Fisheries and Oceans Canada seeks $133 million more for First Nations access

Fisheries and Oceans Canada wants an additional $133 million on top of the $56 million budgeted and spent on Indigenous fisheries rights reconciliation this year.

The ask is the largest part of a $338.5-million top-up to its $4.8-billion 2023-24 budget the federal department is requesting to help it get through to the fiscal year end. It comes after Treasury Board president Anita Anand told federal departments to find $15.4 billion in spending cuts.

While submitting the request for what would amount to an eight per cent increase to its budget for this year to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans on Dec. 5, deputy minister Annette Gibbons noted that in line with austerity efforts they’d “frozen” $24.7 million in spending.

“The biggest item in the supplementary estimates is funding for various treaties and reconciliation agreements that we have,” Gibbons told the standing committee.

“Those are on the East Coast, on the West Coast and in different parts of the country. Certainly, being able to make good on the commitments in those areas this fiscal year would be a big challenge for us. Given the timing of supplementary estimates, being December, with four months left in the fiscal year, we would just be in a bit of a crisis mode, actually trying to figure out what we’d stop doing between now and then because we’ve made commitments in various areas.”

Gibbons did not provide MPs with a breakdown of the money for rights reconciliation. As of Monday afternoon, the department had not responded to a Chronicle Herald request sent Thursday for a breakdown of how the money would be spent.

In the years following the Supreme Court’s R vs. Marshall decision that acknowledged the Mi’kmaq and Maliseet right to make a “moderate livelihood” from the fishery, the federal government spent $580 million buying up 1,200 commercial licences (347 of which are for lobster) to transfer to Atlantic Canadian First Nations, along with training and boats.

Copies of these agreements seen by The Chronicle Herald included language stating that they were without prejudice to the moderate livelihood rights but, in exchange for receiving the licences, the First Nations would commit to not acting on the right for set periods of time (usually five years).

After the issue blew up in 2020, when Sipekne’katik First Nation launched its self-regulated lobster fishery on St. Mary’s Bay and other First Nations followed suit, Fisheries and Oceans Canada began negotiating new “interim understandings” with First Nations.

Unlike the communal commercial licences transferred under previous agreements, this new access would not be allowed to be leased out by First Nations to non-aboriginal commercial fishermen. Called Treaty Right Protected fisheries by the First Nations, they see the department allocate licences for set numbers of traps to bands, which can then redistribute them to their members.

The licences are to be fished during local commercial seasons and are subject to the same enforcement as non-aboriginal fishermen. Unlike the First Nations Food, Social and Ceremonial licences, the catch from these new licences can be sold.

The department has been buying up more commercial lobster licences around Atlantic Canada over recent years to make more room in the fishery for these new agreements.

“The reconciliation funding is for a variety of different agreements that we have in place across the country,” Gibbons said in response to questioning by Cape-Breton Canso Liberal MP Mike Kelloway.

“In particular, we signed four new reconciliation agreements on the Atlantic this year. A lot of that money will be flowing under those agreements.”

The Glooscap, Bear River, Wasoqopa’q (Acadia) and Annapolis First Nations in southern Nova Scotia (Kespukwitk District) have for the last three years been fishing under one of these “interim understandings.” This year they received an allocation of 5,250 lobster traps to be fished in three fishing zones around southern Nova Scotia.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada also had “understandings” in 2023 with Potlotek, We’koqma’q, Eskasoni, Pictou Landing and Lennox Island (Prince Edward Island) First Nations.

Beyond rights reconciliation, the top five requests are for the following additional appropriations:

• $49.4 million for the Fish and Fish Habitat Protection Program
• $42.1 million for the Multi-Purpose Vessel Project
• $19.4 million for the Aquatic Habitat Restoration Fund
• $12.9 million to implement the Indo-Pacific Strategy
• $11.6 million for coast guard helicopter maintenance and operations