Fisheries Committee on Nov. 16th, 2020

[Chief George Ginnish]

I can go first, Mr. Chair.

Because our negotiations have been infrequent and not directly related to the directive to the court decision, it has been a challenge to even begin to talk about what moderate livelihood could mean to our community.

I can share really quickly some information that would give you a feeling of where our communities sit economically. From the 2016 census data, the median family after-tax income in New Brunswick is $52,000. In my first nation, in Natoaganeg, it is $25,000 per family for after-tax income. The unemployment rate in my community is at least double what it is in New Brunswick. We have a very young and growing population who need an opportunity and want to be able to practise their treaty rights. They are not being given that opportunity to this date.

I can tell you that we are a community of 1,000. We have close to 260 families. We have six lobster licences that were part of the initial Marshall interim allocation. That doesn't satisfy any definition of moderate livelihood from my perspective.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

What would your definition of a moderate livelihood be then, Chief?

[Chief George Ginnish]

It would be that all our members who would like to work in the fishery have that opportunity. Right now, dozens are asking me on a daily basis when they will get a chance. When will they get an opportunity to go out and fish? At this point they haven't been given that opportunity.

We've been trying. We've been sitting down at every possible opportunity to ask how we can make access available.

We've submitted a plan by our members for our members to fish snow crab to support the community overall. It's a management plan based on available quota. The response from DFO was to seize our traps and to threaten buyers.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

I understand there's lots going on in this conversation. Try to help me understand.

Right now my understanding is that a commercial fisherman with a quota going out for lobster.... It's an effort-based fishery. They have an opportunity to earn a livelihood. There's no guarantee based on their effort that they will actually have a profitable year. The same could be said for farmers. The same can be said for anybody else who is in business.

In your definition of a moderate livelihood, do you believe there should be a guarantee of that livelihood when you pursue the fishery?

[Chief George Ginnish]

I guess if our community was to be supported in a diversified fishery which would include other species, other available quotas, that might be achievable.

Any one fisher, any one licence, can have a good year, a bad year, but with more access it would mean more of our members would actually have the opportunity to work. That's the first part of it. If you're out fishing, being paid, at minimum, a wage to be able to do that, then that is improving your life, your livelihood. Is it a moderate livelihood? We haven't had a great chance to really look at what that means at this point because we're at the very front end of that conversation.

At a minimum, if you were to say off the cuff, “Wouldn't it be nice for all of the families in my community to have at least the median income”—

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Do you—

[Chief George Ginnish]

—and by no means don't hold me to that. A median income would be double what our families see now after tax.

I don't expect that's—

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Thank you.

Am I out of time, Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Calkins.

You're dead on the six minutes, sir.

[Chief Darlene Bernard]

Can I speak? Can I answer?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Not right now, no. It will have to come up in other questioning, or you can write an answer and submit it to committee.

We'll now to go Mr. Morrissey for six minutes or less, please.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you, Chair.

Welcome, Chief Bernard. It's good to see you appearing before the committee from Lennox Island.

I have a couple of questions. Chief Bernard, you reference no resolution in the two decades that followed from Marshall. Could you outline for the benefit of the committee what access to the fishery Lennox Island First Nation has now versus 1999?

[Chief Darlene Bernard]

Sure. As far as the rights to a moderate livelihood fishery are concerned, we have nothing. We don't have a livelihood fishery in our community.

We have a communal commercial fishery in our community; that is, there are 10 vessels, I guess, that fish commercially for the community. That money is used to help with projects, with deficits from the federal government because we're underfunded in everything. Right now, we don't have a livelihood fishery.

What we got when Marshall came down was we signed Marshall agreements that had no prejudicial language in them at all. This was all about our getting access so that we could start teaching our people how to fish again, because we were pushed out of the fishery for 260 years. We needed that access to bring it into our community.

These were negotiated agreements. At the time, they were negotiated in good faith, and I think if the government's thinking about clawing that back, that's going to put more pressure on the bands to do the livelihood fishery.

There needs to be more commercial access for all the bands so that we can lessen the pressure that's being felt for a livelihood fishery, in my opinion.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

I appreciate that. I believe you addressed it. Are the proceeds from the fisheries that the Lennox Island First Nation is involved in now distributed to the community on a communal basis?

[Chief Darlene Bernard]

Not all of it.... There are people in our community who fish like any other commercial fishermen fish, with 300 traps. They go out. They feed and look after their families—

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Chief Bernard, were those acquired by them, or were they part of the licences that were transferred?

[Chief Darlene Bernard]

All we have are communal licences. All of our commercial licences belong to the band, so the band allocates them to the community. They have to follow our management plans and everything else.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Within that fishery, am I correct that there are fishers who participate who keep all the proceeds?

[Chief Darlene Bernard]

Yes, but they also pay their own bills. They bought their own boats and they've really been entrepreneurial. We like that in our community. We like entrepreneurs.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Okay.

[Chief Darlene Bernard]

There are many people in our community who are poor, who can't get a big boat or anything like that, but would like to go out to fish for a moderate livelihood, by fishing maybe 50 traps. I don't know. We're going to be engaging our community and all our members over the wintertime to come up with what the needs are in the community. We will develop a management plan and an enforcement plan.

We have already engaged with the P.E.I. Fishermen's Association. We've talked to them. I asked the young fishermen, “What's your livelihood? You go out there. You work hard every day and you come home. At the end of the week you get paid. You make your car payment, your boat payment. You get your groceries, you pay your rent and you make sure your kids have what they need. Then there's a little bit left over.” They said yes. I asked whether they would consider themselves as having a moderate livelihood. They said yes.

That's good enough for me. If they're making that livelihood, then we should be able to make the same livelihood, in my opinion.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thanks, Chief. I appreciate it.

Do first nations have access to snow crab in Lennox?

[Chief Darlene Bernard]

Yes, we do.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Okay.

Are there any other fisheries, such as tuna, herring or mackerel?

[Chief Darlene Bernard]

There are tuna and herring fisheries.