Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Welcome to meeting number six of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs.

We recognize that we meet on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Wednesday, September 24, 2025, the committee is resuming its study of indigenous policing and public safety.

I would like to welcome our witnesses for our first panel. Both are on video conference.

If you need to raise your hand using the “raise hand” function, make sure you have your approved headset on or just raise your hand if you need to get our attention.

Please be mindful of your devices that are used for the interpreters. The earpiece should be on the little sticker. There are tips on how to avoid feedback. Please review these so it's not hard on our interpreters.

In our first panel we have, from the Blood Tribe Police Service, Grant Buckskin, chief of police, by video conference. From Service de police de Pikogan, we have Annick Wylde, director.

You will each have five minutes to speak, and then we will jump into our six-minute rounds of questions and answers.

Without further ado, I will turn it over to the people online.

[Grant Buckskin, Chief of Police, Blood Tribe Police Service]

Good afternoon. Thank you very much.

Oki.

I am the [Witness spoke in Blackfoot]. I am a proud member of the Blood Tribe and the chief of police for the Blood Tribe Police Service. As stated earlier, my English name is Grant Buckskin.

I would like to thank the committee for providing the opportunity to make a short statement. I hope our concerns are heard and addressed.

I have been in first nations policing for 35 years and have not only served my home community but have also had the honour to serve in other first nations communities within Alberta and Manitoba. Over the years, the challenges of first nations policing have always remained the same and have been discussed at length. They include chronic underfunding, funding model failures, recruitment and retention issues, systemic racism and bias, a lack of trust and accountability and an absence of essential police service legislation.

The lack of federal legislation recognizing indigenous policing as an essential service means indigenous police forces do not have the same rights or protections as other forces. This also inhibits and limits our negotiating power during funding talks.

It goes without saying that these are valid challenges and issues that have been documented and discussed at length. When the conversation turns to essential service designation for first nations policing, there is hesitation and a refusal to recognize our services as equal to our non-first nations police services.

I ask you these questions: As a first nations police service, are we not considered as important? Are we not deserving of the same designation? Would we face the same challenges if we were a newly formed police service in a small municipality?

There are reports that have been released that state the challenges. These are the very challenges I have addressed, yet there is very little to address these issues. Other police chiefs and associations have been advocating for this essential service designation for years, yet it remains out of our reach. I have not been a part of these essential service discussions, but history has shown there is a bias towards many issues that are related to first nations. I suspect this is the case in this pursuit.

I'm speaking today with the hope that we can reach an understanding on the importance of this designation for first nations policing. Again, I'm going to ask how many more committees, reports and meetings will be held to discuss these same issues repeatedly without any resolution. We know the issues. We know the challenges—challenges that have been placed in front of us from day one.

In closing, I hope our participation and the words we will share today will be heard and a plan of action developed. We are still here, we have thrived despite the challenges mentioned and we will continue to provide adequate, culturally appropriate policing to our respective communities. We only ask that we be treated fairly and in the same manner as our non-first nations counterparts and police services.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you very much, Grant.

We'll go to our next speaker, please.

You have five minutes.

[Annick Wylde, Director, Service de police de Pikogan]

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chair, members of the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs, thank you for having me here today.

We are gathered on the traditional unceded territory of the Anishinabe nation, my nation, which has inhabited, protected and honoured these lands since time immemorial. I would also like to thank the interpreters and the committee staff.

[Witness spoke in indigenous language]

My name is Annick Wylde, and I have been the director of the Service de police Pikogan for five years. I'm also a police officer with 37 years of service, and I'm vice-president of the Association des directeurs de police des Premières Nations et Inuit du Québec. I'm speaking today as a field worker who experiences the real-life impacts of funding and governance decisions on a daily basis.

First, I will talk about funding stability. Stable funding is the key to everything. Working on short-term agreements means living in constant uncertainty. We can't plan for hiring, we can't guarantee training, and we can't replace equipment on time. A five-year framework agreement, indexed to the cost of living and reviewable mid-term, would finally give us the predictability we need to effectively manage our services.

When we can plan our spending, we group purchases together, we get better prices and, most importantly, we protect our officers, our police officers.

Let me be clear: Predictability costs less than urgency.

In my service, this stability would keep us from having to choose between two bad options: operating with expired equipment or postponing patrols. My officers once wore out-of-date bulletproof vests because of unforeseeable procurement times and budgets that left us with no other choice. No other police force in Quebec would accept that.

Another issue that weakens us is the actuarial catch-up of our pension plans. Recent salary increases were necessary, but without funding to adjust the plans, we're passing the bill on to small organizations like mine. Our pension funds are not on par with those of provincial or municipal police forces. The result is that our police officers invest as much and take as much risk as others, but they don't get the same retirement security.

If we want to recruit people and retain the next generation, there must be real parity, even when it comes to pension plans. It's about fairness, but it's also about sustainability. A dedicated fund for actuarial catch-up would ensure that fairness without weakening our operations.

I'm going to talk to you about training. I was part of the last cohort trained at the indigenous police academy. I went to the Mashteuiatsh indigenous police academy before training was centralized at the École nationale de police du Québec, or ENPQ, in Nicolet. It was a locally and culturally adapted model that I strongly believe in.

Today, when I send a police officer for advanced training or professional development at the ENPQ, I lose a resource on the ground and have to pay overtime to the remaining staff to fill that gap. For a small service like mine, these costs add up quickly.

Having said that, we have trainers in our ranks from indigenous police forces who are fully certified by the ENPQ. For example, an Opitciwan instructor trained in Nicolet could come and give my team the same training, but they can't do so without getting an administrative exemption from the ENPQ. This exemption, which takes weeks to obtain, unnecessarily slows down our police officers' professional development and complicates management for training that's otherwise equivalent.

We're therefore asking for a full exemption from the requirement that our police officers be trained exclusively by the École nationale de police du Québec. Our services should be able to organize training locally with qualified instructors from other indigenous police forces based on recognized and equivalent standards. This is already the case, for example, for a fully certified Opitciwan instructor, who cannot teach elsewhere without administrative authorization.

Providing this training at home is faster, more economical—

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you.

We've arrived at the five minutes. You'll have plenty of time to provide more input during the time for questions and answers.

We will go to our first six-minute round of questions and answers.

We're going to start with Mr. Morin.

[Billy Morin, Conservative, Edmonton Northwest, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our two witnesses for sharing with us today.

Oki, Chief Buckskin. We met a number of weeks ago at the opening of the Chief Crop Eared Wolf justice centre. Given that I have family ties to Kainai, although I am from Treaty 6, I was very proud to see that happen.

Kainai has had its own police forces for a long time. We've heard a consistent theme in this study thus far that solutions really rely on the communities. Kainai has, for a long time, proven through its self-investments and risk-taking that it is serious when it comes to protecting its community.

We know the struggles when it comes to funding and recognition, but I'm hoping you can elaborate on some of the successes and lessons learned for other first nations, Métis or Inuit communities that want to start their own police forces. Hopefully, in the future, there will be better supports for them.

What are some of the things you would have done differently and what are some of the successes? Can you give a short summary of the best lessons that Kainai has learned since establishing the Blood Tribe Police Service that other nations can learn from?

[Grant Buckskin]

I take especially great pride in the fact that....

Let me go back a little bit. I began my career here back in the early nineties. At that time, we already knew we were facing a lot of challenges, but one thing that always remained consistent and which we always took pride in was that we were familiar with the community and the people here. I mean, these people are not just community members. They're also family. They're friends. I grew up here. Over the course of my career, I've had to deal with families and friends in some not-so-good situations, but one thing that's always been constant is how we've conducted ourselves—respecting the culture, how we grew up, and what we were taught by our elders and the knowledge-keepers.

As our service progressed and we began to expand, we kept that, even to today. My biggest source of pride is the fact that we have gone to considerable lengths to ensure that we remain a culturally appropriate police service. We've taken into account our customs. We've taken parts out of Kainayssini, the elder declaration. We've respected that by including it and making it part of our mission statement and our values. That's what we're proud of the most. We've always faced these challenges, but we've always thrived. We've found ways to survive. On top of the fact that, we're building this culturally appropriate service. We're also especially proud of the fact that, despite all these challenges....

It's not just first nations people. My police service is not strictly first nations. I have non-native officers here. We've always it made a point from day one to tell them, “You're going to learn about the culture. We're not going to force it down your throat, but there will come a time when during the course of your duties, you'll go into some places where we will need you to be respectful.” We help them. I can honestly say that now, any of my officers, whether they're first nations or not, or community members or not, are very respectful to our people.

One of the big things was that, okay, now it's trauma-informed policing. Well, not only with the Blood Tribe Police Service but with any other first nations police service, particularly first nations officers, we've lived it. We know it. Trauma-informed policing is nothing new to first nations police.

[Billy Morin, Conservative, Edmonton Northwest, AB]

Thanks, Chief.

Maybe I can ask a follow-up question that builds on some of the strengths you mentioned and the tough conflict of interest aspects unique to indigenous communities, with families and things of that nature. A tough situation Kainai has faced in the last decade is the influx of street drugs like fentanyl. I recall even hearing about funerals being backed up for three weeks over there. It's a very tough situation for the nation to deal with.

Canada is going through a similar thing, of course. It doesn't affect just first nations. It's in Lethbridge, Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto, and on the west coast and the east coast. We're never satisfied until there are zero deaths when it comes to hard drugs, but I do understand that things have become a little bit better through several initiatives and things like tough love. As we say in our communities, tough love is still love.

What has Kainai done to address the drug crisis over the last number of years?

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Excuse me, Grant. That brings us to the end of the six minutes, but perhaps there will be an opportunity to answer that through another questioner somewhere down the line.

That brings us to Jaime for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, both, for your service and your commitment to justice.

I didn't get a chance to hear much about both of your police forces, how many people you represent, how many police do you have working.

How important is it to have your communities policed by members of that community or of the people who are part of that nation, in terms of the work that you do every day? I'd like Just one minute from each of you, if I could.

Chief Buckskin, you can start.

[Grant Buckskin]

Okay. It's a very fine line, especially if you're policing your home community. As I said, over the course of my career, I've had to deal with family members, uncles, aunts and cousins, and for the most part they've been very respectful. Of course, there's going to be that period where they're angry with you. It's going to last two or three weeks, but you meet them at some family function, and they'll apologize and you move on from it.

One of the toughest things, and I have to say this right off the bat because it just happened recently.... We had an event here a couple of days ago. The acting sergeant had to become the incident commander for the situation, which involved a death. It was a close family member. You have situations like that. I personally have gone to a sudden death where it's been a close cousin who I grew up with. You have to investigate it because putting all that aside, you're still a police officer and you still have your duties to perform.

On the flip side, you go into a call somewhere and you have somebody who's agitated. They're angry and under the influence of drugs or alcohol, particularly alcohol in this instance. You walk in and they recognize you. They know it's you. They know you're from the same community. They're more apt to talk to you. You're familiar with these people. You know what they're like, so you give them that extra two or three minutes to get angry or whatever, but five minutes later, you're walking out of the house with them in handcuffs, and they're laughing and joking.

I've also gone to complaints with other non-nation members. When they walk in, the person doesn't recognize them, doesn't know who they are, so automatically, that level of engagement does not recede. It does not decrease. It stays up there.

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

Can I intervene on that? Would you say that someone being familiar with a member of their nation and being able to speak the language helps de-escalate situations on reserve when talking about policing?

[Grant Buckskin]

Absolutely. If people recognize you and you're able to speak the language, that has a significant effect on the whole situation.

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

Thank you.

I'm going to Director Wylde.

If you could keep that thought going, does having members of your nation who can speak your language help with community policing?

[Annick Wylde]

Yes, it really helps.

When I'm in a situation where the person is a member of my community, I speak to them in my language. Things move faster, because the relationship of trust is already there. It's easier, faster and more effective. I then become a reference point for that person.

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

Director Wylde, you talked a little about the indigenous police academy in your area. Can you tell me more about the indigenous police academies that are out there? How many are you aware of in Canada that are actually directed towards policing and indigenous people?

[Annick Wylde]

The Mashteuiatsh indigenous police academy no longer exists. The 22 indigenous police forces in Quebec now go to the École nationale de police du Québec, or ENPQ. However, some don't go there anymore because there's a language issue for them. There's no translation from French to English. That's why many people no longer attend the ENPQ. I don't know the exact percentage, but I know that anglophone indigenous police forces are having trouble obtaining documents that are translated into English. That's a problem. There's also a shortage of anglophone trainers. Some training is not automatically offered in English at the ENPQ.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Lemire now has the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, Director Wylde.

I'm particularly proud to see you. The last time we met was, I believe, when the first shovel went into the ground at the new Pikogan police station for the Abitibiwinni first nation. I have to say that I'm very proud of you. I'd also like to congratulate you on your presentation, which was very clear.

I'd like to ask you a first question.

As a woman chief of indigenous police, do you feel that this can inspire the new generation, especially the young women in your community, who could become chief of police and make the commitment to safety and to the community?

[Annick Wylde]

Yes, I do. Several young women have come to see me. Students from CEGEPs have also come to see me. I've had discussions not only with female students, but also with male students. Because I've been a female police officer for 37 years, I care a lot about that.

I'm proud to be a police officer. I gave a speech at the 50th anniversary of the École nationale de police du Québec, and it opened some doors. Yes, I would like to have even more students, but it's not always easy to recruit. However, I can tell you that we're working hard on it.

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

You seem to have run out of time to finish your opening remarks, which were very clear.

Would you like to add anything?

[Annick Wylde]

Yes. I had a few more points to make. May I continue?

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

I'm offering you the time to do that.

[Annick Wylde]

Okay.

I was talking about training earlier. I support the establishment of a bilingual indigenous academy in Quebec. This would make it possible to structure a regional approach, while meeting the department's training standards for certification. I advocate for the establishment of a first nations police academy that would be adapted to cultural safety. It's not easy for a student to leave their community and leave everything behind. They may already have a family. It's therefore important that they be surrounded by their own people and with qualified indigenous trainers.

I also wanted to say a few words about the 911 service, which represents a major operational issue. Without a dedicated 911 dispatch centre, after each call, our officers still have to hand-draft or computer-draft the call cards. This adds to the work and delays, sometimes putting lives at risk. At 3 a.m., in the absence of a functioning 911 network and without radio support, a patrol officer can often receive incomplete information. These are preventable risks. Our communities must be connected to the 911 network, with clear protocols and shared funding between governments. This is not about creating a parallel system, but about aligning our services with Quebec's common standards to ensure a quick, safe and equitable response.

After 37 years of service, I firmly believe that stable funding, pension plan parity, adapted and recognized training, as well as full access to 911 service, are the four pillars that would enable our police forces to fully play their essential service role.

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

Meegwetch.

That's crystal clear.

On another note, in Quebec, the Viens commission served as a catalyst to improve relations between police officers and indigenous communities. In your opinion, what meaningful progress has been made since 2019 in terms of cultural training, accountability mechanisms and access to police services adapted to first nations realities, particularly at your police service in Pikogan?