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

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

Excuse me, Mr. Chair.

I would like to ask the witness to send the committee the evaluation report she mentioned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Yes.

MP Morin, you have five minutes, please.

[Billy Morin, Conservative, Edmonton Northwest, AB]

Georgina, again, you've certainly highlighted the importance of how communities need to police themselves. You've highlighted some of the work you've done in the Yukon and with community safety officers. You named two women as “deadly aunties”. I'm wondering if you can elaborate on the uniqueness of how two “deadly aunties” are keeping their communities safe in the Yukon.

[Georgina Nagano]

It's amazing. They're two matriarchal sisters who are over the age of 65. They applied for the program as community safety officers. What we've brought back to that community is we've revitalized their traditional justice and their traditional ways based on their culture, their values and their clan system so the youth and the people are accountable to somebody. It's revitalizing those traditional ways, and everybody in the community respects that. They respect the “deadly aunties.” If they say, “You have to go home,” they go home. The crime rates dropped because they became the eyes and ears of the community. They know before the police know what's going on in the community. They don't have to carry firearms to find that out. They don't go out into harm's way. It's out of trust. It's out of respect.

The big word is “trust.” They have the trust of the community. They don't rotate in and out. They stay in those communities, and they know everybody. The success of that with the “deadly aunties” is that they're matriarchal; they're respected, and they're revitalizing their traditional laws and their traditional ways. They've been there for almost four years now.

[Billy Morin, Conservative, Edmonton Northwest, AB]

I love hearing solutions that are modern but also take in the context of traditions and how family values are important to the nations.

I'm solutions-focused, so I'm going to try to get through this very quickly.

One thing the current government has done well is they've worked with first nations to implement 10-year grant agreements in ISC. In order to qualify for a 10-year grant agreement, you get 10 years of sustained funding and a road map of 10 years, rather than the one or two years of contribution agreements that most first nations have. In order to get one, you have to have a financial administration law, FAL, and you have to be First Nations Financial Management Board certified.

I think of a solution when it comes to policing rather than Public Safety's FNIPP that we have, which is woefully poorly regulated right now. There's a correlation with, maybe, a future program like a 10-year grant program. I believe, as a Conservative, in protecting the Canadian taxpayer when it comes to taking a risk on each other. The risk is that first nations and the FAL have to have FAL to up their capacity to be responsible, but they also have less stringent rules on how they spend their money. It's up to them on that 10-year grant agreement. When it comes to policing, I see something similar maybe planting a seed here. Maybe, when it comes to policing, you could have a community safety law in order to qualify for a 10-year policing agreement one day in the future.

What would you put in a community safety law for indigenous communities in a framework? What do you think that would look like?

[Una Gair]

Every nation is going to be really different. There's no way to give exact recommendations around this because, for example, in the case of Teslin Tlingit society, they are matriarchal, so women hold positions of responsibility around social norms and law, which is how that program worked really well. I think I would want to remove the idea that having to be around policing, wellness and justice is a lot more than policing. You're starting at the end of the river. I would suggest that we revisit how we view justice and access to justice to be a lot more than crime and criminality and responding to crime and criminality.

[Billy Morin, Conservative, Edmonton Northwest, AB]

I'm going to finish up with a comment, Chair.

I do appreciate your answer, because I think this could be a correlation with other social services that worked. This has worked with other first nations with the government. Here, I don't think there's one size that fits all, but there are principles amongst indigenous communities that traverse this whole country. I think about restorative justice and how it's less about policing and more about how you mentioned where to start when it comes to the river.

Thank you for that answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you very much.

Next we have Jaime for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank MP Morin for taking my question about the “deadly aunties”. I was interested in hearing more about that, so I'm going to continue with that line of questioning. What's the collaboration like between the community safety officers and the RCMP in the region? Do you find that it's a working partnership, or is it failing?

[Georgina Nagano]

I'm here to be honest, and they're failing. I say that because I'm a former police officer, and I used to work in an FNIPP position, and it never worked then. I'm going back to 1985. You can keep funding the police and the RCMP on the road we're going, and we'll be back here in another 100 years.

What we need to do is look at a healthier collaboration and say, “Yes, we do need the police. Yes, we do need the community safety officer program. Yes, we do need this.” Right now it's a struggle. It's almost like it's us versus them, and I know that. I was in the RCMP, and it was always us versus them. The threat is that we're allocated, say, $1.5 million to do community safety work. What happens in the Yukon is that the police don't get $1.5 million to hire more police.

I policed in Whitehorse, Yukon when I was 19 years old. There were two of us policing the whole Whitehorse area with a population of 19,000. It hasn't changed.

As I said, I'm here to be honest with you, and that program is failing. Allocate it to the communities like the autonomous indigenous policing services of my colleague here. That's where they go, not to the RCMP. At the end of the day, with enforcement work, we can't police our way out of trauma. In terms of collaboration, it is a challenge.

I wish the RCMP would step up. We were told specifically by the commanding officer in the Yukon, “They will not work with us.” Why? The program is successful. We're healing our people, and what does it cost the government? We haven't had any dollars yet. It's a very good question. Why it's a challenge is beyond me.

I think my colleague has something to say.

[Una Gair]

It's a challenging time across the board, probably in the public service and I'm guessing for the RCMP. I know they were quite impacted by a white paper in March talking about the future of contracted policing. That probably colours some of the conversations and collaboration we have.

One of the best descriptors I can give you is that, when a nation enacts its own safety programming, a year down the road they were targeting domestic files and K files. We want to see the impact of what we've done. Have we lowered these? Are we collecting more of them now or are we reducing the dark figure?

We have had such challenges with nations requesting that data from the RCMP, which they don't own. They report up to CCJS every month. It's a 30-second PROS poll, and they won't share it with that nation. Again, it's disaggregated and anonymized. It's a series of numbers to a 9,000 level that just provides contextual detail around what was detected and then the outcomes of said detection and/or the relationship between the accused and the victim.

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

Thank you for that.

I have to think that, from the testimony we're hearing today, when communities have someone familiar to them, someone who is a part of that nation, it helps de-escalate the situation a great deal. Right now the RCMP doesn't have that approach that community safety officers have.

Do you think we need a different approach or maybe a hybrid model? We've seen tribal policing being used in the States, where people are able to have sheriffs in their community or tribal groups. Is this a model we need? Do we need to think outside the current context of flexible options and find something different for first nations policing?

[Georgina Nagano]

Absolutely, and one of the things I said is that there is a place for the police in the enforcement role. We absolutely need that, but I am also saying that there is a place for indigenous communities.

Enforcement was to enforce. It was to take away the children. That's what happened, and we haven't changed that. We have not, since the inception of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, so we need something different for our communities, absolutely. We have to think outside the box. I always say that we have to think outside the circle. We must do that. Change is not going to happen if we don't change here.

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

This is the last question I have.

Is there collaboration between community safety officers all across Canada so that we can look at best practices and models that are really working well? By doing that we could say, “This is where we put the money”, instead of putting the money into the RCMP, which seems not to be working as well as we would like in many of our first nations communities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Give a very quick answer.

[Georgina Nagano]

Yes, if you could put the money there, I'll guarantee that it will work, and I'll guarantee that will drop the crime stats in any community.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

We're going to Mr. Lemire for two and half minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Nagano and Ms. Gair, we know so much more about collaborative policing now thanks to you.

What training do you think police officers need?

What public safety protocols and strategies should be in place to support cultural awareness among police officers and orient them to your realities?

Such training should be of interest to provincial and federal authorities that dictate budgets. Do you have any recommendations for us?

[Una Gair]

We recently partnered with Yukon University. We donated our time over the last year to develop the first micro-accredited program for community safety officers as an induction training. We would be happy to share information around that with the committee.

The question you're asking is difficult because every community is so different. I can speak to the communities that we've worked with and with the receptive RCMP detachments, because they do exist. There are some of them that are trying really hard and doing great work. One of the things that we've done is an orientation for new members that's very specific to that community. That might be going and having tea with a couple of elders or participating following a harvest and doing these things as a passport to that community before they actually take on their patrolling duties.

It's about building a relationship, knowing each other as humans and building trust. It would be difficult to say this is what you need across the country beyond mental health literacy and trauma-informed care, the things that should be standard in any first responder training.

[Georgina Nagano]

I want to add that in the Yukon, out of 14 first nations, we are working on our fifth community where there is the community safety guardian program.

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

In your opinion, what are the most effective strategies when it comes to community-based prevention and culturally appropriate approaches to dealing with drugs and alcohol in communities?

[Georgina Nagano]

That's a really good question.

My background being in drug enforcement, undercover police officer, etc., we work with the Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Unit, SCAN. SCAN is a territorial legislated enforcement that comes together. We work with them on bootlegging and drug trafficking issues. We come up collaboratively with innovative ideas within the community with the community safety officers to eliminate the drug trafficking that is happening in the community. It works.

We're also looking at developing and designing this community safety app—if you want to fund that. We do. It works. We're allowing the communities to be proactive. They are standing up and giving us the information that we can work with, the police and SCAN. We also created a community tips line. People are calling in anonymously and confidentially to provide us with information.

Have we tackled the hard drugs and the crime in the communities? Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you for that.

Now we'll go to Mr. Schmale for five minutes, please.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

It's been great testimony here today. Thank you very much to the witnesses, both online and in person.

I want to bring up something you mentioned, Georgina, in your opening statement.

You were talking about the indigenous policing program itself and the fact that it hasn't really been updated since 1996. A lot has changed in that time. That is baffling to me, as Mr. Morin just mentioned a few minutes ago talking about the program funding and how you work within those constraints, but we're also talking about a program that hasn't seen many updates since 1996. There was an Auditor General report in 2014 that outlined some changes. Really, the fundamentals of the program have not really undergone any substantial changes based on the realities of today.