Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 27th, 2025

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora—Kiiwetinoong, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the chief for being here and for sharing his important stories with us.

I have a couple of questions.

You've been here before with this committee. You mentioned, in the past, the difficulty with reserve bylaws not being enforced and respected by policing authorities. You said, “It makes becoming self-determined within our communities difficult.”

I'm wondering if you can go into more detail on that and tell us how that's been impacting your community.

[Chief Leroy Denny]

We have chiefs who govern our communities and try to keep them safe. These are fast-growing communities. Vandalism.... Certain bylaws are not respected by the police.

I remember, a few years ago, back during the pandemic, we had a situation where we were trying to use our powers as chief and council to protect the community from the coronavirus. We wanted to issue fines. We told the RCMP, “Since we have an agreement here, you should do the fines. We shouldn't be doing it. The police from other areas are doing it outside. If the province issues a $50,000 fine for...fire bans of some sort, you should be able to do that.” The RCMP said no. We wanted to close off the road to people entering our community, and they said, “No, you can't do that.” The government gave the RCMP six months to do that to help us, because it would become dangerous for our own security officers. They didn't have any weapons or protection of any sort, not even a stick. We weren't even allowed to touch anyone.

Those are issues, too, that should be part of an agreement on our being able to self-govern nations. Nations under band governance should be able to work with the RCMP or any officers on parking tickets, bylaws or any laws within the community, even under our treaties. Those are laws as well. Our treaties trump other provincial laws of some sort, even for our roads, side roads, ATVs and those types of things. We should be able to have certain rules and laws within our own governance be respected by the police, and that's not the case.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora—Kiiwetinoong, ON]

I appreciate that. You've also spoken before about the overlap between federal and provincial jurisdiction. Obviously the federal government position is to hold policing on reserve as a joint responsibility. You've said in the past that this creates jurisdictional confusion.

Can you expand more on that and how that plays out on the ground in your community?

[Chief Leroy Denny]

Yes, definitely it needs to be done. A good example would be Kahnawà:ke. They have their own police force. They enforce the Criminal Code of Canada, the Quebec provincial highway laws and the band governance bylaws. I saw it on their website. That's what they're doing over there. There setting good examples. In Listuguj, they don't even allow provincial police officers to enter their community.

Those are the things that I think need to happen. Communities or nations should have the opportunity to be respected, to be discussed here, to self-administer and to self-govern their own police affairs and, of course, to co-manage for community purposes and make sure that the law is followed.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora—Kiiwetinoong, ON]

I appreciate that very much. I'm hoping I have time for another question.

You've spoken a lot about the drug epidemic in your nation. I think we see that manifesting in different ways across Canada, really, in indigenous and non-indigenous communities. You also spoke about prevention. That's a very important aspect of it, obviously. We want to make sure nobody gets to that position where they find themselves addicted or in a dangerous cycle.

Can you speak to what you see as the keys to prevention for the people of your community?

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

You have about 20 seconds.

[Chief Leroy Denny]

Again, it's education in schools and youth centres. It's key right there to have prevention officers and not just one. There should be several officers involved in prevention. There should be financial supports, whether for sports or for anything; if there's a death in the community, if there's a crisis or if there's a suicide, they should be there. It should be part of prevention to work with all the organizations, from mental health to youth workers; they should all be a part of it. It should be properly funded. They don't even have funding; they just show up right now. There should be money for prevention services as well. It doesn't happen, and we feel....

Here is a quick story. Recently, for instance, we honoured the first responders—police, paramedics and all the firefighters—because we had a tough year. I'm a first responder as well, and we had a really tough year. We had to deal with suicides and bad accidents. Even I was involved in trying to help the families. We arrived at the crime scene or wherever somebody died, and it was really tough on our mental health. That's why I felt it was important as a community that we come together and honour the police officers. We had ceremonies. The elders came. They smudged the police station. They smudged the officers and the firefighters. You'll find that on our Facebook page, so look it up.

We had to do it because we had to heal our first responders. With all due respect, I respect the police officers and the work they do, because it really affects them emotionally and it affects their mental health. Police officers and paramedics are going through a lot of tough times. They should have those services, as well, when they become officers in our communities and deal with suicides, because they're affected. It's the same with teachers and other people trying to raise our community members.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you, Chief.

We're getting towards the end. We have about a minute left for the Liberals.

Go ahead, Jaime.

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

Thank you, Chief. I know that you do a lot for the youth in your community. I know that you do workshops on Mi'kmaq dancing and things like that. The youth are very comfortable with you, but I think the committee would love to hear the answer to this question.

Hallowe'en is a big time for the Eskasoni community. How many trick-or-treaters did you get last year at your house, and how many do you expect this year?

[Chief Leroy Denny]

We had over 1,100 last year, so I'm expecting 1,100 Hallowe'eners. My brother-in-law and my brother went to go buy me pop and a popcorn machine. It's awesome. Hallowe'en is very positive and happy, and my family and I invest to give back to our community.

When I was a kid, I went to go see the chief for Hallowe'en. Today, we have 5,000 people. Everybody and all the kids are coming to my house for Hallowe'en.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

On that, this is a good way to end it—sweetly.

[Chief Leroy Denny]

Yes, exactly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you very much, Chief.

[Chief Leroy Denny]

Go, Blue Jays, let's go. We need a win.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

I agree.

Thank you very much.

We'll suspend for about five minutes while our next panel gets ready.

Thank you. Chi-meegwetch.

[Chief Leroy Denny]

Thank you, guys.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

All right, we're back.

We have, from Eel River Bar First Nation, Chief Christopher George.

We also have, from Tsuut'ina Nation Police Service, Chief Keith Blake.

You each have five minutes. After that, there will be rounds of questions where you'll be able to share more information.

Thank you very much, everyone.

We'll start with Chief George.

[Chief Christopher George, Eel River Bar First Nation]

Wonderful, thank you so much.

To begin, I send thanks to our member of Parliament, Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault, whose support makes my appearance here today possible.

My name is Chris George, I'm chief of Eel River Bar First Nation. I'm here today to voice the concerns of the nearly 900 community members who I represent.

Policing and public safety are of grave and immediate concern for my community and have been so for multiple generations. The issues we face today are symptoms of deeply rooted issues that conspire to suppress our capacity to defend ourselves effectively. I will use my opening remarks to address some of those issues.

My home community is situated on the north shore of New Brunswick, along Mawipoqtapei—more commonly known as Chaleur Bay—which has been recently identified as the 31st member of the Most Beautiful Bays of the World club. Eel River Bar lies within Gespe’gewa’gi, the seventh district of Mi’kmaq homelands.

Drug trafficking is a primary concern for my community. We lack our own police agency to enforce the bylaws and band council resolutions that my administration uses to address public safety concerns. Most of the perpetrators involved in this drug trafficking are not even community members, they come from outside communities and they use Eel River Bar as a haven for their trade because they know my administration lacks the institutional capacity to take real police actions to disrupt their illegal trade. I argue this lack of institutional capacity is due to the legacy of colonialism.

We have sought help from provincial agencies, but their jurisdiction does not extend to reserve lands. We continue to seek support from the RCMP, but they are not always capable or able to provide the sort of police actions we really need, which has led to a situation wherein the bad guys run the roost, which greatly raises the fears and concerns of our community members.

The violence we contend with daily in my community is symptomatic of deeper issues of structural poverty and institutionalized colonialism that continue to inhibit holistic growth and development for most Mi'kmaq families today. As such, my administration lacks the capacity to do the job of policing and public safety ourselves; we are forced to be dependent on provincial and federal agencies.

Policing and public safety are conceptualized much differently through a Mi'kmaq world view than mainstream Canadian perspectives. Policing for us is more than using force, it includes personal moral values and an inherited responsibility to live in harmony with all of creation.

Effectively confronting the violence and trauma of drug trafficking ultimately requires intergenerational community-led strategic actions aimed at healing the damage caused by forced assimilation and colonization. This also requires financial resources that current funding models cannot accommodate.

The harsh reality is that funding models cannot effectively confront the deeply embedded structural poverty that institutionalized colonialism presents for Mi'kmaq communities today. We need fair and equitable resource revenue-sharing so we have enough resources to make our communities truly safe.

In closing, I would like to acknowledge that 300 years ago, my ancestors, along with other Wabanaki nations, entered a treaty relationship with the English Crown through the 1725 Peace and Friendship Treaties. Those ancestors had a much different vision for their future descendants from the one we exist within today.

I often reflect on the sort of political economy my ancestors would have developed if they had not been so violently invaded, dispossessed and assimilated, and how it would have evolved to operate today, and I wonder if the need for policing and public safety would be so urgent.

We cannot change the past, but we can learn from the mistakes and move forward better informed. Please consider the sort of comprehensive and intergenerational resurgence that can happen if one reconceptualizes current notions of nation-to-nation and treaty relationships.

I ask the committee to take time to read, reflect and discuss among yourselves the arguments laid out in the two red papers published by the Yellowhead Institute entitled “Land Back” and “Cash Back”. Both address the structural poverty and institutionalized colonialism that I alluded to in my remarks today.

Thank you all so much for your attention.

Msit No’kmaq all my relations.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you, Chief.

Chief of Police Blake, please go ahead. You have five minutes.

[Chief Keith Blake, Chief of Police, Tsuut’ina Nation Police Service]

[Witness spoke in Tsuut'ina and provided the following text:]

Datanastada Sizi Keith Blake at’a, Guyamoha Tosguna.

[Witness provided the following translation:]

Greetings, my name is Keith Blake, Chief of Police of the Tsuut’ina Nation Police.

[English]

Good afternoon, everyone. I am Keith Blake, Chief of Police of the Tsuut’ina Nation Police Service. I have been so for almost 13 years. I am also vice-president of the First Nations Chiefs of Police Association. We represent the independent 36 indigenous police services across this country.

I first of all want to thank the committee for this opportunity to provide critical testimony on first nation policing and to discuss the vital need for program change and government support in the transformation of the first nations and Inuit policing program. This is the second time I've appeared before this committee. I must express disappointment that since my original testimony of over four years ago, we've seen very little of the change that was required and that everyone agreed was needed.

Before I speak to some of the inequities, I just want to give you a sense of our community and our service. Our community has about 2,500 band members. We have a land mass of over 300 square kilometres. We have 36 police officers. We are funded from both the tripartite provincial and federal funding partners, but we have a substantial commitment from our nation that pays for well over 16 officers within our complement.

I really want to speak to the fact that our service, like the other 35, is a community-centred and culturally aligned service that's fully accountable to our community. Our service and the other 35 independent indigenous police services are doing an incredible job of community safety, culturally appropriate service delivery and outreach within our communities. This is despite being chronically underfunded and having year-to-year funding envelopes that do not allow us to look at strategizing on how we need to provide that community safety.

It doesn't mean that we don't have a staggering amount of attrition. In our service alone, two years ago we had one-third of our frontline operations leave to join the Calgary Police Service. During their exit interviews, each of the officers wanted to stay in first nations policing, but because of the inequities in pay, benefits and pension, they felt it was an unstable funding model. They needed to provide security for their families.

We have to thank those first nations police officers who continue to perform with outstanding results despite having lower salaries, pensions and wages than their colleagues in mainstream policing. They are to be commended and sincerely thanked for their sacrifices.

I want to speak to a couple of really important examples of where first nations policing does provide a superior service. Despite all of our indigenous communities having the highest crime severity index in the country, we see far fewer use of force incidents and far fewer, if any, lethal force. I'm not suggesting that when you're looking at those situations that occur they're not justified, but that is a disproportionate number of deaths. We can all recall that, tragically, in 2024, within 15 days, six indigenous people died when coming in contact with mainstream policing across Canada. A total of 15 that year died in police interactions or while in custody.

When we're looking at that, it's highlighting a stark overrepresentation of indigenous peoples in fatal law enforcement encounters. It underscores systemic failures. Again, I'm not contending that those lethal force encounters weren't justified, but it is an alarmingly disproportionate statistic that demands further review and understanding.

I know that government is data-driven. I believe one of the more significant data drawn from Public Safety Canada recently was the evaluation of the FNIPP. It was reported through Public Safety Canada that communities that are policed by independent first nations police services were substantially more likely, almost four times more likely, to say that policing is a strength in their community compared with those communities that are policed by mainstream policing.

Now, we also say that not moving forward with the promised essential service legislation and reform has created increased instability within our services. This is compounded by the multiple messaging coming from political leaders, agencies and officials all speaking about how the program and system are broken and need immediate attention. Without attention, it implies that the government is neglectful, apathetic or indifferent to the officers and the communities we serve.

Getting back to the use of force, I truly believe it's as a result of the relationship our officers have with our community. It's not merely a police officer and offender relationship. It's the de-escalation ability of our officers who have a relationship with our community members.

I had a number of quotes that I wanted to provide, from prime ministers to public safety ministers to auditors general to the CACP to the Quebec court of appeal, all saying that this system, this method of funding and supporting our services, needs to change. We—

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you, Keith.

We'll go to questions now. You'll both be able to provide some more input then.

First up is Eric for six minutes.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora—Kiiwetinoong, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to both witnesses for being here.

Mr. Blake, I felt like you were still delivering your final remarks. Is there anything else you wanted to continue with?

[Chief Keith Blake]

I appreciate that very much, sir.

No, I think I can probably reiterate through the discussions we're having some of the things I didn't have an opportunity to speak of. But thank you for that.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora—Kiiwetinoong, ON]

Okay. I appreciate that.

Chief George, you mentioned some of the challenges you're facing and the gaps that exist. You mentioned drug trafficking. You spoke quite a bit about that. Unfortunately, that's something we're seeing right across the country. I know that in my region of northwestern Ontario we see an increased presence of gang-related activities, including drug trafficking—not exclusively, but particularly in some of the remote first nations that I represent.

I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on this. You mentioned the capacity issue. I'm wondering if you have more on that or if you want to expand on why the drug traffickers are making their way into first nations and why there has been an increase, specifically.

[Chief Christopher George]

I think they've always been around. I am new on the job. I am four months into my administration. I was a councillor two years prior to this. I am an educator by trade. Coming into this, I'm about education and trying to learn as much as I can about this. I became aware of the FNIPP program.

When it comes to policing, we are a border town, basically. We're right on the north shore of New Brunswick into Quebec. It's a hotbed for trafficking interprovincially. We've been trying to build relationships with the RCMP. We've had some good conversations with them. When we contact the RCMP, their focus is much more on international, interprovincial and larger-scale drug trafficking. For us in the community, the small-potato fellows, they're big fish in our area. We use the tools we have at hand. We have BCRs and the homes that people live in. Ultimately, at the end of the day, our assets are the community. We have community bylaws to protect our community from outside unwanted persons and to protect our homes from damage and from illegal behaviours and illegal actions.

We have our BCRs. We publish BCRs. We do our best to include and involve the community, but the question is, who serves these eviction notices? The province can't. The province is unable to, jurisdictionally. The RCMP has been hesitant to push our bylaws. I don't think it's malicious. I think a lot of other issues are at play there. But we're left holding the bag. We publish BCRs. We have eviction notices. When the RCMP at first could not enforce those eviction notices, it sent a loud message to those bad actors and those criminal elements: Look, this is like a no man's land. This is a very grey area, the reservation.

We have community members who are deeply involved with this. It leaves us in a position of wondering how we enforce this. We try to avoid conversations about vigilante justice and that kind of measure, but that's the level our communities are left at when their neighbours and their communities are overrun by these behaviours. A lot of them happen after midnight, in the darkness of night, when most people are sleeping. People wake up to different things.

I reached out to the FNIPP program when I became aware of that. I saw that as an opportunity, and I know some communities here did, when it comes down to what is, for us, a lack of funding to bring on a whole police force and then training and all of that. As I alluded to in my messaging, I'm really focused on resource revenue-sharing in our province here to combat the tariffs. We hear a lot of conversation about the softwood lumber, for example, that's taken out of New Brunswick woods. That's billions of dollars of resources. If we could have access to some of that, we could handle these businesses ourselves.

When we talk about policing, I heard Chief Leroy Denny speak from a Mi’kmaq perspective. Policing is different. We wouldn't really be expecting police in full gear. We have to take a very trauma-informed approach to that. Our policing is more about safety.