Thank you Chair.
My name is Chief Jeff Skye. I am the chief of police of the Anishinabek Police Service, situated out of Garden River First Nation. I am starting my 34th year in first nation policing.
We are here representing the Indigenous Police Chiefs of Ontario, also known as IPCO. IPCO was founded in 2019 and represents the nine self-administered first nations police services that operate in the province of Ontario. In total, IPCO member police services serve 85 first nations in Ontario.
We advocate together for equitable policing for all first nations in Ontario. We also advocate for serious and significant changes to first nations police. Some recent successes include working with our funding partner, Ontario, to provide a provincial pension plan for our members equal to the OPP's. We're part of the Community Safety and Policing Act, 2019, which was co-developed with first nations and allows first nations to opt in to legislated standards for community safety.
Four years ago, this committee heard about the struggles of first nations policing and how we were asked to do more with less in extremely challenging conditions. The committee also heard about the extensive failures of Canada's first nations and Inuit policing program, FNIPP. In particular, the committee heard about how the FNIPP, which launched in 1991, was built on a promise. That was the promise of equitable policing for first nations comparable to non-first nations communities. The committee also heard how the promise was never fulfilled.
Since the FNIPP launched, the promise has never been forgotten, but the underlying policy was quite literally disappeared. We call it the phantom policy. Instead, Canada imposes unfair, discriminatory rules through the terms and conditions, which fail first nations people. As my colleague, Kai Liu, will explain in a moment, multiple courts have ruled that these terms and conditions are arbitrary and discriminatory and force first nations to endure restrictive rules that would never apply to non-indigenous people.
While first nations policing has changed somewhat, there is still significant work to be done. As some examples of the work, some detachments don't even have lockers or change room facilities. Recently, in one of the detachments, through funding, holding cells were built that were made of drywall.
The biggest challenge affecting first nations is drugs and associated violence. While the drug crisis affects everyone, first nations communities are particularly hard hit, with an influx of drugs and gangs from southern Ontario. People, especially our young, are dying, and we don't have the resources to do anything about it.
These incidents aren't anomalies. They are increasingly the norm for first nations communities. Gangs target first nation communities because they know there's nobody to stop them. First nations police services have been chronically underfunded, affecting our ability to provide 24-7 policing and keep communities safe. We simply do not have the resources, the funding, the officers or the equipment to tackle this crisis, and it is killing our people, especially the young.
We are asking you, the committee, to help us encourage Public Safety Canada to help make that happen.
I want to say meegwetch and thank you for my few minutes, as I'm trying to speed up as quickly as I can. I'd like to hand it over to my colleague, Kai Liu.