Warren Boyer’s legal odyssey may have finished. He hopes yes.
“No one is getting younger, so I hope this is, but who knows,” said Boyer, 58, just a few days before his new trial begins in the Provincial Court of Lake Meadow.
Boyer has been inside and outside the court since he was accused of fishing without a license in 2014. Boyer and Oliver Poitras were tried together and convicted in 2018 for illegal hunting.
Four years later, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeals revoked that the ruling and ordered a new trial. The provincial government unsuccessfully appealed that decision before the Supreme Court of Canada.
The new trial begins on April 14 at the Provincial Court of Meadow Lake. It could be a historical case that expands the harvest rights of Métis in the province, said lawyer Kathy Hodgson-Smith, who represents Boyer, Poitras and Harold St. Pierre, a third hunter added as accused for the new trial.
“We are going to see whether or not we can obtain a definitive response for the Saskatchewan Methis and the people of Saskatchewan about where the rights of section 35 of Methis exist,” Hodgson-Smith said to journalists at a press conference.
“If you live in Regina, can you hunt, catch and fish food in your community for which you have historical ties? What is the right of mobility? This test case is designed so as to answer the question for all.”
The previous judicial decisions established the Methis hunting rights for specific areas and traditionally used in the province, but Boyer and Poitras argue that these rights apply to a much larger area due to the historical mobility of the Methis groups.
The judge of the original trial ruled that his rights were not protected because they reaped outside the limits of the historic Methis community of the northwest of Saskatchewan, which includes Meadow Lake, à la Crosse and Green Lake.
The Court of Appeals gave them a new trial so that men can advance in their constitutional claim, which was not heard in the initial trial.
In 2003, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in R v. Powley which Métis has the right to seek food under section 35 of the Constitution Law.
Boyer was fishing on ice on Lake Chitek, where he has lived his entire life, when he was accused in 2014.
“I’ve never had a license to start, so I’ve always used my Methis card to hunt and fish,” Boyer said.
“As a livelihood and fisherman, I think the Metis had that right all the time. So that is what I practiced, and still today I have a license for hunting or fishing.”
Hodgson-Smith said that the rights of collection could extend the province throughout the province due to how mobile Methis communities were before the “effective European control date” of the territory.
The trial will happen in two parts. The first part is scheduled for three weeks as of April 14. Then it will be postponed to autumn when the Court will listen to testimony of experts.
“There will be historical evidence of the mobility of the Methis, where they were, what they were doing, the history, the economy, the culture, the way of life and then look closely at the kinship,” said Hodgson-Smith.
St. Pierre, the third defendant added to the test case, was accused of hunting without a license while hunting ups in the Yorkton area.
