LogFAQs > #946003301

Kyuubi4269 posted...

By choice.

Okay.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

f*** the agreement.

That's not how contracts work, I'm afraid.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

Setting up a fishing company to exploit the agreement

Is well within the confines of "moderate livelihood." If we have a contract that allows me to pick six apples from your yard, and I pick six apples from your yard, I am not remotely acting in bad faith, nor is "exploiting the agreement" a reasonable way to frame it. Again, the fishermen in question had less than a thousandth of the traps that comprise the actual commercial fishery. The lobster fishery is not so delicate that a 0.07% increase in harvesting will cause it to collapse (especially by a people who have fished it sustainably for millennia), nor is the industry so fragile that a 0.07% loss in revenue can be seen as the end of the world. Even if it were, that's still on them to account for because this treaty long predates any of their companies and business plans, and any failure to account for it can be seen purely as them failing to do their homework.

This is not the first time this has come into question. This issue has been brought before the Supreme Court of Canada on many different occasions since the treaty was written 250 years ago, and each time it has been affirmed that fishing out of season is fair game. There are currently calls on Ottawa to intervene in this matter by more explicitly defining "moderate livelihood" so that there's a more concrete basis upon which to tell the racist skidmarks to shove it up their portholes, which I think is a good idea, but I can guarantee that the end result will not be to renege completely on the central tenet of allowing them Mi'kmaq to fish out of season.

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