Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before the fisheries standing committee.
I would like to present my perspective on the lobster dispute that is ongoing within our province and soon to be Atlantic Canada-wide. My involvement has been since the initial Marshall decision in 1999, when, with my colleagues, we arrived at the first interim agreement between non-aboriginals and aboriginals. Both parties agreed upon this agreement for the first few years—same seasons, same rules and training.
After the first few years, the commercial industry was not invited to the discussion table. This is where the breakdown started. If you're not at the table, you're on the menu. The gap has increased from then to the present day.
Fast-forward to 2020, with the commercial lobster industry not at the table. We have witnessed the evolution of DFO in allowing the leasing of commercial lobster licences by aboriginal chiefs. The chiefs in turn have control of the distribution of them to aboriginal fishermen, but instead are leasing them to non-aboriginals. These licences have been paid for by Canadian taxpayers. This is why I have called for an audit of licences issued to native bands from 1999 to 2020 to determine who is receiving the benefits from these licences. The licences are being leased out, not in the spirit of the Supreme Court Marshall decision or the present-day owner-operator policies that are being enforced by DFO on the commercial inshore lobster industry.
Our current DFO minister, the Honourable Bernadette Jordan, created this mess. She is responsible for creating this policy of segregation in a two-tier system of managing our Atlantic inshore lobster fisheries. We heard her announce that there would be no—I repeat, no—commercial season outside of the existing lobster seasons. After two years of investigation, she actually prosecuted the illegal sale of lobsters in St. Marys Bay with the use of microchips hidden in the lobsters. In addition to the CBC story posted October 5, 2018, the province revoked the company's buying and processing licence.
These past few weeks, she has allowed Chief Mike Sack to establish a moderate livelihood in St. Marys Bay, which is clearly in violation of the Supreme Court of Canada's Marshall 2—also, with clarification, from the fisheries standing committee, dated 1999, which states that conservation comes first. The minister has the authority to regulate and the aboriginals have access to the fishery, but they must comply with adjacency to their band's territory.
Mr. Sack has jumped over two bands and is fishing illegally in St. Marys Bay. He has taken over a small craft harbours wharf and has a Nova Scotia Supreme Court injunction protecting him to participate in an illegal fishery. Small craft harbours membership has taken a leave of absence. To further confuse the situation, the Honourable Jordan, this month, is enforcing and seizing illegal lobster traps in Cape Breton and again in St. Marys Bay—a double standard, with segregation for southwest Nova.
Clearwater Seafoods has a monopoly on the offshore lobster licences and are in the final stages of an agreement to sell two of these licences to the aboriginal bands. This sale needs to be put on hold until the inshore commercial lobster industry is at the negotiating table. This is all interconnected, because the band chief is going to lease these licences back to Clearwater. I am suggesting a one-year pause to any activity outside the commercial set seasons for the inshore lobster fishing so that both sides can come together to the table to find a peaceful path forward. Our forefathers created these seasons for reasons.
I'd like to caution both sides: Segregation, setting fishing interests apart, and building a two-tier system will be chaotic, and 150 years of regulations and conservation will now be put in jeopardy.
Mr. Chair, I want to conclude my opening remarks by saying that I met with Mr. Allister Surette last week and requested, through him, that the commercial lobster industry must have a panel or a mechanism to have their voices heard, for we are part of this nation called Canada.
Thank you.