A raid earlier this month on an Indigenous off-reserve cannabis shop in New Brunswick has raised the ire of a former national First Nations leader.
The L’Nuk Lounge in Moncton, N.B., which opened three years ago, has been raided numerous times by provincial Public Safety officers, with the owners trying to keep one step ahead of the authorities by relocating their shop.
Run by three brothers who hail from Ugpi’Ganjig, or Eel River Bar First Nation, a Mi’kmaw community near Dalhousie, now part of Heron Bay, in northern New Brunswick about 300 kilometres away, the lounge caters to people who want to buy their marijuana products outside of the provincial government’s sanctioned Cannabis NB stores, whose prices are much more expensive.
Last week, the owners organized a peaceful protest full of pot smoke and waving placards outside Public Safety’s regional centre in Moncton in response to the latest raid on April 2.
Although the Wednesday afternoon demonstration was at times festive, the organizers were dead serious about what they felt was a violation of Aboriginal rights.
They also recruited a powerful speaker, Delbert Riley, the former chief of the National Indian Brotherhood who was instrumental in ensuring Aboriginal Peoples and their rights were embedded in the Canadian Constitution when it was patriated in 1982 from Britain and became the highest law in the land.
He told Brunswick News Mi’kmaw groups had asked him to come and help them defend their rights, such as trading within their traditional territory but outside of reserves, which he insisted the constitution upheld.
“The rights are totally intact. And we’re proving this in court,” said the 82-year-old from the Chippewas of the Thames First Nations in southwestern Ontario. “The Province of New Brunswick hasn’t come around. They haven’t learned any of this stuff, and they’re trying every racist angle they can to try to keep the First Nations people out of the economy of the country.”
Brunswick News asked the provincial departments of Justice and public safety, Indigenous affairs and the executive council office to comment on the controversy days before the protest and requested an interview with the premier or one of the three ministers responsible for those departments.
They ignored the requests.
Law professor Nicole O’Byrne said the Liberal government was walking a tightrope, trying to mend fences with Indigenous communities on some issues, while upholding the law and protecting its regulated cannabis sales at the same time.
“Decisions by Public Safety to enforce the law and prosecutorial decisions to proceed with charges have contributed to bad relations between the government and Indigenous communities,” the University of New Brunswick academic wrote in an email.
“One branch of government is trying to build partnerships with First Nations – the Tax Revenue Sharing Agreements are an example – and yet the Attorney General’s office is intent on enforcing the law at the same time. From the Indigenous perspective, the government is blowing hot and coldit is seeking to negotiate with First Nations on issues such as Sisson Mine and other resource development projects. Yet, state agents are executing search warrants and arresting Indigenous people.”
Public Safety officers raided the unlicensed lounge on Germain Street in east Moncton on April 2.
The black building in an older, modest neighbourhood remains boarded up, and authorities have posted a civil forfeiture order on the door.
It states that the Department of Justice and Public Safety has completed an investigation and that the property has been temporarily seized in accordance with the Civil Forfeiture Act, under the control of the Attorney General, for alleged offences under the Tobacco Tax Act and the Cannabis Control Act.
Cody Caplin, one of the brothers, told Brunswick News the lounge has been raided 14 times over the last three years or so. He remained defiant, stating the Mi’kmaq are trading a medicinal plant on part of their traditional territory, which is part of a larger title claim.
The brothers were trailblazers in their home community, opening a cannabis shop in Eel River Bar shortly after marijuana became legal in the country in 2018. Caplin said the RCMP raided his shop on reserve in 2021, but the charges were eventually thrown out.
He said opening a sister store in Moncton was part business opportunity, part an expression of Aboriginal and treaty rights.
“I started looking into the treaties, and in particular the one from 1752. It’s a Peace and Friendship treaty. It states that we’re allowed free trade. We’re allowed to fish, hunt, and gather and sell our medicines and open up truckhouses anywhere on unceded Mi’kmaw territory. Moncton is on unceded Mi’kmaw territory. So, we decided that’s what we’re gonna do.”
The Treaty of 1752, one of a series negotiated by Wabanki leaders and the British Crown beginning 300 years ago, was signed on Nov. 22, 1752, between Governor Peregrine Hopson and Major Jean Baptiste Cope of the Shubenacadie tribe in Halifax. It aimed to end hostilities, ensure protection for the Mi’kmaq, and establish trade.
That treaty, Caplin said, would be the basis for their legal challenges in court. He said the lounge had hired Jack Lloyd, a prominent lawyer that’s part of Cannabis and Psychedelics Law Group LLP in Toronto.
“Basically, what the government is trying to do is they’re trying to kill us financially and spiritually, right? They want to discourage you, they shut down your shops and bring you to court, and you spend all this money on lawyers, and it costs five grand a day.”
He insisted he wasn’t trying to sell cannabis just to make a buck.
“Me and my brothers, we’re doing this for our people because we have Aboriginal treaty rights, and we really believe in that. So that’s why we continue fighting.”
In New Brunswick, authorities have been reluctant to raid pot shops on First Nations and have mostly targeted unauthorized stores off-reserve.
In the bigger Indigenous communities, such as St. Mary’s in Fredericton, there are dozens of places you can buy weed products, which Cannabis NB has blamed for cutting into its sales.
Lori Stickles, the CEO of the Crown corporation, said in a recent interview more than half of its sales are likely lost to the black market, a huge amount of foregone government revenue considering the authorized stores did about $100 million in sales this past year, good enough for a profit of $23 million, money that will be used for public services.
In neighbouring Nova Scotia, however, Tim Houston’s Progressive Conservative government has been more aggressive and instructed law enforcement to go after unauthorized shops on First Nations, leading to confrontations and violence in some cases.
On the same day that L’Nuk was raided in Moncton, RCMP officers executed a search warrant at the Sikku Shop in Potlotek First Nation in Cape Breton around 7:30 a.m., breaking into the shop and seizing products. Two men were arrested.
The police action incensed Mi’kmaq people who immediately set up blockades on several highways leading to the community. To get past the blockades and avoid confrontations, the officers abandoned seven marked and unmarked police SUVs and walked away on foot. Those vehicles were trashed, the windows smashed, tires slashed, and seats soaked in urine.
Houston has argued that the sales on First Nations are uncontrolled and a danger because none of the products are scrutinized for health and safety. He also criticized Indigenous pot shops for selling cannabis products that look like junk food and candy, enticing children.
Caplin said the idea that the products at Cannabis NB were safer than his was garbage. He pointed to a supporter who once worked at a legally authorized cannabis production facility in New Brunswick who warned everyone at the demonstration that you couldn’t trust its products.
“It’s so dirty and all the algae and the pesticide application, all that s— they use to make the flower grow faster, it’s all poison,” Caplin said. “They talk about our stuff, but our stuff comes from fresh farms out of B.C. As far as the packaging, I agree. I don’t think that we should be putting packaging out there that attracts children because, I mean, they would think it’s candy, you know, and it could hurt a child, you know? I agree with that.”
The protest in the parking lot of the Department of Public Safety wasn’t anything like the violence witnessed in Nova Scotia. Most participants were fun-loving and in a festive mood. The organizers had hired a food truck, offering free grub and drinks. No Public Safety vehicles were present, and no officers inside the secure building made their presence known, if they were even there.
Brenda Berriault of Memramcook, 66, who isn’t Indigenous, smoked a spliff in a wheelchair while holding a protest sign, trying to win honks from passing vehicles.
She said she used cannabis as a pain reliever after suffering a couple of strokes and had felt comfortable at L’Nuk Lounge, where she didn’t feel judged.
“I’ve been smoking over 50 years,” she said. “I can afford to shop there. I can’t afford Cannabis NB. They price themselves out of the market. You might as well be buying it like in the old days, before it was legal, right?”
Meanwhile, the law professor cautioned that the Criminal Code applied on reserves and off reserves and all Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians alike were bound by the same criminal laws. The police, she added, were well within their purview to enforce the law on reserve land or off reserve and lay charges against people who break the law.
But O’Byrne said the situation in New Brunswick was complicated by a long history of tragic and misguided police interventions in First Nation communities.
She cited Easter weekend in 1993, when the RCMP sent in a tactical squad and used canisters of tear gas to arrest nearly 30 peaceful protesters blocking the highway near Kingsclear First Nation who were upset about the provincial government forcing them to pay sales taxes for the first time.
In October 2013, the RCMP raided a shale gas protest camp near Elsipogtog a day after the police had committed to working with the community. And Indigenous communities are still reeling from the separate police shootings of Chantel Moore and Rodney Levi-Peters during the pandemic.
“The current enforcement operations will contribute to tension and not address the underlying problem regarding the sale of unregulated cannabis products,” O’Byrne said. “A more effective way to deal with the flow of unregulated products would be to add cannabis products to the tax revenue sharing agreements on gas tax and tobacco, which have been in effect more than 30 years.”
She said the decriminalization of cannabis eight years ago was a missed opportunity to negotiate with First Nations about sharing tax revenue of the sale of a legal product.
By John Chilibeck, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on Apr 14, 2026 at 07:13
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