Two new solitudes — Feds and fishes

The Supreme Court of Canada is not an elected body, but perhaps it should be if it is to have the last word on matters of economic and social policy in the country. The idea of throwing judges into the fray of mud-slinging that passes for politics these days is distasteful, but quite frankly we’re stumped. What do we do when the highest court in the land does an injustice to the public and the environment? What do we do when judges seem to think being appointed to the highest court in the land means never having to live in the real world again.

We’re talking, of course, about the recent Supreme Court decision that granted East Coast natives the right to fish and hunt for a “moderate living,” without a licence and even out of season, based on treaties signed more than two hundred years ago. It would be fine if the oceans and lakes were teeming with fishes, but we all know they are not. Quite the contrary. That’s why rules and quotas are in place — to try to revive a fishing industry that has been nearly devastated on both coasts of Canada.

The ruling set non-natives against natives and unleashed a veritable Pandora’s box of problems for local, provincial and federal governments and agencies. The federal government is now scrambling to diffuse the tensions that have flared between native and non-native fishermen; an arbitrator has been appointed; and the Indian affairs minister and the fisheries minister are trying to negotiate an agreement with the East Coast native bands, even though some militants have vowed to enforce their “treaty rights” no matter what the outcome of those negotiations.

The problem is bound to get bigger now that the courts have abandoned common sense by giving some Canadians the right to fish and hunt without rules and regulations. The door has been opened for these favoured few to argue they now have the right to harvest timber, mine minerals and pump oil and gas — all without regard to the environment or the common good.

So far, the federal government has refused to ask the Supreme Court to suspend or clarify the ruling. And that means our elected representatives have effectively deferred their powers to unelected judges, subjugating a government of the people to an unelected body. And that means we, as ordinary Canadians, no longer live in a democratic society in quite the same way that we did before one of our meddlesome prime ministers decided we needed a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Judges are using the charter to craft social and economic policy at a stunning pace. The left-leaning among them have been given free reign to take social engineering to an entirely new level.

The question of what to do about all this is a confounding one, with no one answer in sight. We are a civilized nation and there will be no Pakistani solution. But some solution is needed all the same, and soon. This ruling and the equally nebulous Delgamuhkw decision, which upheld native rights to land and resources, have effectively entrenched two solitudes in a nation that is already too fragmented by collectives, each moaning and groaning under the weight of historic woes and perceived injustices.

The time has come to look to the future, not the past. The time has come to end apartheid in this nation, to come together under common laws and common rights. And that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate the traditions and heritage of our ancestors, wherever they came from, and share them with our neighbours. But we are either one country and one people, or we are forever fragmenting into smaller and smaller groups and sub-groups along linguistic or racial lines.

It is the epitome of human folly to enter a new century saddled with ghosts and guilt from past wrongs that can’t be undone, that can never be made right by the politically correct or anyone else. There is no undo button in real life, as there is on a computer screen. What’s done is done. Get over it, move on and start building a nation where everyone is equal under the law.

We can’t live in a new century under eighteenth-century rules, laws and treaties. And the environment wouldn’t fare too well either.