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

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso—Antigonish, NS]

Can you tell us more about that?

[Chief Jeff Skye]

When we do hiring for our recruitment, we hire specific to our communities, if we can. However, we will hire people who are not from the communities. Recruitment is always a struggle because most of our communities are fairly remote, not close to major cities, although some are. It is always a challenge to recruit. Who's going to join our service when we don't have sustainable funding? I call it part-time funding that comes to an end. Who's going to look at that as a long-term job when your funding runs out? Right now, for the Anishinabek Police Service, our funding will run out on March 31, 2026, with no carry-over.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso—Antigonish, NS]

How long usually are the agreements that you sign with the federal government? Are they three, five or 10 years?

[Chief Jeff Skye]

Well, in the past few years, the three police services—UCCM, APS and Treaty Three Police Service—are going year to year. This is the first time we've signed a two-year agreement and with an expiry date. Again, that's not conducive to providing proper safety for our community members.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso—Antigonish, NS]

Would you say five- or 10-year models of transfers for sustainability would increase the number of officers and help you deliver better services?

[Chief Jeff Skye]

No, I disagree with that, because we need funding that never ends. There's no cut-off date and there never should be a cut-off date to policing in any community. That's what we're trying to say. It was almost cut off. If it weren't for the carry-over, we would have had to shut down.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso—Antigonish, NS]

Chief Montour, do you want to build on that?

[Chief Darren Montour]

Yes.

Further to what my colleagues Chief Killeen and Chief Skye said, organized crime is everywhere across this country. We all know that. The opioid crisis is running rampant everywhere, especially in indigenous communities. We also have the influx of gangs incoming from the GTA to Brantford, which is a nearby city just off the Six Nations territory here. We're seeing more and more handguns seized. There's more violence happening.

With the tobacco trade that's here, we have the organized crime groups putting pressure on residents here in the community. They'll partner with them, take over their land and give them some money basically to keep quiet. With that comes competition with the other businesses here.

Like I said in my opening statement, we had a very well-known establishment here in the community, the Burger Barn. It came to a turf war situation in which, ultimately, that business was burned to the ground. Luckily, no one was hurt. A few weeks later, there was an arson attempt at the home of the owner of the Burger Barn. Luckily, with our partners in the OPP, and by working with them diligently, we were able to make an arrest in that situation.

Again, that's all tied to organized crime in the GTA, ultimately, and back into the different cities in the Golden Horseshoe area, because, where we're located, we're in the most populous area of the country. We're an hour from Buffalo and from Toronto, and we're half an hour from Hamilton, so we see the influx of organized crime. Luckily, we partner with our OPP colleagues on a continuous basis, our municipal colleagues.

My service, along with other services, belong to Criminal Intelligence Service Ontario, which helps us greatly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you, Chief. We're going to the next questioner, and there will be more opportunities for you to provide input.

Sébastien, go ahead for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Meegwetch. Thank you for being here, Chiefs of Police Liu, Skye and Killeen.

It was a pleasure to meet you a few weeks ago, when you clued me in to a number of difficulties related to your profession. One thing struck me.

According to Indigenous Police Chiefs of Ontario, first nations must have the freedom to design and administer their own policing model. However, within the current provincial and federal funding structure, the Ontario Provincial Police continues to provide critical support, including specialized unit reinforcements and major investigative services.

Should the funding program be adapted to enable first nations police services to develop their own expertise in things like accident reconstruction, homicide investigation and missing persons cases?

[Chief Jeff Skye]

I can respond to that. Very clearly, what we're trying to say here is the first nation policing program needs to sunset and be replaced by federal legislation, or, in Ontario, be under its Community Safety and Policing Act. That's where we want to go, and I think we need to collaborate with Public Safety and Ontario to communicate and work out something for the longevity of policing for our first nation communities.

[Chief James Killeen]

I would just add that, when you don't have specialized units, such as traffic reconstruction, it delegitimizes your police service. I'll give you an example. There was a very brutal, terrible accident right in front of one of our band offices. The comments from our community were, “Why are UCCM police not investigating this? Why are the OPP coming in here, to our area?” Then it's, “Well, they're the real police; they're the fake police. They're just here as a show.” That is not true. We have very competent officers. We don't have the units to be able to do that.

When we talk about drug units, and when we're working with the OPP.... During my first year here as the chief of police, we did an undercover joint force operation with the Ontario Provincial Police. It was very successful, but as soon as that was done, they had their own communities to take care of. We don't get to keep that drug unit. It moves on. When you don't have a concentrated saturation on a certain area of a criminal element, such as drug trafficking or human trafficking, it just perpetuates and comes back, and it comes back three or four times. As soon as that undercover project ended, it created a vacuum and a turf war started. Within one month there was an attempted murder and a murder involving the same group that had originally been fighting with the people we arrested in our undercover project. We do need those units to continually work.

Also, those specialized units offer lateral movement for your officers and civilian staff within the organization to learn and to grow as professionals and as a police service. It legitimizes your entire police service. We should, at some point, especially after 30-plus years, not have to ask our big brother for help all the time. Although we appreciate everything we get from the OPP and the RCMP, it would be nice for us to do our own major cases.

Currently, at UCCM there is a missing indigenous woman, Juanita Migwans. I want to say her name here because it's very sad that she has gone missing. We should have carriage of that investigation, but we don't have the detectives to handle major case management. We don't have the numbers, by legislation, to do that, so the OPP have to take carriage of that investigation. However, it should be an indigenous service looking after a missing indigenous woman.

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

It has been brought to my attention that there is a crisis with street gangs and organized crime, on the Côte‑Nord in particular. The same thing is happening in my region on the Timiskaming first nation in Notre-Dame-du-Nord.

Do you feel that organized crime is on the rise in indigenous communities?

Are you seeing that on the Ontario side? I'm thinking of the Timmins case, for example, which was brought to my attention.

Can you tell us more about that?

[Chief James Killeen]

All northern communities have been completely inundated and infiltrated by organized crime. I have personally spoken to a gang member while I was the chief of police at UCCM, and I asked, “Why are you coming here?” He boldly told me to my face, “I've been here for years. You didn't know about me. I will continue to come here. You do not have the resources to be able to concentrate on me.” They know this, and he told that to me boldly to my face and said, “I'll be back as soon as I get out of jail.”

That is not something unique to my communities. I worked in Sudbury. We saw the infiltration of gangs starting specifically in 2006 with a major incident that happened in our city at that time with a shooting that had taken place, and we really saw gangs starting to come. It is all over.

I was part of the Criminal Intelligence Service of Ontario. I was the representative when I was a police officer in Sudbury. We would have meetings, and we would meet with all those officers. They would talk about all of the gang members. We have the same people that I was working on in Sudbury now on Manitoulin Island. Those are also the same gang members that are going up to Thunder Bay, Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie and all of our first nation communities. It is a massive, major problem that has been ignored for too long.

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

Meegwetch.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you very much.

Next up is Larry Brock for the Conservatives. They have a five-minute round.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for your attendance. I do want to thank you for your levels of service. Between the four of you, we're talking about probably well over 100 years of community policing and service, so thank you for that.

I'm hearing a consistent theme from all of you about the rising influence of organized crime in your communities. It's not just native to indigenous communities; it's every community across this country. We also have transnational organized crime coming from Mexico and South America. I don't know if you're seeing that in your communities.

To your point, Chief Killeen, about the interaction you had with that one individual, they all know you're completely under-resourced, which is an invitation to set up camp in your communities and terrorize communities. I think the bigger, broader question is how, in addition to a lack of resources, we have a lack of teeth in our criminal justice system. When it comes to bail, we have issues about bail, catch and release, that the Liberals have not fixed for 10 straight years. We also have weak, ineffective sentencing guidelines for all major offences. It does not provide any deterrence, does not provide any denunciation and does not provide any incentive for these individuals to choose a different path.

Chief Montour, welcome. You're part of my community. What would you say with respect to that broader question? Is it an issue?

Please opine on that and how it can be improved.

[Chief Darren Montour]

Good afternoon, Mr. Brock. It's good to see you again.

Yes, it is a very challenging issue, especially in my community here at Six Nations. I know, Mr. Brock, from your former career as a Crown prosecutor in Brantford, you've seen that on a daily basis, because 99% of the time, in the incidents we're dealing with here, the accused is indigenous as well as the victim. I look at the Gladue factors that come up on sentencing and bail hearings. Don't get me wrong. Gladue does have a place in our legal system, but for those repeat serious dangerous offenders charged with various serious offences—firearms offences, domestic violence offences—they are continually being released and having an ankle monitor put on them. Two or three weeks later, they're cutting it off and then they're into the wind.

A prime example is the individual who removed his ankle monitor and later murdered and killed Constable Greg Pierzchala in Hagersville, just outside of my community here. That was a very tragic time for the entire community because my officers were responding to that call as well. One of those officers was my nephew.

Bail reform needs to be drastically improved because continuously we hear the frustrations of those domestic violence victims, those victims of serious assaults saying, “Is this a justice system or is it just a legal system?” To me, change—

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON]

Chief, if I could stop you right there, the Liberal response to the bail crisis has been to introduce Bill C-14, which does not remove entirely the principle of restraint, the principle that requires judges to release individuals at the earliest opportunity on the least restrictive conditions.

Knowing that Bill C-14 does not address that, what is your position as a police officer?

[Chief Darren Montour]

To me, with all due respect, that makes no sense because those people charged with those serious offences, like Chief Killeen said, they know the system. They know they're going to get out. With these factors taken into account, even with the Gladue factors for sentencing, where does that outweigh the safety of the public? I've continuously said that, especially with these violent offenders who keep coming back to the community.

We're also getting violent offenders from other communities, non-indigenous people living here in the territory. We're dealing with them, whether it's a drug execution warrant and they're armed with illegal firearms, handguns that are smuggled in from the U.S..

There has to be a change because I foresee there's going to be another tragedy—I hate to say that—before something is done.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you very much.

Now we have Brendan for five minutes.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

I want to thank all of you for your service and also for your really important testimony today.

Chief Liu, I want to start with you. I noticed that you retired in 2023, but here you are, obviously, still as a member of the association and still heavily involved.

We've heard a lot about the impact of organized crime. I wonder, as you reflect over decades of service, how you would describe where we are today in terms of the challenges you've seen over the decades in community safety in general.

[Kai Liu]

Before retiring and taking on the executive director position, I served 37 years of policing, of which 33 years were with municipal police services. I started with the Ottawa Police Service and did 22 years, and then became chief of police of the Gananoque Police Service, just outside of Kingston, Ontario. As well, I did seven years with the Cobourg Police Service, an hour outside of Toronto.

With that 33 years of policing, my understanding of community-based policing was totally changed when I was recruited and asked to go up to Treaty Three Police as their chief of police. I immediately realized that what I was experiencing or witnessing in first nation policing was nothing that I had witnessed in municipal policing.

If someone were to call 911 sitting where we are today in the city of Ottawa, within four minutes or less a police officer, or a group of police officers, would arrive and respond to that emergency. In Treaty Three, if someone called.... First of all, many of our communities don't have 911, so you would have to call an eight-digit number, but if you were able to get through and called and said there was an active shooter or any other major crime, it could take up to three hours for the police to respond. By that time, a criminal would be able not only to bury the body but to disappear, whereas here in the city of Ottawa, if it took more than seven minutes, I would think there would be an inquest as to why the police took so long.

The differences of municipal policing and provincial policing to first nations are hard to describe. I would leave an invitation to the committee. I don't know what your plans are, if there is an opportunity to travel into any of these self-administered first nation police services, spend a night and spend a couple of hours and ride in a police car with a police officer. You will see first-hand the significant differences of first nation policing.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you so much.

I know you could probably go on for hours, which would be very valuable as well, but I want to take advantage of the remaining time.

Chief Killeen, you referred to the tragedy of a missing indigenous woman. You named her, and I appreciate that. Are you seeing changes? Since there are over 200 calls for justice from the missing and murdered indigenous women report, there has been action in many of those areas. Are you seeing a difference on the ground since the publication of the report, since the recommendations came out? What are you seeing in terms of actions or gaps in implementation of those calls for justice?