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A conservation officer from Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Environment staged an undercover investigation that has been used to prove a Cree First Nations man illegally sold fish he’d retrieved from a lake by his home.

In the end, the sting operation caught the man earning all of $90.

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Donald Iron, who lives in the settlement of Canoe Narrows in northern Saskatchewan, referenced those paltry earnings in his defence against charges of marketing fish without a commercial licence — a defence that failed earlier this month when a Provincial Court judge found him guilty and ruled that the conservation officer did not unlawfully entrap him.

The undercover conservation officer took an interest in Iron when he learned the Ministry had received “persistent” (but unspecified) complaints about him since 1997. The sale of fish without a licence is prohibited in Saskatchewan, and court heard that the commercial fishery at Canoe Lake is barred from catching more than 5,000 kilograms of fish each year, less than one-tenth of what the limit used to be.