Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 13th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thanks so much.

My sincere apologies for the pronunciations. In my particular area of the country, they're a little simpler—Seneca, Huron, Algonquin. For some of the west coast ones, I will really need to spend some time with Ms. Blaney to get them correct.

My apologies for that, and thank you for your presentation.

Chief Bellerose and coordinator Leon McNab, please go ahead for six minutes.

[Chief Reginald Bellerose, Muskowekwan First Nation, Touchwood Agency Tribal Council]

Leon, you can start.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Mr. McNab, can you open your mike?

Your mike is still on mute.

Chief Bellerose, do you want to jump in, or—?

[Chief Reginald Bellerose]

Yes, and we'll get Leon going here.

Greetings from Treaty 4 territory.

I had an elder lift the pipe this morning for all of our work, and I usually say thank you for the prayer. In your system, you don't acknowledge that, but we did that on our own behalf in our area.

I thank all the speakers, and I greet the chief, the leadership, the MPs who are there, the committee.

Community enforcement is a big challenge right now in our area. There are a lot of poor RCMP relations. The community is dealing with an influx of crystal meth, so drug dealing—drug selling and drug buying—is basically at an all-time high. There are so many new things that communities, elders and people are not used to dealing with. Young children are walking around and waving their arms in the air, basically in a zombie state. They have scabs all over their faces. We try to walk around to go visit, but in our situation, we have shootings in broad daylight. It's not been a good situation.

In terms of enforcement, there's a gap right now between the community and law enforcement. One of the biggest problems we're dealing with in terms of law enforcement is high turnover. The community just gets adjusted to some officers, and then, boom, they're gone. They're always re-establishing relationships with the RCMP.

In some cases, there's poor response time and poor community relations.

The prosecution piece in the Indian Act is a big challenge. The BCRs from chief and council of the four communities are being laughed at because the people know that nothing can be done.

We're working hard to come up with our own solutions. We're not here to point fingers and say that you need to do this or you need to do that. What we ask for is respect and understanding of what our solutions are, because there's not one solution for all 600-and-some first nations in the country.

There's flexibility. There needs to be adaptability, flexibility, and understanding and recognition of who we are as first nations and first peoples of this land. We need to design, control and operate the enforcement function.

It's 2021. We don't need people coming into Muskowekwan, Kawacatoose, Day Star and Gordon and telling us how to run our affairs. The solutions are with us. On our end, we're working on getting well, getting healthy, getting back to culture and language and back to tradition.

These are some comments from me.

Thank you.

Leon, I'll turn it to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Go ahead, Mr. McNab. I see that your mike is okay.

[Leon McNab, Justice Co-ordinator, Touchwood Agency Tribal Council]

Thank you.

Good morning to the people in the west. To people in the east, I guess it's good afternoon.

I want to, as part of this conversation, reiterate that we have a partnership we've worked on for many years. We work under a restorative justice program that started in 1997, and we came on board full time as a tribal council in 1999. We have tried to work closely with the RCMP creating partnerships. When we come to law enforcement, we need that involvement, and by “involvement”, I mean first nations committees and police management boards. They're very important. These are the people from the communities who relay issues and concerns to our local RCMP detachments. It creates a little bit of a closer working relationship.

I'm saying that in all parts of these developments, we need first nations involvement, close participation from our people. We know what's needed in the communities, as outlined by Chief Bellerose. Those partnerships are very important to us. We can address a lot of the issues that are there in jurisdiction, enforcement, prosecution and law development. Our communities are on the path of developing laws, but when it comes to the enforcement part of the first nation laws, we run into some problems with the prosecution. Again, work needs to be done there on developing a process that's going to benefit the work that's being done in first nations communities. For us, with targeted funding for enforcement, we need to look at self-administered policing, security programs, and community safety officers whereby we can have that involvement and promote safety in our communities.

The First Nations Land Management Act enables us to enact the laws that we have developed and enables us to work more closely in fulfilling the needs of our people in our communities.

I want to jump a little forward to the prosecution of first nations violations and tickets. We feel that when that time comes, it will enable us to enhance our programming financially, but I'll leave it there.

If we're going to be brought back on to be given an opportunity to speak again, a recommendation from us, the Touchwood Tribal Council, is the possibility.... We've been working and submitting proposals in the area of first nations self-administered policing. It's very important that we be able to fulfill wholly the safety needs in our communities through community safety officers working hand in hand with the RCMP. These are the programs, the things that we request funding for, and we have been doing it, in our case, for many years.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Okay, Mr. McNab.

I'm sure that these matters will continue to be discussed as we go through our next hour or more of questioning, but I'll ask you to sign off at that point. Is that okay? Then we can get back to the questions in a moment.

[Leon McNab]

Yes, I'm fine with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Finally, we have Brooks Arcand-Paul on behalf of the Indigenous Bar Association in Canada.

Please go ahead, sir.

[Brooks Arcand-Paul, Lawyer, Indigenous Bar Association in Canada]

[Witness spoke in Nêhiyawêwin and provided the following text:]

Ahâw nitotemtik kiatamiskâtinawâw kâhkîyaw, nitikawin sîpîysis, kipohtakaw ohciniya.

[Witness provided the following translation:]

Dear friends, I am greeting all of you in a good way, my name is sîpîysis, and I am from the Alexander First Nation.

[English]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Brooks Arcand-Paul. My traditional name is Sîpîysis, which means “little river” in nêhiyawewin, my people's language.

I'm the vice-president of the Indigenous Bar Association of Canada. I'm also an in-house counsel for the Alexander First Nation. I'm here today to represent the Indigenous Bar Association and to discuss the important topic of law enforcement on first nations reserves.

As a practitioner on reserve, and having primarily first nations in Alberta as clients while in private practice, I am intimately aware of the issues that exist within the framework of enforcement on reserve in Alberta and certainly on the Prairies. I've been dealing with this issue regularly in my practice. The same problems are highlighted time and time again.

First, we must acknowledge that self-government and self-determination won't happen if we fail to address the elephant in the room. That elephant is Canada's ongoing paternalism towards its indigenous partners in Confederation.

Our treaties have given this country the authority to exist. Before those treaties were concluded, this very country recognized that my ancestors, and those of other indigenous groups who entered into similar relationships with the Crown, had decision-making capacities, including the application and use of our own legal systems that were never subordinate to any government in Canada.

Further, Canadian courts have repeated since Confederation that indigenous peoples continue to have the right to use their laws for areas including, but not limited to, family law, adoption, and marriage, and have given deference to nations that enact their own laws and customs. For a piece of legislation such as the Indian Act or FNLMA to continue to exert paternalism is discriminatory. It is shameful for Canada to treat its partner in Confederation as incapable of making legal decisions outside the confines of legislation.

If we are truly intent on getting back to the relationship that was intended under our treaties and modern agreements, or as required on unceded territories, we have to reconceptualize what it means to recognize indigenous legal rights. If we're not doing a wholescale removal of the acts, we need to get creative in how we move forward together in a good way, as was intended when our ancestors both became beneficiaries of our continued sharing of the territories currently called Canada.

I will move to the next issue that first nations experience when it comes to the limited law-making rights afforded to them under the act. When a bylaw is intra vires a band council's authority, the most common and pressing issue remains enforcement—that police forces and the public prosecution services of Canada will not enforce these fully legal instruments under federal jurisdiction.

In terms of law enforcement, the first issue is the capacity of a first nation to draft, implement and enforce bylaws under existing regimes. It's expensive to draft bylaws. Many first nations don't have in-house counsel to assist them in drafting exercises to cover the many different layers that these bylaws must adhere to in order to be legally binding.

The issues may include, but aren't limited to, procedural fairness, privacy laws, human rights, charter rights and overall constitutionality.

Most recently, an RCMP detachment local to one of my clients stated that they are not able to enforce band bylaws on the reserve, with perhaps the exception of trespass bylaws, and that it was incumbent on first nations themselves to go through the onerous process of hiring an officer to enforce such bylaws. Additionally, the RCMP agent went on further to mention that some officers are not educated on how they could enforce such bylaws. However, I do want to highlight that there was an interest by the RCMP to assist in enforcement.

If they were given the tools to do so, first nations may be better suited to exercise the law-making capacities with the assistance of their neighbouring police detachments or through their own officers where applicable. This latter option obviously comes at the nation's own cost to draft bylaws; apply to become an authorized employer of an officer; purchase equipment, including appropriate vehicles, uniforms, firearms, etc.; and hire a fair complement of officers to ensure coverage to the nation. Many nations do not have spare funds to even consider engaging in these activities, as they have other pressing issues to deal with, including the ongoing demands of the pandemic.

Over the course of my work on these issues, I've been stonewalled by the Public Prosecution Service of Canada with regard to the enforcement of bylaws for first nations.

Mr. Richstone raised this issue before the committee the other day.

The public prosecutions office is not seized with the ability to prosecute these bylaws, which Mr. Richstone affectionately referred to as “community laws”.

I would argue that such bylaws, formed under the act, are within the ambit of federal laws, given the first nations' stature within the federation. However, I would go one step further and recognize that Mr. Richstone was correct in his statement that laws passed by first nations should be attracted with the appropriate enforcement by all levels of law enforcement in Canada. Many of your agents are offering their willingness to do so, and I would further argue that they are trying to be good treaty partners in extending their willingness to enforce our laws. It is now your turn.

In sum, I make three major recommendations: a review of the bylaw-making capacities of first nations to amend the act to reflect that first nations have the authority to enact laws, not just bylaws; that such laws be adequately funded for first nations to develop and/or enforce; and finally, that such laws be enforced by those charged to do so, akin to the laws of other law-making jurisdictions in the federation, including your own.

Kinanâskomitin.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thank you so much for the presentation.

Mr. Clerk, I understand that Tribal Chief Officer Deborah Doss-Cody is with us. We'll have the presentation by Tribal Chief Doss-Cody, and then we'll continue right through for the entirety of our committee time with questions.

Ms. Doss-Cody, please go ahead with your presentation, for up to six minutes.

[Deborah Doss-Cody, Chief Officer, Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service]

[Witness spoke in St’at’imcets and provided the following text:]

K’alhwá7al’ap nsek’wnúk’w7a. Dee Doss-Cody nskwátsitsa. St’at’imc, xaxl?i´pmeckan xaxli’p.

[Witness provided the following translation:]

Hello, friends and relatives. My name is Dee Doss-Cody. I am St’at’imc, from Fountain, crest of the hill.

[English]

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Dee Doss-Cody. I'm from the St'at'imc Nation and the Xaxli'p Fountain reserve.

I am the chief officer of the Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service. We were established in 1988. We are a program-funded, stand-alone police service, the only stand-alone police service in the province of British Columbia.

Stl'atl'imx nation consists of 11 communities, and the Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service provides policing to 10 of the 11 communities in the Stl'atl'imx nation.

The Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service falls within two different RCMP policing jurisdictions in the Stl'atl'imx territory. We are part of the Sea to Sky RCMP district as well as the Kelowna district, which is a southeast district. Our traditional territory spans both those districts. As you will note, communicating with two different entities and two different Crown options creates some challenges for the Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service.

We are governed by the provincial Police Act in the province of British Columbia. We have an MOU with the IIO, the Independent Investigations Office.

Our police officers are trained at the Justice Institute of British Columbia. Our training is the same as the Vancouver city police service or any other municipal police service in the province of British Columbia. Our officers can apply to other agencies if they wish to go forward and resume their career with another police agency. We have the exact same training in the province, and we adhere to the same police standards in British Columbia.

We have entered into a 10-year funding agreement, which is a tripartite agreement with the 10 Stl'atl'imx nation communities, the Province of British Columbia and Canada. The chiefs of the Stl'atl'imx have signed that agreement, and that is how we came to be.

We do have a culture component to our policing. The Stl'atl'imx nation has a declaration day, which was just a couple of days ago. In 1911, a declaration of the Lillooet tribes was signed. Every year, that day is recognized, much like Canada Day, if you will. Each time a new officer joins our police service, they are sworn in. The nation has created their own swearing-in ceremony. When we have a new officer, they are drummed in and welcomed in by the nation, and they then come and dance in. They are welcomed in by the nation as an acknowledgement of their choosing to join the Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service. That is one of the things that we do.

The Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service, as you have heard from the FNCPA, is not legislated. We are a program. We are funded as a supplemental service. We are not a supplemental police service; we are the police service for the Stl'atl'imx nation, but we are funded with program dollars, and programs can be cut, so there's no sustainability. There's fear that if it's decided, we will no longer exist.

The Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service has one of the highest Criminal Code stats in the province of British Columbia. We are second to the Victoria police service. We investigate everything from domestic assault and sexual assaults to serious motor vehicle accidents. We get assistance from specialized police services in the RCMP. If there's a fatal accident, we have them come in, or we have IHIT, the integrated homicide investigation team, come in if we have a homicide that occurs in our community. We do rely on the RCMP and we partner with them. We have a good working relationship. We are currently working on a new MOU with the RCMP so that it's clear to everyone what our roles are in our policing jurisdictions.

We do have restorative justice in our nation. We have utilized it. It is effective. Currently with COVID, it is challenged, due to the fact that people can't get together. That creates some issues.

Currently there are 12 police officers. We did receive extra funding to recruit four more officers, so we will be up to a total of 14. We did receive $2.5 million in funding for a new building. There is a new building in the Mount Currie area. Another one is being built in the Líl'wat area.

We do not have cells. We utilize the RCMP cells when we arrest someone and bring them before a JP to attend court. Our travel police territory is 2.2 million hectares—that is 8,494 square miles or 22,000 kilometres. That is how big our territorial jurisdiction is. It is huge. We actually did an experiment where we patrolled the area to see if we could fit that in within one of our shifts. It took one of my officers a whole eight hours to go from one end of the territory to the other. And that's not stopping to go to the washroom, to eat, or anything like that. That is just driving through and being that body that the people see from here up, the police officer with no legs, if you will.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Chief, we're just about at time.

[Deborah Doss-Cody]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Do you have a concluding remark or should we go to the questions?

[Deborah Doss-Cody]

We can go to the questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

I think you've not only given us—

[Deborah Doss-Cody]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

—food for thought, witnesses, you've given us a feast. I'm looking forward to the next hour as we go to our committee members.

For the first series of questions, Mr. Schmale, Ms. Damoff, Madam Bérubé and Ms. Blaney have six minutes each.

Jamie, please go ahead.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and wow, what great testimony today. That is absolutely amazing, and somehow my camera has failed. I'm getting a failure notice. I don't know what happened.

Anyway, I'll continue. Sorry about that. I'm getting a failure notice on my Zoom.

I'm loving the conversation around potential solutions to some of the problems. If I'm hearing correctly, the government has been slow to respond to a lot of the problems. A lot of solutions could be found on the ground or at the community level if government—whether it be Ottawa or your provincial government—just gets out of the way and lets these communities solve things. Getting rid of drug dealers and other methods were mentioned.

I don't even know to whom I should address this question. I'll open it up. How would that work, in terms of the mechanics, if Ottawa or the provinces backed away and said, “Okay, we want to give communities the tools and the funding they need to either run their own police service or enact their own laws,” and then gave them the enforcement power to do that? How would that work with existing Canadian laws?

Again, I don't know who to open it up to, but I'm willing to listen to anyone who wants to answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

We have some lawyers here.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Who would like to go ahead?

Go ahead, Murray.

[Murray Browne]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, and thank you to the honourable member for the question. I know the chiefs and representatives will have many suggestions. It's an interesting question.

The first part is the funding. If we had the funding and if the government stepped out of the way, that would get us a large percentage of the way there. However, we also need the legal authority.

In terms of the legal authority, we either need to find it under the Indian Act, the First Nations Land Management Act, a treaty or other arrangements. We have proposed, and probably Mr. Arcand-Paul and his group have proposed amendments to legislation. The federal offence acts could be amended to include all first nations as governments able to pass and enforce laws. We could get directives to the courts from the chief justices to enforce those laws. There are some technical steps, but as you say, most of what is needed is to provide the funding and step out of the way.

I'll stop there. Thank you for the question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Is there anything further?