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 Court’s decision in the Marshall case, which affirmed the historic rights of Indigenous-Canadians to earn a livelihood from fishing, is now more than 20 years old. The Liberal approach to the “moderate livelihood” right has been to assign fairly large quantities of lucrative lobster licences to various Mi’kmaq bands, to be exercised by those bands communally according to licence conditions that are designed to preserve the overall health of the resource.
But the fisheries ministry has been reluctant to apply a hard definition of “moderate livelihood,” which it would then have to defend in court, and it refuses to do so now. The actual fisheries minister, whose signature is on the Liberals’ plea for an emergency debate, is in talks with the Sipekne’katik, which ceremoniously issued its own lobster licences in September, and with other bands that intend to follow its example.
[…]
It’s a very Canadian situation. The Supreme Court, in making the Marshall decision, defined a treaty obligation that has a rather absolute, paramount character (within the bounds of the adjective “moderate”). If it turns out that federally licensed lobster fishing is unsustainable when combined with licit Aboriginal use of the resource, the Mi’kmaq’s “moderate livelihood” entitlements must come at the head of the queue for lobster quota.
And why not? After all, they were there first, and the recognition of their rights is not consciously intended to shut anyone else out. But that will be small comfort if the federal government loses its ability to steward the lobster fishery because licences are being issued in unlimited numbers by rival authorities.
Economic study of the tragedy of the commons teaches us that the depletion of a commonly held resource is not inevitable. But non-state solutions to the tragedy are most successful when the resource is in the hands of a single community with the social power to enforce good stewardship practices. If this were the year 1620 we could solve the problem by assigning ultimate ownership of lobster licences to the Mi’kmaq. Short of that, a government has to run things, and the one in Ottawa is the only choice on offer.
Meanwhile, restaurants in Halifax are boycotting lobster in support of the Mi’kmaw fishermen, and there are rumblings on social media about a counter-boycott of these restaurants, which I predict will lead to a counter-counter-boycott against restauants that aren’t boycotting lobster. In 2020, everyone will be boycotted for fifteen minutes.
Interestingly, after months of protests against police brutality and racism, and even calls for police to be defunded or abolished altogether, the conventional wisdom in Nova Scotia is that the Mi’kmaw need more police to protect them.
Mike Sack, chief of the Sipekne'katik First Nation, is even asking for the military to be called in. And who can blame him, considering the shocking acts of violence directed at his people?
This does show, however, just how unrealistic “abolish the police” works as a plan of action for protecting vulnerable minorities. (Defunding police, which would involve redirecting some resources and responsibilities from police to more appropriate professionals, is a different issue - and a slogan that seems deliberately designed to turn off people like me, who might otherwise agree with it.) Police forces in Canada have a long history of racism and violence directed at native peoples - in Saskatchewan, “starlight tours” were still going on in the 21st century - and comprehensive reforms are needed. But that’s a far cry from abolition.
In the United States, polls show that African-Americans want better policing, not less of it. Many even complain that the problem is too few police officers in their neighbourhoods. The same principle applies up here. The status quo is not sustainable, but all but the most blinkered utopians know who would actually end up suffering the most in this world:
I think “holistic conflict resolution” in a police-free world would look a lot like what Kyle Rittenhouse did.
The Trump campaign’s hail-mary shot at winning next month’s election involved the contents of Hunter Biden’s computer, recovered from a computer repair shop in Delaware and totally not obtain by Russian government hackers. Even Fox News thought the story smelled too bad, so it eventually wound up at the New York Post - where some poor reporter had her name put on the story without her knowledge.
No one expects high-quality journalism from an unrepentantly sleazy tabloid, but this is truly beyond the pale. The Post’s act is not funny anymore, and I can’t in good conscience treat it like a legit-
Dammit, New York Post, I just can’t quit you.
Indigenous people often face poor living conditions. They lack security in basic physical essentials such as food, shelter and medical care. They face discrimination over generations - police harassment, being singled out for violent crimes, sexual assault, medical discrimination, and the list goes on. Having faced long-term food and shelter insecurity along with “milder” versions of societal and medical discrimination as an autism spectrum person while raising small children on almost nothing, I have to say, these things have the power to destroy you until there is nothing left. Constant insecurity about essential human basics such as health care, food, shelter and personal safety wears people down and send them into depression, or worse.
Keeping in mind all that has been taken from them, Indigenous people more than deserve the right to make a living. The federal government needs to step up and clarify Indigenous rights as well as the reasons behind them so that settler fishermen can at least understand that this isn’t special treatment, but just the minimum decency of being given a chance to earn a fair living. A secure, self-earned income is one of the first steps towards essentials such as developing a strong sense of self and maintaining their culture. That’s impossible to achieve when basic physical requirements are not met and people are socially marginalized at the same time, causing constant anxiety and fear.
A decent living is a fundamental cornerstone of healthy lives. It won’t magically fix past injustices. All it does is give Indigenous people something to work with. As such, the right to a livelihood needs to be defined and set out in law clearly and distinctly, and given correspondingly strong police protection. Otherwise, discrimination and potentially violent harassment seems almost inevitable.