Fisheries fight casts pall over Nova Scotia race
Province’s lone Tory seat finds itself divided over Indigenous fishing rights
The Star is looking at key races across the country to see who’s running, who’s voting and why — and what local battlegrounds tell us about the national fight.
The West Nova riding represents the only blue blip in a sea of red on Nova Scotia’s federal electoral map.
That’s courtesy of a close 2019 election win, where Chris d’Entremont claimed the sole Conservative seat in the province’s 11 federal ridings, defeating Jason Deveau who ran for the Liberals after incumbent Colin Fraser decided not to seek reelection. Historically, the southwestern Nova Scotia riding has only ever sent a Liberal or a Conservative candidate to Ottawa.
Covering most of the province’s Bay of Fundy coastline, and extending down toward Yarmouth in the south, the West Nova riding encompasses a large swath of small coastline towns conducting Nova Scotia’s most significant fisheries. But it also includes the fertile agricultural lands of the Annapolis Valley, home to — among many other crops — the province’s burgeoning wine industry.
It’s cited as something of a microcosm for rural Canada — fishing, agriculture and tourism are the lifeblood for its mix of English, French (Acadian) and Indigenous populations.
In that 2019 campaign, d’Entremont, a former provincial Opposition house leader and MLA since 2003, made the jump to federal politics, squeezing out a close victory by less than three percentage points.
This time around, he is widely expected to retain that seat despite a challenge from Liberal newcomer Alxys Chamberlain.
But some of the political landscape has shifted significantly since d’Entremont’s last campaign, and a large chunk of the riding now finds itself divided over the issue of Indigenous fishing rights.
In September of last year, the Sipekne’katik First Nation launched its self-governed moderate livelihood lobster fishery in St. Mary’s Bay, which extends out into the Bay of Fundy, exercising its treaty right to fish when and where the band wants, and to sell its catch.
That touched off months of protest — and sometimes violence — from irate non-Indigenous fishermen, angry that Indigenous boats were fishing outside the commercial seasons. Commercial fishermen argue that doing so will damage the lobster stock, but fisheries biologists say the scale of the Indigenous fishery is too small to affect stocks.
That dispute attracted national and international attention.
Bernadette Jordan, the fisheries minister and the Liberal incumbent in the neighbouring South Shore—St. Margarets riding, flip-flopped on the issue; first saying the Sipekne’katik had a treaty right to fish according to the Supreme Court’s Marshall decision and saying there was no conservation issue with the fishery, then saying that the Mi’kmaq could only fish with DFO licences during the established commercial season.
As a result, relations between non-Indigenous and Indigenous fishermen in much of the West Nova riding remain frosty.
“It’s not a great moment for the Liberals, that’s for sure. But if anyone knows anything about the issue at all, this has not been simply the inaction of one government,” said Lori Turnbull, associate professor of political science at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
“I don’t think that any party is winning on this. None of them can say that they’ve made a change for the better on an issue like this. The Marshall decision was not yesterday.”
D’Entremont, a former provincial fisheries minister, who has criticized the Liberal minister for her inaction, has come out in favour of a more hardline approach to the crisis. He’s in favour of applying fishing laws equally to all parties and enforcing them, with conservation as his first priority.
“I need the minister to step up. I need her to be here on the ground. I need her to meet with fishermen, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous as well,” he said last October during an emergency debate over the Sipekne’katik moderate livelihood fishery.
West Nova Liberal candidate Chamberlain said more than just talk is required.
“Although I know government is working on this file, I also understand that people are looking for a different approach and they’re not looking for this to be resolved years down the road. They want immediate action,” said Chamberlain.
She said it’s important that commercial fishermen are heard and equally important to respect treaty rights, and make sure Indigenous voices are heard, too.
“Ultimately, the people that know this industry are the people that work within it, and I fully believe in the power of science and the power of data, but we have to be listening to the people on the ground that do this for a living as well … and make sure that that is taken into account,” she said.
Chamberlain, 26 and a former social worker, worked as an executive assistant in the communities, culture and heritage department under the previous Liberal provincial government.
Her inaugural jump into federal politics, she said, came from an ambition to apply a social work lens to government and politics.
“As a young person and as a female, I say all the time: Representation matters,” she said. “We tend to keep electing the same type of person over and over again and expecting different results to come from that. What I can offer is something that is truly different and not often seen in politics, and especially in the riding of West Nova.”
But without d’Entremont’s higher profile on both the provincial and federal scenes, she’ll have to lean on the popularity of party leader Justin Trudeau in Nova Scotia to bring her across the finish line, said Turnbull.
“I think (Liberals are) assuming that if they win the riding, they win it because of Trudeau’s leadership, not because of the candidate. Which is no offence whatsoever to the candidate. It’s that Chris d’Entremont is very well known. And she is not. They’re making an assumption that if they win it, they’d win it because of Trudeau.”