Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 19th, 2025

[Sandra DeLaronde]

Do you want me to start my presentation?

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Sure. Say a few words, please.

[Sandra DeLaronde]

Honourable Chairperson and committee members, I'm grateful for the opportunity to meet with you today. The name “Ganawenima'Anaanig” means “we all take care of them”. We are—

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

I'm sorry, Sandra. The interpreters are giving me the thumbs down. They can't hear you, so I apologize.

We will get a brief from you or make an arrangement at another time.

Thank you.

[Sandra DeLaronde]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

We're going to questions.

William, you have six minutes, please.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you.

I'll start with Ms. Doss-Cody.

I don't think I need to hear a whole lot more from you because you were very good on what you were determining we need to change so that you're deemed to be an essential service. During the pandemic I found it rather interesting that an accountant doing taxes was deemed an essential service, probably because they wanted to collect the taxes. It does not always make sense as to what is deemed an essential service. In my opinion, you definitely should be, so that is something we definitely need to take forward as a recommendation.

I'll go to you now, Mr. Chartrand.

In our previous panel, I made a comment that this committee has a lot of rural members. We probably have half a dozen of the largest rural ridings in the country.

You were talking about how the funding is not necessarily the same in the rural areas and it's affecting the rural areas because they're not on par. Could you expand on that?

I guess I could have gone to Ms. Doss-Cody on that as well, but you can start, Mr. Chartrand.

[David Chartrand]

I'll use the community I come from, Duck Bay, Manitoba. It's in northern Manitoba, towards the centre in the north. We are beside Pine Creek reserve, which is two or three miles away. They have community policing. They have programs and services. We have nothing. Camperville is another Métis village and the reserve is between us. There are two big Métis villages. However, we have no services. The police we have who protect or attempt to deal with some peace in the community come from about 45 or 50 miles away. That's where they're positioned, in Winnipegosis.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Can I get you to focus on how the funding is affecting it?

[David Chartrand]

That's what I'm trying to lead to. In order for you to understand it, I have to lead you there.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Okay.

[David Chartrand]

When you look at the process.... As I said, the Winnipegosis police cover about 10 reserves and Métis communities, so they're fully spread out. They're only there to pick up people when action happens in the community. There's no funding balance between us and next door to the reserve. We don't have any policing. We pay taxes like you and everybody else, but we don't have the services there to align or work with us to make sure that it's dealt with in the community or effected and quickly reacted to in the community.

We're starting to see a greater approach of gangs and drug dealers coming into the villages and communities. We know who they are. We talk to the RCMP. I even personally phone the RCMP at times and say, “Look, this house is the one that's selling drugs.” They say that they can't do anything unless we can prove to them that they're selling drugs. They want us to go with a camera and catch them in a picture or something to prove they're selling drugs. That puts some people in harm's way, by the way.

Again, we're trying to figure out how we find that balance, but if there is no approach to investing in our communities to have policing or community police forces.... We used to have constables. I'm talking about 30 years ago. They disappeared. We used to have them. They made a big difference because they were right in the village and they knew everybody. They could go to your house. If there was something happening and people were having a problem—say there was a party going on—the constable could go to that house and calm everybody down because they knew him and he knew the people. However, we don't have that, so we get more crime, more reaction and then more harm. It really costs us, overall, as taxpayers, a lot more money because now you have to pick them up and take them to jail. By that time, harm has started in that village or community, and it lingers on to family clans now.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

You're talking about the limited resources that you have. Can you elaborate on how the buyback scheme is going to affect your communities and your area with regard to the illegal gun issue?

[David Chartrand]

First, it will protect the issue of our rifles and our shotguns to hunt and harvest. We don't believe that you need weapons used in wars and so forth, those types of military guns. We don't support handguns of any nature either. However, we will protect our rifles and our shotguns. We need those in order to continue existing in the way we do.

Our families have seen that there's a higher rate of gangs using more guns. It's also getting more dangerous for police because we have Métis police officers who are part of the RCMP or part of municipal policing programs. Clearly, at the end of the day, guns do make a more dangerous situation. For example, in Manitoba, on the Sagkeeng reserve, there was someone shot by the RCMP. He had a knife, so he was killed. By the time they took him in, it was too late.

When you look overall, guns are something that we are very cautious of. We watch very carefully. However, we also will protect our rights to our rifles and our shotguns in order to keep feeding our families through our cultural ways of harvesting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you very much. That brings us to the six minutes.

Now we have Ginette for six minutes, please.

[Ginette Lavack, Liberal, St. Boniface—St. Vital, MB]

President Chartrand, thank you so much for being here. Long time no see.

[David Chartrand]

Yes. Thank you.

[Ginette Lavack, Liberal, St. Boniface—St. Vital, MB]

Thank you so much for your testimony. It's good to have you here on the committee.

Can you share with us what the MMF's current collaboration is with municipal and provincial policing services to help address community safety?

[David Chartrand]

We do have a dialogue with the RCMP. I get an update on my phone, personally, on any incident that happens in my communities. It's after the fact: so-and-so was arrested and so forth and was injured, etc. That helps in some ways, because I can deal with the family before it storms out into some issue, but it's only that.

We used to have a liaison officer from the RCMP who was located in our building. That's now gone, because they say they're short of HR in their own department. That leaves us with a vacancy in having more connectivity with the RCMP. We do have a good relationship directly with the chief of police, whether it's municipal and at the same time with the RCMP. It's good for having the ability to talk to each other, but there's no plan.

There is no plan, and I think that's the question this committee should be asking itself. Even if you were to give advice or direction, you look at the institutions we have today. Indigenous people in this country are 5% of the population and we make up over 30% in the federal institutions, while women make up over 50% in the women's jails in this country, but there's no data. You're not collecting data of the Red River Métis anywhere. How do you know who you're dealing with?

In your own picture, when I come walking into this room, you, as the INAN committee, have the Inuit configuration, you have the Métis infinity and you have the totem pole for the first nations. You describe three different indigenous peoples, but you do not deal with three different indigenous peoples. You use the word “indigenous”. There's a difference among all three of us. There's a complete difference in service providers and in the reaction of how we govern, how we operate and how we have relationships with the policing.

It's important, I think, this question you need to ask yourselves. How do you collect data to give anybody the proper recommendations on how to address this issue? It is a serious issue. It's costing everybody a lot of money, and it's causing a lot of harm. We need to figure out how we compile it. I can't just be sitting at a meeting with the chief of police and talking about matters but seeing nothing change. Nothing is changing. We need to make change if we're going to make a difference.

For the committee members, in most of our villages off reserve—someone asked the question but he's left now—in rural Manitoba, there are no sports at schools anymore. The baseball diamonds are empty. All of the basketball...you have the odd kid playing once in a while. There is nothing happening in the communities. Where's the proactiveness of the youth and the opportunity to keep them busy so that they don't get into crime?

Gangs are taking advantage of this. We have to figure out how we stop that, but you can't make a decision if you don't know who you're dealing with. You do not keep data on us. You just use the word “indigenous”. If you start keeping data, then you can at least recommend to any government, whether it's your government or a sitting government that's going to be in play, how to spend taxpayers' money on how to make change.

You could evaluate how the change would measure itself, because you'd know what you're spending it on and how. If you just plank it out to indigenous people, you can never properly measure it and see if taxpayer money is being spent wisely. Is there a good return? Is it making change? That's something that really bothers us a lot, because nobody seems to collect this data to tell us how we work on it.

[Ginette Lavack, Liberal, St. Boniface—St. Vital, MB]

Expanding on that a bit further, the collection of data helps to inform and to develop strategies and those kinds of things. Do you have experience with or ideas on models of co-operation or co-development that could exist or that do exist and that you would want to bring in to ensure that, working with the Métis government and the federal government, this could be co-developed?

[David Chartrand]

Well, clearly, there are programs that Canada was running. UPIP is the acronym for it, urban programs for indigenous populations, and it was sports and recreation investments of proactiveness. That program has been cut now. We're wondering where it's at. We're pushing Canada to see where it's at. We understand that it will be expanded for one year. We don't know what's after that.

That program makes change. That's a particular program where you have collaboration. It's where the federal government, which has jurisdiction with indigenous people, is actually investing in something proactive in the villages and communities. That's the only thing they have. They have nothing else. I know that you can't tell provincial schools what to do because the provinces run the schools, but if you don't have anything proactive in a school that will have kids busy and involved in something proactive, where they can gain pride, self-esteem and have a better outlook for the future, you're not going to make that change.

From our perspective, we believe in sitting down with the police, with the ministers and coming up with a collaboration, but it has to be distinct based. You cannot be indigenous.... That's the only way you're going to measure whether I'm a failure as a leader, whether I'm not doing justice with the resources I'm managing or whether the investment we're doing is not working and we need to change it, stop it and go in a different direction. There's no way you're going to make change unless you go distinct based.

[Ginette Lavack, Liberal, St. Boniface—St. Vital, MB]

Thank you very much. I think I'm kind of wrapping up the time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Lemire, you have six minutes.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chartrand, I'm very pleased to see you here, particularly given this week's “celebration” of the 140th anniversary of Louis Riel's death by hanging. It's an interesting context we find ourselves in. We're talking about indigenous policing, about different approaches to law enforcement and about how the colonial system has imposed its own laws and its own regime, especially on the Métis. This has had a huge impact on your community, your development and your nation.

Do current federal programs accurately reflect, in your view, the distinct legal recognition of the Métis nation? Are Métis communities still treated as an afterthought in funding models designed primarily for first nations and Inuit? The first nations and Inuit policing program does not even include the word “Métis”. Why?

[David Chartrand]

Clearly there's a different distinction in how it's treated. Canada continues to avoid that the Métis or Red River Métis are section 35 rights holders in this country and have rights. Canada still tries to avoid its responsibilities, so it treats us differently. It does not want to have a direct collaboration of recognition of responsibility.

We're then pushed back to the provinces and the provinces push us back to Canada. Both of them take our taxes, but they still push us back and forth. Who is supposed to be working with us?

When you start looking, I think, in the overall context of.... In just my personal experience, I worked for the Department of Justice in Manitoba for 10 years. I was a probation officer for four years and I was director of the courts for six years. When we looked at the opportunity for change, I'm talking now 28 years that I've been the president; I left the Department of Justice in 1996. Even then, change was being talked about—change of the future—distinctively for the Métis, Inuit and first nations.

At that time, I developed a court model along with some other judges. We wrote a court model that would make it more community-based, where decisions would be made in the community because that's how our laws worked. That's how we maintain peace in our communities. It's because our families were in control. Our oldest is always the boss in our Métis culture. The grandparents are the boss. When they pass on, the parents are the boss. When they pass on, the oldest is the boss. That keeps the family responsibility intact. When you affect another family, the two family heads would talk to try to find peace.

What happens in the colonial system is the Crown becomes the victim and acts on behalf of the victim. The victim is never there, so the Crown then represents the victim. What the Crown in the colonial system forgets is that those two people who interacted in the justice system are going to go back to the same village. Those two family clans are going to still scrap when they get back home to get their own justice. Now you solved nothing. You just maybe gave somebody probation or gave somebody some offence or punishment in some form, but you didn't solve the problem.

From our perspective, our laws and our way of managing our affairs worked so well. One time years ago, I had a justice conference and I asked my elder how they had so much peace. We never locked up anything. Our bikes were outside or we left stuff outside overnight and never had to lock up nothing. Today, you have to lock up everything. You can't even go to the store unless you lock your house. In our villages, that was never the way.

This exterior of policies and driven processes that are coming to our community on how we run ourselves has really broken our system. We have to figure out how we bring it back to our ways.

Right now, we have no methodology for any distinct-based approach by the provincial governments, by the RCMP or the municipal policing, nor do we have anything from Canada. There is no distinct-based approach for how we're going to tackle this issue together.