This appeal was heard in the New Brunswick Court of Queen’s Bench, Trial Division.

The appellants had been charged with possessing a deer carcass in violation of section 58 of the New Brunswick Fish and Wildlife Act. In response to this charge, the appellants argued that they were exempt from this section of the Act because they had been exercising a treaty right to hunt under the Treaty of 1779. The trial judge had rejected this argument and found the appellants guilty. 

In this appeal, the appellants argued that the trial judge had erred in his decision for two main reasons. First, they argued that the trial judge had not properly considered the expert oral testimony that they had raised. The Court decided that the trial judge had used the testimony correctly.

The appellants also argued that the trial judge had erred in deciding that the Treaty of 1779 did not give them the right to hunt in the area where they had been found. The Court found that the trial judge was correct and that this treaty did not give the appellants the right to hunt in that area. The appellants tried to argue that the Mi’kmaq were one nation without distinctions between groups like those made in the Indian Act, so the treaty was not specific to certain areas but rather gave all the Mi’kmaq the right to hunt anywhere in their territory. The Court rejected this argument. It decided that the treaty only covered specific areas and that the appellants had not been hunting in an area covered by the treaty. 

The appeal was dismissed.

The issues raised in this decision were brought before the Courts again in the following decisions: R v Peter-Paul, 2007 CanLII 7511 (NB CA), R v Peter-Paul, 2007 CanLII 36616 (NB CA), and Peter-Paul v R, 2008 NBCA 22/David John Peter-Paul and Adam Peter-Paul v Her Majesty the Queen, 2008 CanLII 39160 (SCC).

View the Decision on CanLII: https://www.canlii.org/en/nb/nbqb/doc/2007/2007nbqb65/2007nbqb65.html

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