The Ugly Violence in Nova Scotia

In the last two weeks there has been escalating violence in Nova Scotia, including assaults, a mob of 200 people threatening Mi’kmaq fishers, and burning down a building containing the lobsters they had caught.  This led to Chief Mike Sack’s calls for military support, to prevent non-Indigenous fishers from ‘taking the law into their own hands’.  On Friday, October 16, Prime Minister Trudeau called for federal agencies to ensure that those involved in an Indigenous-led lobster fishery are safe.  Chief Sack criticized Prime Minister Trudeau, saying he had to go beyond sending comforting tweets and begin to send reinforcements for the law enforcement agencies on land and water. 

It was an unresolved the legal issue that led to the violence: do the Mi’kmaq have a treaty right to fish for lobster out of season, and if so, for how large a catch?  Underlying the legal dispute is the economic battle over a limited natural resource.  It is essentially a zero-sum game.  To the extent that one side wins by catching more, the other side loses by catching less.  Even if their loss is modest, it is the principle that infuriates the non-Indigenous side: ‘they can do something to make money from a common resource that we can’t, so they are unfairly stealing our livelihood.’

The Two Supreme Court of Canada Decisions in the Marshall Case

In order to understand the legal issues we have to go back to 1999, when there were two Supreme Court of Canada decisions (discussed below) involving the prosecution of Mi’kmaq Donald Marshall for fishing for eels without a licence. The Court had to consider a 1760 treaty between the Mi’kmaq and the British.  In the first Marshall decision, a 5:2 split decision, the Court acquitted Marshall of the charges.  In interpreting the treaty, the majority of the Court held that “a deal is a deal”, but failed to clarify what the deal was. The second Marshall decision also didn’t clarify it.  So the question remains unresolved: do the Mi’kmaq today have a treaty right to fish for lobster out of season, and if so, for how large a catch? 

The Court held that catch of each aquatic species raises different issues. What applied to Mr. Marshall’s eels in 1999 may not apply to lobsters today. As well, the Mi’kmaq are only entitled to earn an undefined “modest livelihood”.  Modest in whose opinion?  And the Court held that even such a modest livelihood may be reduced or eliminated by federal fisheries regulation, if that is necessary.  Who will decide what’s necessary? Ultimately, the courts.

Today, 21 years after the Marshall decisions, we have no better answer.  That is not the fault of either the Mi’kmaq or the non-Indigenous fishers who oppose them.

In the Marshall decisions the Court tried to give something to each side, to make everyone a winner.  But despite its good intentions, the Court effectively gave each side a sharper legal sword with which to attack the other side.  Sometimes,  when the judicial process is too slow, too costly and the outcome too uncertain, people take the law into their own hands. The Indigenous fishers did that by fishing for lobster out of season; and the non-Indigenous fishers did that by attacking them.

Interpreting a 1760 treaty, written in the language and the historical context of that time, cannot be easy. Still, how could our top court have created such uncertainty?

The Court Giveth and the Court Taketh Away

In the first of the two SCC Marshall decisions (which I will call Marshall I) the court was split 5:2, with a strong dissent by Justice McLachlin. The majority of the Court held that the 1760 treaty granted Mr. Marshall the right to a modest income by fishing for eels.  But that was not an unlimited or unqualified right, and the court described several limitations. 

After that decision was released, the West Nova Fishermen’s Coalition brought a motion for a rehearing, and to stay (i.e., to stop) the decision from coming into force.  This motion led to the second Marshall decision (Marshall II), which was unanimous.  To get the two dissenting justices in Marshall I to come on side with the five judges in the majority, there had to be some sort of compromise.  The majority had to give up something to gain the agreement of the two dissenters.  The compromise gave up some of the clarity in Marshall I, thereby increasing the uncertainty about what the “deal” was.

Here are some quotations from the two decisions to illustrate my point, and my comments on these quotations.

Marshall I

The Majority Reasons

“….. While it is true that there is no applicable land cession treaty in Nova Scotia, it is also true that the Mi’kmaq were largely dispossessed of their lands in any event, and (as elsewhere) assigned to reserves to accommodate the wave of European settlement which the Treaty of 1760 was designed to facilitate.  It seems harsh to put aboriginal people in a worse legal position where land has been taken without their formal cession than where they have agreed to terms of cession.  A deal is a deal.  The same rules of interpretation should apply. ….. [paragraph 21]

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The policy of not being harsh to aboriginal people and enforcing the deal the parties signed in 1760 are worthy policies.  But that would not justify changing today, through judicial interpretation, a treaty written 239 years ago.  The treaty that was written then was the deal then, it is still the deal now. 

The McLachlin Dissent

[From the Editor’s Summary headnote] ….The core of the trade clause is the obligation on the Mi’kmaq to trade only with the British.  Ancillary to this is the implied promise that the British will establish truckhouses where the Mi’kmaq can trade.  These words do not, on their face, confer a general right to trade.   Nor does the historic and cultural context in which the treaties were made establish such a right.  …. To achieve the mutually desired objective of peace, both parties agreed to make certain concessions.  ……  The …. system was a temporary mechanism to achieve peace in a troubled region between parties with a long history of hostilities.  When the restriction on the Mi’kmaq trade fell, the need for compensation for the removal of their trading autonomy fell as well.  At this point, the Mi’kmaq were vested with the general non-treaty right to hunt, to fish and to trade possessed by all other British subjects in the region.  The conditions supporting the right to bring goods to trade at truckhouses, as agreed to by both parties, ceased to exist.

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Justice McLachlin’s interpretation of the treaty was quite different from that of the majority.  She concluded that events that occurred over the years after the treaty was signed showed that the treaty rights had expired.  Once it had expired, the Mi’kmaq were granted no rights greater than those of all other British subjects in the region.  (They are British subjects because Canada did not yet exist at that time.) In Justice McLachlin’s opinion, Marshall should have been convicted as charged.

Marshall II

The Court’s Unanimous Reasons.

“ The fact the Crown elected not to try to justify a closed season on the eel fishery at issue in this case cannot be generalized, as the Coalition’s question implies, to a conclusion that closed seasons can never be imposed as part of the government’s regulation of the Mi’kmaq limited commercial “right to fish”.  A “closed season” is clearly a potentially available management tool, but its application to treaty rights will have to be justified for conservation or other purposes.  In the absence of such justification, an accused who establishes a treaty right is ordinarily allowed to exercise it.  As suggested in the expert evidence filed on this motion by the Union of New Brunswick Indians, the establishment of a closed season may raise very different conservation and other issues in the eel fishery than it does in relation to other species such as salmon, crab, cod or lobster, or for that matter, to moose and other wildlife.  The complexities and techniques of fish and wildlife management vary from species to species and restrictions will likely have to be justified on a species-by-species basis.  Evidence supporting closure of the wild salmon fishery is not necessarily transferable to justify closure of an eel fishery. “ [Paragraph 21]

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Similarly, evidence supporting a right to fish for eel is not necessarily transferable to a right to fish for lobster out of season.

“At para. 64, the majority judgment again referred to regulation permitted by the Badger test.  The Court was thus most explicit in confirming the regulatory authority of the federal and provincial governments within their respective legislative fields to regulate the exercise of the treaty right subject to the constitutional requirement that restraints on the exercise of the treaty right have to be justified on the basis of conservation or other compelling and substantial public objectives, discussed below. “ [Paragraph 24]

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Necessary Next Steps

Suggestions have been made for mediation to resolve the dispute.  Mediation can help, but only if the parties want it to.  Otherwise, someone must make a decision that is binding on both sides of the dispute.  That someone should be the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, on the basis of conservation and other resource management issues, as the Court set out in the two Marshall decisions.

Someone must be held responsible for the mob violence of some 200 people against the Mi’kmaq fishers.  The RCMP officers who were present at the scenes of these violent activities, but didn’t stop it, will have a good idea of who did what. They should investigate further.  Anyone who committed a criminal offence, such as assault or arson, should be charged.