Fisheries committee  I'd agree with Mr. Roman. I don't think there's anything within.... It was never a question being asked of the court in Marshall whether or not Donald Marshall Jr., either individually or as part of a collective, should have management rights. It was strictly towards access. I w

Fisheries committee  The way I always describe it is, in governance, what's happening in the Mi'kmaq community, certainly, is what I call the fundamentals of federalism. We are starting to really understand, from the communities' perspectives, what are certain areas of concern that may be of a global

Fisheries committee  I think I lost the tenor of the question. Could you repeat it for me?

Fisheries committee  We put it in the same context as just about all of the aboriginal treaty or aboriginal rights litigation that the Supreme Court puts out. These are classified communal rights, meaning that they accrue to a community of first nations. In this case, the community would be the Mi'km

Fisheries committee  Do they have a mandate? I'll tell you what I've been told, and then we can decide whether or not they have the mandate. When we developed the community fishing plans that I talked about—Potlotek, Pictou Landing and Annapolis Valley—we wanted to work with DFO to try to ensure tha

Fisheries committee  Well, to my mind—and I think this is what the chiefs have put forward—they need to sit down as negotiating partners with the Mi'kmaq at the table, and they need to look at the proposals being put forward by the Mi'kmaq to consider whether these are workable proposals that can be

Fisheries committee  Yes, that's what I mean about concepts like median income or whatever. You know, the court wasn't saying that a person has the right to have a middle class income or whatever. What the court was trying to do was to find a way to put some parameters around where this fishery would

Fisheries committee  As I said, I think you have to look at the moderate livelihood more as a spectrum of the way in which resources are allocated. If we start getting into an idea of moderate livelihood as a monetary unit or moderate livelihood as family income, and we start having to look at what d

Fisheries committee  Well, to my mind, and certainly as being somebody who is at the main table negotiating with both CIRNAC and DFO, as well as the Province of Nova Scotia, it's always been our understanding that when it comes to fisheries negotiations, that is in the purview of DFO. Certainly, DFO

Fisheries committee  We have to recognize as well there are various aspects of the fisheries wherein first nations have rights. As I said in my opening comments, there's a direct difference between food, social and ceremonial rights versus moderate livelihood rights. When we brought the case to the

Fisheries committee  The difficulty of an assertion such as that would be just the language that was used in 1760-61. Is there any direct statement that says it can be regulated or should be regulated by the Crown, or what have you? No, there's not, but it was certainly accepted by all parties within

Fisheries committee  I think one of the keys to the Marshall case was that, clearly, what was taking place was that you had a document, the treaty of 1760, that was written by British authorities. It was written in a language that was common to British authorities. That's why, when you read Marshall

Fisheries committee  I wouldn't know the exact amounts when it comes to the Marshall response. I do know that the vast majority of the dollars were for purchases of licences and purchases of equipment. Those dollars didn't go directly to first nations communities. Those dollars would have been used t

Fisheries committee  I should say that I was also co-counsel on the Stephen Marshall logging case as well. I think with the Marshall cases, the unique thing that I see in the way the Supreme Court handled the Marshall case is that ordinarily a new case will be brought to the court with a specific set

Fisheries committee  Yes. It reiterated the fact that it's up to governments and first nations to negotiate these things out.