A group of Nova Scotia fishermen are fighting the provincial court’s recent ruling denying them the ability to clarify First Nations’ fishing rights.
Years of legal proceedings and the Marshall Decisions
In July 2026, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court threw out the group’s request to rule on whether the Fisheries Act applies to the Sipekne’katik First Nation.
The Unified Fisheries Conservation Alliance (UFCA) has alleged that the Sipekne’katik First Nation has been operating a large scale commercial fishery outside the legal season.
Much of the dispute revolves around the ruling in the landmark 1999 Supreme Court Case R v Marshall, when a Mi’kmaq man, Donald Marshall Jr., caught and sold 210 kilograms of eel with an illegal net, without a license during non-fishing season.
The first of the two Marshall decisions was made in September 1999, and affirmed the treaty rights of First Nations groups including the Mi’kmaq people. It said that they had the right to hunt, fish and gather to pursue a “moderate livelihood”.
According to The Canadian Encyclopedia and many fishing advocacy groups including the UFCA, the term “moderate livelihood” has yet to be defined by any court. In 2017, then Federal Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc appointed a consultant to negotiate with First Nations groups to come up with a workable definition of the term.
The second Marshall decision came in November of 1999, and stated that “The federal and provincial governments have the authority within their respective legislative fields to regulate the exercise of a treaty right where justified on conservation or other grounds. The Marshall judgment referred to the Court’s principal pronouncements on the various grounds on which the exercise of treaty rights may be regulated. The paramount regulatory objective is conservation and responsibility for it is placed squarely on the minister responsible and not on the aboriginal or non‑aboriginal users of the resource.”
Both decisions were criticized and are viewed as widely controversial.
The UFCA Argument
UFCA president Colin Sproul said this decision makes it clear that both the federal and provincial governments can implement legislation to prevent off-season First Nation’s fishing.
“What really started this was Sipekne’katik brought an action against the attorney general of Canada seeking answers to five questions, and they are essentially ‘do they have the right to fish out of season and regulate their own fishery, and do whatever they want with total impunity,’” said Sproul. “And all of that flies in the face of the plain language of the Marshall decision.”
Sproul said that the Marshall decision was written in very plain language without additional legal terminology so that people like him, and the Sipekne’katik First Nation, could clearly understand what the justices meant.
The UFCA is made up of many groups of concerned fishermen across the Maritimes, many of whom operate their own commercial fisheries.
The group won intervenor status in the 2021 Sipekne’katik case against the attorney general, meaning they were eligible to provide evidence and information in the case. One day before the discovery was going to begin, Sipekne’katik entered confidential negotiations with the attorney general.
Sproul says when his group provided their information to Sipekne’katik and the federal government, they conspired to exclude them from the court process.
“It’s very immoral, terrible behaviour on both their parts,” said Sproul.
Ecological Impacts
He says regardless of the legal battle, he feels it will never be ecologically or morally okay to fish in a lobster breeding ground during molting season.
“It’s totally unsustainable, it does incredible damage to the resource… we cannot continue this way,” said Sproul. “The most important export of Nova Scotia, our biggest economic driver, our biggest industry is lobster fishing and its all being placed in peril because of the inaction of the federal government.”
The UFCA has shared videos on their Facebook page of what they allege is illegal harvesting out of St. Mary’s bay. Sproul said they only have anecdotal evidence, but would estimate more than 2 million pounds of Lobster were fished illegally last year. He claims at one point the group saw more than 10,000 pounds of lobster removed in a single night.
Sproul said he isn’t yet aware of how long the appeal process will take.
Acadia News has reached out to the office of Sipekne’katik First Nation Chief Michelle Glasgow, but has not received a response.
