Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Good morning, everybody.

We'll start the meeting with respect for the guests that we have, who have come a very long way to present to us. We are very interested to hear about emergency measures for your own community, and your recommendations for those that were evacuated.

We sit on the unceded territory of the Algonquin people, something that all Canadians should recognize in our history, especially now that we've started on the journey of truth and reconciliation.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we will continue our study on fire safety and emergency management in indigenous communities.

We welcome you to the committee. You'll have 10 minutes to present, after which we'll have an opportunity to get questions from the members of Parliament on the committee, and there will be a back-and-forth discussion. Just once in a while, if you look up at me, I'll give you an indication of how much time is left for your presentation.

Bonjour. I'm glad that you're here. I hope you had a good trip. Now it's over to you. You have 10 minutes.

[Chief Joe Alphonse, Tribal Chairman, Tsilhqot'in National Government]

[Witness speaks in Tsilhqot'in]

Thank you for giving us this opportunity. We're thankful to be here to present to the standing committee and honoured to be on Algonquin territory. I want to acknowledge that, first and foremost.

The Tsilhqot'in people have fought long and hard for the establishment of our aboriginal rights and title. That's been my career. I have spent eight and a half years as chief for Tl'etinqox, Anaham, community. Nine years before that I was director of government services for Tsilhqot’in National Government. Nine years before that, I held just about every position from fishery coordinator to natural resource community liaison. I did just about everything within the tribal council except for being an accountant, so I've seen and worked my whole career advancing our aboriginal rights and title.

The Tsilhqot'in case has been my career. At the time of winning our aboriginal title in B.C.'s supreme court, I knew it was time to go back to my community.

I'm a fifth-generation chief in my community. Chief Anahim, the grand chief of the Tsilhqot'in during the Tsilhqot'in War, was my great-great grandfather. Chief Casimir was my grandfather, the last hereditary chief in our community.

I tell my community, I don't fear you but I fear my ancestors on the other side. One day I'll meet up with them so I have to do and conduct myself in an honourable way.

The fires we experienced this summer, I don't ever want to experience that kind of intensity again. That was...but it was also an act of self-government. We talk about self-government and we want self-government, but the reality is that people aren't ready for that, or so it seems. The moment we decided.... In 2009-10, my community was evacuated. We were also evacuated in 2003, which was the last time there was a major report on wildfires, a firestorm report.

In 2010, when our community was evacuated, we had our members in gymnasiums with cot after cot after cot, which reminded our people of residential schools. To be lining up in cafeterias just like residential school, eating foods that are not traditionally appropriate for our people, and worrying about our homes, hearing rumours and reports of looting and so on and so forth.... Social media is really a powerful thing and it plays a big part, especially when a big thing like that is happening. It adds to the confusion. You have to be aware of that.

We also have a lot of band members who were living in other cities in 2010, and they came to Williams Lake to help our community members. We're proud people. We don't want anybody looking after us. We'll do it ourselves. Our members came to volunteer, and they were university students. In one case, it was on the fourth day, they learned there was actually a spare room for the volunteers, and that spare room was filled with refreshments, sandwiches. If you wanted to have a nap, there was a cot over there. There was a couch. There was a TV. Our volunteers discovered that on the fourth day.

Two of our university student volunteers were walking in, one a master's student, at the same time as two non-aboriginal ladies were walking out, and one of them said, “I don't trust them” and told the other to go back in and keep an eye on them.

Right then and there, we said that we will never listen to an evacuation order ever again. We will not be a burden to anyone. We will look after ourselves.

We put a tremendous amount of resources into training our members. From 2010 to the fires this year, we've probably trained about 400 firefighters. We have a long history of fighting fires. We live in the Tsilhqot'in. We're in a fire zone. This isn't going to be the last fire that my community is ever going to face. This will continue. We're surrounded by lodgepole pine. When you open a book on the lodgepole pine, the first thing you read is that it's fire dependent. If you look at the pictures or slides, there's dead trees sprinkled all throughout. That's the case. That's what we live in. We're fine. Generation after generation, we learn how to deal and how to look for it.

I grew up fighting fire. My first job was at 15 years old. All throughout high school, I fought fire during my school days. I knew if I got on a fire and I fought fire for five days, I would make more money in those five days than the other kids who stayed on the reserve and worked for their community all summer. I had a lot of experience fighting fire. After graduating from high school, the B.C. Forest Service starting establishing native-unit firefighting crews. I was asked to head up our native-unit firefighting crew in Alexis Creek, but my views can be viewed as extreme at times. When I looked at that list of all the firefighters they had, I told them, “I think you have too many potheads on your crew. If I were to run it, I'd be constantly wanting to fire everybody, so I think I'll save my stress and go work for fisheries instead.” Also, I had had enough of fighting fire. It's not the cleanest job in the world. You have to get dirty to be effective fighting fire. I had had enough at that point.

When the evacuation order happened, the RCMP came into our community. I was stranded in Kamloops. I had to go pick up my baler. I have a small hobby farm. I do the chief thing on a part-time basis. That's my part-time job, I tell people. I'm a full-time rancher. On my way back, the fires around 100 Mile and Barriere stranded me in Kamloops.

Following social media, the fires that were happening around Williams Lake erupted and we were hearing reports of RCMP officers coming through our community banging on doors, kicking down doors, threatening our members, and asking for dental records if people didn't want to leave. “Give us your dental records, so that we can identify you after the fires,” and comments such as that. I got hot under the collar. I had a hard time finding a hotel in Kamloops. I finally found one. One of my other councillors was in Merritt picking up a vehicle. We were in the same situation. We were in contact with each other.

The next morning, I got a Facebook post. One of my councillors wrote that there were only a couple of other councillors including him who were in the community that night and said that was the only leadership. There needs to be more leaders in our community. We have 12 councillors and one chief in our community. “Where the heck is the chief?” he said.

I read that post and I was like, “I'm coming back to Anaham. If I have to run all the way back, I'm going to run all the way back to scalp this guy”. I told my councillor in Merritt, “You meet me and I'll get as far as Barriere and I'll wait at the gas station in Barriere.” We caught up to each other in Barriere and we continued on. We made it home that night. The next day, when we got in, the RCMP came in and informed us that there was an evacuation order and for our community to leave.

I said, “We're not leaving.”

Instantly his whole demeanour changed, and he said, “We're going to put up roadblocks on both sides of your community, and if you leave, you can't come back.” I said, “We have no intention of leaving, so it doesn't matter if you have roadblocks.” The response there was, “Your children can't make decisions for themselves, so we're going to come back with the ministry of children and families and take your kids.”

I said, “In that case, we'd better put up a roadblock and keep you guys out of our community then.” He looked at me and said, “Your roadblocks won't slow us down.” At that point, I lost my temper and told him, “Maybe our roadblocks won't slow you down, but bullets flying past your head would definitely turn you around.” Suddenly I realized what I'd said and thought, “Holy cow, I'd better have a good comeback line or I'm in jail.”

I told him, “Maybe before you come back in here with an attitude you need to go back to your RCMP office and talk to your RCMP lawyer, because what you'll probably find is that on Indian reserve land, your evacuation order does not apply unless chief and council sign, and we are not about to sign any evacuation order.” At that point, they left, but we had to assert ourselves, and it was upsetting. It seemed like every government agent who came through...and I got tired of hearing this over and over: “Do you guys even have a plan?” or “Do you even know how many people are in your community?”

Since 2010 we've developed our policies around firefighting and emergency. We're on version six. To date, I haven't met an agent or organization anywhere that has more of a plan than we have.

When you're going to make a stand, you'd better be prepared and you'd better know what you're doing. We're involved with a logging company, Tsi Del Del logging, the largest logging company in and around the city of Williams Lake. We log 400,000 cubic metres of wood. We have some of the best heavy equipment operators you're going to find anywhere. We have over 400 people who are trained firefighters certified under the B.C. process. Suddenly government agents are running around asking what kinds of qualifications we have and what kind of training we have. It's the same goddamn training they have. They're the instructors.

I will say this. I often tell people this. The fires this summer were never a threat to our community. The bureaucracy and the governments that were all around us were a threat to our community during this crisis.

Leave us alone.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you, Chief, for that very powerful message.

I've allowed us to go over time a bit. I hope the committee understands that we wanted to hear the story of this community that stood up to defend themselves.

Now we're going to have an opportunity to go to MPs, Chief, and they'll be asking you questions. We'll start with MP Will Amos.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Chief, for those powerful remarks, and thank you for your recognition of our privilege of communing here in Algonquin territory. As the member for Pontiac, I have the privilege of representing many from that community just north of here.

I also appreciate your underlining of how many years you've spent on the front lines, securing the rights and title of your community. I think the whole country has watched and has learned in the process. For those teachings, which have run through judicial decisions but also through interactions with you, I know that a lot of people are very thankful for what you've brought to the table.

Obviously the most recent fires were an intense experience, and I'm sure there are lessons learned on your side that go beyond the frustrations you felt with regard to interactions with the civil service provincially, with security forces, and with the RCMP. We've read about those frustrations. We've heard about them first-hand today.

You've mentioned that over 400 individuals in your community have been trained up and are ready to go. In relation to your own community's performance in the context of fighting this natural disaster, if you will, what lessons have you learned about your own community's performance, leaving aside the frustrations? What was done very well? What could have been done better? How are you going to learn from this summer?

[Chief Joe Alphonse]

I think, just like anything else in life, after the fact you can improve on a lot of things. At the end of the day, we're thankful that we went through this process, and we'd do it again in a heartbeat. Now that we've gone through this once, we're even more prepared. We will go back and review all our policies, making sure that every last step of our policy is well reviewed.

It's important as a community that you be prepared. If you don't have an emergency response plan, you'd better get on it and better start planning it, because in today's global warming age, this is the new norm that we live in. It's going to happen sooner or later. You, as a community, can't spend enough time talking about safety measures in your community and pouring financial resources into training and equipment. No matter how prepared you are, you will never be prepared enough when catastrophe hits.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, and I appreciate the clear message of your testimony today, and at the time the fire was occurring, which was that you're going to stay and fight.

At a local level, as your community takes on responsibility for fighting these fires, for evacuating as necessary, what kinds of resources do you think will be required, in addition to what you have already?

[Chief Joe Alphonse]

The problem is not at our level. I think the problem of financial resources is with the province and Canada, but it wasn't until our situation arose in just about every newspaper across Canada with my statement on INAC policies.... My community was the most dysfunctional of Tsilhqot'in communities when I stepped in. We had close to a $5-million deficit. It had taken me eight and a half years to climb out of that. For us to leave now and lose even five or 10 homes in a fire, we would never recover, because INAC's policies are to impoverish our people.

When I made that statement, we got a response. We had the regional director general in Vancouver show up in a chopper the next day in our community. While she was there, promising that their finances were going to be left in place, her FSOs in our administration room were threatening to cut off our funding.

Right from day one, I told people that they had to look after their finances. We hired an auditor and I told him to look after this, because we're going to get called, I guarantee you. Prepare the finances for an audit, because we're probably going to get audited. They're going to do everything they can to try to discredit us, so be prepared for a forensic audit. That's how I won my finances, and today we continue to fight that.

They want to go over every line, line by line. We spent $3.1 million on the fire, and we've only been paid back $840,000, and they want to go over everything. If you issued a $2 cheque, they're going to question you about that, asking what that is and telling you to justify that. You have to spend 15 minutes on every last fricking transaction. When they finally agree to pay you, they're not going to tell you what they're paying and what they're not, as if to set us up. Now when our pan-audit goes through, I can see the INAC FSO having a field day clawing back all of the finances that went in through all of this, to continue to try to keep us impoverished.

I told Justin Trudeau when he came to Williams Lake to cut B.C. right out of the whole deal. We'll make this nation to nation: Canada and Tsilhqot'in.

When you provide us with funding, we have strict regulations as first nations people, so when Canada does this for a B.C. wildfire, why don't they have the same standard for them? I don't mind. I love being in those situations, and I've gone to the Supreme Court of Canada. I feel we have to be accountable to my members. I don't mind being held to a high standard, but if you're going to do that and share those finances, why don't you hold that same standard to every other agent, especially non-native agents, because non-native people think that we got it for free. If they're held to the same standard, I guarantee attitudes will change in this country.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Very good.

Our questioning moves to MP Cathy McLeod.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you to the witnesses for coming such a long way. Also, your pictures are very powerful, so bringing them along makes it real again. Of course, your area is farther north than the area I represent, where the fires also impacted quite dramatically.

I have a couple of quick questions. Did you lose any homes?

[Chief Joe Alphonse]

No.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Had you not been there with some of your workers, do you feel you would have lost some homes?

[Chief Joe Alphonse]

The former RCMP sergeant at Alexis Creek, who is now in Williams Lake, tells me I'm being very modest when I say that if we had left we would have lost 40 homes, our band office, our health building, our gas bar, and our church. We have 140 homes in our community.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

You never did a band council resolution to evacuate, but some of the families decided to go and some decided to stay and fight. Is that what happened?

[Chief Joe Alphonse]

No, we have our own process. In our policy, we declare our own state of emergency or alert, and then we go door to door and inform everyone. The whole community is aware that we are in an emergency state. We employ 25 security guards, 24 hours a day, and in the event of a fire threat to the community, they have the authority to knock on doors and wake people up. We all meet down at the band office headquarters and then decide what to do.

Anybody over 65 years old was moved away, but we didn't move them to Williams Lake. In those types of situations, we move people as far away from the fire as we can. Anybody over 65 was sent to Abbotsford. People under 50, say, 40 to 50 years old, who weren't physically strong enough to fight fire went to other first nation communities where they were looked after and were able to move freely.

Just because we didn't sign the BCR.... You sign a BCR and you hand your authority over to the regional district. We had our own process and we followed it.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I didn't realize that the BCR would turn authority over to the regional district. You had your own system in place, and it sounds like it worked very well for you.

You said you're a rancher. I would think fencing has been a big issue, the loss of timber. Have you been able to analyze the impact of those losses? Is there any plan to support the recovery in your communities?

[Chief Joe Alphonse]

We're in a recovery process right now, and we're trying to replace all the fencing and everything else, even the fireguards we've built. For the Plateau fire alone, just the outside boundary fireguard is a thousand kilometres long. For the Hanceville fire, the outside boundary is about 600 kilometres. That doesn't include all the other roads or fireguards that were built within those, so there's a lot of work still ahead of us. I would say 75% of my caretaker area is gone—it's burnt now.

As a community, we had our own land use plan. Well, that land use plan is out the window now. We have to start from scratch again.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

You indicated that you submitted a number of bills for your work to government and you haven't been reimbursed. Is that true?

[Chief Joe Alphonse]

It was $3.1 million, and $840,000 has been paid, so the rest of that is.... You know, we're maxed right out at the bank. We're very fortunate that I have a very good relationship with our banker. Now that situation is bringing the recovery work almost to a halt, almost to a complete halt now, because EMBC is not going through the process.

Reading between the lines, it's almost as if there's one big, huge cash cow that they view and that now somebody else has gotten access to that cash pot and it's almost as if everybody, the old-school team, is doing the best they can to protect their own interests. Well, we're here and we're not leaving, and we better come up with a better system.

When I get home, I'm prepared, and I've been pushing my Tsilhqot'in chiefs, to demand that there be a full inquiry into this summer and the handling of these fires. What we've learned, what created this is the mismanagement of our forests over all these years, so we will not allow that to happen again. We're going to insist on and push on every aspect of management of our resources in our territory from this day forth.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

This will be fairly quick. Social media and Internet access can be a mixed blessing. In some ways they help inform people, and in other ways they spread misinformation.

Does your community mostly have Internet access?

[Chief Joe Alphonse]

We have a couple of towers in our community, and community members also use satellite dish for Internet communication. That's definitely one area that needs to improve within our community in the Tsilhqot'in, for sure.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Questioning now goes to MP Rachel Blaney.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you so much for being here and for your long journey. I'm also from B.C., and I really respect how big a journey it is.

Thank you so much for the testimony today. I think it was incredibly important. One of the things I really heard from it that was sort of a shock for me, I guess, was how little the regions around you, the RCMP, for example, understand how prepared you actually are.

Could you tell us a little bit about why it is that these emergency services and RCMP don't understand the capacity, the amount of work you've done, the training you've done, and how prepared you really are? Where's the breakdown in communication?

[Chief Joe Alphonse]

You know, I think it all comes down to attitude, the attitude we have toward first nation people, stereotypes, whatever. Every government agency that came running in.... I got to the point where I told our EOC coordinator that I was sick and tired of government officials running in and every last one of them saying things like, “Do you even know what you're doing? Do you even have a policy? Do you even know how many people you have in your community? What are your plans? What are you going to do?” In the end, I just started telling them that we were going to run down to the river and take all our clothes off, and that we had logs there, so we'd tie the babies to the logs and throw the logs in the river and then we'd jump in.

But it wasn't until the Department of National Defence, somebody from Ottawa, called me at home, called me late at night, and I decided, since this was a military guy, I was going to go through our emergency operations policies. I spent one full hour with him and talked to him, detail by detail. At the end of that hour, he said he was sorry for underestimating us, for not realizing that we have policies.

I figured he would understand because this was very much like a military-style operation that we ran in our community. We took.... There was no more band office in our community, and that structure, all our stuff. There was no more health, no more chief and council. In our Tsilhqot'in way, before contact, we had lots of chiefs in our community. Each chief was responsible for certain things in our community, and in times when there was a threat to the community, a threat to the women, children, and elders, the war chief would take over.

When the war chief took over, everybody became subordinate to that person. That's what our emergency operations centre and policy was and how I explained it to our community. People bought into that. It was something they could relate to, and they related to that. It was through this crisis that we found harmony. For two months we had harmony amongst us. You exclude all the other government agencies, remove all of them, and just within our community we had harmony. Fire was never a threat to us, never a threat.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

I really appreciated what you said about this action being a strong action of self-government. What I can hear from what you're saying is how strong the community must feel after this experience, knowing that they could care for themselves and that there was a plan. I'm very impressed by that, and congratulations for that leadership.

One of the things that were very clear to me in what you were talking about is the threats that you received from the RCMP and how painful and frustrating that was. Can you tell us if there have been any actions about fixing those relationships?