aboriginal rights are. That is what our provinces are lacking.
If we could teach our children at a young age things right from our area, our province, instead of all the other history lessons, then as they grow into adults they would have more understanding, but that isn’t happening.
When we’re pushing for more learning on our rights-based fishing, we need to push for more learning about our treaties, about the First Peoples and our way of life.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you, Chief Glasgow.
Are you aware of any actions that DFO has undertaken to effectively decrease racism within DFO?
The second question is: Has DFO asked you to co-create any programs or interventions to address embedded racism within DFO?
The third question builds on the second question: Have you noticed any change in racist attitudes within DFO in the last 5 to 10 years?
Ms. Glasgow: Thank you again for your questions.
I’m not aware of any actions DFO has taken or that DFO created anything that will lessen racism or help out. We haven’t been asked to co-create anything.
In the last five years, it has been the same. If you saw videos from 1999 and 2000, that was my father’s boat. My father is Alexander Peter McDonald, and he was also former chief. He was fighting then. He’s still fighting. He’s older now. In 2020, he was still out there fishing. He’s still fighting for his right to fish. This is lifelong. I have known him all my life. He’s a strong warrior. He still struggles. He lives down in the Digby area. He keeps to himself. He knows that there’s still racism. It’s still the same.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you for that.
My last question is very short. As a federal department, is DFO capable of adequately addressing the rights-based fisheries?
Ms. Glasgow: Thank you for your question.
I don’t think DFO is the right way to go with addressing any of our treaty fishing. The conflict that has been created by DFO and the overall feeling that our people have when DFO comes around is not good.
In order to move forward in a good way, we would need to establish something by the Mi’kmaq for the Mi’kmaq that is not DFO. DFO isn’t working for us. To us, it feels like DFO is working for the commercial fishers. Thank you.
Senator Ataullahjan: Chief Glasgow, you said that you’ve been asked to mend your relationship with DFO. Do you think that relationship can be mended?
Besides, why should that responsibility fall on you to mend a relationship that has been broken for so long? What about their responsibility?
Ms. Glasgow: Thank you for your question.
When I speak to my community members and our fishers, I do not see us moving forward in a good way with DFO having authorization over us, because we feel that we can manage our own plans.
I don’t know why it is that we have to find a way to deal with DFO as a whole. There are some nice officers, but you can count them on your hand. It’s very hard to move forward with the DFO and them claiming the authorization that they have.
When we have our management plans and we present them and do all the community engagement, it’s a lot of time and work. Our people’s voices are heard in our management plan. Then for us to send it to them and them to take it and say, “No,” they’re fair plans. We also want to work on preservation and conservation of the species.
It seems as if when they put limits on us they’re doing it so that as soon as someone is over that limit, they’re getting charged. We find that they’re using our plans. They’re manipulating our plans so that they can charge our members. I don’t see us moving forward in a good way with DFO.
Senator Ataullahjan: We’ve heard in this committee that the DFO is now open to hearing ideas of the First Nations. You have kind of answered my question already. Is it also your sense that they’re open to hearing from you? Is that the sense you get in your interactions with the DFO? You have just said that the conflict has been created by DFO. Yet now we’re hearing that they’re open to hearing ideas from you. Is that the sense you get?
Ms. Glasgow: They’re open to hearing from us.
Senator Ataullahjan: Ideas, yes.
Ms. Glasgow: Yes. When you talk about co-development, I feel that they’re open to hearing from us just to check something off their list and say, “We heard from the First Nation.” It is now, “We co-developed it together,” when really all they’re doing is hearing but they’re not taking anything that we said and applying it to anything. I feel that they’re using it just to have a box that they check off, but it’s not meaningful.
Senator Ataullahjan: Thank you for your honesty.
Senator Cordy: Thank you for being here. You’re very practical in your answers. That’s helpful.
Being from Nova Scotia, I remember the Marshall decision in 1999. That was 24 years ago. Here we are in Ottawa still talking about the Marshall court decision not being implemented and not being followed by the government. We would like to poke a stick at it, if we can, and see if we can make something start to change.
The discussions should be nation-to-nation discussions. What we’ve heard from you, and many other witnesses, is that, in fact, it’s not nation to nation; it’s a hierarchy, and then the Indigenous communities are below that, so it’s not an equal footing. I’m putting that in my words. That’s the sense I got from witnesses that we’ve had.
You spoke about dealing not with the fisheries minister or the Department of Fisheries but, rather, speaking with Minister Miller. I look at this as a court decision, even with Justice Minister Lametti, where there wouldn’t be a conflict within the Department of Fisheries but, rather, it would be implementing a judicial decision. However, after 24 years working with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, this doesn’t seem to me, as an outsider, to be working. Could you comment on that?
Ms. Glasgow: Thank you for your question. It isn’t working. Twenty-four years is a very long time, especially when we have people getting charged. We have people losing boats and vehicles. My father, for example, lost his truck in 1999. He was so happy when got this brand-new truck that he was bragging about it. He always wanted one but was never able to get one. So, he got this brand-new truck but they seized his truck and kept it for over 10 years. When he got it back, it was no good. It’s very sad that our people are trying to establish themselves and they are not able to do so.
Something has to be done. It’s not working. Right now, we have a court case against Canada where we have to prove we have rights. We’re opting for mediation; why do we have to prove we have those rights? It’s been 24 years since the Marshall case and I feel that we may be in a worse position. They are just using it against us because nothing is defined. They are charging us, our people, and it’s terrible.
Senator Cordy: My comment to somebody who said about the Marshall case “Well, we need more time,” was “Well, how much time? It’s been 24 years. Is it 30 years, 40, 50?” To the average person, I think 24 years would be more than enough time to have the Marshall decision fully implemented.
I would like to go back to what you were speaking about earlier regarding what happened in 2020, namely, the national attention to the South Shore fisheries in Sipekne’katik in particular. Those who watched it have the visuals of what was happening to the Indigenous fishers on the South Shore. You said — and I didn’t know this — that DFO had two years to charge people, yet they waited until two years and a bit had passed before they actually charged people and many would have forgotten about it. Do you think that was intentional?
Ms. Glasgow: We feel that it was intentional. We feel that even now, with the elver fishing, they are taking names. There are no charges yet but they are going to wait for 22 months and then there will be charges. I think it is intentional and that they are just letting people feel comfortable and then they will hit them with multiple charges. That’s terrible for our people.
Senator Cordy: Thank you.
Senator R. Patterson: Thank you, Chief Glasgow. I bet your father is very proud that you are here. Your responses are very powerful.
One thing that we keep hearing again and again from witnesses is that people at the grassroots are suffering because of the consequences of this system that you have had imposed upon you. But the bigger issue is about trust and respect at the national level. That’s the theme that I’m hearing.
When you break trust — and maybe trust never existed — and you show disrespect, it takes more than a policy or a procedure to fix it. It needs a much bigger solution to that. Can we layer in that — and this works well when working with my colleagues here — this is about nation to nation and DFO is a tool of a nation?
We have heard other witnesses talk about if they had an ability to go in and address the trust, the respect and the understanding of Indigenous rights — whether it be through UNDRIP, reconciliation, treaty rights, et cetera — there would be a different solution other than trying to talk to fisheries about quotas. That’s the consequence of a bad system.
You sound very wise in how you look at the whole system. If you had all barriers removed and you were able to make a recommendation as chief of your people to address trust, respect and understanding, what recommendation would you make to try and fix this relationship at the top levels in order that the system can be adjusted to better respect Indigenous rights?
Ms. Glasgow: Thank you for your question. I said it before with the other chiefs: I feel that DFO cannot adequately manage us and have authority over us. There is too much conflict and too much lack of trust and respect. If we could, it would be ideal to have our own Mi’kmaq department of fisheries and oceans for us to govern ourselves. From my understanding, as a chief — and we have our own management plans — we should be able to govern our own management plans. We should be able to sit down and say, “This is how much our people can catch, keeping preservation and conservation of species in mind, and this is how much you can catch. This is how it’s going to be laid out.” We can do that, but they tell us we can’t manage our own plans when they take our plan and change it. Why are we not intelligent enough to create plans and manage our own plans when we are the first stewards of the lands?
It’s very insulting when we put so much time and effort into making a plan that’s right for our people — when our people put so much input and time into it — and they just change it. We should be dealing nation to nation — Sipekne’katik First Nation, Potlotek First Nation, Eskasoni First Nation — among our nations first and then with Canada. We shouldn’t have to individually deal with DFO, who I feel separates us and picks us apart. So then we’re fighting with each other because one community is getting something that another community isn’t, when, really, all of us as First Nations need to get together and say, “This is what we need to do.” We’re put in a system that is not right for us. It’s not how we work. Thank you.
Senator R. Patterson: Thank you. You mentioned in your opening statement about catches on lobsters. There’s already this massive commercial fishery and your portion is very small there. In a practical perspective, somehow, somewhere, within the system, you would need to connect in. Based on the recommendation that you have just given us, where would you see your fisheries linking into the federal government so that communication exists when it gets down to the community level and you don’t have people with the hammer coming in and imposing things?
Ms. Glasgow: Thank you. The limit they put on is one of our plans. It’s for food, social and ceremonial. They put a limit on how much we can catch to eat. They put a limit on how much we can catch for ceremonial and how much we can give to our people. When we do community disbursements of our lobster fishing, there is a limit. Some people don’t get anything because we’re cut off at that limit. They don’t recognize our livelihood fishing at all. There is zero limits. We cannot catch anything to say, “You have a moderate livelihood and you are allowed to do this.” They say, “No.” Our livelihood fishers feel like they’re treated as criminals, but they put a limit on us for our food, which isn’t right. Why do they get to judge how much we can feed our people?
Senator R. Patterson: You talked earlier about CIRNAC versus DFO and the minister. If you had the aspiration of independent Indigenous fisheries with different nations engaged in there, where would you see their main point of connection to the Government of Canada? Where would you see best that would be accommodated?
Ms. Glasgow: The connection should be sharing information for conservation and preservation purposes. The connection should be sharing information for health and safety, but it shouldn’t be for limitations and charging our people. So I feel that if we can connect, it should be, because we have a lot of different organizations that work for us, and we have a lot of pride in conservation and preservation of the species. If what is needed is sharing our information about how much is being caught as a whole, I think that would be good, but I don’t think the authorization should come down from Canada. I think we should be able to authorize our people together as a collective. Thank you.
Senator Osler: Thank you very much, chief, for your testimony today.
I will follow up on some of what you have said regarding the conflict with DFO and on Senator Patterson’s questions. It’s with regard to the nation-to-nation negotiations and conversation. This committee has heard testimony from various witnesses regarding the roles of DFO and CIRNAC in negotiating rights‑based fisheries. Most recently, the committee heard that DFO is not open to hearing the ideas of First Nations, maybe a little bit more than in the past, and the committee has heard that CIRNAC seems more committed to that goal. So in follow‑up to Senator Patterson’s questions, in your view, how would negotiations or discussion dynamics surrounding rights-based fisheries differ if CIRNAC was the lead federal department on rights‑based fisheries negotiations?
Ms. Glasgow: Thank you for your question. My thought on negotiation from the years of negotiating is they always want us to give something up, which is our rights. The only thing that needs to happen is our rights need to be respected. We need to be treated as equals and not as if we’re less and we don’t understand and we can’t manage our own plans. Our rights have to be respected. In further negotiations, they want us to give up our rights. That is very, very big — our treaty rights, our Aboriginal rights as First Nations people.
Dealing with DFO is not the right way to go to move forward in a good way. We can try CIRNAC. But it’s tough, because when you present the First Nations with negotiations, it feels to me it’s usually you can have this or you can have that, and they are both very, very small. The choices that they give us are not good at all. So I think the main thing is understanding of our rights, education on our rights and respecting our Aboriginal and treaty rights as First Nations people. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much. Before we move on to the second round, I would like to ask a question. I am actually moved by your compelling testimony around the experiences that you and your First Nation have experienced trying to enforce your inherent and constitutional right to a rights-based fishery.
I’m a little shocked that, given the Supreme Court decisions around Marshall, DFO is still laying charges like this and that they make their way to the justice system. That’s more a comment than a question, but I am shocked that still happens given the compelling decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. I think the system in that regard needs to be deconstructed to find out where that is going wrong.
I was interested in a comment that you made. A number of the recommendations that we had in our first report were around the RCMP’s interaction in particular with your First Nation, but also with a number of First Nations in the enforcement of fishery rights. You had mentioned that they had acted as an intermediary in enforcing your rights in your community lately. Could you explain that process a little bit more?
Ms. Glasgow: Thank you for your question. On your first comment about the charges by DFO, my father has been charged I don’t even know how many times. He has been charged a lot. Every single charge has been dropped. Our people that are being charged are spending lots of money on lawyers and time away from their family and time away from their work. They are getting their boats taken. They are getting their vehicles taken. And in the end, the charges are being dropped. They are all being dropped. The last case involved some of my family members. It went on for almost two years and then it was dropped.
If it’s going to be dropped, why waste our members’ time? Why waste their money? Why aggravate them and make them more angry with DFO if you are just going to drop the charges because you can’t prove them against us? When we say we’re fishing for a moderate livelihood and we’re fishing for treaty rights, they drop the charges because they can’t charge us with anything.
Secondly, regarding the RCMP, it’s not the same in every community, but in our community, there are a couple of RCMP officers that our community and our members trust, and they have built a very good relationship with them. One of them was Joe Young. He is a little guy. We call him Mighty Joe Young. He is very nice. He has been in our community for a while and he can go to anybody’s house and, really, he is very good at talking with them. And that’s something big to say about Sipekne’katik. But recently, he was moved, so right now we’re lacking in our police services. But at the time when our motion was made, it was because Joe was there. It was easier for him to talk to our community members. So moving forward, we may have to change our plan a little bit.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. I appreciate that. We don’t have a lot of time left, and your testimony is so compelling that there are a number of people who want to follow up.
Senator Francis: The federal government continues to use the legislative and regulatory framework created for the privilege-based fisheries to govern the rights-based fisheries. In your view, chief, is that appropriate or should there be a separate legal and regulatory framework to govern the rights-based fisheries to achieve full implementation?
Ms. Glasgow: Thank you for your question. I don’t think it’s the right way to go. I think rights-based fishing is different. We need to govern it in our leadership and our chiefs and our councils and our programs. We need to govern it. Moving forward, I think that would be the right way to go. Thank you.
Senator Kutcher: Chief, we have heard incredibly powerful testimony at this committee from you today and the whole time we have been doing this study. I just want to let you know that I have actually heard one of the most powerful statements from you today, and I just hope that it’s reflected in our report. I’m paraphrasing, but you said something like, “They can’t tell us how much we can eat.” I think that was one of the most powerful phrases I have ever heard here.
I was listening to you talk about the charges being dropped. I would like your opinion on that. In my own non-professional understanding of the legal system, this doesn’t sound like a legal issue; it sounds like harassment. It’s ongoing harassment. I’m wondering if you think that this kind of harassment could actually be an expression of how embedded racism is being applied by the justice system.
Ms. Glasgow: Thank you for your comments and your question.
Yes, it is. We have one lawyer from our community, Michael McDonald, and he was representing a lot of people from 2020 against all the charges laid then, and every charge was dropped. But we actually hired him to help us in our treaty fishing department, because we’re creating one. Listening to his stories, he has to deal with so many things within the court system, and it is unjust. Our people are treated very badly just because of who we are, because of where we were born, really, because we were born into the inherent rights. We were born into the treaty rights. We’re being discriminated against because of that through DFO and through the court systems as well. I don’t understand why the court system continues to accept them when, in the end, it’s wasting so much time and so much money. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much.
If no one else has any follow-up, I want to echo Senator Kutcher’s comments that your testimony today has been very informative and incredibly compelling and we will make sure that your words are taken very strongly in our report as we move forward. Thank you very much for being here today to help us, Chief.
Senator Francis: Sipekne’katik brought a complaint against Canada to the United Nations. Why was it necessary to pursue recourse internationally? What other legal recourse has your community pursued domestically?
Ms. Glasgow: Thank you for your question.
We felt like we had to do it and there was nothing else that we could do. It felt like we were just stuck. We felt like we had to go to the UN to be seen and to be treated as equals because we felt that, within Canada, we weren’t being treated as a nation or as a people.
Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Again, thank you for taking the time to be with us today. It’s been incredibly helpful.
Senators, during our second panel, we’ll be hearing from the following witnesses: Wilbert Marshall, Chief, Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs and Justin Martin, Mi’kmaq Fisheries Lead of the Kwilmu’kw Maw-klusuaqn Negotiation Office. I apologize for slaughtering that. I practised it all last night.
I understand, Chief Marshall, that you’re prepared to give us opening remarks.
Wilbert Marshall, Chief, Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs: I’m going to give you the dark side of the fisheries, and Justin will give you the other side after. The dark side means all the fights we have — still ongoing — with the non-native fishermen and DFO. It’s been many years now.
Growing up in the community all your life and people calling you — we’re not rich, you know; we weren’t really poor, but my parents always — it was a close-knit community. My uncles and aunts were there, and we always hosted the St. Anne’s Mawio’mi every year. People would come from all over the place. There would be fishing everywhere. There was a community way back. It’s one of the oldest communities in Nova Scotia, and Mi’kma’ki, actually.
Food fisheries started way back in maybe 2006 — I might be wrong about the year. When we first started this in St. Peters Bay, there were only six fishermen who started fishing, and we had a hell of a time with intimidation and bullying. When we got there, I guess the whole union of the fishing association brought all their fishermen to St. Peter’s. There must have been about 200 or so boats there. So I took it upon myself to go on every boat, and I started talking to all these fishermen. Some of the stuff they were saying — they said stuff like “You guys never fished before; you never fished lobster.” I remembered a conversation with our mother, and she said that we did fish lobster, but we always hid it. We had to, because you would get shot or something like that or beaten up or bullied. A lot of people don’t want to fight with anyone. You get some guys that will just stand up and stand their ground, but most of the time, we don’t like fighting. We did that all our lives, and why would we?
Anyway, it all started from there. That’s when I knew that the fishery was a way of life. I already knew that growing up because we always fished — my uncles, my dad and my cousins. We’d go eeling — anything, really.
A few years ago, we started doing the moderate livelihood. It was one of my guys, actually, Craig Doucette; I know him off by heart — my cousin, for God’s sake. At an age, people start calling you “uncle.” He’s calling me uncle now, maybe because of my salt-and-pepper hair. Craig said, “Uncle, I want to go fishing.” So I said, “All right.” So I contacted Justin and said that we wanted to do a moderate livelihood. I contacted the assembly, and we started. I had 13 communities involved with this. Everyone calls it Potlotek; it all started from Potlotek, but we had a community involved. They started it, and we met almost every week — sometimes twice a week — over Zoom. It was during the COVID era too. We did it all on the phone, but we decided we were going to start fishing October 1, and we had the plan all done up. They picked two seasons — the spring and the fall. They took 70 traps each. I was kind of leery to put a number on traps.
Anyway, it took a while. The first season, the same thing happened as with Chief Glasgow. The DFO would take their traps and take your boat. They were pretty well playing games, really. At the end of the day, they’re not going to charge you, but it kind of hurt our fishermen because the season was pretty well over by the time they got their boats back. And it was just because maybe there were two officers that don’t like our guys. Our DFO officers are usually former fishermen, or they have family or friends that are fishermen, and they make this hard on us. I know this for a fact because I have friends in DFO also.
I was talking to Brian and talking to you guys a while ago — sorry, I’m jumping all over the place, but I’m doing this from memory. I’ve been doing this for a while. I just keep talking and talking. You’ve got to tell me to shut up eventually, and I don’t mind that.
Anyway, this is still going on, and I didn’t like putting a number on the traps, but it made sense for our guys. They want to go fish in the spring and the fall — 70 traps. I said 100 max, 210 traps per boat, so they did. It started this year. Last year, Craig’s boat got seized by the DFO. They took his boat. He was very proud of it. He bought one of the nicest boats. I know you heard me last time I was here. Our guys were fishing with these rinky-dinky — as I call them — boats. One guy came back, and it was almost sunk. He just made it to shore. His bilge pumps went, and I said, “You guys are taking a chance.” They go out far, because St. Peters Bay — these guys go fishing all the way to Gabarus and Fourchu, and it’s two or three hours. The only reason why is that the non-native fishermen wouldn’t let our guys put their boats in the other areas, like L’Ardoise and Framboise. We had problems before. They cut our traps and sabotaged our boats and our gear. It’s hard. And we didn’t fight.
I’ll give you an example. A few years ago, when we first got Marshall back in 1999, everyone was buying all these boats and all this gear and everything. We got a licence up in Lobster Fishing Area 27, which is Glace Bay. The guys are happy, they’re going to go fishing. We got all geared up, get the boat there, and next morning the guys go fishing. All the windows are spray-painted black, the wires cut off our things, our traps are all cut. Sometimes the traps were even burnt, then we would buy metal traps and they would cut the nets. At the end of the season, we gave up. We leased the licence instead, because they didn’t want us there. But now, we got some guys fishing out of area 27, and I know their wharves are in deplorable shape. All of a sudden, they said, use our wharves. And I tell my guys, you have to be careful. They’re nice to us now, but I can’t help it. I’ve seen it. I don’t know how many times they did that to us and just kept going.
What happened in Lennox Island, in P.E.I. — I was talking to the chief there yesterday. I said, “You have to be careful, chief; you know what happened to us.” He said, “They did that to us in P.E.I. too.” I asked what they did and he said they wouldn’t let them use their wharf for the longest time, and all of a sudden they needed wharf repairs and then offered the use of the wharf. They got their boat fixed; it cost $20 million to get it fixed, and after they get that fixed they said they don’t want them there. I said, “Jeez, really?”
We have to be careful. We want our own wharves. DFO knows we want our own wharves. They said they would do it, but I’m not sure if they will or not. The trust is gone with DFO. The only reason I’m saying this is not that long ago, I had the privilege to meet with the minister and a few of her colleagues. There are two chiefs for fisheries; there’s myself and Chief Jerry. I’m the bad chief, he’s the good chief. I’m the guy that can get pretty nasty sometimes and I’ll say it the way it is. I’m not going to hide it, I’m not going to sugar coat anything, and sometimes I use the wrong words but I’m speaking from the heart, because you see so much of it and it’s wrong.
Anyway, the minister was there and she started talking. And a couple of meetings before that, I asked if the minister was getting what we’re saying here. Is she getting the right information? “Yes, she is,” they said. So they brought in the minister, and the minister started talking, and all of a sudden she starts talking about elvers and lobster, and she had the wrong information. I told her she didn’t have the right information and asked where she gets the information. But that was what we wanted. We wanted to meet with the minister herself, but they have to have the right information also. She wouldn’t give us a chance to rebut against her because she had to leave, she was on a time crunch. It isn’t going to work that way. If we’re going to resolve something, you have to stay in the room until it’s done. I don’t know how many times I sat with somebody.
Native policy is so different. To my eyes, Chief Brian is still Chief Brian. He could tell you we deal with stuff day to day. The stuff you hear sometimes is unbelievable. You don’t know if you’re on the edge. Sometimes people want to kill themselves, and it’s not funny, but you hear all that stuff. You take it to heart.
People want to go fishing. All my life we were told we were lazy and we don’t want to do anything. All of a sudden, our guys want to make a big difference; they want to go fishing. It’s only a small percentage. Not everyone is going to be a fisherman, but if we had that chance long ago, there would be more fishermen at home than there are now.
I’ve been on the news a few times with the fisheries. Every time you go on the news, people recognize you. I’m going to reference Senator Kutcher in a second. I was at a Tim Hortons in Halifax, in Hammonds Plains. I was standing in line and two big burly guys said, “We know you, you’re that chief.” I looked at them and I asked what I could help them with. He said, “You guys aren’t going to go fishing.” They wanted to start a fight with me right in the lineup, but luckily the manager stepped in. I had to wait inside for them to leave, because I probably would have gotten my butt kicked. These guys were big. I didn’t care, I was pissed, I wasn’t going to back down, and I didn’t.
This is the stuff we go through. All we want to do is fish, and it’s not everybody that’s going to go fishing. You know, there is only a small percentage of our own people that are going to go swimming. We want to go fishing; we’re ready. DFO told us to bring up a management plan, and we did. We even had the 13 communities involved, plus UINR at home. Shelley Denny is a marine biologist and she got her masters — she’s a doctor, actually. You can’t get any better than that, and the government uses her for free; they use her. All of a sudden, she helped us develop this plan, but it’s not good enough for DFO, but then again, they used her. They’re being hypocrites. They’re using her. I just don’t get it. But it’s not good enough; it’s the same as it was with Chief Glasgow.
The Deputy Chair: I can listen to you all day — we’re fascinated to hear some of the things that you’ve been through — but we’ve got a hard stop at 11. If you don’t mind, may I offer the floor to the senators? We could listen all day, because you have so much to say, but I want to make sure that the senators give you a chance to use your valuable time to answer some questions.
Senator Francis: DFO continues to imply that the seasonal limits and other infringements on the exercise of the rights are needed due to conservation. In your view, is that a valid concern? Are the rights-based fisheries the privileged ones that present the threat to conservation?
Mr. Marshall: No, I think what happened there is that DFO doesn’t want to limit the non-natives. It’s an easy fix. All they have to do is trap reduction. We’re not out to make a million dollars, but some of these guys do. They’re all making way over a million dollars. Trap reduction is the only way it’s going to happen, but they don’t want to do it. It doesn’t look good on their part. It’s so easy to fix.
What I mean by trap reduction is that for each fisherman who gets 375 traps or 250 traps, you take 50 traps from them. These guys are making over a million dollars, some of them, per season — one person — and they’re telling us to do moderate livelihood fishing. Our guys went down to 70 traps in the spring and the fall, but now they don’t want us to fish in the fall now. They asked, “Why don’t we just give you guys 140 traps, then?” And that’s what I’m thinking.
The whole goal was for us to go fishing, and we did that. But we’re still struggling. We still want to go, but they’re taking our traps, taking our boats; whatever they’re doing, they’re just making us look bad. We offered to help them with our guys and they said the policies have to change also.
Senator Francis: Thank you. To your knowledge, what steps has the minister or her department taken to respect and truly integrate Indigenous laws, principles and knowledge into the fisheries decision-making process?
Mr. Marshall: They did their plan, but the only thing wrong with it is that they have to stop meeting behind closed doors. We should be there with them when they are talking about our plans. It’s impossible to make a plan when you’re not in the same room. Why meet behind closed doors? Why not meet together and hash this out? What do they like? At the end of the day, here you go. We have to get their blessing, but we already knew about that. That’s why we had Shelley Denny. She’s a biologist. We know we’re not affecting the lobster stocks, and there weren’t that many people fishing.
Senator Francis: Thank you, chief.
The Deputy Chair: Mr. Martin, you had your hand up. Would you like to add to the conversation?
Justin Martin, Mi’kmaq Fisheries Lead, Kwilmu’kw Maw-klusuaqn Negotiation Office: I appreciate the chance to talk. I want to provide some framing for Chief Marshall’s opening statements. The progress since Marshall has been very limited in the recognition of treaty rights. We’ve been left with limited ministerial mandate, targeted enforcement by DFO, cultural and colonial violence and human rights violations by DFO, but also a colonizer mindset that continues to impact reconciliation and foster racial tension and physical and cultural violence towards our harvesters. Our harvesters, both men and women, have been targeted, racially profiled and criminalized, even when fishing in a manner consistent with the DFO authorization.
I’d like to share two specific incidents that occurred to our members recently. This includes something that Chief Wilbert spoke to earlier about the seizure in Potlotek First Nation that occurred last fall by a targeted enforcement action. The officers made a public display of the arrest and handcuffed the harvesters on the water; they made a public display of it. This makes people think our harvesters are doing something wrong and that’s not the case. The actions of the fisheries officers promote racial hatred and increases the likelihood of physical and cultural violence. This harassment is racially motivated and a clear demonstration of a racially motivated culture at DFO’s Conservation and Protection — C and P — detachments.
The second incident occurred this spring. It was an airport seizure. A fisheries officer in a position of authority in C and P who attended meetings with the assembly and our Mi’kmaq organizations on the process of developing understandings to implement our fishing plans knew that the Kespukwitk communities implemented a conservation and preservation-based elver management plan this spring and obtained a proper DFO authorization. On October 5, 2023, this fishery officer seized 25 kilograms of legal DFO-authorized elvers caught by Mi’kmaq fishers. The money collected from the sale of these elvers would have been more than $145,000. It’s still under investigation, and the elvers and revenue from those elvers are being held under investigation with the officer’s discretion; 31 Mi’kmaq harvesters — 6 women and 25 men — have suffered undue hardships due to the hands of the specific officer’s discretion or lack thereof.
I don’t want to go too much deeper into that, but I would like to speak to the human rights violations. C and P has treated Mi’kmaq harvesters differently than non-Indigenous harvesters. These are breaches of section 5 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, and the public targeting of Mi’kmaq fishers continues to send the message to Canadian society that Mi’kmaq fishers are criminals. This fosters increased tension and a lack of trust, which we’ve all seen too often and has led to racialized hatred, violence and conflict. This conduct is a breach of section 12 of the Human Rights Act.
These are all clear examples of the enforcement culture within C and P that seeks to continue the colonization of our people, victimizes them and harms them, regardless of whatever attempts at reconciliation are being made by other sectors including within DFO.
We ask the Senate to call on the minister of DFO to evaluate the department’s Conservation and Protection branch and look at behaviours and decisions being made through an Indigenous lens. The Mi’kmaq have suggested developing collaborative conservation and preservation enforcement practices with Indigenous-led management and actively practice enforcement divisions, especially with our Mi’kmaq harvesters. Our people are fishing to better their lives and their families, and even the courts have said they have every right to do so. It’s time for Canada to do better and hold DFO accountable for their actions. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Martin.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you, chief, for being here with us. In a conversation that we had in your community, you shared some of the experiences of racism that you had personally experienced, and I wonder if you could share some of those with the committee, because it’s important we get on the record some of the ongoing racism that occurs in these communities.
Mr. Marshall: I could keep going on, but something that comes to mind was one of my nieces, actually, she’s one of the fishers. She’s been called a squaw and all this stuff that still exists to this day, being harassed and racial. It’s not all people, but a lot of them, they got to get that out of their heads. Education is the best part. When we started the food fishery way back, we had our staff post our treaty rights all over the post just for them to read them. A lot of people didn’t know about it. Even myself growing up, I remember, like Shelley Denny, I didn’t know too much about the treaties until I got older. Especially in your politics, you got to know about your treaties. Education is the key thing — educating the little kids in the public schools. In Nova Scotia, we started teaching treaties in the education system. Jaime Battiste, who is an MP now, was one of the first treaty educators in the province. That’s through our Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey, or MK; we have our own education system.
But the constant harassment and racial profiling: Where does it stop? I don’t think that’s going to stop, myself. That’s just me, though, because I had too many bad experiences. As soon as you get brown skin, all of a sudden you’re a fisherman. I don’t fish. I’ll do it for fun; I’m the kind of guy that can’t be still.
Senator Kutcher: Both for you and Mr. Martin, I’m going to go back to the same questions that I raised in the first section. To give context, these are questions that are dealing directly with responses that we got from DFO around previous recommendations that we had made, because we were very interested in education. We were interested in what DFO was trying to do to fight racism and what DFO was doing to educate about rights-based fisheries. So that’s the context of my questions; I’m trying to understand DFO’s response to us.
The first one is on rights-based fisheries. Mr. Martin, please jump in as well. Are you aware of any education programs that the DFO has created and delivered to local communities? Have you ever been asked to co-create educational programs on rights‑based fisheries with DFO? And have you seen any change in understanding of your local communities with regards to rights‑based fisheries over the last 5 or 10 years?
Mr. Marshall: The one I’ll speak to is what I was just talking about: education in the schools. We started educating when we started the food fishery. We tried on our own to educate the fishermen on what the treaties are, what year they were done and what they’re for. But, of course, they said they’re no good; they were signed a long time ago. I had one guy try to give me a heart-to-heart talk and said that wasn’t that long ago. He said his kids are learning treaty rights in school. I said I thought that was good. He said he didn’t think that was right. I almost punched him. But at the end he said it’s always when we were fishermen we did it this way. He said they never had the opportunity. They had to hide to go fishing as kids because they weren’t allowed. We didn’t know the extent of our treaty rights. We’re actually educating our people too, but educating non-natives even more, because we have every right to go fishing. But Mr. Martin would tell you more about the DFO.
Mr. Martin: I appreciate that. From my understanding — I’ve been in this role for five years — DFO has done some internal work with treaty education at the regional management level. The concerns we have are at the Conservation and Protection level: the on-the-ground officers and the use, or lack of use, of discretion when making decisions that affect our peoples harvesting activities.
We’ve been very clear. I know I’ve been sitting at the table for five years. We’ve been willing to co-create and develop Indigenous-based information and education processes and sessions specific to C and P. To date, we have had no response from C and P on the development or implementation of any Indigenous program development or co-creation of some sort of educational course. It wasn’t an education initiative for DFO. We were willing to educate and build education for C and P specifically, but there has been no directive or mandate provided by the minister to develop that process.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you for that.
The next set of questions is around embedded racism. We have heard eloquent testimony from you about how common the racism is. Are you aware of any activities that DFO has undertaken to effectively decrease racism within DFO itself?
Mr. Marshall: We meet with them almost every week. They never told me, but there is one good thing about it: A few people in DFO are on our side. I know this because I used to meet with them. They used to call me before the meeting. I’ll take their names to my grave — I won’t say their names — but it was helpful for me because they would give me the questions. I think they figured one guy out. I don’t see him there anymore. It’s the relationship and the trust, but the higher-ups are still listening to somebody here. The smaller guys are actually good guys. They are on your side. One guy told me, “You keep it up. You are going the right route.” I said, “What am I doing?” He said, “You tell it the way it is.” You have to, though. That’s how the fishermen talk to their own MPs and all that. I hate to use those words, but I do. Sometimes they’re effective; sometimes they’re not. You have to pick and choose. I forget your question. I haven’t seen anything yet.
Senator Kutcher: Before Mr. Martin answers, I would take from that answer — and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, so correct me if I’m wrong — that the DFO hasn’t come to you and said, “We would like to work together to co-create a program that deals with embedded racism.”
Mr. Marshall: No, they haven’t — that’s a guarantee — not using those words anyway. They say, “I’ll work with you,” but they work behind closed doors. It’s not going to work that way. We have to sit together. They need to stop sending their junior people. We want to talk to the higher-ups. You are wasting your time.
Mr. Martin: It has only been recently that Conservation and Protection has been willing to consult with Indigenous people on their actions and the way they handle racism and enforcement. Those officers in positions of authority have been entrenched in the commercial industry for decades. They have always witnessed us or viewed us as criminals who were coming in to try to exercise our rights. Their relationships are with those commercial industry representatives and harvesters. Their decision making and their discretionary opportunities are heavily influenced by their relationships in those communities. There is a small amount of Indigenous representation in C and P on the ground and in those decision-making positions of authority, so I would like to address that.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you very much.
Senator Ataullahjan: Thank you, Chief Marshall. I have enjoyed listening to you, and I thank you for your honesty. We need that. I like the fact that you don’t mince your words. As a racialized person, one coping mechanism we learn is to be brutally honest.
So the minister came, she talked, had the wrong information and then didn’t have time to listen to you, which was very disrespectful. Do you think she was just there to tick a box to say, “Been there, done that?”
Mr. Marshall: That’s what it sounded like. She had no time for us, really. It was only for a few minutes and then she left. We got caught off guard. It would have been nice to have the questions prior to the meeting. She didn’t have all the right information. She was talking about elvers and all this stuff. The elver fishery is the cheapest way to make money for our people. All you need is a pair of rubber boots and a net. What else are they going to do? They have been broke all their lives. They have no money. These are our women. They are going fishing at nighttime, the most dangerous time for something to happen. They get harassed but it’s okay for commercialized fishermen. You can read about them in the paper talking about this affecting their way of life. What? Hold on a minute. Here’s a lady who wants to go, and that’s what she was doing. I knew for a fact that she wanted to buy stuff for her kids’ formal and all that stuff. While I’m here, I think I should go see the Prime Minister, then I’m going to Home Depot to get some garbage bags and get some money here. But our people don’t want that. We want to go fishing. We want to make our own lot. We don’t want handouts.
Senator Ataullahjan: Consistently, we have heard of racism. Senator Kutcher kind of asked my question. I have been scribbling, Senator Kutcher, and I had written, “embedded racism.” That’s the one sense that we have gotten consistently. We have consistently heard about the deep-rooted racism within the DFO. Has this issue ever been brought up with the DFO? Also, Mr. Martin spoke about how the harvesters are treated differently. When they’re arrested, those images are shown on TV to Canadians. People just believe those visuals that they are seeing. Do you feel that the DFO is controlling the narrative?
Mr. Marshall: Some parts of the DFO are different. There’s C and P, and DFO. It’s up to their officers how they want to charge, but they should be more educated in racial profiling. What they’re doing isn’t right. You are and Justin are correct. We already knew this. They’re treating our guys differently. Anyone else who had their boat taken away would have gotten it back long ago. They would have gotten a fine and be told you’re stuck on conditions. But, no, now the season is halfway done. He might get his boat back — I don’t know if he is going to get it back or not — but it’s too late. That’s why we did the fall and the spring in the fisheries. We only had 70 traps to make a half‑decent living because our guys didn’t want to deal with all the racism. But we still dealt with it in the fall. You go there but when you come back, there are no traps. They are cut, or your boat is sabotaged or sunk, or someone has drilled holes in the boat to compromise our guys. There’s danger with that too. They would drill holes in the boats, but when you got out there you wouldn’t know your boat was sinking. So you’re rushing to get back to shore because the bilge pumps don’t work. Our guys had boats that were not fit. Some are taking their lives in their hands, but they can’t help it. That’s all they can afford.
Senator Ataullahjan: Could we ask Mr. Martin for a comment?
Mr. Martin: I appreciate that.
DFO has consistently demonstrated that they are unable to create, maintain or develop a narrative of support for rights‑based implementation. I’ll give you an example. Recently, we developed an understanding with DFO which implemented a community-based fishery in a district where four communities have developed and implemented a conservation‑based management plan. That management plan was to be fished within the DFO season. Before the beginning of the season, we were unable to acquire wharf space for our harvesters to exercise that DFO authorization. This came from DFO being unable to indicate to the harvest management authorities that this is an authorized fishery. The harbour authorities rejected the harvesters’ applications to utilize wharf space in that area based on their lack of understanding that this was a DFO-supported fishing activity.
It comes down to our harvesters and our teams to educate and inform the industry representatives of the conservation-based community management plans that we’re implementing and the DFO understandings that we’re undertaking.
I don’t want to lose track of the question. It’s clear that DFO cannot communicate directly with their authorized licence holders and communicate only with the area reps. The gap is between DFO and the actual commercial harvesters that affect our activity directly. There is a huge communication gap between DFO management, Conservation and Protection industry reps and then licence holders themselves, and that’s where the stem of the problem is, from my perspective.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Cordy: Thank you very much, Chief Marshall and Mr. Martin, for being here today. Your testimony, as well as the earlier testimony today, is very powerful. It’s from the heart, and so I very much appreciate it.
As a former teacher, I would like to go back to the idea of education and educating the non-Indigenous peoples — I was going to say in Nova Scotia — but in Canada about the rights of Indigenous peoples and the history of Indigenous peoples.
Our group, the Progressive Senate Group, is very lucky because Senator Francis is always educating us about Indigenous history. Yesterday, he organized a blanket ceremony for our senators and our staff. I had read a lot about Indigenous peoples and history, but to actually take part in a blanket ceremony was an incredible experience, and it was very moving and extremely powerful in getting our group to understand why things are the way they are. I want to publicly thank you, but I think it’s important that we’re doing that all the time.
I think you are absolutely right about education and that it has to start with young people. Sometimes it takes a lot longer than we would like it to take, and I have read where it takes several generations, which, to me, seems like a really long time, but at least then we have a start on it. You said that there is education in the school system now with young people.
Were Indigenous peoples consulted on what the format of the curriculum or the programming should be?
Mr. Marshall: Yes. We started it with MP Jaime Battiste; he was involved.
Senator Cordy: Oh, was he?
Mr. Marshall: He went on to be a member of Parliament, but he was one of the first treaty educators in Nova Scotia, and it’s in the schools now.
As it goes on, you have to keep revamping it. I’m hoping that the adults also learn somehow. They should. I know they’re going to learn from their kids, but they should learn more. It’s online, and our language is online. You can go online right now, and you could learn Mi’kmaw. That’s the key thing, education, because even our own people didn’t know the extent of our treaties and their rights.
Senator Cordy: I’m also wondering about the challenges of getting a lobster licence for Indigenous peoples. We had witnesses before us who said that it’s very, very difficult to get. They talked about the buyback program. There just aren’t enough licences available, and the licences that become available are so expensive that many Indigenous people cannot afford to buy them, because they are just out of reach.
Could you just comment on the challenges?
Mr. Marshall: We actually got blamed for that, for the price tag going up on that. Because the government is going to pay whatever, and I hear those conversations, because people blame us, and some of the fishermen, like I said, I hear it all the time. Some of the fishermen get in an argument, “It’s because of you guys, the price, and we can’t afford lobster licences now.” And I said, “You guys?” It’s this constant battle, like, name-calling, and all of a sudden it’s our fault. I just tell them, “We don’t even need to buy a licence. We just go fishing instead.” I said, “That was before moderate livelihood started, and the next thing you know, it’s a moderate livelihood.”
The government tried to do a buyback, but like you said, the prices are so ridiculous right now, the average person can’t afford it, and the government will only pay so much, and I don’t blame them.
That’s why I said that it’s important to start clawing back the traps also. That’s the only way it’s going to work, and I know they don’t want to touch it with a 10-foot pole, because it’s going to make them look bad, but what else are you going to do? Unless you just tell our people, “Go fishing.”
I know there are some people waiting on the sidelines for that. They don’t want to go fishing yet. They are scared, and I don’t blame them. I’ve seen what happened, like, boats being overturned, boats being burnt, traps being cut, traps being burnt, getting assaulted and your women being called squaws and all this racial stuff, just because they want to go fishing. They want to make half-decent money to buy diapers or whatever. They want to do something. They want to build their own house, because in my community right now — and in all the First Nations communities around Canada, I would say — the housing gap is so — everybody is moving back now. They all want to move back to reserves.
But we shouldn’t have to be living on reserves. It’s our country. You always hear people say “unceded territory,” but do they really mean it, though? What does that mean when they say that?
Senator Cordy: Chief Glasgow spoke about what happened down in the Digby area with the boats being burnt and those kinds of things, which is not helpful.
Mr. Marshall: No, we’ve been through that. We went through that back in 2004 or 2006, I forget. Our boats were overturned, and they burnt their boats, and they threw our cars in the water, in the canal and everything.
I had a young guy — he is a non-native guy, actually, but he has kids in the community, and he pretty well lives in the community. They call it Pirate Days in St. Peter’s, and they had a thing going on. Anyway, they beat this guy so bad they almost killed him, because he is friends with us, and that’s where it started. They almost killed him. It took awhile for them to lay charges. They finally charged two fishermen.
Senator Cordy: You mentioned in your closing remarks about the elver fishery, and there were women wishing for eels who were charged; is that what happened?
Mr. Marshall: I don’t know if they were charged, but they got harassed, and all they wanted was to just make a living. It’s the easiest and cheapest way to go fishing. All you need is rubber boots and a net. That’s all you need.
Senator Cordy: It’s quite unlike all the commercial cases of eel fishing.
Mr. Marshall: Exactly. I never knew these little eels existed myself. I know that in Cape Breton, we didn’t fish them that much. We would go fishing for them with spears during the night. That’s how we fished eels at home.
I know the elvers are big money. I can’t blame our people for going fishing. They are practising their rights. All these commercial guys have been doing it for many, many years, and all of a sudden the secret is out, guys: Knock, knock, we’re here. I don’t blame them for going fishing.
Senator Cordy: Thank you very much.
Mr. Martin: I’d like to go back to the potential challenges to get the lobster licences. This is an industry-controlled process, so the pricing of the lobster licences for DFO to acquire is controlled by the industry, and the lack of mandated tools and flexibility to build and develop our fisheries outside of commercial licences is an issue that we’re consistently up against with the minister.
My experience to date with the buyback program has indicated an epic failure, to be completely honest. The industry continues to work to provide licences, and the department continues to be unable to purchase those licences because of the limited scope of the ministerial mandate.
I’ll give you an example. The Gulf of St. Lawrence is a region of DFO management. It consists of half a dozen or a dozen lobster fishing areas. They actually rallied themselves and gathered many licences — over 30 licences — and offered them to DFO to buy back to support Indigenous participation and increase opportunities for our harvesters. DFO in turn only bought seven of those licences. They were unable to acquire the rest of them due to their very limited policy around the buyback process. So I’d like to touch on that.
Secondly, I would like to support Chief Wilbert on the women in the elver fishery. We’ve seen an increase of an over 10% participation level by Indigenous women in authorized elver activity this spring. That comes from the low barrier to entry. You don’t have to be educated, experienced or have a lot of capacity to go out there and harvest on the side of the bank. We have seen that. We expect to continue to see Indigenous women coming out and exercising their rights, empowering themselves and their family to be sustainable.
We did have six women, Indigenous harvesters, who were affected by the recent seizure by DFO. There are six women directly affected by the continuous seizure of our elvers that were authorized by DFO.
Thank you.
Senator Cordy: Thank you.
Senator Francis: I’ll ask this to both Mr. Martin and Chief Marshall. I asked this question of Chief Glasgow earlier.
In your view, should there be a separate legal and regulatory framework to govern the rights‑based fisheries to achieve full implementation?
Mr. Marshall: We have been telling DFO all these years we want to do a co-management with them. Their policies don’t fit that. We have our own. I can’t even remember off the top of my head. We have our own guys at home. We said, “Why don’t you take our guys and go on a boat?” They said, “We can’t because our policies won’t let us.” We want to. It’s somebody from the higher-ups.
These other guys, we talk to them. They can’t do anything. Their hands are tied. Whoever is talking to them, we would like to be in the same room with the minister and some of her technicians who could make decisions on it. We have to get this resolved. It’s only going to get bigger and bigger. It’s only the first few years now.
A lot of people are going to go fishing eventually. Our communities are growing. People are moving back. There is an influx of people moving back right now in my community. I can’t even keep up. There are 14 people living in one house, for God’s sake, sometimes, and 11 people living in one house. We’re trying. Every day it’s emergency housing. We’re putting them in shelters. We’re putting them in hotels. You can only afford to do that so much. You can’t keep doing that, putting a Band-Aid on something.
A lot of it has to do with the fishing. They want to go fishing. They want to make some money. We are trying to educate people. We are doing whatever we can.
Senator Francis: When it comes to fishing, what is it like in terms of your ability to sell? Do people want to buy from the moderate livelihood fishery?
Mr. Marshall: That’s another thing. A lot of people don’t want to buy from us because — we had a meeting in Dartmouth and then Halifax maybe a few months ago. I forget their names now, but there were two guys from the association or three guys, sitting there. One guy was sitting there. They were talking about the province lifting the ban on us to buy a licence to buy shellfish. This guy was going on information that happened three, four or five years ago. I forget.
Anyway, I called him out on it. I told him, “That’s bull crap.” I just had a meeting with DFO that morning before I went to that meeting. I had to correct him. I said, “You are totally wrong.” I said, “I don’t know where you are getting your information from.”
Communication is another thing. You have got to have better communication with us and also the associations. A lot of the associations don’t know what’s going on. We want to be your friends. We are more like this, saying, “Oh, hold on” because we have been through so much.
Some of the guys are good. Some of them, they would tell me stuff. Some of their own fishermen would tell me. They are so scared of specific guys in their association. It shouldn’t be like that.
They said, “I like the way you guys run your fishery and you are not afraid.” These specific guys are afraid, but they shouldn’t be. It is almost, the way they run it, like a mafia. It shouldn’t be like that. It should be all the community. They don’t run their fishery like that.
The Deputy Chair: Mr. Martin looks like he has something to say. I hate to cut you off, but we have four minutes left.
Mr. Martin: Thank you. I apologize, Chief Wilbert, if I distracted from your thought.
To Senator Francis’s comments, the co-management piece is our focus currently. We need to have the ability and capacity to create and build consensus in our communities to effectively create our own laws, regulations and policy to support the proper implementation of our rights, then work with DFO to development the tools and regulations to effectively implement them in a co-managed approach.
Right now, the Fisheries Act has no tools to support our fishing implementation. It’s important that you understand that the capacity needs to be built with the communities, not just throwing money at it. We need to build the capacity, educate individuals and Indigenous people to help support the creation of the law and consensus development and then effectively create our own framework to move forward in a co-managed approach with DFO.
To your second point, the selling, Chief Wilbert touched on it quite well. To fully implement our fisheries, we need a complete review of all the regulations that affect the value chain of the harvesting activity and the products that we create.
Right now, we’re pressing against the provincial regulations that inhibit us from actually having buyers’ licences to purchase our own products from our own people and then distribute them to market. There is a barrier to entry with our products once we establish a DFO authorization. They still have problems selling it to the buyers who are market regulators, essentially, where they control the market and the flow and dynamic of the products. That’s a barrier. They don’t necessarily want to deal with us. As a business owner, they don’t have to deal with us.
We need our own processes, buying abilities and our own market. The capacity has to build from the harvesting all of the way through the value chain. That is what is missing right now. We’re focusing on harvesting. We are not focusing on selling. That’s where my mind is at right now with our work.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Mr. Martin.
I have to apologize to Chief Marshall for having interrupted him at least twice in the conversation. We have three minutes left. Because your opinions are so valuable, and you are literally where the rubber hits the road or, in this case, where the boat hits the water, I would like to offer you the remaining time to state any other remarks that you think we would like to hear.
Mr. Marshall: At the end of the day, all we want is for our people to go fishing. We do want to work with DFO, even though it seems bleak sometimes. There are some good people in there also. It’s too bad they can’t get the good people to talk more. They are scared to get shot down. I know that for a fact.
Sometimes when we have meetings, we have people on our side and I think there is more than that, actually. The minister also has to know. It comes down even further from the minister. I know the Prime Minister has to step in also, he has to. He has got to tell his soldiers what to do. That what his ministers are, right?
Sometimes, when you are a chief you don’t want to go above your colleagues on something, but sometimes you have got to make that call. Sometimes when something is not right you have got to say something. He has got to say something here. I met with him. He was in the community last year. He seems to be a reasonable man. He helped us quite a bit with the First Nations. Making the right call here, he has to step in and talk to his ministers and whoever he has got to talk to. Obviously, they are not getting the right information.
At the end of it, education is another thing. That’s the biggest thing. It’s got to be in the schools. You have got to educate people. It’s going to take awhile. It won’t be overnight. But eventually we’ll get there. I don’t know when. Hopefully I can see it in my lifetime. Hopefully, we’ll get there.
We want to have safer, better lives for our people.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much to both witnesses for taking your valuable time to come here and to educate us on what we need to know as we continue our struggle to get the rights‑based fishery in a good place and in a good way. I thank you again for your time.
(The committee adjourned.)