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Musqueam Indian Band |
Thursday, June 19, 2003
VANCOUVER, BC— June 19, 2003 — Good afternoon. My name is Wendy John. I am an elected member of the Musqueam Council, and am here today to speak on behalf of my community about the decision of Judge Saunderson given in Campbell River a couple of days ago.
My comments will be brief.
The business of judges is to apply the laws made by the politicians. In this case, Judge Saunderson appears to disagree with the law he was required to apply. Instead of applying the law, as a judge is obliged by his oath of office to do, he applied his private opinion of fairness. In doing so, he stepped out of his judicial role, and entered a political forum not permitted to judges.
I am not going to debate whether the judge’s private opinion is right or wrong. A judge like anyone else is entitled to his private opinions and personal political views. But judges are not allowed to bring their private political views into the courtroom.
As I said, Judge Saunderson failed to apply the law. These 40 fishermen pleaded guilty to breaking the law. It was his duty to impose an appropriate sanction, to deter them and others who might be inclined to engage in similar illegal activity. Instead, his decision condones and approves of their law breaking.
Not only has he condoned the illegal fishing of these 40 fishermen, his decision encourages further law breaking by the BC Survival Coalition at a time when the salmon are just starting to arrive in the Fraser River.
While the Judge may disagree with the policies and regulations of the Department of Fisheries, surely he should have realized that unregulated anarchy on the water is bad for the fish and dangerous for the fishermen.
Last year, over a 100 Survival Coalition boats went out and fished illegally during Musqueam’s fishery. This year, with the judicial support of Judge Saunderson for their political cause, what do you think they will do? How many boats will they send out this year? How many fish will not reach the spawning grounds because they have been illegally poached by the Coalition?
I am especially concerned for the safety of Musqueam fishermen. Our fishermen go out in small boats. Women and children are on board. The Coalition goes out in powerful commercial gillnetters on their illegal fisheries. When 100 of our boats and 350 commercial gillnetters are fishing together things get very dangerous. In previous years, the Coalition has swamped our boats. There have been many close calls, but so far no one has drowned.
This situation is becoming frustrating. When the Coalition goes out and fishes illegally during our fisheries, they endanger the lives and safety of our fishermen and they take the fish we are legally entitled to harvest. DFO does nothing to stop them. They take pictures, and lay charges after the fact, but nothing is done to seize illegal catches or gear (as would and has regularly occurred with aboriginal protest fisheries). The largest Coalition protest fishery happened in 1998, and still none of the charges laid have been concluded by DFO. The situation gets worse, and the DFO response (or more accurately, non-response) remains the same. And then, when a charge finally gets before the Court with the fishermen pleading guilty, we have a decision like this one from Judge Saunderson, which condones their law-breaking.
What are we supposed to do? DFO won’t protect us and our rights from this ongoing interference and harassment by the Coalition. Now, many aboriginal people will conclude that the Courts cannot be relied on to act impartially to defend our rights either. That is most unfortunate.
Musqueam urges the DFO to immediately appeal Judge Saunderson’s decision. We also ask that the Minister of Fisheries make immediate arrangements to bring in additional officers to the Fraser River to enforce the law against the Coalition, who will escalate their dangerous and destructive illegal fisheries as a result of the Saunderson decision. Manpower shortages were not an impediment to enforcement at Burnt Church. We see no reason why the Minister would think otherwise in this case.
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