Domestic fishing licence proving difficult for Inuk boy

An Inuit beneficiary card is not sufficient identification for a young Inuk boy from Kuujjuaq, Quebec, who now lives in Alberta, to obtain a provincial fishing licence.

“I have been inquiring about a domestic fishing licence from Fish and Wildlife for my son, and have been given quite the run around,” said Helene Paul.

Paul began pursuing the fishing license for her son Michel, 15, this past summer, making application to the Fish and Wildlife office in Cold Lake, where she resides.

“They said all I had to show was a status card, but his was an Inuit card and they said the card wasn’t sufficient,” Paul said.

Jessica Potter, spokesperson for Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development, says a letter from a Quebec government official is required.

“An Inuit beneficiary card is different from the First Nation or Métis here in Alberta…. There’s a difference between the documentation required because he’s Inuit as opposed to First Nation or Métis. All three of those are distinct and what I’ve been told in order to get the licence here in Alberta for subsistence hunting and fishing we just need the document from his home province that he has that (right) there,” said Potter.

Paul says she has been working on getting the documentation, but whatever she gets doesn’t seem to be enough.

“I made a lot of calls all over the place,” said Paul, who is frustrated with governments in both Alberta and Quebec.
Paul says she was asked by the local Fish and Wildlife office to provide a list with Michel’s name on it showing that he was entitled to benefits as an Inuit. Once she produced the list, she was asked to get a letter from the Quebec government saying Michel was entitled to benefits in his home territory of Kuujjuaq. But the letter she solicited from Makivik Corporation, the organization mandated to protect the rights and interests of James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, which is the first comprehensive Inuit land claim in Canada, was not sufficient either. Nor was the email that was sent from a government official with the Quebec Ministry of Natural Resources.

“(Documentation) needs to come from the official granter of that licence and it would be the government,” Potter said.

Paul sent Alberta ESRD an email she received from Guy Tremblay, liaison officer with Wildlife Protection Direction of the Quebec Ministry of Natural Resources, which outlined the rights of those enrolled as an Inuit beneficiary, which includes the right to harvest. However, that wasn’t acceptable by ESRD because the email was unsigned and did not contain the required line that Michel held the rights in his home territory.

Potter says Paul has been instructed again to get a letter from a Quebec official.

“We will absolutely recognize those rights here but we just need appropriate documentation,” Potter said.

That letter will also give Michel hunting rights, Pat Dunford, of the Legislative and Advisory Services for ESRD, said in an email to Paul.

“If this letter is obtained and produced…we will also recognize him as having rights to harvest game for food in a manner consistent with the harvesting rights we recognize for people who hold status as Indians in Canada,” wrote  Dunford.

Paul is frustrated by what she considers the run-around from both provincial governments.

“I feel that my son has been ripped off from the beginning with this fishing license,” she said. “It’s really been unfair.”

Although the Indian Act guarantees the right to subsistence hunting and fishing, licenses are managed by the provinces and territories, says Chantal Patenaude, spokesperson for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada.