Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2022

[Chief Sarah Diabo]

A cellphone service would be beneficial for us as a first response type of capability, yes.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Most people have access to cell coverage, don't they, in your...?

[Chief Sarah Diabo]

Yes.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Okay. That's good.

[Chief Dwayne Thomas, Chief, Mohawk Council of Akwesasne]

We do have pockets in our community, though, where we don't have cell service just because of the geography of our community. Sarah and I represent the same district. We live about a quarter of a mile from one another, and there are times when we don't get cell service at our homes. I have my chief's phone on the Canadian side, but it's Verizon on the American side, only because I get better service with Verizon where we're located.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

I appreciate that. Where I come from, there are many in communities in my riding who don't have cell coverage at all, so I can appreciate that very much.

My time is running out. I want to switch gears a little bit and ask you one further question. This is maybe a little bit more of a curiosity question.

There has been a lot of talk in the last few weeks around policing on first nations, and this is all driven out of an incident that happened in my northern Saskatchewan area. You have your own police force already. I would love to chat with you in more detail some day about that.

In the context of having your own police force, I want you to tie that back specifically to emergencies. Could you talk about the benefit of having your own police force when it comes to an emergency situation in your communities?

[Chief Dwayne Thomas]

I will speak to that.

In our community, for the last close to 50 years, on the northern portion we've had the Akwesasne Mohawk Police . It has only been in the last couple of years that we have let people come in and map our streets. Currently we don't have a 911 system, because some of our community members don't feel comfortable giving out their information to the outside world.

With a local community force, for years it was only people from our community. We were lucky that people were stepping up and filling those roles. However, in the last five years, we have had a lot more people from outside the territory apply because we had no other applicants who got in.

With my house, for example, when I was a dispatcher for the Mohawk police and I said go to Dwayne Thomas's house, the guy on the other end said “Okay”. I didn't have to say “318 Wade Lafrance”.

In our community, that knowledge of who we are and where everyone lives, and the families and the closeness, really helps when you get into that situation. All of a sudden, you can be in a panic mode and something's happening. There's a house on fire. There was the ice storm of 1998. It can be any of those things.

You say to go to somewhere, and the person on the other end says, “Who's that? Which district is that?” They want a physical address, because that's what they know, but our local community, as I said, was being serviced for probably the first 45 years by people who were all from Akwesasne, so they knew where to go. In that respect, it was a positive thing.

The other thing with being in a small community is that everybody knows your business, so when somebody is sick or something, our first responders are aware of that. Sarah's husband is an EMT. He has a great memory and he remembers a lot of things. He knows things that someone from the outside might not know. I think those are great things.

In my case, I went to school off the reservation. I had a lot of friends in our neighbouring town of Massena, New York, because that's where I went to high school. In the early nineties, going up to visit them, when I'd get pulled over and asked why I was in Massena, I would always say, “Is it illegal to be in Massena?” I knew what they were getting at, because I was coming from the local first nations community and I was into trouble or something. I don't know why that assumption was. However, to get pulled over on your territory and recognize a person and see a friendly face and stuff like that definitely helps in our community.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Chief.

We will now go to Mr. Powlowski for six minutes, if I have that right.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Yes, it's me.

Thanks, Chief. That was a very interesting and good response.

I'm going to concentrate on Lucas.

Lucas, welcome to INAN. I'm glad you're here. The committee won't know it, but the western part of my riding is all Treaty No. 3.

During the flooding this spring, I was up there. I certainly saw in Seine River that there were cars floating in the river. The community centre was basically an island surrounded by sandbags, and water around that. In Couchiching, which is close to Fort Frances, there were a lot of houses flooded as well.

Lucas, maybe you could tell me more about the extent of the damage in the spring, and in which communities. As I recall, the communities further upriver, like Lac La Croix, had the flooding first, and then as the water levels rose downstream, there was flooding in other areas.

Could you maybe tell us more about the damage this spring?

[Lucas King]

Sure, and I think the first thing I'd touch on there is that it wasn't just the spring, and that was the issue in Treaty No. 3 this year. Normally when we have a flood event, it starts at the headwaters and we have that flood, and then by July and August it has flowed through the system. There was so much water this year. The eastern portion of Treaty No. 3—Couchiching, Seine River, Lac la Croix—all experienced housing loss, damage to infrastructure on the water, to water treatment plants. All of that then flowed through the Rainy River to Lake of the Woods, and that's where we then saw the level of Lake of the Woods rise, impacting our communities on the lake to the same extent with regard to access to community centres, education, roads in and out of the communities and evacuations. The sandbagging efforts were out of control, and this went on into July and August.

It wasn't actually until about two weeks ago that water was off a lot of the physical infrastructure on the lake, but that same situation is then still being experienced on the Winnipeg River flowing into the Lake Winnipeg system.

That high water was also unprecedented in terms of the longevity within the territory. We just tried to keep getting as much water out as possible, but the infrastructure wasn't in place to get enough out soon enough. White Dog First Nation, for example, instead of sandbagging, actually dumped a pile of sand in front of their water treatment plant to try to stop water from coming in, because there just wasn't time.

Each community now has had costs for roadways and other infrastructure associated with rising water. It was up about six to seven feet in some places.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Lucas, you and I have talked about this before.

In the Winnipeg River system, there are several dams. There are several natural choke points, and the water builds up behind those points. Let's say you're looking at how to alleviate the problem in, for example, Rainy Lake. If you were to make a bigger passage going into Rainy River, then you would create more of a problem potentially in Rainy River. Similarly, out at Lake of the Woods, there's a dam there, but I don't think that's the choke point; it's further downstream. However, if you were to open it up there, then you could potentially have more flooding in the Winnipeg River.

Could you explain some of that?

[Lucas King]

For sure. We've had this conversation around the infrastructure that's currently in the Rainy Lake-Lake of the Woods system.

A lot of that has been around for decades now. There are natural choke points along the way, and that's where you can't get enough water through the Rainy River in this situation to bring down Rainy Lake and Namakan Lake, and you experience that high-water level. Similarly, for water going out the Winnipeg River to bring down the Lake of the Woods, which is the big storage reservoir, and then Lac Seul, you can't get enough water out fast enough to then alleviate that pressure. You'll actually see gravesites being eroded in Lac Seul. There are physical bones showing in shorelines.

That being said, that's why we're sitting here now again. It's to start to redo or manipulate those choke points, but is doing more manipulation to Mother Earth really the right answer? The conversation at grand council is about how we can do a better job of getting more information so that our predictions are actually more accurate.

My point of concern is that the rule curves in the Rainy-Namakan system actually went 0 for 2 in the last two years in terms of predicting either that drought or that flood, and we're supposed to be the experts. Those models and those engineers are supposed to be the experts. However, we're just human and we need as much information as possible.

That's where we get into starting to look at this as treaty partners. It's a problem for everyone, and we need to start bringing a more holistic approach to how we talk about water regulations, because it's not going to be just widening dams and choke points that's going to get us out of this; it's managing our relationship to that water and bringing in more knowledge and harmonizing those governance systems to really do a better job.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Do I have any extra time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

There are only about eight seconds, Mr. Powlowski, so I think we'll call it there.

Mrs. Gill, you have six minutes.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses for being with us today.

My next questions will be for Chief Thomas and Chief Diabo from the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne.

As a member of Parliament from Quebec, I have met a few tunes with members of the Akwesasne community regarding, among other things, the Jay Treaty, which they are very familiar with.

Our study discusses emergency and crisis situations, in addition to the issue of the Canada—U.S. border and the many different difficulties that this causes for the Akwesasne community.

Chief Thomas and Chief Diabo, in a crisis situation that the community may be experiencing or has experienced, what additional challenges should be raised to enable you to better meet the needs of the community on both sides of the border? For you, this is really a unique case.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

We can start with Mr. King.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Actually, Mr. Chair, my question is for Chief Diabo and Chief Thomas about the Jay Treaty.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

My apologies.

Sorry. We'll start with Chief Diabo.

[Chief Sarah Diabo]

During the pandemic, for example, because of the ArriveCAN app, it was difficult for our physicians to come to the homes for the elderly. They were coming from Canada, but they would have to go through the United States, so it was difficult for them to go back through. Even though it was for just 8-10 hours a day, they weren't able, so that hindered our health care sector. We had very few doctors and very few nurses, and the same applied to the American Red Cross. It was difficult for the American Red Cross employees to come and assist us because of the international border. They weren't members of Akwesasne, so there was no right to entry. They would have to go through the whole process of ArriveCAN.

All of our nurses, the PSWs and the community health nurses were becoming fatigued, so we needed some support to come in. The American Red Cross was not able to come in during COVID.

In our district, it could be something as minor as my washer and dryer needing repair. Nobody would come over from Ontario to service our appliances in Quebec. We would have to load up our appliances and take them over the border.

A lot of our goods...We couldn't get lumber; we couldn't get any deliveries. It's difficult in the Quebec districts, because you have to go through New York state. From New York state you couldn't come over to Quebec, because of the border. There's no manned border, but individuals would still have to report to U.S. customs at Massena.

[Chief Dwayne Thomas]

There's the geography of the whole thing. Our district of Tsi Snaihne and the district of Kana:takon have water on the northern portion and then land on the southern portion. The only way to get there is through the United States, with all the border restrictions during COVID. Prior to COVID there wasn't a problem, because we didn't have the border restrictions, but we really were exposed to a lot of that.

Thankfully, we have a great community. Everybody steps up and volunteers. If you want to talk about supplementary things we did to navigate COVID or anything that came up, I can tell you that our people really step up.

Right now, we're really suffering from COVID fatigue, because we couldn't get that outside support. Many people just don't understand how Akwesasne is built until they come down, tour Akwesasne, see the border and see all the difficulties we face. Our people are waiting for answers, trying to figure out how to do it.

We've been accustomed over the years to saying, “Okay, we'll pick you up by boat on Cornwall Island, bring you by boat to Tsi, let you do your thing, and then take you back.” American customs and people in Washington, and sometimes people here in Ottawa, don't understand what we're faced with until they come and see what's happening in Akwesasne. Often we're forced to do things ourselves—

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

I'm sorry, Chief Thomas, but I don't have much time left.

I'll ask you one last question, which could sum up a lot of the topic.

Would an agreement between Canada and the United States regarding the border, as you are requesting, under the Jay Treaty, for example, be a solution or at least an improvement in the security of your people?

I would like to hear from you and Chief Diabo on this.

[Chief Dwayne Thomas]

Currently we have an agreement with the CBSA office in Cornwall. We have a remission order that allows that freedom. We don't have that same freedom at the Dundee port, which is on the easternmost part of our reservation. That leads us directly into Montreal.

Really, what the Jay Treaty does is talk about our individual rights, not our community rights. A remission order in Dundee to match the one in Cornwall would probably be a first step. I don't think it would solve it. I think there are other things that need to be worked out between all three governments—our government, the United States government and the Canadian government—to recognize it.

Even with funding, when we get funding, it's tagged only to Ontario. It's not tagged to Akwesasne; it's tagged to Ontario. We have three jurisdictions, and everybody is the same. I have family that live on the American side. They're not any different from me, and they all live on Akwesasne, but we have funding in place for only certain people. I call it discriminatory funding because it can't service everyone, even though we're all one.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you.

We'll go to Ms. Idlout now for six minutes.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

Thank you very much to the witnesses who gave us presentations. I am very proud of you, especially from Canada, and the leadership you have shown, the tremendous support, and the fact that it's very important to support each other as to how we can carry this out.

I understand that in your community operations—I'd like to ask Chief Diabo this, if she can tell us—the school bus takes over an hour and a half just to go to school. Can you clarify that a bit more or tell us a little bit more about that, about how long it takes to cross the borders and how much impact that has on the families, especially with the kids who are going to school to achieve their education?

[Chief Sarah Diabo]

It depends on how long the wait at U.S. customs is. Coming from Cornwall Island, Ontario, they have to cross into U.S. customs. Often it can be anywhere from 40 minutes to close to an hour of waiting in line to go to school. Often the parents will just bring the kids back to their closest district, but because the parents want their children to learn the language, because our language is dying, they send them to the school in the village of St. Regis, where there's immersion. It's 100% Mohawk language. Sometimes they drive them in themselves and pick them up at school and drive them home in their own vehicle.