Canoe Narrows man pleads guilty to illegal fishing after co-accused convicted

A northern Saskatchewan man who was investigated during the same undercover operation that recently led to another man's conviction has pleaded guilty to illegally catching and selling walleye from a restricted area.

Richard Desjardin, 63, recently pleaded guilty to three counts of marketing fish without a licence, commercial fishing without a licence, fishing in a closed area and obstruction in Canoe Narrows, located 427 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon. 

Desjardin was fined $14,500 and had to give up his truck to the provincial government. 

Saskatchewan's Ministry of Environment announced Desjardin's plea on Friday — less than a month after the government announced that the trial of another local man involved in the same year-long sting operation, Donald Iron, concluded with Iron's conviction for selling 10 bags of fish to conservation officers.

Iron, a 60-year-old Indigenous man, sold $90 worth of fish, according to court documents. He was fined $1,080 at his sentencing hearing earlier this week.

Defence lawyer says transactions were 'induced'

Dwayne Stonechild, the lawyer for both Iron and Desjardin, said Friday that conservation officers took advantage of both men's poor economic positions.

Both men live on social assistance, Stonechild said, and "when it comes to their food, the only proteins that they're really able to eat is the foods that they hunt."

"It is a lifestyle where you are very, very low income," Stonechild continued. "There are days when you need bread and you need milk and you need cigarettes, you don't have any money to buy any of that, there isn't much opportunity for earnings up there, any kind of income."

The methods used during the undercover operation can't be detailed because they are covered under a publication ban.

But Stonechild, speaking generally about the investigation, said that "the transactions that happened between [Iron] and the officers were not commercial, they were induced."

CBC News has reached out to both the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Justice for comment. 

Charges against 2 others dropped

The government originally charged two other people with various fish trafficking offences, but those charges were dropped after Desjardin accepted responsibility, according to the ministry's Friday release.

The investigation began in 2016 after conservation officers in Beauval, Sask., heard that two individuals were illegally selling fish.

"That was never proven," said Stonechild of Iron's trial. 

In response to declining walleye populations in the 1970s and 1980s, an area of Canoe Lake has been closed year-round to all fishing for more than 20 years.

The protective measure is supported by the Canoe Lake First Nation, according to the government.

The sting operation was criticized as predatory, however.

Dwayne Stonechild, Iron's defence lawyer, described his client as illiterate, poor and alcoholic, and said he was entrapped by conservation officers.

The judge ruled otherwise, however, saying there was no evidence the undercover operation took advantage of Iron's impoverished state and his alcohol abuse.