FOPO Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES PÊCHES ET DES OCÉANS

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, November 25, 1999

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. Wayne Easter (Malpeque, Lib.)): Could we call the meeting to order, please.

We have as the first witnesses this afternoon, from the Maritime Fishermen's Union, Mike Belliveau, executive secretary; Frank McLaughlin, president; and Ron Cormier, vice president. We're a little late starting, so we'll give you your full time.

Mike or Frank, who's leading off?

Mr. Frank McLaughlin (President, Maritime Fishermen's Union): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I just want you to know that Mr. Ron Cormier is on my right and Mike is on my left. Since we don't have much time, I will ask Mike to start the presentation.

Mr. Michael Belliveau (Executive Secretary, Maritime Fishermen's Union): The presentation is actually fairly lengthy and it's in English. We didn't have a chance to translate. But tomorrow our local in the Miramichi area, I believe, is going to be meeting with you, and that one they'll do in French. So we're mixing it up that way.

Some of you know the Maritime Fishermen's Union, but I think we should remind you that we represent around 2,000 bona fide fishing operations in the maritime provinces. We often get identified with the Acadian fishermen, because a large majority of our membership is based here in eastern New Brunswick in the Acadian communities. It's sometimes forgotten that we have three strong locals in Nova Scotia, and we have individual members in Prince Edward Island.

One of the things I want to bring to your attention is that we find ourselves in a unique situation vis-à-vis the coastal native population. I did a check, and basically, if you look at where our MFU locals are, that's where the native bands are. The only exception that I can think of right now would be Malpeque. These are native coastal bands. You're talking about Chaleur Bay, the Miramichi Bay, the Richibucto Estuary, and the Northumberland Strait area. In Nova Scotia we have a local in the Pictou area. We have another in Sydney Bight. The Sydney Bight is really the only access area to the large numbers of natives who live within the Bras-d'Or Lake area.

Then you've got other locals down in southwest Nova Scotia, mainly based in St. Mary's Bay and the upper Bay of Fundy region.

Our fishermen have had a long association in one form or another with native peoples, but it has taken a particular course, I suppose, since the Sparrow decision in 1990. I know your committee members have heard a lot about the food fishery and how it was implemented in the east coast. That's in our brief. I don't know how much I will get into it, but there are a couple of points I'll make.

One thing about that food fishery is that Burnt Church became kind of famous in the last little while for the problems there this fall, but back in...I'm not sure which year, I think it was 1993—the DFO people in Ottawa came down and negotiated some kind of separate agreement with the Burnt Church people at the time for a food fishery. It ended up that 750,000 pounds that year was fished in a food fishery, and you're talking about a reserve with 1,000 people. It seems to be a lot of lobster to be eating in one year for food, social, and ceremonial purposes.

It was that kind of thing that built up. We had very tense situations in the Richibucto area where the Big Cove and Indian Island reserves, under the food fishery, decided to fish in June and July. July is the closed season in Northumberland Strait. It opens in August. So they were fishing in a food fishery before the commercial season opened. There were some very difficult situations and points at which we were worried there would be violent confrontation. We found means through the years to get workable solutions. They were never acceptable ones, I suppose, but they were workable solutions, on some of the Sparrow issues.

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One of the things we put in here is we found there is no abstract or even legal solution to some of these issues that came out of Sparrow, and our fishermen could not, and rightly so, tolerate a situation where all of a sudden a food fishery right becomes a kind of black hole where no regulation is imposed on native lobster fishing and where in some instances the native rights are used as a screen for elaborate poaching-type rings, which included of course white people. This was not only in this area, in the Richibucto area and the Burnt Church area; it was in Nova Scotia, and I know you've heard from our own members down in the Yarmouth-Meteghan area.

I'm skipping along here. One of the things we'd like to emphasize...it's our perception that the senior officials in Ottawa are not that understanding of what we have here in terms of the lobster fishery. It's remarkable that I could say such a thing, but I actually believe it, and they seem to have been.... It's hard to generalize on these things, but I think they're locked into a model that comes out of the groundfish sector, where you manage by quotas, you get stock assessments every year, and where they have gone through great trauma as a result of the cod collapse, and so on, and you really wonder if they understand how the lobster fishery works, that it's such a sedentary and localized species.

It's dispersed along all of our coasts in the Maritimes, but it seldom moves more than.... You know, lobster seldom move outside of their habitat more than 25 kilometres, that we're aware of, and the best tagging studies suggest nothing different. There are some exceptions maybe in the Gulf of Maine. But generally speaking, there's no information to suggest the lobsters that are in Miramichi Bay right now will not be the lobsters that will be there next spring, unless somebody takes them in the Miramichi Bay this fall. That's a very, very fundamental kind of fact that I think has been lost sometimes in the media and even on some of our senior officials in Ottawa.

This lobster fishery built up its own kind of management system, kind of by trial and error over 25 to 30 years, and it's full of restrictions. There are not only seasons, but there are trap limits, there are minimum legal sizes, retention of buried females is prohibited, and so on. There are 41 different lobster zones.

We feel DFO, whether they're aware of it or not, have basically built up a kind of covenant with the inshore fishermen on the lobster. There's a wide consensus on how to manage the lobster fishery among the fishermen, and it's built into the regulatory process. Yet when we faced the difficulties we did this fall, it would seem that side of the covenant was forgotten.

A couple of other things about the lobster fishery you probably know already: There are around 8,000 lobster operations in the Maritimes and around 25,000 fishermen associated with that fishery. It's the number one fishery in the country, in terms of numbers involved, in terms of value of landings. Nobody knows exactly how much of the adult lobster is taken every year, but the estimates suggest it's up to 70%. So it's a fishery that, at minimum, is totally subscribed to. It's plain that it's fully utilized, but we'll come back to that when we talk about some principles of how to reach a settlement.

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During the Sparrow years, at one point when Brian Tobin was the Minister of Fisheries, he referred the question of a conservation definition through the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council. The best thing the council came up with at the end—and whether or not it was helpful, I'm not sure—stated:

All removals from a resource are important and must be properly monitored and controlled. Consequently, the Council believes that all fisheries should take place within the same conservation framework.

And they're talking about all lobster fisheries.

On the Marshall decision itself, the November 17 decision rejecting the applications for a rehearing didn't really add anything new. I suppose the only clarification we didn't really know about before was the business of logging. The court was very explicit that the clarifications were simply that. The other clarifications were already there if you took the patience and time to examine the September 17 decision and you consulted reasonable legal people. We did that early on.

We state in this brief here—and I think we all believed it—that the Supreme Court clearly notes the government has the powers to accommodate treaty rights in an orderly fashion. The government knew it had those powers, not after November 17, but it knew that on September 17. Our perception of some of the senior officials in Ottawa was that they were like medieval scholastics trying to establish how many angels were on the head of a pin while the whole thing was blowing up in front of our eyes. We could not get those messages across to people who are elected or hired—one or the other—to deal with this kind of sensitive situation.

We're prepared to say here in front of you people that whoever was calling the shots in Ottawa was either woefully ignorant of the nature of the lobster fishery and the history of Sparrow, or was cynically Machiavellian and was willing to use the native and commercial fishermen's confrontation as a small price to pay for some larger political objectives. Perhaps you people could help us sometime and tell us what the larger political objectives might be, because we're baffled. We'd like an answer to that question, because the MFU is not prepared to shoulder the responsibilities for what happened in the Miramichi, the nasty business that arose after some two weeks, on that Sunday morning when there was the famous trap-cutting incident.

You have to realize, Mr. Chairman and members, that there are 193 commercial lobster fishermen in the Miramichi Bay if you include Tabusintac, Neguac, and the coast along Escuminac, and some of the Pointe-Sapin fishermen fish in the bay as well. The bay is a very contained body of water at the mouth of Miramichi.

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What happened after September 17 was that the Burnt Church Band in particular had their interpretation of the decision. To start with, the band felt it gave them an immediate right to fish when, where, and how they wanted, and there was a buildup that went on there.

Our estimate is that there were 6,000 traps put in the water by the second week. Now, 6,000 traps is equivalent to 20 commercial operations during the season, but you'll hear more about this directly from the fishermen themselves tomorrow or perhaps later on. But in that area, that lobster is normally fished in the spring, it moults in the summer, and by the fall it's feeding and is basically preparing for its hibernation for the winter.

In terms of the catch rate, when you have the equivalent of 20 operations, as distinct from 200, they tell us the catch rates are sometimes between 10 and 20 pounds in a single trap in a single day. When you compare that to during the season, most fishermen are quite happy to see a pound or maybe two in a trap per day. If they could do that over the season, they'd have a reasonably good lobster fishery. So this is not hysteria; this is not something dreamed up. This was traps going into the water in front of the fishermen's noses when they knew these were the lobsters they're expecting to fish for their livelihood next spring.

We saw no visible intervention on the part of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to separate the parties, to get some kind of orderly management arrangement, or to do anything to defuse an explosive situation. We sat with that for two or three weeks, and now what are we left with? We're left with communities that are divided. There are hardened feelings on both sides. As best I can tell, the situation in terms of people's attitudes has not improved. There's conflict. People's families are torn apart on this thing. And nobody's going to back us off the federal government's responsibility for paralyzing its whole Department of Fisheries and Oceans operations while standing by and watching this happen. It's not acceptable.

The Chair: I don't want to—

Mr. Michael Belliveau: I don't how long I've been going on, but I'd better get through some—

The Chair: You've been going quite a little while.

Mr. Michael Belliveau: All right, sorry, Wayne. Let me get through the—

The Chair: We'll give you a little leeway in time—we did that for a couple of witnesses this morning as well—but move on to the solutions if you can. I know you wanted to make a point.

Mr. Michael Belliveau: Yes, I hope I made the general point there.

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[Technical difficulty—Editor]

Mr. J.W. Bud Bird (President, Miramichi Salmon Association Inc.): ... The MWMC model still needs to be further refined, and it particularly requires a stronger commitment to community-based management by both the federal and provincial governments.

For several years now we've been seeking a formal MOU to be negotiated and signed by each level of government with the MWMC that would clearly set out the management responsibilities for each party and would also identify the financial resources required to fulfil those responsibilities.

For example, in terms of river stock enhancement, the federal government arbitrarily terminated its responsibility more than two years ago when it announced the closing of the Miramichi hatchery at South Esk, a facility that DFO has operated continuously for almost 125 years. Since then, the operation of that hatchery and the responsibility for enhancing wild salmon stock in the river has been carried out under the mantle of the watershed management committee, with financial investment by the Miramichi Salmon Association and even by the hatchery manager, biologist Mark Hambrook, personally.

This hatchery has been saved with private volunteer action and primarily with private volunteer funding, but it continues to remain on a fragile financial foundation. There's an urgent need for long-term sustainable support from both the public and the private sectors to keep the hatchery and its enhancement program alive and well.

There's a similar need to rationalize and improve the protection functions throughout the watershed, where warden patrols and activities by both levels of government are almost non-existent because of economic restraints in past years of deficit budgeting. Today, with a huge federal surplus staring Canada in the face, surely the conservation of our natural resources can again become a priority.

These issues and others that are river specific—and surely the negotiated sharing of wild Atlantic salmon harvest would be one of them—are all germane to and ripe for a formalized concept of watershed management. However, that concept needs commitment, and it is high time for serious negotiations to begin and for both Ottawa and Fredericton to sign onto the process.

I have great confidence that if we can successfully demonstrate sound community-based watershed management on the Miramichi River, it will become a model for managing wild Atlantic salmon stocks and related resources almost anywhere, and, especially in terms of the Marshall decision, it will offer native and non-native people alike the opportunity to reconcile their separate and distinctive interests and to share at least the salmon resource in a reasonable and rational way.

Mr. Chairman, my most important message to you today, however, is that there are not many wild Atlantic salmon left to share.

I'd like to refer you to the graph at the end of my brief, which is exhibit A. It's a graph that is produced each year by the International Council for Exploration of the Sea, and it plots the estimated abundance of large two-sea winter fish returning to North America.

In 1974, 25 years ago, that estimate was 800,000 fish. In the current year, the estimate was 90% less, only 80,000 fish. It's hard to get your mind around those numbers, so it's worth pausing to comprehend them: a decline of 90% in one of the most valuable natural resources over the past 25 years.

What does that say for all our supposed contemporary management skills, our high-technology expertise, or even our conservation commitment? It is clearly a sad and dramatic statement of failure, and yet we are still debating today, not how to save that resource but how to share it.

Perhaps upon reflection we may find that in this very conservation crisis for the wild Atlantic salmon there will be the beginnings of a true process of joint conservation management between natives and non-natives toward the common goal of saving this wonderful resource from extinction. And perhaps because there's so very little left to share, there will be a common-sense approach to dialogue, consultation, and understanding that will lead us to new ways of sharing and new ways of managing our resources well. In the course of doing so, we shall hopefully be able to sustain the foundation stocks of wild Atlantic salmon on a river like the Miramichi and to rebuild those stocks to levels that once made that river world renowned.

Mr. Chairman, as I thought about this opportunity to appear before you today, several specific questions came to my mind. One of them is with respect to the courts and their judgment. Is there not a more orderly framework of guidelines that the courts can specify to facilitate the implementation of judgments such as the Marshall decision? Surely Supreme Court decisions should not incite violence, as has recently occurred over the lobster bed, and notwithstanding the November 17 statement of clarification by the court, the adverse reactions have already occurred and the explanation now seems too little, too late.

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Another question is, where there is a vacuum of interpretation within judgments, should not governments act swiftly to legislate interpretations or at least test them in a judicial process? For example, we all know that the New Brunswick Minister of Justice has stated his view clearly that the Marshall decision does not pertain to forest resources. Conversely, his counterpart in the federal government has opposite views. Those divergent opinions should be reconciled quickly in the interest of all concerned.

A third question: does the Marshall decision pertain solely to natives living in traditional communities, or do these rights extend to aboriginal people living off reserves in contemporary society or to any other citizen who can lay genealogical claim to native blood in his ancestry? The answer to that question will impact dramatically on the possibility of ever achieving a clear and enforceable structure of responsibility and authority for resource management, because, as I noted earlier, no sharing of the harvest should occur outside such a lawful structure.

Lastly, does the defined economic threshold of a modern standard of living pertain in collective or individual ways, and is it to be based on all sources of income? Whereas the Sparrow decision specified a native right to fish for food and ceremonial purposes, the Marshall decision goes beyond that to suggest a definable standard of living, which they have termed as moderate. There are few Canadians, in my opinion, who would oppose such an economic concept for our native people, and obviously our natural resources can offer a significant contribution in that direction. But how will that overall contribution be measured, monitored, and controlled? Will native marketing boards, for example, become the modern equivalent to the government truck house prescribed in the 1760 treaty? Hopefully it will not be only our natural resources that must bear the onus for this economic threshold of a moderate standard of living.

There can be and already are other opportunities and sources of income that assist native people toward that economic goal. Some of them have achieved that goal, but many have not. Surely there are other innovative ways, apart from the harvest of natural resources, to provide for income security or an economic safety net for native people, as there already are for non-natives in Canadian society. We should strive to relieve the economic onus that the Marshall decision seems to place on our fish and wildlife resources.

Mr. Chairman, the Supreme Court's clarification on November 17 appears to encourage regulatory action by government. Beyond the four specific questions I've raised, there are dozens of others that pertain to all of the fine areas of regulation. These include tagging the native harvest, marketing the resource commercially, economic thresholds for moderate standards of living, and equivalent employment as a substitute for harvesting and especially conservation practices. In these and other areas our government ministers and all stakeholders, native and non-native alike, will be constantly challenged to exercise great reason and judgment as the implementation of the Marshall decision becomes another milestone in the Canadian way of life.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I appreciate very much you allowing me this opportunity to present you with a brief and to read through it as fast as I possibly could. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Bird.

We only have about 10 minutes for questions.

Mr. Cummins.

Mr. John Cummins (Delta—South Richmond, Ref.): I just want to thank you for your presentation, Mr. Bird. I think it very clearly defines many of the problems we've encountered over the last few weeks and indeed the last couple of months. I think you made a very clear statement of those problems.

You note quite correctly that there are not many wild Atlantic salmon left to share—if any, I guess. You also commented a little earlier in your brief that the Gladstone decision acknowledged that others had acquired the right to fish as well as the natives. Gladstone, of course, was an inherent aboriginal right, and it said that others have since acquired some rights, so those rights have to be balanced. Then, in the November 17 Marshall decision, of course, the court again said that the rights of existing licence-holders and stakeholders had to be balanced with the treaty right of aboriginals.

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What you don't mention, and an issue that really hasn't come to the fore in the last few days, is the notion that Gladstone dealt directly with herring roe on kelp. The Van der Peet decision, and NTC Smokehouse, which came out the same day from the Supreme Court, dealt specifically with salmon. In fact, in the one instance it was Fraser River salmon and in the other it was salmon in the Alberni Inlet of Vancouver Island. The November 17 decision said the issue was strictly eel. Are we into a species-specific...here, and if so, how are we going to address that issue?

Mr. Bud Bird: That's a question I can't answer. Certainly the assumption is that it is not species-specific, but as I understand it, the eels are an example of the resources that native people are allowed to fish to achieve this moderate standard of living. Certainly every reading I have done and everybody I have talked to assumes that eels are a species that were specific to that case but that the principles of that case pertain broadly to fish and wildlife. As I say, many people felt it pertained to trees and other renewable resources.

As I understand it, in the November 17 clarification, there was the notion that the fishing pertained to the fishing and hunting and gathering of resources that were contemplated by the natives in the context of 1760. For example, someone made the point recently, in one newspaper I read, that obviously they weren't gathering natural gas on Sable Island, and perhaps they weren't gathering logs or sawn lumber, and so on.

But in answer to your question, my understanding is that the decision presumes to pertain well beyond eels to all fish and wildlife.

Mr. John Cummins: Actually, one of the reasons I ask that is because in the September 17 decision, no mention was made of the words “eel fishery”, yet in the November 17 clarification, those two words appeared ten times, and the court seemed to be trying to be species-specific, I guess.

Mr. Bud Bird: I suppose that invites people to test that notion.

Mr. John Cummins: Yes, but your group hasn't thought of that?

Mr. Bud Bird: We have really assumed that the Marshall decision pertains more broadly. My brief, of course, is very species-specific as well in the sense that it speaks to Atlantic salmon, but in so doing, I was hoping I could perhaps provide a model that would address other species as well.

Even if it were eel, there ultimately still has to be a determination about the renewability of the resource and the sharing of the resource and how it should be managed. There has to be a management structure, and everybody who's going to participate in the sharing has to be inside the structure.

We have not thought of, for example, challenging the Marshall decision because it deals with eels and we're talking about salmon.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Steckle.

Mr. Paul Steckle (Huron—Bruce, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Bird, given your historical background in this field and having the ability to come to us now after many years of having been involved with government, looking back, looking at the problems you encountered during your time at the federal level and also at the provincial level, what has happened in the interim? Where has government gone wrong, or what has happened here?

We know we've lost a species. Has it been because of overfishing, or have we lost interest? Have we left it in the hands of the wrong people? If you can summarize quickly, if that's possible, what single reason would be given as probably the most likely cause of the demise of some of these species? What has happened in terms of how we've managed the species?

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Mr. Bud Bird: That's a good question. In terms of the decline of Atlantic salmon, which is the resource I can speak to most specifically, there's a bewilderment, frankly, about what is happening, particularly in recent years—the 25-year graph I showed you—because some very significant actions were taken.

I think it's to the credit of Roméo LeBlanc, when he was the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, that he closed the fishery in Baie des Chaleurs and Northumberland Strait to the commercial fishery.

It's to the credit of John Crosbie when he was the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.... I was in Parliament at that time, and if you ask me what I did, I used to chase him up and down the hall saying, for God's sake, when are you going to close the Newfoundland fishery? He ultimately did that.

It has been a bewildering reality that we have not seen the dividends we had anticipated from those closures. Certainly there has been serious overfishing and fishing of mixed species in the ocean, or species of mixed origin, but the recent decline in returning salmon is a bewilderment. I think there's a need for a major scientific research commitment, led by the federal government and joined by all the countries in the North Atlantic, with respect to Atlantic salmon. There's something happening out in that ocean or something happening in the environmental process that has not yet been defined.

For example, in the Miramichi, we're continuing to have a very healthy juvenile population, and that's why we seized on sustaining this hatchery and why we were so frustrated by the federal decision to close it. Until the plight of the salmon at sea is determined, there's one action we can take, which is to ensure that the juvenile stocks are sustained in high levels of production. We're doing that, yet the migrating fish are not returning.

So if there's something that is required by government, both federal and provincial, in Canada, it is to commit major increases in research funds and activity to finding out the cause and the solution to the mystery of the Atlantic salmon and to recruit other countries around the North Atlantic to do the same. It will take Canadian leadership to do that.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Bird.

Mr. Stoffer, be very brief. We're now a half hour behind, and an extra witness was just put on the list.

Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Bird, a former parliamentarian.

There are many questions I'd like to ask, like the effect aquaculture salmon has on wild stocks—

Mr. Bud Bird: Not good.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: —but that's not for today. If you could possibly present that one day, that would be great.

On page 3, you indicated how DFO is responsible for the management authority, through the provincial minister of natural resources, and so on. In the native fishery, you say it's the DFO to the chief and council of each band, and down through the native fisheries, and so on. Are you advocating in the post-Marshall kind of thing, if I'm not mistaken, sort of a co-management approach to the new management of the fishery?

Mr. Bud Bird: I think the whole concept of watershed management talks about co-management, and yes, we were talking about a co-management or a community-based management approach.

One of the points I'm trying to illustrate there, however, is that particularly for off-reserve natives or Métis, who it seems to me at the present time would not fall either under the authority of the band, the chief, and the council, or under the authority of federal government, there would be this large body or large constituency that would sort of be free of either authority.

The point I'm trying to make is that the resource is unmanageable if any part of it is practised outside of an enforceable authority.

If, for example, the off-reserve natives or the Métis, or any other part of our population, are allowed to harvest this natural resource, or any natural resource, they have to be within some form of management structure and enforceable authority. That will be a real challenge when it comes to groups of Canadians such as off-reserve natives and Métis, because they're not in either structure.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I have a final question for you.

The Chair: No, the final question is from Mr. Power.

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Mr. Bud Bird: Mr. Chairman, I started a little late.

The Chair: Go ahead.

Mr. Bud Bird: I'm enjoying this.

Mr. Charlie Power (St. John's West, PC): How would he define modern—

A voice: It's good to see a former Conservative parliamentarian.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: You had to get that in there, didn't you? And one day they'll all be former—

The Chair: They're few and far between.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Just kidding, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Go ahead, Charlie.

Mr. Bud Bird: What big fans I have here.

Mr. Charlie Power: This morning when we talked—Mr. Steckle in particular—about the Ontario situation, we talked about why the Department of Fisheries and Oceans had sort of abandoned inland waters fisheries management, in particular the recreational fishery.

In your time as member of Parliament and as a minister here in the province...my thought is that maybe now with needing some new research, maybe some enforcement, taking care of hatcheries, that if you didn't have a separate department of fish and game in Ottawa...unless you took this issue to somebody at the cabinet table, wouldn't you be better served being represented through the Department of the Environment rather than through DFO? Do you think so?

Mr. Bud Bird: I don't think so with a resource like Atlantic salmon, given my understanding of the authority of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. The problem with Atlantic salmon right now, of course, is in the oceans; the mystery is in the ocean. Of course the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans supposedly would make the strongest representation at the cabinet table and at the budget committee.

Mr. Charlie Power: In regard to the ocean, has anything been done with Greenland to cut down the amount of wild fish they were taking?

Mr. Bud Bird: Yes, through NASCO, the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization, there's been a negotiation that has diminished the Greenland quotas very significantly over recent years, and Canada has played quite a large role—

Mr. Charlie Power: In pushing that.

Mr. Bud Bird: —in pushing that and in achieving it.

But I think in this area of solving the current mystery, there is a similarly compelling cause for international cooperation in investing big time in research and in scientific examination of the salmon's plight and the solution for it.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Bird and Mr. Power.

Thank you very much for your testimony. We appreciate your efforts. It is a very extensive brief.

We'll now call on Mr. Leon Sock of the—I'm not going to do this name justice, so you'll have to re-pronounce that for me—Mawiw Council of First Nations, with Susan Levi.

Could you go fairly quickly through your presentation—we only have half an hour—so that we have time for questions?

Mr. Leon Sock (President, Mawiw Council of First Nations): Yes.

Honourable members of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, I wish to thank you very much for the invitation extended to our first nations organization to address the issue of treaty implementation and interpretation based upon the Marshall ruling in this nation's high court.

This decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Marshall presents important new challenges to be embraced by all concerned. We, the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet people of this land, are of this land. You have to understand that we do not have a place to go back to. So we have to learn to survive in whatever conditions and whatever circumstances we might find ourselves in. This will never change.

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The recommendations we will share with you have been forged over time and backed by the resolve of our people. Our ideas were born long before Marshall but have crystallized around this important decision, and although rooted in the past, the evidence and the interpretations speak to the social, political, and economic future of our first nations and our people.

The base of a new social, political, and economic relationship is at hand. This provides us with a great opportunity to deal conclusively and constructively with the impact of dependency in our communities, in all its forms and with all its consequences.

We plan to address the primary interests of the Mawiw First Nation as to where we were, where we are, and where we are going in the area of commercial placement and the future management of the fishery.

We, as Mi'kmaq and Maliseet people, have been able to access the fishery resources since time immemorial for food, for trade, or for whatever reason we needed to use these resources.

In the early part of this century, our people were engaged in the fisheries for their livelihood. This was a struggle on its own. Our people encountered unscrupulous liars, unscrupulous lawyers, unscrupulous judges—everybody who had something to do with the fisheries. But still, our people needed to sell, because they had to survive.

Nothing would change until the early 1970s, when the Government of Canada decided to regulate the fisheries and licence the fishermen. With these licences, the provinces came up with a way the fishermen could get access to adequate financial resources for boats and equipment. This process proved to be good for the fishermen, but unfortunately the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet people were left out and did not get access to these licences or the financial resources the other fishermen were offered. We were intentionally left out.

In the 1990s, after the Sparrow ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada, we were further left out of the commercial fishery, even though we repeatedly stated over and over again to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans that we had to have equal access to the fisheries. But again no one listened. They said we were only able to access the fish for food, social, and ceremonial purposes, and definitely not the commercial fishery. This is what started it all.

Now that the treaties are reaffirmed, our inclusion in the commercial fishery is here.

The commercial placement of a competent harvest capacity must be measured and paced so as to achieve the optimum results. The current demographic of licensed commercial activity suggests a natural attrition over the next five years of approximately 1,800 departures from the industry. The maximum new-entry placement in the best of circumstances is about 500 to 700. Twice as many people will be leaving the industry as are going into it, thus achieving actual sustainable-use standards.

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The corporate memory of our people as far as the commercial fishing is concerned has all but left us. We will have to retrain our people on all aspects of the industry. We will have to get access to new vessels and new equipment. A lot of things will have to be done.

So we put forward an ambitious placement model as follows.

Number one is the establishment of an aboriginal-sponsored venture capital fund to provide investment opportunities for new fishery enterprise developments.

Number two is the establishment of commercial placement programs at Indian Affairs to provide the regulatory monitoring of the resource transfer.

Number three is the establishment of a community freezer program to provide fish for the community members year-round.

Number four is the establishment of a contract fishing program to provide first-level exposure to the fishing industry for the eligibility for apprenticeship certification.

Number five is the establishment of a treaty certification program to provide the necessary skills and professional development to our fish harvesters.

Number six is the establishment of a joint resource transfer committee to provide a mechanism to enable fair and equitable access to the available commercial resources at the local level.

Number seven is the establishment of a cross-resource enterprise innovation program to provide communities with the means to establish a partnership fund.

Number eight is the establishment of a resource integrity commission to review all resource management plans of DFO to ensure compatibility with Marshall.

Number nine is the establishment of a retirement and reinvestment program.

Number ten is the establishment of a commercial harvest association to provide cooperation amongst harvesters.

There has to be community control, there has to be tangible commercial placement, and there has to be a combined effort of Canada, the chiefs and councils, and the fish harvesters to work in a fair and responsible manner.

I'd just like to note that the past failures with the aboriginal fisheries strategy resulted in rigid community-based agreements with no room for innovation, harvest support, or individual assistance.

If there's going to be change, then the ones who are most affected by this will need to be consulted. The aboriginal people were wronged in the past. These wrongs will have to be rectified.

That's the gist of my presentation. I have provided you with a longer version of the presentation I have made. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Sock, and thank you for proposing some solutions.

I have one question before we go to committee members, and that's on the aboriginal fisheries strategy. I take it you're not satisfied with the current aboriginal fisheries strategy. The committee is going to be looking at that issue in the not-too-distant future, but can you, in brief, give me your views on it?

Mr. Leon Sock: In a few words, the aboriginal fisheries strategy is not about fish. It's about not fishing by the aboriginal people.

The Chair: Okay, thank you.

Mr. Bernier.

• 1505

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier (Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Pabok, BQ): I would like to thank our witnesses for their participation. Their document is well done and all the stages of the thought process are clear.

I am not very familiar with your nation. In a practical way, I would like to know how the talks are progressing. Did you have an opportunity to meet with the mediator, Mr. MacKenzie? Secondly, what do the fisheries look like for this winter or next spring?

The implementation of all the steps you have identified is going to require a lot of time. As other witnesses said earlier today, it will take us a lot of time to identify the fishermen who are ready to leave the industry. How should we go about it?

I would like you to describe your contacts with the mediator. Is your nation or your community able to wait until we have established a schedule? We don't want to have any more surprises like those we had this fall.

[English]

Mr. Leon Sock: Okay. No, we never met with Mr. MacKenzie. We don't know what he planned to put in place and we have had no contact with him at all. Hopefully in the very near future we'll have a chance to sit down and talk to him and meet with him and discuss these issues with him. But as of now, no, we never have met with Mr. MacKenzie or any of these people.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I am not familiar with your nation. Our Order of the Day indicates that you are representing the Mawiw Council of First Nations. Are you members of the Mi'kmaq Nation and thus, covered by the treaty of 1760?

If you have not yet met with Mr. MacKenzie and if you have rights under the Marshall decision, what are your next steps? You recognize there is a will to make things progress. We should not blame the fishermen either. How are we going to prevent other problems from occurring on the public scene or on the water next spring?

As a chief, you can talk with the people of your nation, just like the representatives of the fishermen can talk with their people. I understand that the man who can formally discuss with you has not done so officially. If you don't meet with him, what will you be able to do?

[English]

Mr. Leon Sock: Let's go back and introduce ourselves. I guess we should do that first.

The Mawiw Council of First Nations represents approximately 60% or 65% of the on-reserve aboriginal population of New Brunswick. The communities are Big Cove First Nation, Tobique First Nation, and Burnt Church First Nation. These are the largest aboriginal communities in New Brunswick.

the two communities, namely, Big Cove and Burnt Church, represent a majority of aboriginal fishermen in New Brunswick. Their interests lie there in the fishery, because the communities have been shut out from the industry. It's at their doorstep, but they can't access it.

• 1510

We realized years ago that we had to do something for our economy. Our people were suffering too badly. The resources were there, so we had to somehow move into that industry, because a natural-resource-based economy of any community can help cut dependence and help ensure the emotional health, physical health, and spiritual health of the people.

We have brought our ideas forward many a time. We have brought them forward to the Department of Indian Affairs, almost the same documents you have now. We have brought them forward to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, almost the same documents you have now.

We brought them forward because we were concerned that in the whole process of it all, the people who were most affected, the people who were most concerned for their families, were not going to be part of this. We were concerned that the Government of Canada would only deal with the chiefs and that's it. We were concerned that the actual fishermen and their families would not have a say overall in the area of the fishery.

So we brought this forward on that basis. We had support from everybody.

The Chair: Mr. Gilmour.

Mr. Bill Gilmour (Nanaimo—Alberni, Ref.): Last week in Ottawa, in hearings we held there, we had the benefit of listening to Chris Harvey, one of the lawyers who argued Sparrow and Gladstone. He was very knowledgeable of the last ten years of this issue, the aboriginal fishing issue.

Boiling it down for us as laymen, basically his view of the Marshall outcome was that there had to be a balance, because if it was too far on one side, then the treaty rights of native people would be violated, and if it was too far on the other side, then the rights of people who had already been in the industry would be violated. So it had to be middle ground.

In your brief on page 3 you say:

The Community Commercial Committee will ensure a single individual permit for lobster, crab, shrimp, red fish, mackerel, herring, halibut, haddock, cod and other groundfish, oysters, mussels and other products of the sea.

The difficulty I'm having is this. If all of your people were to get one of these permits and then through them obtain a licence, there would be, for example, more lobster licences than are in existence now, and that would violate the rights of the people who are already in the industry.

So my question is, how do you see this balance of native and non-native fishermen being reached?

• 1515

Mr. Leon Sock: What we were trying to do is not focus on one singular species. We were trying to focus the effort on all of the species that are available for commercial use. If everybody lined up for lobsters and there were other species available, there are only a certain number of places in the lobster industry anyway, without hurting conservation.

You talked about balance and about being fair and equitable. You talked about our inclusion in the access to the resource. You have to realize that when we initially accessed the resource just a few years ago, not at the commercial level but at a food fishery level, our boats weren't as long as this table.

[Technical Difficulty—Editor]

• 1610

Chief Arthur Bear (Chief, St. Mary's First Nation; Fisheries Commissioner, Union of New Brunswick Indians): ...That's about 120 miles from St. Mary's. I wondered at that time what was going to happen if we did get involved. Was somebody going to retaliate and sink our boats? We could watch our lobster nets and our traps, I guess.

On regulations, yes, there have to be regulations. By whom? I always said before that it should be regulated by natives from each community. You know the people, so they're going to respect you. For myself, I feel it has to be regulated—from our perspective.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Should the same rules prevail? Is it conceivable that you end up abiding the same rules as the so-called traditional fishermen?

[English]

That's including lobster season and stuff like that.

Chief Arthur Bear: In terms of what you were saying, can we regulate it as any other—

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Would it be under the same rules and seasons and stuff like that?

Chief Arthur Bear: Oh, under the same rules and regulations.

If we work together...I think it'll all work out the same anyway. We might want to.... Let's look at it this way. We want to get into a food fishery. Can we go out before the season? Can we go out a couple of weeks before? Can we go out a couple of weeks after? I mean, take the things we want to ask for. Are they going to allow that?

I think that's the area in which we have to deal with it. We have to dialogue with the people there. Are they going to allow this, and are they going to say to go ahead and do it? Is that a regulation? Or are they going to say we can't, that we have to follow regulations, that we have to come in at the same time they do and get out at the same time they do? That's something we have to negotiate. Those would be different regulations, right?

The Chair: Before I turn to you, Mr. Stoffer, coming off this line of questioning, I think the problem is timing, Chief Bear. We don't want to find yourselves, the commercial fishing industry, or DFO in the position they were in during the late summer and this fall when the Marshall decision came down. We have to have an interim or permanent plan in place.

If we're going to look at buyouts and everything else in order to accommodate the natives' rights, we're going to have to have a lot of lead time prior to spring in order to do that. We're going to be looking at February, because you just don't go out and buy out licences overnight.

In the MFU submission this morning—and this question may be better directed to Mr. Birney, because I understand he's a biologist—they indicated that by DFO's own admission some 750,000 pounds of lobster were being fished in one out-of-season period under the food fishery. One of the areas we've heard a lot of criticism about as a committee is the food fishery. That's not only as a result of the aboriginal community, but as a result of other people—call them white people or whatever—using that angle of the food fishery in order to poach lobsters and that, and sell them on an illegal market.

• 1615

If that kind of fishery continues, it would be my opinion that there's the possibility of extensive damage to the fishery and the future of the lobster industry if those numbers are correct—and we're told they're DFO numbers. I guess the question to Mr. Birney is whether or not the lobster fishery can sustain those kinds of food fishery numbers.

Secondly, to Chief Bear, how do you control that food fishery in such a way as to ensure there isn't an illegal black-market fishery being established off to the sidelines? I don't think anybody has any problem with the food fishery if it's reasonable and is actually going for food in the native communities. But if it's used as a vehicle for other purposes, that's not what it was designed for. How do we deal with that?

So there's the one on the biologist's side and the second one on how to deal with the food fishery from our perspective.

Mr. Peter Birney (Biologist, Union of New Brunswick Indians): Maybe I'll start.

I am a biologist, not a lobster biologist, and I'm not sure of those exact figures. I've never seen them before in that context. However, there are some points on which I do agree with you.

There have been some people fishing a food fishery under the guise of a native community when they aren't really part of that community or perhaps aren't even native to begin with. I think that's a big issue. There is a poaching problem. But again, I think there's a benefit to having a food fishery if it is a legitimate native food fishery that is not restricted by a season, because it is basically going to the aboriginal community.

Another benefit to having those people on the water is that it eliminates a lot of that non-native poaching. If you have a presence on the water twelve months of the year, then you certainly do not have people who would normally be out there with no one else out on the water. They wouldn't go out there.

As far as regulating it goes, yes, the food fishery is regulated by first nation communities. It's not a free-for-all; it's a legitimate fishery, and there is a need for it.

I'll turn it over to Chief Bear.

The Chair: Do you have anything to add, Chief Bear?

Chief Arthur Bear: In my community or anybody else's community, you're always going to have some...you can't watch everybody. You're going to have people out there fishing in any other community besides the first nation ones.

Right now, if you don't mind, Mr. Chairman, we regulate our lobster fishery and we're into sea urchins. They're all regulated. We regulate them ourselves.

With the Marshall decision, like I said before, we didn't go out but we could have. What would have stopped us? We took the Marshall decision like it was an opening door. But as I said, we took it to mean we should sit down, negotiate, regulate, and talk about other fisheries in that area.

Right now, they want to deal with us in tuna. We can't get that, and they can't get it. It's regulated. I know they have it in Nova Scotia. But these people want to sit down and they want to deal in other fisheries besides lobster and sea urchins.

The Chair: Thank you, Chief Bear.

Mr. Stoffer, this is the last round of questioning.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to Chief Arthur Bear and his colleagues for coming and presenting us with what I consider to be a good presentation.

There are a couple of things you said there that don't jive with all the representation we've heard. Even Mr. Sark, the chief of the Lennox Island Band, admitted the other day that by his own figures, 50,000 lobsters were taken out, and that was a conservative figure by his estimates. Those were his own regulated, looked after, tribal amounts.

Now, nobody is eating 50,000 pounds of lobster, and there is no question that there is a lot of non-native activity out on the water that shouldn't be there. We have evidence of that. But there's also evidence of native activity out there that shouldn't be happening as well. Selling a lot of those additional lobsters to obtain money or cash in order to offset the cost of catching those lobsters in the first place was one reason we said some of the food and ceremonial fishing is going on.

• 1620

Part of it is being sold in order to obtain cash, in order to pay for the gasoline and everything to operate the boats. I have a problem with that because of the fact—and there's no question about this in my mind—that when you catch lobster off season as compared to during a closed season, you can catch lobsters much quicker with one trap than you can with ten traps, in terms of a closed season if you were catching lobsters as everybody else.

I really appreciate it, Mr. Bear, that you're the first aboriginal chief to say you're willing to negotiate and operate under a regulated system if you're at the table to negotiate. I hope everyone else we speak to has the same opinion you have. But again, although it is your legitimate right to catch lobsters, for example, for food, ceremonial, and cultural purposes year-round—you can do that—there is no doubt in my mind that catching lobsters in a closed season is much more advantageous than catching it during a regular season.

When a season opens, the first two weeks of everybody's lobster season is very good. Then it really drops off. But if you were out there catching lobsters three weeks before the season opened, you would be catching a very large amount of lobsters, because in that season they're moulting, their shells are soft, they're hungry, and they'll go after anything.

My concern, sir, is that you really look at that aspect. If you are looking for a regulated fishery in conjunction with the non-native community, you should consider that part as well.

To say that having people out on the water twelve months of the year—you didn't actually say this—is good for enforcement possibilities just lets the DFO off the hook, because it's really DFO's responsibility to patrol the waters and enforce any illegal fishing that's out there.

Mr. Peter Birney: The reality of that point is that there's not enough manpower in DFO to do that.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: There it is. Thank you. God love you.

Mr. Peter Birney: You're alleviating one problem by having people's presence on the water.

Let me remind you, too, that first nations people are conservationists. We're the original conservationists. Again, for those figures, I don't know where they came from or what derived them. I think we're all in agreement that there is a big poaching industry out there for lobster, but I don't think it should be tagged on the backs of the aboriginal food fishery.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: No, it's not just one group. It's all groups.

Mr. Peter Birney: It's all groups, yes.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Stoffer.

Chief, go ahead.

Chief Arthur Bear: I just want to make a brief comment.

With our fishery, we don't want to stay away from the lobster. We're like any other first nation, I guess. We're new at this. You heard from Big Cove in their presentation before. They're into that. They know when not to go out there at a certain time because fish are moulting or whatever. I think we'll do the same. When it was opened up through the Marshall case that we could go fishing year-round, I think conservation came to our minds too. We're not going to go out there to rape the fishery of lobster.

We have divers. We go diving for some species, like scallops maybe. That's for a food fishery. But there's always a limit to what we take. We're not greedy. In our first nation anyway, I know there's no greed here. I don't think we'd jeopardize the lobster fishery even if it was open year-round. I know there have to be conservation measures, but until that time....

If I can just say one more brief thing here, it's like the salmon. They closed the river on us. We respect that because we know there are no salmon out there. We want to see our kids see the salmon. Right now, maybe that's why we've signed these agreements. I myself don't care for these agreements too much, but they create work for our people for ten weeks anyway.

Anyway, on that, I can say we feel we are strong conservationists and we'll always work to be.

Thank you.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you, sir.

The Chair: Thank you, Chief Bear, Mr. Thériault and Mr. Birney.

• 1625

The final witnesses will be from the United Nations Human Rights Commission. We have Junior Charles Bernard, ambassador for the Mi'kmaq; Charles Marble, fisherman; and Charles Bernard, fisherman.

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard (Mi'kmaq Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission): Mr. Chair and ladies and gentlemen, I realize your time is kind of limited here. I appreciate your asking me here, and I'll be as brief as I can.

I passed out a document that is going around in front of you. It's our presentation, but I'm going to talk from my heart, sir, as my elders have taught me.

I have been in many different forums in Geneva and in New York City, representing my people since 1986. After the first Supreme Court decision came out in 1985, I was instructed by then Grand Chief Donald Marshall, Sr., who was the father of the person who was involved in this whole situation, Donald Marshall, Jr.

I have a few notes that I'm going to follow so that I have some sort of format and outline that I can refer to them myself.

From what I hear from the testimony from my elders—and this is how I was taught—there is a reason why these treaties exist. There is a reason why these treaties are coming about nowadays. The document that I put forth deals with compensation. The first thing I would say about compensation would be to compensate our people for not being able to use this right since the ruling came down in 1999.

I talked to a few families over the days, and like every other family, whether they're native or non-native, these families have told me that Christmas is coming and they're very concerned.

We know we have done many studies before. I was involved in the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. I was involved in the royal commission on Donald Marshall. I was involved in the Nova Scotia working committee with Eric Kierans back in 1992. My people's opinion is that we've been researched to death. All sorts of research has been done. Now is the time for a plan of action. We've now come to a time when it is questionable who represents whom.

I was at your meeting in Halifax yesterday. From the questions that were asked, I know there is a lot of confusion as to who represents whom, so I'll take you back to where they took me.

The late Grand Chief Donald Marshall, Sr., said that when they signed this treaty, it was the grand chief of a sovereign nation that signed this treaty with then King George III. There are two sovereign nations that we are dealing with here. In order to have mutual respect and co-existence, that's why this treaty came about.

I often hear the question about who represents whom. Well, you must learn there's an education process for all of us here, on both sides, Mr. Chair. There are a lot of people who are ill-informed about just exactly who we are and what we are. That leads to things like racism and it leads to things like confrontation. It leads to things that ordinary people and little children are suffering. We are dealing with a poverty rate that is high here in Canada. We are dealing with a regime that is not doing its job, and that's the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

I remember one gentleman asking yesterday if we meant we were not being treated fairly or equitably under the DFO. Yes, it's true. We are being treated differently. My father-in-law is 66 years old. He was fishing for oysters four years ago, six years ago, before the ruling. They took the oysters away from a 66-year-old man. He fished all his life, but they took them away.

• 1630

When the ruling came down, this was the action of DFO. They sent them back and phoned him on the phone. My father-in-law's first language is Mi'kmaq; his second language is English. He speaks to my children fluently in Mi'kmaq. He doesn't want to speak to them in English, because he has never gone for education in English. The DFO official phones him up and says to him, “Do you want your oysters back?”, four years after the ruling when they told him not to fish. That's one example of the attitude of DFO.

When we go fishing, the DFO imposes on us and says there's regulation. I deal with international lawyers and I deal with lawyers all over the world, and I ask law professors as well: does the regime of DFO now exist? A lot of them advised me it doesn't. Canada has collapsed; the DFO regime has collapsed. We have to come to another term of agreement with the new regime because of Marshall.

I want to show you something. I'm going to leave some of these documents with you. This is Donald Marshall when the ruling was upheld; it says, “Mi'kmaq Rights Upheld”. Does that man look like a happy man, for somebody who fought for his rights and for his people? No. That man looks sad. You have to ask yourself, why does he look sad? Because maybe he thought, “How many things are our people going to have to go through?”

We've seen it on TV—the racism, the uninformed people, the lack of education. We have to educate these people to treat people equitably. They say, “We want equity. We want to be treated the same. We don't want the natives to have special rights.” Well, I'm sorry. Our opinion is that two regimes came into play here.

I looked at the Supreme Court decision in the latest intervention on November 17. In this intervention it says we have to come to a moderate living. There's a term in the treaty, “necessity”. The Supreme Court modernized it and called it “moderate living”.

Well, I checked the stats on the Internet and did all my research and found the information. The average family income in Nova Scotia is $45,615. If you ask a person who's been drawing welfare for thirty years or twenty years, because of the regime that existed, and who draws an income of $5,000 to $13,000 a year, do you think they're going to say no to $45,000? Maybe that's where we should start to determine a moderate living. Does that standard apply to all Nova Scotians?

Our people feel that we're not part of Canada, that we're not part of Nova Scotia. I'll tell you, there are governments in this world that are tri-cameral. There's no reason Canada can't say there should be a three-level order of government. I stated that in the Kierans committee, in the Charlottetown Accord talks, and in the Meech Lake Accord talks. They could be. There are countries, such as Switzerland. I was in Switzerland, I was in Sweden, and they have models that exist outside.

On compensation, phase one and phase two deal with MacKenzie's terms of reference. In phase one, since the ruling came down, the people didn't have the opportunity to exercise that right. That denied them the right of a moderate living. They too will deal with the long-range plans made in five years or in April, so that we don't have the kinds of conflicts that have arisen in Burnt Church and in Yarmouth. That education process has to take place.

Let me go back to the treaty. The treaty was signed by two kings. Those two kings then, in 1752, were Jean-Baptiste Cope and a representative of King George III. There were two regimes. You ask who represents who? Well, there were two kings there, keep in mind, and one king was the grand chief. The grand chief has the levels down that he deals with.

• 1635

In our nation there are three acceptable people at the top level. You have your grand chief, you have your grand captain, who oversees the captain of all the Mi'kmaq territory, that is, Quebec to Newfoundland, including New Brunswick and P.E.I., and the other person is what we call the putus in our language. Putus means the law-holder, and that's the treaty-holder.

A similar system exists in the United States. You have your president, you have your vice-president, and you have your secretary of state. And that's how these people have to look at this.

The captains are signees to the treaty. If we ask the Supreme Court, if we ask any lawyer who is the beneficiary, it is all of them. The non-status and status issue is not an issue for us. It may be an issue at the lower level, but it's not at the top level, because the significance of the numbers don't warrant that.

We're a small number and the non-status are a small number. It will be up to us. It will be up to the grand chief who is our king and his workers to have hearings, and they'll decide.

Yesterday I heard people who bothered me with their comments. They said we can't live with a two-tier system. My God, my friend, we live in a two-tier system. We have an English language and a French language. That's two-tiered. We have the province and the feds. That's two-tiered. We have the Senate, and that's triple. We do have an existing system. Why is it so hard for people to accommodate our people who want to make a living?

We don't have to go over and over again about the social ills of my people. I had a person talk to me yesterday from the Shubenacadie Reserve, the Big Cove Reserve, and Eskasoni. These are the three largest reserves that I oversee. They have the highest rate of suicide. The young people are telling us they have lost hope.

I saw a representative from the Inuit go to England. His Inuit son committed suicide while he was fighting for his people.

We have a very drastic situation here with high suicide rates, high incarceration, high unemployment. The reserve in Eskasoni might have 90% unemployment, Mr. Chair. The reserve in Big Cove, our largest reserve, has the highest unemployment rate anywhere.

So we have to come to a solution. I have spoken with international lawyers and I often ask them what is the answer. Is the answer more money? Is the answer land claims? What's the answer to this? The answer, they say, is empowerment. Empowerment. You have to give the power back to the people and let them decide, because they have to have the integrity to be able to have hope for a life to live. That's immediate.

If we have to use Marshall...this man came back and fought for his people after he was wrongfully convicted for a murder he didn't commit. He spent 11 years in prison, in a system that had sent him there. So now where do we go? He's saying where do we go from here?

I've spoken to Don Marshall. He comes to my house every so often. He says “I lost hope too.”

The Chair: Mr. Bernard, can you close up fairly rapidly so we can have time for a couple of questions?

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: I just want to tell you about one other newspaper article...when I had a meeting with the all chiefs' committee in Beaver Brook, back when the ruling came down. It said, “`Pay natives not to fish', says environmentalist”. Elizabeth May, president of the Sierra Club said, yes, the compensation package should come into play. If somebody doesn't want us to fish, then there has to be a resolution where moderate living would have to come into play.

• 1640

There's no denying there's a lot of poverty on our reserves. Some people have made comments that we live in a third world or a fourth world.

The Decade for the Eradication of Poverty is looking at this on the international front at the United Nations. I report to that group.

I look forward to your report. I will take the report to the high commissioner, who I met over the past four years, and to the commissioner for the decade group as well. The co-chair is actually supposed to come here in December. He just had a recent death in Costa Rica. He phoned me yesterday.

Things have to be fair. Consultation has to take place. You cannot have one group saying they represent people without any consultation.

Please, gentlemen, hear me. The consultation has to take place at the grassroots level. You don't understand if you don't live on a reserve. We live in a corrupt system, and it's not accountable. I'm not going to say any names. Now there's a gathering strength to make it accountable. That's what we want too. We want these people to be accountable. We want to be able to develop a fair system where there will be no nepotism, where there will be accountability and consultation. That's the kind of system we want.

DFO cannot be trusted. I myself phoned DFO in Sydney two weeks ago and asked them if I could fish. He didn't know who I was. I didn't tell him on the phone who I was. I contacted him and he said no, it would be up to my chief to decide. The chief didn't even consult. He had one meeting with his family, and without the numbers and everything else he issued one licence and closed it up. I gave this man this licence. He closed the meeting off and he calls that consultation.

So in your recommendations remember there is a system that's not working within our system. The DFO system is not working. So the idea would be to come to an understanding.

The Chair: Are you saying the chief doesn't represent the people?

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: You have to go back to the treaty. There was no chief then. There is now. The representatives would be the grand chief, the traditional government, and they would be the ones.

If DFO doesn't exist, then perhaps...the collapse of the regime of the Indian Act.

I heard one person say to me at this table here yesterday, now, do you say that the Minister of Indian Affairs will have the last say when it comes to self-government? Well, sir, that is not self-government. Self-government is not one person talking over one million people and saying they're representing them. That's not self-government. Self-government is empowerment. You give that power back to the people.

You're dealing with 52 nations across Canada.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Bernard. A question I have on your—

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: He just wants to make a comment.

The Chair: Let's have one small question first.

Okay, go ahead, Mr. Bernard.

Mr. Charles Bernard (Fisherman, Waycobah First Nation): I'm the grandson of the late Grand Chief Gabriel Sylliboy. He was fighting for the Treaty of 1752 in his twenties and he was told he was defeated.

The way I see it, we defeated this case on September 21. We walked into a new era for our native rights. After the decision was made they came along with a 30-day moratorium on fishing. The weather started getting cold after the moratorium was gone. With the high seas and everything else we couldn't get out. We couldn't get enough money to get our stamps.

• 1645

The way I see it, and him and all the native people...talk to us about compensation before Christmas. A native person should be compensated like the white man who is getting $852 every two weeks for the stamps he has obtained.

I would suggest you look at that form of compensation package.

The Chair: On activity 1 in your action plan here, you're saying that compensation for the loss of use to this right from the time the ruling came down, December 17, to December 24...you recommend $6,000 for each Mi'Kmaq, to be compensated for the loss of income for the year 1999. How many Mi'Kmaq are you talking about?

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: We're talking about perhaps 22,000 Mi'Kmaq in all the Mi'Kmaq territory.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien (Labrador, Lib.): They wouldn't all fish, would they?

Mr. Charles Bernard: It's the right of the individual native person.

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: It's not only just for the loss of use of fishing, sir, but also for the loss of use of natural resources they could have used. The denial of being able to use the natural resources...even the oil, gas, and all the minerals that have been taken out.

If you want to go back through history, I heard one gentleman say, “My father was fishing here; my grandfather was fishing here.” If we want to, we can go back 10,000 years to see how many forefathers of mine have fished here. Who's to say you have more grandfathers than we do? That's not the point. The point is that we were here.

Where do these people expect us to go, and what do they expect us to do? Live within the government?

The Chair: Mr. Steckle, you have a question.

Mr. Paul Steckle: You raised an interesting point that has been raised from time to time, that is, the Department of Indian Affairs not seeking accountability from the chiefs and their bands. We know there are people who are doing quite well on the reserves. We know there are people who are impoverished. Would you like to comment in terms of the wealth that comes from the resources? If the fishing becomes a greater part of your income source, do you see a fair or proper distribution of that wealth to all the people in the band?

I think that's very important, and I'd like you to comment on that for the record.

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: I see this as double—in-shore and off-shore. I see working in the off-shore as being a communal right.

I heard Bill Montour, who is the Atlantic regional representative for Indian Affairs in Amherst, say that the Atlantic region needs 1,000 housing units. We don't have the money for it. Why isn't this right used as a communal right and why not have the income come in and used for housing? Why doesn't the government think like that? They could use that income to build the houses they need. There is a housing need. Everybody needs houses. I know it's just not the natives, but also the non-natives. We have a shortage of houses.

On the in-shore part, it will be the little guy who can't afford a 100-foot boat, who can't afford the amount of traps or the equipment that is needed. That's the way I see it.

Mr. Paul Steckle: I think the accountability is important.

Mr. Charles Bernard: Accountability is going to be carried out by the chief and councils because they have big companies and we can't argue with them. Once they start removing our rights, we have no say in it, because we're not relatives to them, right? It's hard. As you said, the grand chiefs should be the leaders on the project we're talking about.

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: We could develop a process where the grand chief would have to consult with his administrators, who would, in turn....

Mr. Paul Steckle: On the transfer of federal dollars to the native bands, is there a fair distribution of that wealth to the people? My concern is that everybody shares reasonably equally among the group of people.

Mr. Charles Bernard: The jobs are held by certain individual members on the reserve and—

Mr. Paul Steckle: And how can we help you to change that?

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: We develop a system that will be accountable and we develop a system where we can help that little guy who doesn't have political pull within the reserve or in any other forum....

• 1655

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Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: ...Answer my question. Have you consulted with...? There are 35 grand chiefs and there's the Atlantic Policy Congress. The minister has met with them. We haven't seen this.

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: Oh, yes.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: No, we haven't seen this.

I asked you, have you consulted with these people to come forward here?

Mr. Charles Bernard: Yes, sir. It seems there's a mental block between the chief and us, from talking to him. We have suggested to the chief about this issue, but the chief just doesn't want anything to do with it. He wants to be bought out.

We've talked to the grand chief; he's happy about it. I had a talk with the grand captain, and he was a little saucy to me, but I don't blame him. He's drawing a $90,000-a-year salary. He doesn't give a damn about native issues. And you're asking us.

We talked to the people in the Whycocomagh Band. We hadn't talked to the elected officials, but we talked to the native people.

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: Yes, it's my job to consult with the ordinary, everyday Joe and Jane.

Mr. Charles Bernard: Yes.

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: And the children. I don't like to leave anybody out. But in the second-last—

The Acting Chair (Mr. Bill Matthews (Burin—St. George's, Lib.)): Let's have order now. One at a time, please.

Mr. O'Brien, do you have another question?

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: Do you want to make another point?

Mr. Charles Bernard: I suggest, when we're talking about these compensation packages, that we have a referendum in the Whycocomagh-Waycobah first nations to ask the people if they believe we should be asking for $852 every two weeks to survive until the fishing season next year.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: Okay. I have one last point.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Bill Matthews): Make it quickly, Mr. O'Brien.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: Were you, as aboriginal people—status, non-status, or otherwise—given, in your view, an equal opportunity to be licence-holders of lobster licences in the 1960s or so, the same as any other fishers who hold licences right now? Do you feel you were given the same opportunity to be licence-holders?

• 1700

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: I'll let my colleague, Mr. Marble, answer that. He was in a residential school in the 1960s. He knows just what went on in the 1960s.

Charlie, please.

Mr. Charles Marble (Fisherman, Waycobah First Nation): Simply, no.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Bill Matthews): You didn't have the same opportunity.

Mr. Charles Marble: No, we didn't have the same opportunity.

A voice: You know we didn't. I don't have to explain that.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: We don't need clarification. We've got reports. There has to be on balance—

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: Let me tell you something. There was a policy in 1960 to centralize our people. They took the children and tried to turn them into white people; they took Mi'kmaq people and tried to turn them into white people.

Mr. Charles Marble: That was in a type of school.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Bill Matthews): On Mr. O'Brien's question, we've heard numerous times since we started on Monday that until 1968, fishing licences could have been obtained—

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: For 25¢.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Bill Matthews): —very cheaply, and they were available to whomever. So I think that's why he's asking the question.

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: You have to bring yourselves back to that time. There were Indian agents who were acting like the chiefs act today. They were the ones who were issuing the licences. There was a lot of corruption back then, according to testimony from my people. Those licences were sold for sex, for example, and other things, like food. How could anybody, even with 25¢—

The Acting Chair (Mr. Bill Matthews): I don't want to belabour the point because we really have to adjourn. We have to get to the Miramichi.

If you'll permit me, I think the crux of the question is that with the licences being so readily available, it appears—and I'm speaking now on a personal point—as if there wasn't a great take-up on the licences by native people.

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: Right.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Bill Matthews): That's what seems to be insinuated, whether correctly or not. So I guess the question is that here we are now in 1999, when the fishery has become very lucrative in a lot of cases—not all cases—and now there's a sudden interest in getting into the fishery. I think that's the premise—and I'm not trying to prejudge Mr. O'Brien's question, and it's been asked a number of times since Monday. I think that's the premise and the basis of what we're asking. There seems to be, in some people's view, a sudden interest.

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: The sudden interest comes into play because of the fact that the right has been recognized. Finally there's a right for us to act upon a right. Our people were told...and I commend them for not acting while this decision was in the Supreme Court.

In the 1960s we had legislation on residential centralization. Now, sir, I must say this for the record. I'm answering these questions out of apprehension and as best I can, because I know the time constraints. I have my time too. I look forward to your committee report. I also have a plane to catch, and I have to present this to the high commissioner and whoever is involved in the economic and social council at the UN level.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Bill Matthews): We thank you very much for coming. Thanks a lot.

You can finish with one final comment and then we will adjourn.

Mr. Charles Bernard: I have one final comment. You mentioned getting the licences. We weren't informed about the stuff that came out.

• 1705

My grandfather was taken to court in 1920 for the illegal trafficking of muskrat. He was charged and he took the 1762 treaty and stated it in court in Port Hood, Cape Breton. It's been documented and he was told he was beat, but he was the winner as far as I can see. That's how we were deprived from going out to the fishery guys and saying we didn't want a licence. We were scared. We've just started coming out of the dark ages. We're just getting out now, because we see that the issues of self-government and the fishing rights are—

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: Hope. We see hope.

Mr. Charles Bernard: We see hope at the end of the tunnel.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Bill Matthews): Thank you very much.

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: I have one last comment.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Bill Matthews): We're going to adjourn now.

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: Mr. Chair, I just want to leave this with the committee. It's a Mi'kmaq resources guide, and it has all the names in Mi'kmaq prior to contact. It shows how lucrative these things are.

I also want to leave with you a chart that shows where there are thirty species that are fished in Atlantic Canada.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Bill Matthews): You can give it to the clerk.

Mr. Junior Charles Bernard: With those thirty species, there are enough natural resources there to treat everybody equitably and fairly. I think one-third of these natural resources really do belong to the Mi'kmaq.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Bill Matthews): Thank you very much.

On that note, we're going to adjourn.