By Mark Kiemele

Fred and Delores Elliott sit at the dining table in their comfortable house that looks over the waters of Stuart Channel and the entrance to Kulleet Bay. In the near distance, to the east, is Thetis Island.

The house next door is where their son lives. He is John Elliott, chief of Stz’uminus First Nation. Fred’s skiff is tied up on the waterfront, just below the house.

Nearby is where, in August 2010, the Stz’uminus people successfully shut down a geoduck harvest on their doorstep by the Underwater Harvesters Association, the group that has a near-monopoly on commercial harvests of the lucrative shellfish.

All these things could be relevant to what happened in the BC court in January when Fred was found guilty of selling $750 worth of prawns and halibut in a Department of Fisheries and Oceans undercover operation. Fred was fined $2,000 and had to pay another $18,000 to get his confiscated boat returned.

“It was a sting,” Fred, 74, says as Delores serves salmon sandwiches to her husband and a visitor. “This guy kept calling me, wanting to buy fish. I finally sold him some, some prawns and halibut four different times. Then they charged me and confiscated my boat.”

It was having his boat taken away that hurt the most. “It’s a boat the community uses for fishing for feasts and other events,” he said.

Fred was charged with one count of selling halibut without a license on August 7, 2013, and three other counts of selling prawns later in 2013 and early 2014.

Fred Elliot aboard his boat near the spot where it was confiscated by DFO. Photo © Tricia Thomas

“It’s all about politics and money,” Fred says of the multi-million dollar geoduck harvest. The same seems to apply to an elder selling a few hundred dollars worth of seafood.

“There are lots of illegal things going on out there,” says Fred, nodding toward the waters that make up his front yard. “When I was younger, DFO wasn’t that bad, but things have changed.”

The trial in the Duncan courthouse lasted for three days. Fred says 19 DFO officers were involved in the investigation, and that five DFO officials testified against him.

“My lawyer felt so bad about what happened, he said he would do the appeal for free.”

Nothing about reconciliation

Lawyer Matthew Boulton of the Victoria law firm Woodward and Company took on the case and said an appeal was due to be filed in late February.

“I am so baffled by DFO’s approach to the whole thing,” he said. “Both Stz’uminus and the DFO are going to be around for a long, long time and this result does nothing for reconciliation.”

“This was a 74-year-old man with no prior record. Court statements showed that the DFO called Fred 30 times during the investigation.”

When the judge handed down his ruling on Jan. 21, Boulton said he was surprised at both the $2,000 fine and the additional compensation Fred had to pay for the value of the boat.

“In the circumstances of the case, there was no pressing need to deter this 74-year old man from future infractions.  The result of the decision is that an Aboriginal man who has fished his entire life is deterred from fishing in the traditional waters of the Stz’uminus people.”

Boulton said the court heard that the Stz’uminus people had been a “thorn in the DFO side” for years and thought that may have had much to do with Fred being prosecuted to the tune of $20,000.

While Boulton mentioned the recent Supreme Court decision allowing commercial sales of seafood by Nuu-chah-nulth nations on the west coast of the Island during the case, he said it was not central to Fred’s.