Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 13th, 2021

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all the witnesses today for their participation, their good recommendations and their testimonies.

I'm on the traditional territory of the Anishinabe Cree people of Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou.

Chief Lazore, could you finish your presentation, please?

[Chief Connie Lazore]

Was that on my first answer? When I spoke earlier, I believe I was speaking about the enforcement of our laws and the restrictions of Canada.

As mentioned, we have to deal with two provinces when we talk about Canada laws. When we're talking about the jurisdiction of our court, we have to sit and negotiate with the province. I don't think we should be negotiating with the province.

I find it difficult when you talk about a self-government agreement for us to govern ourselves. With every issue we have, the provinces come in to negotiate, not the federal, yet it's the federal department that is responsible to us. We struggle with trying to get our self-government agreement, because there are so many mechanisms in there. Even education became the province. Justice is the province, and it's two provinces, not one.

We're fortunate that the ministries have come together to talk about an agreement that sees us coming together and recognizing our court. We talked earlier about the reciprocity of our orders. Just the way the provinces respect the orders of each other, our indigenous courts' orders should also be respected and allowed to happen.

Community development laws are for our community, not for the rest of Canada, so they should be heard in our courts, and Canada should not have any authority over how we develop them, if we develop them, and if they are sanctioned and approved. It belongs to each community to do that and to enforce them as well.

Today we look for the funding to pull all this justice system together to work for us—not for Canada but for us, for each respective community.

Thank you. I hope that answers the question you wanted me to elaborate on.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Would you like to add anything else, Chief Lazore?

[Chief Connie Lazore]

Thank you for asking.

I would like to acknowledge that we are all different. While we are all indigenous, we are all at different levels of trying to protect our communities and keep them safe. That's our responsibility as leadership.

What we need from Canada and the province is to work with us to do that, not to become the barrier. We're all at a level where we can appreciate, respect and honour each other, and that's what we need to do so that when we talk about recommendations, they're heard fully. That is my recommendation. We need to exist in this world together, in these provinces and this country. Allowing us to govern ourselves in a more respectful way, especially when it comes to justice and the way we deal with our community members, needs to be at the forefront of decision-making.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thank you.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

My question is for Chief Doss-Cody.

Are you having trouble recruiting new police officers?

[Deborah Doss-Cody]

Yes, we do. We are competing with the likes of Surrey, which, as you're aware, has created a new police service. We're competing with the Surrey police service and we're competing with the Vancouver police service. We are the second-lowest-paid police service in Canada, and in British Columbia, we are the lowest-paid municipal police service.

We have tried numerous things to attract recruits. We have joined the municipal pension plan. We are going to be having our grand opening. We'll be inviting APTN out so that they can do a video clip and we can put a plug in there to recruit. It is very difficult when you're competing with agencies that are paying their first-class constables $107,000 annually and you're providing $86,101 for a first-class constable. As well, we're a program. We're program-funded versus being essential, for which funding is sustained and it's there.

It definitely creates challenges for recruiting when you have someone who is looking to enter policing as a career and they don't know whether, at the end of the 10-year agreement, their career will continue.

Those are the challenges we're faced with.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

I think that's time, Madam Bérubé.

Ms. Blaney, you're next. I'm going to ask Mr. Vidal to take the chair. Mr. Schmale's camera hasn't come back on again. He's our vice-chair.

There you are, Jamie. It's good to have you back again.

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

Thank you. I don't know what happened.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

I'm going to have to Zoom out and Zoom back in again to correct a technical problem. The translation is troubling in my headset because it's equal volume and the only way to solve it is to go out and come back again.

Ms. Blaney, you have six minutes, and Mr. Schmale, please take over as vice-chair.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jamie Schmale]

Thank you, Chair.

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

Thank you, Vice-Chair. It's nice to see you in that seat; it's a little bit different.

First of all, I want to thank all of the witnesses. I appreciate your testimony.

Today my questions will be directed towards Mr. Yang and Mr. Browne. I want to assure you both that your written submissions are most likely going through translation right now, since they have to be delivered in both English and French, and I'm sure we will all have them very soon. I hope that you will pass on my thanks to the hegus and the legislators for sharing your valuable time with us today.

My first question, and I leave it to both of you to decide who is the best to answer, is this: Could you please explain why federal negotiations haven't supported Tla'amin's requests to negotiate an enforcement agreement as set out in the treaty process, and of course in the treaty itself?

[Murray Browne]

Thank you very much, honourable member.

I work with Tla'amin on treaty negotiations. The problem is implementation. We sit down and we negotiate something at a treaty; it's not perfect, but it's constitutionally protected. Then we try to activate it, and we look around and see that the negotiators have gone on to another file. We have a real problem with implementation.

On the provincial side, they have appointed implementation managers; we can pick up the phone and call them. The federal government sort of has that, but not to the same strength.

Mr. Yang may want to talk about a provincial side. We're having detailed discussions with the province on having highways authority to deal with speeders racing through the community. We just haven't had that level of engagement yet on the federal side. I'm hoping that we will.

I hope that answers your question.

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

Thank you. That is extremely helpful.

I of course heard testimony about the overharvesting of shellfish, and that is definitely a significant concern. Could I get some more thoughts on what you think needs to be done to encourage DFO to co-operate with Tla'amin on enforcement? That is key. We hear again and again from constituents across the whole riding that there are not enough DFO folks on the ground doing the work. We see guardian programs starting across many nations, but of course the level of enforcement is simply not there.

Could you talk about what next steps need to be done to encourage DFO to understand these roles and how important they are?

[Murray Browne]

I'll make a few comments and see if Mr. Yang wishes to add to them.

First of all, there's no treaty funding for enforcement. It's a blank. It's a gap in the treaty. Tla'amin is consistently rejected for guardian funding. We apply under the guardian program and we don't get it, so Tla'amin has to take money that could be used for urgent housing, education, health, and social needs and hire its own guardians with money it doesn't have. That's problem number one.

Problem number two is there are many fine folks at DFO, but as an entity, I'm sorry to say, it's trapped in the colonial history. It's racist, it's arrogant, it's defensive. It does not work with first nations. It's anti-reconciliation. I can give you many examples of that. DFO consistently breaks the law. They do not follow the treaty; they do not follow the basic law set out by the Supreme Court of Canada to put conservation first, followed by aboriginal and treaty rights. They think it's their job to provide opportunities for sport and commercial fisheries, and the resources be damned.

I'll give just one quick example. The name for the Tla'amin village is Teeshosum. That means “waters that are milky white from herring spawn”. That is because, for thousands of years, Tla'amin managed that herring fishery and kept it sustainable to feed their people. DFO came into the picture and wiped out that stock because they, in their arrogance, decided that it was part of an aggregate stock, not a local stock, and that they could authorize commercial harvests on it. Tla'amin stopped fishing, but the stock is gone. That's part of the many issues with DFO.

Going back to the enforcement aspect, what I see is that DFO, as a culture and as an entity, thinks that they can do it better and they don't want anyone else to do it.

I'll ask Mr. Yang if he has comments.

[Derek Yang]

Thank you to my colleague, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Blaney, for that question.

I think one of the biggest challenges, as pointed out by my colleague, is the lack of willingness by DFO to engage in a productive and progressive manner with indigenous communities, such as Tla'amin, to enforce natural resource protection laws.

The other challenge, it seems, is the lack of willingness by DFO to cross-designate our enforcement officers to take some of those initiatives off their plate. If there's one thing we can speak confidently on, it's that DFO fisheries officers are an under-resourced federal enforcement body.

For our region, the qathet Region, there are only two or three officers at any given time, and they have a large area to patrol. That's the same in a lot of other parts of Canada. They do not have the physical ability to patrol and enforce their mandate, let alone serve the desires of Tla'amin Nation or other indigenous communities to protect their resources and their traditional practices.

I think if there were clear direction by the government to DFO for them to start engaging with and working with nations to enforce and protect natural resources, that would be a very good start. As well, the push from the government to the ministry to start cross-designating and funding indigenous guardian programs that are well within the act, as well as treaty sections within the Fisheries Act itself, would will be very good starts.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thank you very much.

We're going now to a five-minute round of questions. Mr. Viersen, you're up first.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here today.

I want to start with Chief Lazore. She talked in her opening remarks about section 107 and how the experience had changed over time. I was wondering if she could expand on that a little bit more.

[Chief Connie Lazore]

Thank you, honourable MP.

What happened was that Indigenous Services had decided they were no longer going to appoint justices of the peace. With that moratorium put in place, we did have, I believe, four. We were down to two, and we have one left. We required justices to sit in our court. We decided to take the inherent right component, as we did with the development and approval of our laws, because, again, Indigenous Services stopped approving bylaws. We needed laws to govern ourselves.

With that said, we decided to appoint justices of the peace. We put them through the training that, at the time, was available for them. We've had two sitting inherit right justices since then who have been hearing cases in our court. Today we have 10 in training to be justices of the peace.

We have been continually moving forward. We've been continually exercising our self-government and our inherent right.

We have heard in our court the four offences in the Indian Act that I identified earlier, but today we sit and negotiate that with part of our self-government agreement, because it's in the Indian Act.

If we have to negotiate that, to my mind that doesn't make sense, because we already have it. We're doing it. The provinces turn around and tell us we can't do that either, but it's in the Indian Act. Are we not working to be more independent of the Indian Act?

For us, we have been hearing it. We want to continue hearing it. We've had some cases very recently that probably should have gone to our court, but we sit here negotiating that, and it becomes very difficult.

We have to keep moving forward. We have justices in training and we have justices sitting in our court. As everyone else has said today, we require the funding. We've been carrying this court and all the needs of it for almost 60 years. For 57 or 58 years we've been carrying that.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Is that court in northern Alberta? I'm not familiar with any first nations courts. Is that court unique in Canada in your situation?

[Chief Connie Lazore]

Here in eastern Ontario and western Quebec, it is, yes. I believe that the Mohawks of Kahnawake also have a court. However, ours is all indigenous, except for one person. I believe our prosecutor is not indigenous.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Brooks, have you come across anything similar to an indigenous court of any sort in Alberta?

[Brooks Arcand-Paul]

No, there is no similar kind of court in Alberta yet. I know that there is some discussion about getting that off the ground. However, to date, those are the only ones—those ones on the east coast—that we know of that do practise that full jurisdiction and that inherent jurisdiction. There are other nations that are looking to do that. I think the court you're talking about is specifically just in the Cree language. It still uses the same framework as the provincial court system.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

In Alberta, we have a pretty robust police force—self-policing—but not necessarily court jurisdiction. Would you agree with that?

[Brooks Arcand-Paul]

Yes, although with those situations, it's mostly in southern Alberta, where there are a lot of police forces that first nations have put in place themselves. In central and northern Alberta, there aren't as many. It's mostly the RCMP that occupy the field, particularly if they have policing on their first nations. They have the actual RCMP detachments located within their nations.

However, when it comes to judicial prosecutions, we're running into that issue. That's been a constant issue even for those that do have their police forces in place, but it's less so there because they do have those agreements with the province.