It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Time to replace Alberta’s health minister, says NDP critic David Shepherd
Duration: 02:28 2021-03-31
Doctors refusal to endorse a new deal with the Alberta government is a sign of the lack of trust the province’s physicians have in Health Minister Tyler Shandro, says the NDP
Black students speak out about racism in Lethbridge schools
Duration: 02:082021-03-31
Black students are speaking out about their experiences with racism in Lethbridge schools. Taz Dhaliwal has more on the impact students say it’s having on them and what the school divisions are trying to do about it.
AOC Says Referring To Migrants As A “Surge” Is Invoking White Supremacy
During a Tuesday Q&A, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez challenged the language used around immigration, particularly as outlets and prominent Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz continue to discuss and emphasize a “surge” of migration.
DURHAM, NEW HAMPSHIRE – FEBRUARY 10: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-N.Y) speaks before introducing Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to the stage during his campaign event at the Whittemore Center Arena on February 10, 2020 in Durham, New Hampshire. The state’s Democratic primary is tomorrow. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Lydia Wang 2021-04-01
Refinery29
“This is not a surge. These are children, and they are not insurgents and we are not being invaded, which by the way, is a white supremacist idea,” she said in an Instagram Story, adding that the word “surge” is often used to invoke a militaristic way of looking at immigrants. “The idea that if an other is coming in the population, that this is like an invasion of who we are.”
These comments came after a follower asked why Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t been “addressing the border crisis” as much as she used to. She proceeded to break down the myriad ways other issues relate to the situation at the U.S. border. “Well, we’re talking about it, they just don’t like how we’re talking about it. Because it’s not a border crisis. It’s an imperialism crisis, it’s a climate crisis, it’s a trade crisis,” the congresswoman explained. “Also, it’s a carceral crisis. Because as I have already said, even during this term and this president, our immigration system is based and designed on our carceral system.”
Ocasio-Cortez has been an outspoken critic of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s approaches to immigration and incarceration. “This is not okay, never has been okay, never will be okay – no matter the administration or party,” she wrote on Twitter after The Washington Post reported that a migrant facility had been opened under the Biden administration. “Our immigration system is built on a carceral framework. It’s no accident that challenging how we approach both these issues are considered ‘controversial’ stances.”
However, many Republicans have shown outrage at the state of immigration under Biden — for opposite reasons. A group of a dozen GOP senators recently visited a facility in Texas, and although Cruz also drew attention to the inhumane living conditions, he denounced the “influx of migrant crossings” and described the people he encountered as smugglers and cartel members. Biden has responded to claims about increased migration, arguing that the “significant increase in the number of people coming to the border… happens every year.”
Ocasio-Cortez says, however, says that if Republicans are really concerned about immigrants, they should consider that this topic is multipronged. Take the issue of climate change. “The U.S. has disproportionately contributed to the total amount of emissions that is causing a planetary climate crisis right now,” she said on Tuesday. “It’s South Asia, it’s Latin America that are gonna be experiencing the floods, wildfires, and droughts in a disproportionate way, which ding ding ding, has already started a migration crisis.”
Instead of creating fear-mongering around migration, we should focus on fixing these issues. Ocasio-Cortez has also created, along with Rep. Pramila Jayapal and several others, an immigration reform resolution called the Roadmap to Freedom. The proposal calls for a fair immigration process with a path to citizenship, policies that protect communities living at the border, and modernized laws with humane, community-based alternatives to detention centers.
“Sometimes I see people respond to our current immigration policy with, ‘Well, what else can we do?'” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in February. “There’s a lot we can do.”
THE NECESSITY OF DISMANTLING THE U.S.: A CONVERSATION WITH AJAMU BARAKA
By Kollibri terre Sonnenblume https://www.hamptonthink.org March 31, 2021
On February 26th, I interviewed Ajamu Baraka for my podcast. Baraka is a veteran grassroots organizer whose roots are in the Black Liberation Movement and anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles. He is an internationally recognized leader of the emerging human rights movement in the U.S. and has been at the forefront of efforts to apply the international human rights framework to social justice advocacy in the U.S. for more than 25 years. He is a National Organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace, whose activities we discussed.
Baraka has taught political science at various universities and has been a guest lecturer at academic institutions in the U.S. and abroad. He has appeared on a wide-range of media outlets including CNN, BBC, Telemundo, ABC, RT, the Black Commentator, the Washington Post and the New York Times. He is currently an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and a writer for Counterpunch.
What follows are excerpts from our conversation, edited for clarity. You can listen to the entire interview here.
Kollibri terre Sonnenblume: [In terms of foreign policy], it seems like this last election was just Trump or not-Trump and so there was no discussion about how a Biden administration might be different.
Ajamu Baraka: There really wasn’t. Within the context of the bourgeois press, during the so-called debates, the number of minutes devoted to foreign policy was less than one hour, total. But yet you see that once the Biden administration takes power, some of the first initiatives that they engage in have foreign policy implications. So it’s really incredible that, because of the weight of responsibility that the executive has, that there was so little conversation around foreign policy…
The result was that basically Biden got a pass and there was no real discussion in the campaign and even among civil society. There was an assumption that you just had to get rid of Trump and everything would be just fine. It would be a return to normal. No one talked about what did normal look like and whether what was so-called normal was really in the best interests of not only the people of the US but the people in the global south, who find themselves constantly in the cross-hairs of aggressive US policies.
Sonnenblume: It seems like one untouchable topic these days, both in politics and in civil society, is the US military budget, which as we know takes up over 50% of discretionary spending. It’s obscene. It’s ten times as much as Russia’s is. It’s more than the next ten countries combined. When the conversation comes up of, “How do we pay for Medicare for All?” that’s the perfect opportunity to be like, “Let’s cut that military budget” but then it never comes up…
Baraka: One reason people are not talking about it is because, again, there seems to be bipartisan consensus that the military would get not only what it wants, but even more so. When Donald Trump came into office, that first budget he submitted to Congress included a $54 billion increase in military spending. It’s very interesting because Donald Trump just didn’t know how to filter himself so every once in a while he would say something that was brutally honest, so be blurted out that he thought that that $54 billion was in fact crazy. At first, even Democrats were raising questions about the increase, until a couple months later, I guess they got the memo, and all of a sudden it went quiet. And not only did they give Donald Trump $54 billion increase, they increased it by almost another $30 billion that first year. So that’s been a bipartisan consensus…
The issue we have, as the people, is to make that an issue. To in fact demand that our resources are redeployed to address the objective human rights needs of the people. Because who is benefiting from this 750 billion, or really, over a trillion dollars, spent on defense? It’s the fat cats making the money. These military-industrial complex executives. Everybody’s making money off of this but the people. The people are the ones suffering, so we have to demand that they reduce the spending, that they close down these over 800 military bases worldwide, transfer those resources back to the people. Back to providing housing. Back to providing some decent healthcare. Cleaning up the environment. Creating a first class educational experience for our young people.
But as long as the interests of the rulers prevails, then you’re going to have this obscene behavior, this obscene budget…
We are trying to make people aware of the fact that we have this [global military] basing system, these command structure, and we’re asking a very simple question: Whose interests are being carried out with this enormous expenditure of the public funds? To have these troops, to have these bases that are being built in various parts of the world. Is that helping your family to get a better education? Is that helping you to have some healthcare? A rec center in your community? Do you have access to more capital if you want to start a business? Where is the emphasis? And see, those questions—if the Democrats had been raising those kinds of questions, or pursuing policies that were more in alignment with working class people and the lower elements of the middle class (what we call the petite bourgeoisie)—perhaps the conditions would not have been in place that would have allowed Trump to win the presidency.
These basic questions of whose interests are being served by these policies are the kind of questions that have to be raised on the liberal part of the equation. Because they’re being raised among the radical right and you see a radicalization taking place that culminated in terms of behavior on Jan. 6th.
So there’s a real disadvantage on the part of liberals because they have surrendered their political positions to the neoliberal bourgeoisie and they have disarmed themselves politically and ideologically. As a consequence, they have ceded significant ideological space to the radical right. They’re playing a game that’s very dangerous. Not only are they losing, but all of us are losing as a consequence.
Sonnenblume: You made a reference to neoliberalism being a form or expression of neofascism. I heard you speak about this recently, I believe it was on Black Agenda Radio, and this was new for me to think of it this way. [See Black Agenda Radio 1/25/21.]
Baraka: …What you see is this dangerous coalition of forces, of ruling class forces—Silicon Valley, the military industrial complex, the corporate media companies that control 90% of news and entertainment, and elements of the state: the intelligence agencies—you see the foundation there. We already have the dictatorship of capital. If we want to think about the liberal bourgeois process, it provides a shell for the dictatorship of capital. The shell is not becoming almost an impediment for the neoliberal bourgeoisie. So they are slowly conditioning the US population to accept open fascistic kinds of rule. That’s why they flaunt democracy. That’s why Biden can talk about how he wants to center democracy and human rights, but then turn around and support fascism in Haiti or right-wing elements that are trying to take power in Venezuela.
So not only do I talk about neofascism as having a neoliberal character, it’s important to understand that within the context of the global system, for many years this fascism that we have in the US has been disguised. Because you can have forms of democracy, of democratic practice, at the center, while the connected economies and societies that the empire was connected to, are basically fascism.
When we look at these relationships from the point of view of the oppressed, of the colonized, we say: “Someone explain to us how we didn’t have fascism.”
So for me, I’m hoping that people are alerted to this friendly fascism that’s being developed because in many ways it’s more insidious because it’s not being recognized. So for four years they had us fixated on the theatrics of Donald Trump with his incoherent and clownish behavior, while they were systematically tightening up the national security state, the conditioning of the population to accept an Orwellian-Big-Brother-doublespeak-newspeak kind of environment. It’s very troubling what’s unfolding now because elements who you think would be hip to it, and in opposition, they’ve been helping to go along with it. Just yesterday, the Nation jumped on this whole Facebook thing and called Mark Zuckerberg a danger to democracy. Why? Because they want to engage in even more censorship. To me, it’s kind of crazy.
Sonnenblume: You’ve made a point about this particular topic of social media before, where you’ve talked about how our public space has been privatized.
Baraka: Exactly. It’s been privatized. It’s been colonized. And as a consequence it’s becoming more and more difficult for alternative information to be disseminated. Look, they’ve been wanting to do this for quite some time. Ever since they saw the possibilities and the dangers of the internet and social media. You might recall that at one point, they were attacking what people were referring to as “citizen journalists.” That they weren’t authoritative. That they were just making things up, blah blah blah. It’s always been a concern that information not approved by the authorities would be disseminated and be the source of real political opposition in this country and throughout the entire West. But they never had the nerve to engage in open censorship. But with Russiagate, they had that opportunity to begin laying the ideological foundation and they did it and they did it with a vengeance. So now, four years later, you can have the Nation calling for censorship and no one bats an eye.
Sonnenblume: Within the context of decolonization, do we need to dismantle the United States?
Baraka: Well the short answer is, yes.
Because the United States is a settler-colonial project, a settler-colonial state. It’s had a continuity since 1791, once the new constitutional process was finalized, and that process just basically resulted in the consolidation of the power of the colonists that were on the land since 1619. Even with the Civil War, there’s been continuity, because the US national state won that conflict with the Confederacy. The very fact that the material basis of the US was the conquering of this land and then the confinement of Native peoples to concentration camps that we refer to as “reservations,” provides not only a moral critique but it provides a moral foundation for how a just resolution has to look.
That is, we can’t just be saying, “I’m sorry” and that’s it, or even reparations whatever that’s supposed to be, but it in fact has to be a dismantling of this power, a dismantling of the settler-colonial state.
And that process of dismantling the settler-colonial state and the colonial system requires a decolonization of one’s consciousness. It goes hand-in-hand. That process of decolonizing one’s consciousness is a process in which you root out the ideological foundations of white supremacy. In this society—in this white supremacist, settler-colonial society—everyone who was born—no matter what your ethnicity, nationality or race or whatever—you are subjected to it, and become in essence a white supremacist. It’s part and parcel of the DNA of the US experience. You are taught white supremacy from the very first moments… It’s so pervasive, it’s not even recognized. It becomes just common sense.
So you have to go through a process of purging oneself. Of not seeing Europe as the apex of civilizational development, of understanding that there are other people on this planet who have civilizations, who should be recognized and respected, who have value just as much as the lives of Europeans. You have to rid yourself of Euro-centrism because it’s so pervasive you can’t even see it. So the process of decolonization structurally requires a simultaneous process—maybe even a prior process—of decolonizing one’s consciousness, decolonizing knowledge, decolonizing the very basis of being.
That is the simultaneous process we need to engage in, in this country, and throughout the Western world, because the very notion of modernity, of what is human development, has to be re-thought. Part of that re-thinking is part of the decolonization process. De-centering Europe. De-centering the entire process of modernity.
Sonnenblume: So this makes me wonder: To what degree is the modern technological and industrial state dependent on white supremacy then? Because the wealth that makes it happen comes from these structures. We look at our phones and our other technologies and it’s a colonial and white supremacist process that’s extracting those materials. We know about the child slave labor that’s happening in Africa. Is it even possible to have modern life without it? Can we make a cell phone without colonialism, I guess I’m asking?
Baraka: That’s a very important and profound question. The relationships of colonialism are such that they when they are separate, there has to be a change in what we consume, how we consume, how we relate to nature. That’s part of the process. Now we can’t turn back the hands of time. We have these industrial processes, but right now those industrial processes and the technologies being developed are such that they are almost instruments against collective humanity.
So part of the decolonization process is to take hold of those technological innovations and industrial processes, and reorganize them in a way that makes more sense, that helps to elevate life, and to protect life. And that means a lot of profound changes. For example, what that might mean for these megacities that we have? Can we continue to afford these megacities? When we take hold of the industrial base, maybe we will be able to reorganize agriculture in a different way that will allow people to leave these cities and go back to the countryside and engage in small plot farming, for local and national markets.
The whole logic and rationale of capitalist society has to be looked at in a new way. There are a number of movements that are in fact doing that. That make an argument that we’ve got to completely reorganize every aspect of society if we’re going to be able to survive, because one of the obvious contradictions and consequences of the industrial processes we have is that we’re basically destroying the ability of human beings to sustain themselves on this planet. Mother Earth is going to survive. She might be altered in many ways, but we are the ones who are going to destroy our ability to live on this planet.
So until we’re able to seize power from this minority of the human population that is invested in production processes and social relations that force all of to have to work for them, that put profit over the planet, and over people, then that kind of irrational production will continue, to our detriment. So we have a vested interest in a global revolutionary process.
The major contradiction that Marx identified was between the capitalists and the workers. And that’s a continuing contradiction, but at this stage of monopoly global capital and the irrationality of these processes, the major contradiction today, in my opinion, is between capitalism—the capitalist class—and collective humanity. We have to take power from these maniacs if we’re going to survive. So there’s an objective, material need for us to recognize that we have an interest in taking power back from the capitalist class if we want to survive for ourselves and for our children.
These are the kinds of things we have to look at. When we take power, what kind of societies do we build? That is the other part of the conversation, because you have some people that will argue that there’s some models being developed that represent how a post-capitalist society might look. Well, maybe. But there’s some things in some of these models that some of us don’t want to follow. So what would be created remains to be seen.
But we’ve got to find a new kind of ethical framework, a framework that is based on cooperation, based on equality, based on rationality and decency. I think we will collectively be able to figure out how to reorganize society in ways that will ensure we can survive and live as decent human beings in a new kind of world. I think we can do that.
Marxist historian Sandra Bloodworth commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Commune, retelling the breathtaking events as well as providing an assessment of their political significance.
Indigenous woman Joyce Echaquan posthumously awarded Rosa Parks prize in Quebec
An Indigenous woman who died in a Quebec hospital last September shortly after she livestreamed degrading comments from hospital workers has been awarded a prize recognizing people who foster inclusion and social justice.
Joyce Echaquan's death gained international attention and prompted a call for action as a result of the video filmed from her hospital bed, showing her in distress as two staff members disregarded her calls for help.
Echaquan’s husband, Carol Dube, accepted the prize, named after U.S. civil rights activist Rosa Parks, from a Quebec group that works to build solidarity with Africa.
Dube noted in an April 14 thank-you letter that he takes comfort in knowing his wife's actions fuelled a desire for social justice, saying he and the couple's children were deeply moved to have Echaquan’s name associated with Parks.
Echaquan, who was from the Atikamekw community of Manawan north of Montreal, was the fifth recipient of the prize awarded by the Union des Africains du Quebec et amis solidaires de l'Afrique.
The group's president, Ali Dahan, said Echaquan was an obvious choice, as she had the courage to document systemic racism from her hospital bed, raising awareness of Indigenous issues in Quebec and around the world.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on April 19, 2021.
The Canadian Press
Ex-U.N. chief Ban urges Guterres to engage directly with Myanmar army
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Former U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon urged his successor on Monday to engage directly with Myanmar's military to prevent an increase in post-coup violence and said southeast Asian countries should not dismiss the turmoil as an internal issue for Myanmar.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' special envoy on Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, has communicated with the military since it ousted an elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1, but the army has not allowed her to visit.
"Given the gravity and urgency of the situation, I believe the secretary-general himself should use his good offices to engage directly with the Myanmar military, to prevent an escalation of violence," Ban, secretary-general from 2007 to 2016, told a U.N. Security Council meeting.
Guterres is "very actively involved" on Myanmar and "has been for a long time," said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric, adding: "His good offices, along with his special envoy, are always available. We all want to see an end to the violence."
Guterres told the Security Council on Monday that a "robust international response grounded on a unified regional effort" was needed, urging "regional actors to leverage their influence to prevent further deterioration and, ultimately, find a peaceful way out of this catastrophe."
The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been trying to find a way out of the violence tearing at fellow member Myanmar. Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is due to attend an ASEAN summit in Indonesia on April 24.
"ASEAN must make it clear to the Myanmar military that the current situation is so grave that it cannot be regarded only as an internal matter," said Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister who is now a member of The Elders global leaders group.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners activist group, 737 people have been killed by security forces since the coup and 3,229 remain in detention.
"The military's use of lethal force and the gross violations of human rights being perpetrated against the civilians are not compatible with the ASEAN Charter," he said. "These actions are clear violations of international law, and constitute a threat to the peace, security and stability of the region."
Ban also urged the Security Council to move beyond statements to collective action. However, some diplomats say Russia and China are likely to prevent any stronger action.
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; editing by Grant McCool)
Mars helicopter makes history with first powered flight on another planet
...Mars helicopter performed its first test flight at 3:30 a.m. ET, on Monday, April 19.
SIXTY YEARS SINCE THE FIRST MAN IN SPACE
Scott Sutherland
THE WEATHER NETWORK
4/19/2021
The day has finally arrived! Ingenuity, the little helicopter that tagged along to Mars with NASA's Perseverance rover, has now made history by achieving the first powered flight on another planet.
All about Mars: The objective of the mars perseverance rover
This story has been updated.
Ingenuity, the Mars Helicopter, is a ground-breaking technology demonstration to test powered, controlled flight on Mars. This is something that was once thought to be impossible, due to Mars' extremely thin atmosphere. The mission team has now proved that this is, indeed, possible, and this could lead to new types of exploration on Mars.
Perseverance's first rover selfie, on April 6, 2021, included Ingenuity in the picture (also shown enlarged in the inset). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Scott Sutherland
After a few delays, the Mars helicopter performed its first test flight at 3:30 a.m. ET, on Monday, April 19.
During this test, Ingenuity spun its twin rotors up to 2,500 revolutions per minute (roughly three times the rpm of helicopters on Earth). This generated enough lift for the helicopter to rise up into the air to a height of 3 metres above the ground. Ingenuity then hovered, pivoting towards Perseverance in the process, and gently lowered itself back to the ground.
This still image from the Mastcam-Z video shows Ingenuity hovering above the surface. Visible on the ground beneath it is the helicopter's shadow. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
"We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet!" said Mimi Aung, Project Manager of the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The data from this flight was relayed to Earth via Perseverance and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, arriving shortly after 6:30 a.m. ET. The data to confirm the successful test consisted of a simple graph that showed the helicopter's altitude with time. Images taken by the downward-facing cameras on the helicopter were also transmitted back to Earth.
The best view of this flight, though, was provided by the Perseverance rover, via its high-resolution Mastcam-Z camera. Watch the flight, below:
DELAYS
Originally, Ingenuity was scheduled for its first test flight on Sunday, April 11. In the days leading up to this, however, it ran into a problem while testing its systems.
The Mars Helicopter, imaged by one of Perseverance's navigation cameras (Navcams) on April 5, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Scott Sutherland
According to NASA, "During a high-speed spin test of the rotors on Friday, the command sequence controlling the test ended early due to a 'watchdog' timer expiration. This occurred as it was trying to transition the flight computer from 'Pre-Flight' to 'Flight' mode. The helicopter is safe and healthy and communicated its full telemetry set to Earth."
Based on this, the first flight was delayed until at least April 14.
In an update on April 12, NASA said that they found a way to program a solution to the problem that occurred. This required the new program to be validated and transmited to Ingenuity, and then the tiny drone would be rebooted for the new programming to take effect. Since this process was expected to take some time to complete, they delayed the date of the first test flight sometime during the week of April 19. FIRST POWERED FLIGHT
While several missions so far can be said to have 'flown' through Mars' atmosphere, everything that came before Ingenuity would be more appropriately called 'controlled falling'.
Provided by The Weather Network
In this computer simulation, Ingenuity is shown flying a short distance away from the Perseverance rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Ingenuity was the first attempt at true powered, controlled flight on another planet.
So, why even test such a thing?
With powered flight an actual possibility on Mars, this opens up a new facet to surface missions that we haven't explored yet. Perhaps in the future, every new rover or lander will include a helicopter companion that can quickly explore and scout around where its primary is located. Or, perhaps we fill a Pathfinder-style lander with a swarm of helicopters that can fan out and quickly explore a wide area in a short amount of time.
NOT THE IDEAL ENVIRONMENT
Mars does not have the best environment for flight. It's cold and dusty, and this combination can put off some impressive static charge. These conditions can test the electronic hardware of any robot, especially that of a small helicopter drone.
The biggest challenge that Ingenuity faced, though, was the planet's atmosphere. The atmosphere of Mars has less than one per cent of the surface pressure of Earth's atmosphere.
Provided by The Weather Network
This image taken by the Viking 1 orbiter in June 1976 provides a glimpse of Mars' thin, dusty atmosphere from space. Credit: NASA/Viking 1.
This has been a challenge for all missions that have landed on the planet. There's just barely enough air there for heat shields and parachutes to function properly, so every mission has needed something extra beyond those measures. For Pathfinder & Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity, airbags allowed the robots to bounce across the surface and eventually roll to a stop. The more massive Curiosity and Perseverance rovers required the impressive 'powered sky crane' maneuvers to touch down intact and safe.
Ingenuity attempted something none of these other missions had tried, though.
Now, the mission team didn't going into this blindly, of course. They tested Ingenuity in a special chamber at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, known as the Space Simulator. In this immense sealed chamber, they recreated the cold, low-pressure atmospheric conditions that Ingenuity will encounter on Mars and then tailored the small helicopter to fly in those conditions.
The question of whether it will actually work in the real environment has now been answered! Watch for more updates in the days to come.
18 YEARS IN COURT!
First Nations on Vancouver Island celebrate B.C. Court of Appeal fisheries ruling VANCOUVER — Canada must remedy problems in commercial fishery regulations arising from a legal battle that was first launched in 2003 by a group of Vancouver Island First Nations, the British Columbia Court of Appeal has ruled.
While there is no demonstrated need to make mandatory orders, they would "remain available if Canada does not act diligently to remedy the problems," Justice Harvey Groberman wrote in a decision released Monday.
A three-judge panel unanimously upheld parts of an April 2018 ruling by the B.C. Supreme Court that found Canada's management of regular commercial fisheries unjustifiably infringed on the First Nations' rights.
In that judgment, Justice Mary Humphries gave Ottawa one year to offer the plaintiffs opportunities to exercise their rights to harvest and sell salmon, groundfish, crab and prawn in a manner that remedied those infringements.
The decision outlined several specific infringements related to the allocation of Pacific salmon and directed Ottawa to take a more "generous approach" to chinook allocations for the First Nations, noting the policy at the time gave recreational fishers priority over them.
But the five Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations — Ehattesaht, Hesquiaht, Ahousaht, Tla‑o‑qui‑aht and Mowachaht/Muchalaht — appealed the decision, which dismissed their argument that Canada failed in its duty to consult them by refusing to implement proposals raised in discussions outside the courts to resolve the dispute and negotiate new policies.
The Appeal Court found Humphries did not err in that part of her decision.
But the court said she did make an error in limiting certain commercial fishing rights to vessels of a particular size and fishing capacity.
Humphries "went too far" in her interpretation of a 2009 B.C. Supreme Court decision that upheld the nations' right to commercial fisheries, Groberman wrote.
She found that right should be interpreted as a "non-exclusive, small scale, artisanal, local, multi-species fishery ... using small, low-cost boats with limited technology and restricted catching power, and aimed at wide community participation," the Appeal Court judgment says.
Humphries was entitled to interpret the earlier ruling, Groberman wrote, but she did not have the authority to diminish the nations' commercial fishing rights. If upheld, her interpretation would have done so, he said.
"The limitations the judge placed on the levels of technology and the types of vessel that could be used do not take into account the need to allow Aboriginal rights to evolve to meet modern conditions and requirements."
Nuu-chah-nulth leaders hailed the decision as a major victory, while pushing Fisheries and Oceans Canada to implement their rights immediately.
"Why does it take all these years and all these court battles when the federal government should be sitting at the table with our nations and working this out, especially in times now of reconciliation," Judith Sayers, president of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, told a news conference.
"We look forward to seeing these five nations being able to go out and fish as they have since time immemorial."
Fisheries and Oceans Canada said it will "take the necessary time to properly review the decision" by the Appeal Court.
The department will continue to work with the five First Nations on implementation of their rights to fish and sell fish, and on their participation in commercial fishing more generally, it said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 19, 2021.
This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.
cbc.ca
