When I think of the amendment to the Fisheries Act allowing first nations bylaws to be incorporated into the Fisheries Act, that still does not represent the government-to-government or Crown-to-first nation relationship. It makes our aspirations and bylaws subservient to the Fisheries Act of the Crown. That's a snapshot of that time, I believe, and doesn't reflect the realities of law today and the embracing of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
When we start to think about first nation bylaws, just on that train of thought, we see we have a Department of Fisheries and Oceans that is loath to discuss what the word “social” means, even though it's covered off in the Supreme Court. Food, social, ceremonial—they will not give it a definition.
First nations have views and perspectives of what that means to their nations. There's no cookie cutter for this. What we need is a department that is willing to have substantive and real negotiations with nations to blow that balloon up and bring it to the dance so we can understand and have an agreement about what “social” is. It could very well mean the exercise of the licences that come from indigenous programs like PICFI, NICFI and AICFI, but then there needs to be an appropriate allocation.