Thank you.
[Witness spoke in Cree]
[English]
My name is Ron Quintal. Since 2005 I have been president of the Fort McKay Métis Nation, the authorized government of the Fort McKay Métis community. I am also the elected chairperson of the Alberta Métis Federation, a collective of eight independent Métis communities.
My community is located in northern Alberta, between Fort McMurray and Fort Chipewyan. Our Métis community traces its history to the original forts established by French traders in the early 1800s amidst the Cree and Dene peoples who inhabited what is now northern Alberta. The present-day community can trace its lineage directly to the original families of Boucher, Piché and Tourangeau.
The Fort McKay Métis community has persisted together for over two centuries as a people. Our members continue to engage in harvesting as their ancestors did. Our members continue to look to each other for leadership and support. For this reason, our community began incorporating various bodies to formally represent our community, including the Red River Point Society, established in 1970; MNA Local 122, established in 1992; and MNA Local 63, established in 2002.
At the time our community incorporated the MNA locals, the Métis Nation of Alberta was acting as a Métis advocacy group. That all changed around 2016, when the MNA changed from working to assist Métis communities to asserting itself as a government over those communities. That may have been welcomed by some communities, but it was not welcomed by ours and so many other Métis communities throughout Alberta.
The MNA’s constitution, prompted by its negotiations with Canada, asserts that the MNA and its successor Métis government represents the Alberta Métis and all Métis communities. Fort McKay and other Métis communities have made it very clear that this assertion is not true. Despite that, Canada agreed to the same assertion being entrenched in its February 2023 agreement with the MNA, which states that the MNA is the government of the Métis nation in Alberta, defined as comprising both registered citizens and the Alberta Métis communities whose members are entitled to become its citizens. Imagine a foreign nation suggesting that it had the authority to speak on behalf of not only its own citizens but also Canadian communities simply because those community members could join that nation.
Bill C-53 now proposes to give Parliament’s blessing to this hostile and undemocratic takeover of Alberta Métis communities by formally recognizing, in clause 8 of the draft bill, the MNA as the “Indigenous governing body that is authorized to act on behalf of” the Métis nation within Alberta.
I come to this committee on behalf of the Fort McKay Métis Nation to alert this House that the federal government does not properly understand the Métis of Alberta and that Bill C-53 is based on that flawed understanding that the MNA represents all Métis communities in Alberta, which it does not.
In its present form, Bill C-53 is a threat to Métis communities in Alberta and represents a massive step backward and not forward toward reconciliation. It threatens to unilaterally assimilate all Métis and Métis communities under an organization that lacks the consent of the governed.
If this committee declines to recommend rejecting this bill, the Fort McKay Métis nation asks that you instead amend the bill and expressly limit the recognition granted by Parliament in clause 8 such that it confines recognition to those Métis communities that have collectively and democratically chosen to be represented by the listed Métis governments.
To be clear, if this bill passes in its current form, we will fight it in court. We will not be governed by the MNA. This Parliament cannot legislate away our sovereignty. To attempt to do so is not only paternalistic. It also represents a huge blow toward the efforts of reconciliation.
We have had to fight the MNA for our identity and for our right to exist. We have had to use the courts to do so. We have won every court case, and all this while the MNA had no rights of recognition. I fear to see what will come if Canada passes this bill and the MNA has rights that are recognized. We will be there to stand our ground and to continue to defend our Métis communities.
We will defend this to the very end.
Hay hay.