Documents rebut former minister's reason for ending Indigenous-harvested meat permits

Court documents in an Indigenous hunting case are contradicting a former cabinet minister's claim that the province restricted the sale of First Nations meat for health and safety reasons.

The court filings in the prosecution of Michael Reynolds of Woodstock First Nation show that officials restricted the selling of moose meat by Indigenous hunters because they were worried about the number of moose being hunted.

There's no reference in the documents to them being concerned the meat would be sold without a proper health inspection.

Earlier this month, former Progressive Conservative natural resources minister Jeannot Volpé told CBC the province eliminated special permits over the lack of inspections.

"First Nations or not — you cannot sell meat [that's] not inspected," said Volpé, the DNR minister from 1999 to 2003. "It's not about a right, or whatever. I can have all the rights I want, but it's illegal to sell meat that's not properly inspected."

Volpé said he was alarmed about uninspected meat being sold, but public health officials were unwilling to create a new inspection system for the trade in Indigenous meat.

That led to the end of the permits instead, he said.

Harvesting cap sought

But in an agreed statement of facts filed in court, Crown prosecutors and Reynolds' defence lawyer made no mention of health concerns.

Instead, the documents suggest the policy change was designed to reduce the number of moose being killed.

"There is a need to limit or cap the overall moose harvesting," Volpé's successor, Keith Ashfield, said in minutes of a Sept. 24, 2003, meeting with First Nations chiefs.

At that meeting, the chiefs told Ashfield he was free to eliminate the special permits, a move he made the next day. That in turn led to the Reynolds case.

Reynolds was charged in 2012 after he hunted a moose and sold the meat to a non-Indigenous man, Addison Knox.

Crown lawyers agreed that Reynolds, as an Indigenous person, had the right to hunt moose and sell the meat to earn a "moderate livelihood" under the 1999 Marshall decision by the Supreme Court of Canada.

But Knox did not have the right to buy the meat without a special transfer permit — a permit the province created in the wake of the Marshall decision and eliminated by Ashfield in 2003.

'Record harvests'

Reynolds was charged as an accessory to Knox's offence of possessing meat without the special transfer permit.

The New Brunswick Court of Appeal threw out the case last year, saying by eliminating the permits in 2003, the province was "attempting to do indirectly what it could not do directly" — restrict Indigenous hunting.

Government documents filed as as evidence in provincial court, where Reynolds was first charged, say there were "record harvests" of about 2,500 moose in 2000 and 2001, after the Marshall decision.

Even before Marshall, Indigenous people were hunting increasing numbers of moose in the wake of earlier court rulings.

The figures were "approaching a high enough level to confound DNR population models" because there was no information on the age, sex and location of the animals.

In his September 2003 meeting with First Nations chiefs, Ashfield raised "the possibility of introducing an Aboriginal Moose Hunting Regulation," the documents show.

But the chiefs were against any regulation and "it was suggested" that instead, the province stop issuing the permits to non-Indigenous buyers of Indigenous-harvested meat.

The chiefs agreed to that, the document said. "The Province does not need First Nations consent to delete this policy," Chief Second Peter Barlow of Indian Island First Nation is quoted as saying in minutes of the meeting.

That allowed the Crown to argue in the Reynolds hearing that Reynolds' hunting and selling of moose meat was covered by the Marshall decision but "subject to" the agreement with the chiefs that it could eliminate the permits.

Instead, the Court of Appeal ruled the lack of permits was an attempt to "carve around" Reynolds' Marshall right because it deprived him of buyers for his meat, and without buyers he was not able to exercise his right to earn the "moderate livelihood."

The province decided not to appeal that ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada but hasn't said yet how or whether it will adjust its regulation of the moose hunt to respect the decision.

Ashfield couldn't be reached for comment Tuesday.

Reynolds' lawyer Maria Henheffer said Tuesday she could not comment on the case.