A leadership vacuum in Nova Scotia

When the federal government doesn't do its job, you get chaos

Like most Nova Scotians, I feel caught in the middle of the ongoing dispute between native and non-native fishermen over the lobster fishery. (Mind you, any more disgusting incidents like this, and the non-native fishermen can count me out.) After centuries of oppression it’s good to see the Mi’kmaw people asserting rights they’ve long been denied. At the same time, it’s easy for people in Halifax to sneer at rural Nova Scotians who have fished for generations and legitimately fear for their livelihoods.

Unfortunately, what we’re seeing today is the result of a federal government - under Liberal and Conservative administrations - too timid and paralyzed to act on the Supreme Court of Canada’s Marshall decision, which confirmed the Mi’kmaw’s right to make a “moderate livelihood” from fishing. The federal government still had the power to define exactly what a “moderate livelihood” entails, and as Colby Cosh notes in the National Post, they never really got around to it:

…The Supreme …