Thank you, Madam Chair.
Honourable Chair, committee members and fellow witnesses, Kwey psi-te wen. Hello everyone.
My name is Chief Justice Gruben. I'm the newly elected chief of Bilijk.
Today, I want to talk to you about salmon in the Wolastoq, known as the Saint John River, the homeland and waters of my people, the Wolastoqiyik. This river is the longest river and largest watershed in eastern Canada.
The six communities of the Wolastoqey Nation are situated along the banks of the Wolastoq, which in our language translates to “beautiful and bountiful river”. The Wolastoq runs past my home and has fed my family, guided my ancestors and shaped every value I carry as a leader.
My community of Bilijk lives in the shadow of the Mactaquac Dam, an enormous structure built in the late 1960s that has drastically changed the Wolastoq. When the dam was constructed, DFO and NB Power agreed to mitigate its impacts by establishing the Mactaquac Biodiversity Facility. For most of the past century, this building has helped protect the genetic diversity of the Wolastoq, including the unique species of wild Atlantic salmon in our river.
In February 2026, DFO abruptly announced that this facility would close because of budget cuts. I want to be extremely clear: The closure of this facility represents the extinction of salmon in the Wolastoq watershed. For approximately $150,000 in annual operating costs, DFO is risking the full extinction of a genetically unique species of wild Atlantic salmon on the Wolastoq.
This is urgent. The full closure is planned for October 2026. Programs, people and the salmon have already been impacted.
The salmon above the Mactaquac Dam are functionally isolated. Before industrialization, more than 100,000 Atlantic salmon returned home every year. Today, only a few hundred make it back.
The Mactaquac Biodiversity Facility is not a luxury. It is a lifeline. It raises Tobique River salmon. It has been the bridge between extinction and survival for decades.
This year, thousands of young salmon are expected to be released into the Wolastoq from this facility to help restore the population above and below the dam. If this facility closes before alternative measures are in place, they will likely die. The end of a critical species in the Wolastoq will have ripple effects across the region.
What is happening here is not only a conservation failure: It is a legal one. Section 35(1) of the Constitution Act of 1982 recognizes and affirms “aboriginal and treaty rights” of indigenous peoples in Canada.
The Supreme Court of Canada, in Haida Nation versus B.C., established clearly in 2004 that the “Crown has [a] “duty to consult” indigenous people when it contemplates actions that may adversely impact our rights. It's not after the fact or as a courtesy, but a constitutional obligation. The decision to shut down the last facility standing between the Wolastoq salmon and extinction is exactly the kind of decision that demands that consultation.
The Wolastoqiyik have held treaty rights to fish the Wolastoq since the peace and friendship treaties of the 18th century. We also hold inherent aboriginal rights to harvest and manage salmon, which are rights we have held since time immemorial. These rights are supposed to be protected by Canada's Constitution, but we have not had access to salmon fishing for decades.
Our ancestors and elders stopped fishing as a gesture to help restore the species. This is a future-generation-oriented sacrifice because salmon, polamuwok, is not just a food source for us but a cultural keystone featured in our creation stories, our ceremonies and our relationship to our homeland. They sacrificed to preserve polamuwok for the future.
We and Wolastoqey community members all along the Wolastoq have done our part to keep the salmon alive.