Words by Cara McKenna. Photos by Tricia Thomas

A Stz’uminus elder who was fined $20,000 after a seven-month covert fisheries investigation has successfully appealed his sentence.

Fred Elliott, 74, was charged two years ago after he sold $750 worth of prawns and halibut to an undercover officer who called more than 30 times asking to buy fish.

The Sentinel featured the
Fred Elliott story in its
March issue

Elliott appealed his sentence on June 20, and the judge decreased his fine to $4,500.

Matt Boulton of the law firm Woodward and Company took on Elliott’s appeal for free because he didn’t think the first sentence was fair.

“The law says that the penalty has to be proportionate to the gravity of the offence,” he said. “It’s disproportionate. And that’s essentially what the appeal judge found.”

Initially, the court ordered forfeiture of the $18,000 security deposit Elliott had to pay to have his boat returned.

At the appeal, Boulton said he was surprised that the Crown went after the boat itself. “They asked for the boat to be substituted for the [forfeited] security deposit, and I was pretty surprised by that move, given the importance of that boat for this community,” he said.

“There’s plenty of evidence on the record that this boat gets a vast majority of the food, social and ceremonial fish for this nation.”

In the end, it was decided that Elliott can keep the boat, but has to pay $2,500 to the fisheries department and $2,000 to the court.

He also must give $2,500 in fish, cash, or a combination of both, to the nation itself.

Elliott said he is glad that the whole ordeal seems to be over. “I feel a bit better compared to what the first court came up with,” he said.

“When we got to the appeal, it was a little bit easier to go through. I thought Matt did a good job in it. We feel better about how it turned out.”

Boulton said he is hopeful that it is a final decision and that the Crown won’t be appealing again.

But he still feels like it should have been handled without going to court at all. “They could have just talked it out,” he said.

“[The fisheries department] didn’t have to pursue him over the course of seven months in this really aggressive investigation where they essentially goaded him into getting as many prawns as they could get from him.”