Evidence of meeting #88 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was community.
A recording is available from Parliament.
December 5th, 2017 / 12:15 p.m.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair
Thank you to Chief Ann Louie for being here.
Folks, I don't know how many of you know that my hometown is the chief's. My mom lives literally about 700 metres down from the chief's community, and chief's very humble. When she talked about sitting in her car and making phone calls, she really was. She talked about the 150 Mile House volunteer department. You have to depend on a department that's not fully ramped-up.
Chief, I have a couple of questions for you, and I really appreciate you and your strength over the course of the summer. Your comments were bang-on with both chiefs.
Chief, on July 31, Prime Minister Trudeau visited our region. How much time were you afforded to speak with him and voice your concerns?
Chief, Williams Lake Indian Band
When Prime Minister Trudeau came to Williams Lake, none of our chiefs from the northern Secwepemc were given any time at all. He got off the plane, shook our hands, made a couple of comments, and that was the extent of his visit with us.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
That is disappointing, and I know you were fairly frustrated since it is the traditional territory of our Williams Lake Indian Band.
Chief, we had a lot of conversations over the course of it. Did you have anybody in the CRD EOC working alongside our Cariboo Regional District and our regional firefighters?
Chief, Williams Lake Indian Band
Eventually, after we asserted ourselves, we had planning meetings throughout, but for the first few days we did not have anybody other than Jeff Eustache, who came on from first nations. We moved our office to Williams Lake because we have a building in Williams Lake. That's where we did our work, but we ourselves ended up setting up a daily phone call for our community members and staff, along with EOC.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Were there some inequities in who was receiving funding with respect to first nations in and around our areas and who weren't receiving funding to begin with?
Chief, Williams Lake Indian Band
We never received any funding and we never got any planning dollars or anything to develop emergency evacuations for crises such as this.
The funding we got from the federal government I requested directly from Catherine Lappe. That's how we got that, but it was much later in the event.
Conservative
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Okay. Did other groups receive funding earlier in the process?
Chief, Williams Lake Indian Band
That was where I found out about information with funding being allocated to the Tsilhqot'in people. Chief Joe Alphonse approached me and mentioned that he had received a large sum of money, so I pursued it immediately and relayed that message to other chiefs in our area.
Conservative
Chief, Williams Lake Indian Band
I don't know. You mentioned earlier about the Prime Minister coming to the area. The Williams Lake Band and the surrounding areas have always been left out.
I addressed that specifically to Minister Wilson-Raybould, that I was annoyed that the Prime Minister landed in our territory and took a flight directly to the west to see the other nations, but didn't give us the time of day. That seems to be a regular occurrence.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
I think you know that at least it wasn't due in part from your MP working hard to try to get him to meet with you.
Chief, Williams Lake Indian Band
That's right and I appreciate your efforts in that.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
I think both of you mentioned during this, that when we are doing a mass evacuation—and for those who aren't from British Columbia and who might not understand the scope of this, we had first nations communities and non-first nations communities, the largest mass evacuation in British Columbia history. The social and cultural component in the evacuation centres is something I think the Red Cross was not equipped to really handle. Is that correct?
Chief, Bonaparte Indian Band
In their defence, the Red Cross really just came in at the request of EMBC to do what they did in Alberta last year. That's basically what happened, so I mean they did the best they could, but....
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
In Ottawa, I think the other part that sometimes we forget is that many of our first nation communities are in rural communities. You work alongside our ranchers and our farmers. I think you both said it. You had the local knowledge, but we had firefighters from out of country and out of province taking precedence over our local contractors and firefighters.
Do you both agree with that?
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
How hard was it for you to fight to have your local firefighters be part of the program?
Chief, Williams Lake Indian Band
For us, initially, it took the meeting that occurred at the Cariboo fire centre, with the people that I named earlier, and making demands and asserting ourselves. Fortunately for us, one of our council members, Willie Sellars, was a former firefighter with the Cariboo fire centre, so they recognized him and finally set up a “pac team” within the Williams Lake Band and then he eventually went to work for the Cariboo fire centre.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Chief, how much property would we have lost, in terms of residential as well as community, if our local first nations, ranchers, and farmers didn't band together to really fight this fire?
Chief, Williams Lake Indian Band
I can't speak for all other communities, but I know for us, our community would have probably been wiped out entirely had it not been for the firefighters who went back in during the night, as well as the people who worked on the highway. It was their equipment that saved our businesses and the community members saved the houses.
My home is probably 500 yards from where that other house burned and the fire came right up. That's a new subdivision and it stopped right at the pavement and that was due to the members stopping it.
