Powley Case
News - Articles I I
14 Mar 03
AUDIENCE: 74,400, 12:07
Length: 00:21:00
Ref# 2B1908-1
Anchor/Reporters: DAVE RUTHERFORD, DAVE RUTHERFORD
ONTARIO MÉTIS DISPUTE
DAVE RUTHERFORD HR. (CHQR-AM), CALGARY
DAVE RUTHERFORD: A couple of cases going before the Supreme Court of Canada argued on the first part of next week, but it is regarding hunting rights for Métis in Canada. We have two guests today. Tony Belcourt, President of the Métis Nation of Ontario, and Tim Danson, yes you probably remember that name, Tim Danson, a lawyer representing the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters. Tony Belcourt, welcome to the program.
TONY BELCOURT / Métis Nation of Ontario President: Hi, how are you?
RUTHERFORD: Oh good thanks. Tim you there?
TIM DANSON / Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters Lawyer: Yes, how are you?
RUTHERFORD: Good thank you Tim. First of all I want to get, on the record I see a statement coming from the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters Tim dated March 7th, clarifying that in fact the organization you represent is opened to discussions, mediation, whatever, a willingness to meet with the Métis Nation of Ontario over this issue. Is that right?
DANSON: I think the OFAH is always opened to discuss the use and sharing of natural resources, wildlife resources, with all users, and obviously an important user is the aboriginal Métis community, which the OFAH has always held in high regard and respect.
RUTHERFORD: But it does say the Métis Nation now claims thousands of members have special status, means they can hunt and fish without licenses, says "we are concerned that unrestricted harvest of fish and wildlife does not mesh with province wide efforts to ensure the long term sustainability of fish
and wildlife".
DANSON: Well yes, I mean you know one of the things that the OFAH is very proud of is its contribution to conservation and resource and wildlife management, and unless you have a proper wildlife resource management plan in place you are going to jeopardize the sustainability of populations, and in this particular case, the Powley case, that's being argued on Monday and Tuesday in the Supreme Court of Canada, it's a moose case in which is interesting is that where at the time, 1820, when it's being asserted that the Métis community had come into its full form, there were no moose, and the reason why there were no moose in the 1820s in the Sault Ste. Marie area is because of both aboriginal and non-aboriginal hunting wiped them out and there were no conservation laws, and it was only as a result in the later part of the 1800s when conservation laws came in that the moose population came back, which is proof that you must have conservation laws to benefit both aboriginal and non-aboriginal hunting community.
RUTHERFORD: Does your association consider Métis to be aboriginal people?
DANSON: Well the Métis are aboriginal recently in part. That's the definition, but in this case for example, Roddy Powley is one hundred and twenty-eight aboriginal, which means that he is over ninety-nine percent of European ancestry, or put it another way, he's less than one percent aboriginal ancestry, and the difficulty is, and I'll say this that certainly my friends in the aboriginal community who may not want to go public with this, but they're very concerned if the Métis community has the identical aboriginal rights as they do. If less than one percent of some aboriginal ancestry is all that's needed, where do you draw the line, and it could have some very serious implications. So hopefully the Supreme Court of Canada will give some definition to it. And there's another problem that of course the jurisprudence now from the Supreme Court of Canada in terms of identifying an aboriginal right, it's a custom and tradition as a contact with the Europeans where that obviously doesn't apply to Métis because they come into existence after contact.
RUTHERFORD: Tony, is this an issue about recognition of Métis as aboriginal? Is it about a food-hunting scenario? What's at the bases of this?
BELCOURT: First of all Belcourt, B-E-L-C-O-U-R-T, and I think that first of all the case is about Steven and Roddy Powley having been charged for illegal hunting with moose, and they're asserting that they have a constitutional right to do so as a Métis person, because Métis people are recognized in Section 35 of Canada's Constitution and the constitution asserts that we have aboriginal and treaty rights. Our province, the Province of Ontario in particular, has taken a position that our rights don't exist even though there's a statement in the Constitution. We're putting our fate in the Supreme Court that they will rule that the Constitution is not meaningless. You don't put things in the Constitution and say, "well, they don't really exist after all". Certainly if you say, "well we say in the Constitution that Métis rights exist, but then again they don't", well if that part is meaningless then what other parts of the Constitution are meaningless. So I just want to make clear what the case is about. The other thing is Mr. Danson said that OFAH is opened to discussion with us and in fact I did go to OFAH's annual meeting a year ago and got a standing ovation for what I had to say to OFAH's members about the issues and you know get a grip on the issues. First of all in terms of conservation, I want to make a correction. The moose weren't wiped out in 1820, they just had moved away because of the trapping of furs and the beaver coming in and the change in the ecology, so the hunting just took place a little further away than where it currently takes place now.
RUTHERFORD: Who changed the ecology?
BELCOURT: Well, the ecology changes, well the fur trade certainly had an effect on the change in the ecology, no doubt about it, but it didn't mean that the moose were wiped out. Now the other thing about conservation I want to point out is this, where they Métis are concerned, they're not talking about new Métis going out and exercising rights, we're talking about Métis as one of the aboriginal peoples in the Constitution who have been doing that all along any way, and nobody knows better than that then the conservation officers because they've been charging our people over the years. So in Ontario the government hands out up to fifteen, sixteen thousand adult moose tags to sport hunters every year and an unlimited supply of moose tags for calves, so you can go out and pretty well annihilate the moose calf population nobody seems to care about that. We say before they hand out those tags to their sport hunters, any good management regime must certainly take into consideration that the Métis and First Nations are out there hunting anyway outside of the regulations. They know that because they charge our people, and so before they say well it's okay to issue these adult moose tags to sport hunting, they must surely have said, "well we've got a short here that there's a nominal allocation for the First Nations and the Métis", any good conservation regime must certainly have done that. Now to the point about Roddy Powley being one hundred and twelve, whatever it is, I find that really grossly insulting. Métis people are a people. We are one hundred percent Métis. We have Métis ancestors, Métis parents, we come from historic Métis communities from Ontario through to British Columbia, and we just abhor the idea that you're somehow going to start measuring blood counts (?), and the last time that was ever proposed was in Germany in 1940s. Surely we're not suggesting something like that here in Canada.
RUTHERFORD: But is blood relevant at all?
BELCOURT: To us, yes. For the Métis Nation we have a definition and the definition is simply that Métis must be of Métis ancestry from an historic Métis community in Canada.
RUTHERFORD: And that's not unlike the way First Nations, those that are taking control of their own registries, are approaching it as well.
BELCOURT: Well they are being discriminatory in some cases about blood. You need to be pure Nan (?) to get into some bands in Canada, but now that's another story.
RUTHERFORD: But isn't it true that you're asking to be having the identical rights as First Nations aboriginal community? You're saying that the Métis community should have the identical aboriginal rights as the First Nations aboriginal community as defined under the Constitution?
BELCOURT: We're not asking for that. We're are certainly saying that there is no justification to treat the Métis people differently than you do First Nations because our rights are recognized equality in the Constitution.
RUTHERFORD: Right.
BELCOURT: And in the Constitution of Canada there is no higher archive in recognition of the aboriginal peoples; the Constitution simply says the aboriginal peoples are the Indians, the Inuit, and the Métis peoples. So there's no justification, none that we see in law. The only justification for limiting rights has to be for say conservation purposes or for safety, preservation of the species obviously, but we have a harvesting policy that already embraces these principles.
RUTHERFORD: I want to come back and find out what those are. Tim stand by, Tony Belcourt stand by, back after this. Issue about Métis hunting rights in Ontario goes before the Supreme Court of Canada and a couple of Court levels the Métis claims have been upheld. Tim Danson with us and Tony Belcourt, President of the Métis Nation of Ontario. Tim, because the lower Courts have agreed that the Métis should have the ability to hunt without licenses, what is the argument before the high Court?
DANSON: Well the argument is that the Courts below expanded the definition beyond what was contemplated by the Constitution, and the argument is that Section 35 of the Constitution while recognizing Métis rights, it means that it is a recognition of the historic treaty commitments of the Crown to the Métis, which include recognition of the Métis land claims agreement, so it's not meaningless but there are agreements out there, treaty rights with respect to the Métis and they should be respected, and are certainly protected by the Constitution.
RUTHERFORD: Well the Métis say the Government of Ontario would be better to negotiate than to go to Court. The OFAH, the Federation you represent, also says we're willing to meet and, I assume, negotiate, so what would a negotiated position be?
DANSON: A negotiating process would allow a mutual sharing of the resource through the application of conservation principles, and I think that if people understood what conservation meant, I think many people don't. Conservation is a science and it's a science of wildlife resource management, and if we applied those principles properly, you would find that the sustainability of wildlife populations would increase significantly and there would be enough sustainability for both the aboriginal Métis and non-aboriginal community. And I have to take issue on one point and that is we have a Métis and aboriginal hunt and that everyone else, a non-aboriginal community, is sport hunting, and I just disagree with that. You know, I mean here I'm speaking to you from downtown Toronto on Bay Street, that might be one perspective, but the people who live for example in Northern Ontario, hunting is as much a part of their culture and tradition as it is anyone else.
RUTHERFORD: Sure.
DANSON: And when we go back to distinct identity, well the fact of the matter is when aboriginal rights were being developed, they were being developed along side a European community here who hunted and fished like everybody else, and so I wouldn't refer to it as just sport hunting. Hunting has profound meaning for a lot of non-aboriginal community.
RUTHERFORD: All right, Tony and when you talk about a negotiated settlement, what does that mean to you?
BELCOURT: The Courts in fact in Ontario ordered the Ontario, the Government to negotiate with us the last time around, and that ended up with a protocol agreement between the Métis Nation of Ontario and the Government of Ontario because what we were able to say to the Government of Ontario is we have a registry, we have certainty about who our people are, we issue Harvester's Certificates under certain conditions to those people who want to hunt or fish and they have to meet certain conditions and abide by our policy, they have to prove to the Captains of the Hunt that they have knowledge of firearm safety if they want to go hunting, and so on.
RUTHERFORD: For the whole Province you have that jurisdiction and that enforcement power?
BELCOURT: Yes. WE have problems in terms of enforcement because we don't have Enforcement Officers, we've got Captains of the Hunt, but we don't have a power to enforce. We do want to have the cooperative arrangements with the Ministry of Natural Resources so that we can be involved in enforcement and involved in proper management of the resources. Now one thing cannot be taken lightly, and that is the fact that aboriginal people - certainly nobody is going to suggest that we don't care about conservation. I mean aboriginal peoples...
RUTHERFORD: Well.
BELCOURT: Care deeply about predators and...
RUTHERFORD: But do you think that there's non-aboriginal hunters care about conservation?
BELCOURT: Of course I do...
RUTHERFORD: Okay, and their not all sport shooters...
BELCOURT: I'm not arguing about that...
RUTHERFORD: They're not all sport shooters.
BELCOURT: Pardon me?
RUTHERFORD: They're not all sport shooters; some actually consume the animals they shoot?
BELCOURT: Sure, I'm not arguing about that. I'm not disagreeing with that, no.
RUTHERFORD: Okay.
BELCOURT: You know the sort of panic out there is that aboriginal peoples don't give a damn about conservation, when in fact that's the farthest from the truth. Our harvesting policy is or the fundamental of it is our value of conservation and preservation of the environment. And when it comes to saying conservation is a science and so on, sure in theory, but in reality governments everywhere have cut back, and you know one of the departments that got cut back the most is the Ministry of Natural Resources. There are fewer Conservation Officers out there, there are no biologists to speak of anymore that can do that kind of science, so the departments need us to help them in terms of conservation. We know more about the bush because our people live in it. It's not a matter of going out there from time to time.
RUTHERFORD: All Métis live in the bush?
BELCOURT: Not all Métis, no.
RUTHERFORD: Oh, okay.
BELCOURT: We have families who do live a traditional way of life. Now not everybody that's registered in the Métis Nation of Ontario has even ever applied for a Harvesting Certificate for camping or for hunting.
RUTHERFORD: You have to register with the Métis Association as a registered Métis?
BELCOURT: Yes.
RUTHERFORD: How would you prove that?
BELCOURT: Well people have to bring us, when they fill out the application form; they have to provide proof of their ancestry.
RUTHERFORD: Of their bloodline?
BELCOURT: Absolutely, their parents, grandparents. We need hard evidence, Birth Certificates, and so on, and that people who fill these forms out bring in the documentation and prove their connection to an historic Métis community.
RUTHERFORD: All right. Gentlemen our time is limited on the complex topic. We wait for arguments Monday, Tuesday, but no decision then Tim right?
DANSON: No, it'll be quite sometime I would think.
RUTHERFORD: Of course. Tony and Tim, thanks for your time.
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