Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2026

[Chief Helen Paavola, Chief, Namaygoosisagagun First Nation, Assembly of First Nations]

Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee. It is an honour to join you today.

I am Helen Paavola. I'm chief of the Namaygoosisagagun First Nation. We are a near band located in the Robinson-Superior Treaty territory. We are currently going through the process for recognition through the Federal Court. We submitted an application to the Federal Court in December 2018. We did that because the NBBA policy does not take into consideration near bands, the situation we find ourselves in.

We do have land and we are recognized first nation members. We are all status. We have a community that is situated.... What I find with this policy is that it does not take into any consideration that we are already a situated first nation.

There's so much more I could say, but I just wanted to bring to your attention that the policy needs to be looked at and that it really needs to consider the near bands located in Ontario itself and in the other provinces.

Thank you.

[Chief Céline Cassivi, Chief, La Nation Micmac de Gespeg]

Good afternoon. Kwei.

My name is Céline Cassivi, and I am the chief of the Gespeg community.

I would like to thank the committee for allowing me to testify today.

Recognition and support from the federal government are essential for communities like ours to achieve self-sufficiency and protect our culture. Today, I would like to share the story of our community, the challenges we have overcome, and our hopes for the future.

Our community has worked for several generations to obtain a reserve. Many chiefs and councils before us devoted years of effort to this without success. Their work paved the way for us to move forward today. Realizing this dream is a great achievement, as it brings to fruition the efforts of those who came before us.

The absence of a reserve for all these years has had profound consequences. Our members have had to disperse far from their ancestral lands to work or access services. This has weakened the transmission of our language, our territories, our traditions and our cultural knowledge.

Access to federal programs and funding has been very limited. Recently, our community had access to only three grant programs, while other communities were eligible for 27 such programs. During the COVID‑19 pandemic, we received very little financial assistance simply because we did not have reserve lands. These difficulties show that the lack of territorial recognition affects our economic, social and cultural development.

Over the past few years, we have been working to prepare for the creation of our reserve. Under the new conditions, we opted for an accelerated process. We submitted an official form and followed a structured work plan. The official response arrived after about 18 months. Creating a reserve in Quebec is a rare event. There had not been one in over 50 years, which shows how important and complex the process is.

The creation of a reserve will enable our community to strengthen cultural and spiritual ties to our territory. It will ensure that our children and grandchildren can grow up surrounded by their culture and language, and access more federal programs and resources to support our social and economic development.

We recommend that the federal government continue to support the reserve creation process with accompanying programs and ensure that all communities without a recognized reserve have equitable access to resources and grants.

Our community is proud of what it has accomplished, but we still have a long way to go. We are sharing this brief so that our voice, our experience and our vision for the future can be heard and understood. We hope that the committee will be able to use this information to support all communities in similar situations.

Thank you for your attention. Wela’lioq.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you very much, Chief.

Now we'll go back online. I apologize for the mix-up with the order of speakers; my notes were different.

La Nation Micmac de Gespeg will be next, please.

Go ahead, Chief.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Next we will go to Long Point First Nation.

Chief Mathias, go ahead.

[Chief Steeve Mathias, Chief, Long Point First Nation]

Kwey. Bonjour. Good afternoon.

My name is Steeve Mathias. I'm from the Long Point First Nation, a member of the Algonquin Anishinabe Nation.

I want to first welcome you to the Algonquin unceded territory where you're having this parliamentary standing committee session right now.

Winneway is where we're situated today, and we're considered an Indian settlement. We have a membership of about 1,000 on our band list, and we have around 600 members living in the community of Winneway.

We have all the infrastructure in terms of housing and public buildings. We have our school. We have our nursing station. We have our band office, our community hall. We have about 12 public buildings in the community, and we have 120-some houses.

When we came about, we were originally located at Long Point, Kakinwawigak, which is on the shores of the Ottawa River and is now known as Lac des Quinze, here in Quebec.

We were forced to relocate on two separate occasions. We were initially flooded by a hydro dam development, so we were forced to relocate upstream on the Ottawa River to Sand Point. Then there was another development. I'm going back about a century ago.

In the late 1930s, they had another hydro development project. Our ancestors took part in the construction of that little hydro power plant where they had to build some dikes upstream—seven dikes to stock up water in the winter months at the main dam. All the hard labour was provided by our ancestors to build all that infrastructure, including a 26-kilometre transmission line to provide the electricity to a mining project.

We were really impacted by this economic development back then by the industry, also to the benefit of the Crown, without any compensation, without any meaningful consultation either. We're doing some research right now, and we found some letters that were sent to the federal government in 1906 from one of our former chiefs, Chief Pier Ogoshen, who requested reserve land in 1906 prior to getting flooded. Quebec, at the time, had set aside 230,000 acres of land for reserve purposes. When the request was made, the answer was that there were 581 acres remaining out of that 230,000. We still don't have the status of a reserve here where we are now in Winneway.

The missionary oblates, in the early 1950s, obtained a lease from Quebec. It was two half lots totalling around 116 acres of land. They obtained those lands for religious and educational purposes. We built all those lands.

Today, I'm sitting at the administration office of Long Point First Nation. Most of our public buildings and residential homes are situated on those lands. We have engaged on more than one occasion to try to resolve the situation of my community.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Chief, I'll ask you to finish up. Then we'll get more out of what you're saying through the testimony.

Thank you.

[Chief Steeve Mathias]

Okay.

I heard you mentioning earlier that if we had anything to add later, we could do that in writing. I'm on the edge of finalizing a brief that I would submit to the standing committee on this file.

Just to wrap up, it's been quite a challenge. I've been chief here for nearly 20 years, and it's very challenging to resolve this situation here because of the different policies either at the provincial level or at the federal level. I'm hoping this exercise we're doing is going to be able to facilitate things in the future.

Meegwetch.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Chi-meegwetch. Thank you.

Chief Robinson, go ahead, please.

[Chief Lisa Robinson]

[Witness spoke in Algonquin Anishinabemowin and provided the following text:]

Kwey kakina, lisa nindizhinikaaz, maang dodem, mahingan sagahigan nindoonjibaa.

[Witness provided the following translation:]

Hi, everyone. Lisa is my name. I am Loon Clan. I am from Wolf Lake.

[English]

I, too, would like to welcome you to unceded, unsurrendered Algonquin territory.

Thank you, Chair and members of the committee, for giving me the opportunity to speak today.

I am here today to present on behalf of Wolf Lake First Nation, a historic Algonquin nation that has been recognized by the federal government for generations, yet remains without a reserve.

This is not a new issue. Algonquin chiefs have petitioned the Crown for land for more than 200 years. Canada has been on notice for two centuries. What has changed is not the legitimacy of our request but how long Canada expects us to wait. This situation is not a result of legal uncertainty; it is the result of administrative choice.

Wolf Lake is described as landless, but that term is misleading. We are not landless. We have always had our territory, the territory that our people have occupied, governed and cared for since long before Confederation. We are reserveless because Canada has failed to fulfill its obligation to set aside reserve lands. That failure has real consequences. Without a reserve, our members are excluded from infrastructure, housing and essential services. Services without land is not a remedy. They leave communities like ours in perpetual insecurity, and the cost of that failure is paid every day by our people.

We have done everything that Canada has asked of us. We submitted claims in the 1980s, the 1990s, the early 2000s and, more recently, a specific claim in 2018. Negotiations began in 2020. Canada created timelines and systems intended to deliver resolution, yet years and even decades later, we remain without a land base.

When the systems that Canada relies on, whether negotiations or tribunal processes, extend over many years without tangible results, the process itself becomes a substitute for justice. Delaying justice is not neutral. It actively harms the people of Wolf Lake, and that harm is now irreversible. Because we were denied a land base, our nation has been dispersed across jurisdictions. This dispersal was not voluntary. It was the consequence of policy failure.

The current generation of elders is the last with lived memory of Wolf Lake together as a community gathered on our land. As they pass, that irreplaceable knowledge, continuity and living history are lost. No future settlement can restore what is being lost through delay. At this stage, time itself has become the harm.

This dispossession has also created real division within our community. Families have been forced to live apart and to organize separately, and that division is not a failure of our people, it is the result of being denied the land that makes unity possible.

Canada knew who we were, where we were and how to act and, in other cases, it did act. We remain caught in a jurisdictional loop where responsibility shifts and nothing moves, an impasse only federal leadership can break.

This committee has already recognized these failures. In its 2024 report on reclaiming the land, INAN called for concrete measures to restore land to first nations and for clear pathways to resolve historical obligations. Wolf Lake First Nation is a test as to whether those recommendations will be implemented.

I also want to note a growing contradiction. The government has shown that it can move quickly when it wants to or chooses to, yet when it comes to reconciliation and providing a land base to a historic first nation, we are told the system cannot move.

I will conclude by saying that we are not asking for anything our past chiefs have not already asked for. We are asking that our elders, while they are still with us, have the opportunity to be together as a community on our land. Canada knew who we were, where we were and how to act. The absence of a reserve for Wolf Lake First Nation is not an accident. It is a choice that can and must be corrected.

The question before this committee is no longer whether the problem exists, but when Canada is prepared to act. Our nation is ready.

Meegwetch.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you, Ms. Robinson.

The first round will be six minutes.

MP Morin, for the Conservatives, go ahead, please.

[Billy Morin, Conservative, Edmonton Northwest, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all our guests.

I acknowledge the chiefs.

I'll start with Chief Robinson.

As I understand it, you are a recognized band with status, but you do not have reserve creation lands. Is that correct?

[Chief Lisa Robinson]

That is correct. We've always been recognized by Canada, and the land issue remains today.

[Billy Morin, Conservative, Edmonton Northwest, AB]

Perhaps you could get into the details, but not too much because we only have limited time. This fight has been ongoing for decades, so what is the actual excuse? I have Wolf Lake on my screen on Google Maps. Quebec and Canada are huge. Canada is the second biggest country in the world and Quebec is the biggest province in the country. Wolf Lake, as a small settlement, is minuscule. What is the excuse for not giving that to you as a reserve?

[Chief Lisa Robinson]

For us, it's not about policy or processes: It's about the political will to do it. Wolf Lake has been recognized by Canada for years.

In our history, we're told that Chief Petrimont came and petitioned for a reserve in the 1880s. Since then, we've gone through all of these processes. We've had early petitions to the Crown. We'd been recognized, when bands started being recognized in 1951 on formal lists. In the 1980s, we were really close, through an ATR process led by Chief Miness. Unfortunately, Canada unilaterally pulled the plug on that process. Then, fast-forward to the 1990s, when we submitted different claims, the Indian claims commission came into being. The process was rejected. Eventually, the specific claims process came into being, and that's where we stand today.

Canada has made all of these processes and decisions, and Canada can make these decisions to resolve this, to solve this land issue for the people of Wolf Lake.

[Billy Morin, Conservative, Edmonton Northwest, AB]

In a broader context, not just specifically a piece of reserve land, I'm assuming Wolf Lake gets all the same benefits of being an Indian band, which is consultation on the broader territory alongside other first nations. Is that correct? I could be wrong in my assumption, by the way.

[Chief Lisa Robinson]

No, actually there is.... The position we find ourselves in is still quite detrimental to Wolf Lake. We continue to be marginalized. We do not have access, as I mentioned earlier, to funding regarding infrastructure, capital projects but, also, land. We know that land is very much needed to create an economy and also to have the space to maintain our identity and culture, so for us it's a bit of a challenge.

Can I get you to restate your question again?

[Billy Morin, Conservative, Edmonton Northwest, AB]

If there were a project being developed in the traditional territory, maybe a concentric.... I'm just....

[Chief Lisa Robinson]

Oh, consultation is what you're—

[Billy Morin, Conservative, Edmonton Northwest, AB]

Yes. Do you still go through those similar processes?

[Chief Lisa Robinson]

Yes, we do. For that though we have had to fight to be included in some of those processes as well. It's unfortunate that within our territory where we're situated our territory extends on both sides of the Kichi Sìbì, the Ottawa River. You also have that jurisdictional boundary, which is today Ontario and Quebec, and our recognition on one side is better than it is on the other even though it's our territory.

[Billy Morin, Conservative, Edmonton Northwest, AB]

Which side? Would the Quebec side give a little bit more recognition there?

[Chief Lisa Robinson]

A little bit yes, but in Ontario it's a challenge. Also, in Ontario you have other entities or groups that are also being consulted and being parts of decisions that are projects on our territory. It has huge implications in that our not receiving the proper recognition, I'll call it, of a recognized land base leaves us in limbo.

[Billy Morin, Conservative, Edmonton Northwest, AB]

What's the population roughly of the community nation?

[Chief Lisa Robinson]

It's 300 people, and that's no fault of our own. We've had a lot of our members who have left to secure housing in our neighbouring communities and to have access to more programs and services as well.

[Billy Morin, Conservative, Edmonton Northwest, AB]

I have one more question for you.

Are you a part of any tribal council?