OTTAWA--"In appointing Bob Rae as mediator in the dispute at Burnt Church, Fisheries Minister Herb Dhaliwal has conceded that aboriginal communities have a right to `manage and regulate the fishery'," said John Cummins, M.P. (Delta-South Richmond).

That was the position taken by Mr. Rae's NDP government when they acted as an intervener in the Nikal case before the Supreme Court of Canada.

In Nikal, Mr. Rae's government supported the appellant Jerry Benjamin Nikal's claim that Sec. 35(1) of the Constitution Act of 1982 "protects the power of the hereditary chiefs in his Wet'suwet'en community to regulate the exercise by the community's members of its existing aboriginal right to fish for food in the Moricetown area".

The Supreme Court did not support the appellant. Mr. Rae's position did not carry the day but thanks to Mr. Dhaliwal, Rae's back in circumstances which are eerily similar to Nikal and likely to deliver a decision that will be precedent setting.

That being said, the Minister of Fisheries does not need a mediator to reconcile differences between those who would enforce the law and those who would break it in Miramichi Bay.

The commercial lobster fishery in Miramichi Bay is closed to protect spawning lobster. Natives have not demonstrated that they have any special aboriginal or treaty rights to harvest lobster. Therefore the Minister's right to regulate the lobster fishery is unfettered.

Furthermore, the Indian Brook band is currently before the Federal Court of Canada in Halifax challenging the Minister's right to regulate the fishery in St. Mary's Bay. The case is identical to the dispute on Miramichi Bay. The Department of Justice has provided evidence that the band has no historical attachment to the lobster, no special right to harvest them and that the Minister of Fisheries has an unfettered right to regulate.

"It is time for Mr. Dhaliwal to recognize that not only does he have the authority to regulate the lobster harvest but he has an obligation to do so. Peace on the water on both coasts depends on him vigorously enforcing fisheries law," concluded Cummins.