With R. v. Hirsekorn, the Métis Nation of Alberta put into a motion a test case to force the province into negotiating a new Métis harvesting agreement. Two men, Jones and Hirsekorn, invited enforcement officers to their kill sites (a deer and an antelope) and the defendants were charged accordingly. One of the defendants (Jones ) died after the trial but before this judgment was released.
Hirsekorn was convicted of shooting wildlife outside of regular season and possession of wildlife without a permit.
[T]he defendants were not permitted to expand their constitutional notice to assert that the historic rights-bearing Métis community was the Métis of the Northwest as opposed to the Alberta Métis Community. The constitutional challenge was dismissed on the grounds that neither defendant hunted for subsistence, nor did they hunt for ceremonial purposes, as the hunt was organized and conducted for a political purpose. In addition, it was inappropriate for the defendants to launch a collateral attack on the Wildlife Act by intentionally breaking the law to commence criminal proceedings. Instead, the proper procedure was a direct constitutional challenge commenced under the civil process in the Court of Queen’s Bench. In any event, the defendants failed to establish historic patterns of use or occupation that were, to some degree, site-specific to where the killing of the deer and antelope occurred in southern Alberta. As there was no historic rights-bearing Métis community in southern Alberta prior to the arrival of the North West Mounted Police in 1874, the date of effective European control of the region, it followed that the modern Métis community in Medicine Hat was not the equivalent of a contemporary rights-bearing community. Therefore, neither of the defendants qualified as individuals to exercise the aboriginal rights claimed.
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