Wearing a sharp three-piece black suit and his hair neatly coiffed, Matthew Cope looks nothing like a laid-back lobster fisherman at the helm of Mystique Lady as he climbs the stairs into the courthouse in Dartmouth, N.S.
Cope would rather be out on the water, where the weight of his legal battle dissipates for a while.
But that’s what landed him in court in the first place. He takes a deep breath and reminds himself whom he’s fighting for.
“I want my children to be able to exercise their rights,” he said. “I want them to be able to work hard and fish and be able to make a living out of it.”
Cope, who is Mi’kmaw, is facing federal charges for doing what Canada’s highest court said he has every right to do: fish for a “moderate livelihood.”
Lobsters sit in a crate on Cope’s fishing vessel before he returned them to the ocean. (Jonathan Castell/CBC)
But Cope’s fight extends beyond the courtroom. He and other First Nations fishers who sell their catch without government authorization face allegations from some in the commercial industry that they’re fuelling crime and threatening lobster stocks.
The fifth estate investigated the legitimacy of these allegations and found federal government research does not support the accusation that lobster is at risk due to what it considers to be “illegal” trade. The investigation included an analysis of dozens of court records and interviews with lobster industry insiders,
This story was brought to Nouzie by RSS. The original post can be found on https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/commercial-lobster-fishing-indigenous-rights-dfo-9.6995262?cmp=rss
