Michel Tremblay is an individual who, in the early 2000s, started to claim and exercise rights as a member of the Métis Nation of Ontario. He was exercising these rights in the province of Quebec, on our traditional territory, to which we wholeheartedly objected.
Mr. Tremblay was subsequently charged by the provincial government for 47 offences, from trapping without a licence and hunting without a licence to destruction of the territory. He built roads. He built his own pond. He really believed that he had the right to do so, and as in every other court case the Métis have brought forward in Quebec, he tried to prove that as a Métis citizen, he had rights and the ability to exercise those rights in Quebec. The Quebec Court of Appeal rendered a decision and found Mr. Tremblay guilty of all 47 charges.
While that was going on, Canada continued to address, through a number of bills, issues of people who lost their status through modifications to the Indian Act registration, the last one being Bill S-3. With the subsequent proof issues, Mr. Tremblay ultimately went from being a non-indigenous person to becoming a Métis who exercised rights and was convicted. In his testimony, it was clear that he had some linkages to the Algonquin nation. The problem is that non-status individuals like Mr. Tremblay sometimes mistake who they are and who they represent. Ultimately, as time went by and a number of years passed, the improvements changed, and lo and behold, Mr. Tremblay became a card-carrying member of one of the Algonquin communities, Pikwakanagan, which is in Ontario, as a matter of fact.
The situation with Mr. Tremblay highlights one of the major problems we have with the Métis Nation of Ontario. Many of the individuals who claim to be Métis are in fact non-status individuals who have been removed from our communities for generations. It just shows the extent of the mentality and the mindset that folks like Mr. Tremblay get when they acquire or think they have rights, versus how we look at the world and how we exercise rights as real Algonquin people on the territory.
We can talk about this from an economic perspective. What we see is that, while we prioritize the protection of the territory over everything else, groups like MNO and AOO are ready to give up the protection of the territory for contracts.
The best example for us is the Timiskaming dam replacement project. We've been leading the environmental assessment since 2018 on our behalf and that of two other Algonquin communities. We've engaged our communities. We've had many consultations. Four hundred people have come out and have told us that the new dam has to be built on site. It cannot be relocated because it will have huge detrimental impacts on white sturgeon.
The MNO, because they are more interested in pre- and post-monitoring contracts, simply spoke to four of their members. They decided that the best location to build this new bridge is in the spawning bed, because it will create work for them. It will create pre- and post-monitoring work. Plus, they will be responsible for creating the offset. If they destroy the spawning bed, they have to build a new one.