Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council President Judith Sayers is hoping the NDP’s increased influence on a Liberal-minority government could help end the decade of federal appeals against their Aboriginal fishing rights case.
She says Courtenay-Alberni MP Gord Johns has been helping fight against the appeals originally launched by the Harper Conservatives, and continued by Trudeau’s Liberals, that has cost the government millions of dollars in legal fees.
:16 “Yesterday was the 10-year anniversary; ten years to settle a court case when you’ve won? Nobody else in Canada would ever put up with that,” she said. “Yet here we are, for ten years our fisherman have been denied any kind of economics from a commercial fishery that the court recognized.”
The court case to establish Aboriginal Fishing Rights on the west coast has been won multiple times by Nuu-chah-nulth but appealed or denied by the government who want to maintain total control of fisheries resources.
