Certainly.
Thank you very much for inviting us to make comments on this bill.
As you may be aware, we made a similar presentation last spring to the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs.
My name is Brian David Tahononsoka:tha, and I am from the snipe clan. I am an elected chief with the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, which is the elected government for the northern portion of the Akwesasne community.
The community of Akwesasne is located about 120 kilometres southeast of Ottawa. It is about 120 kilometres in distance away from Montreal. The territory is located along the St. Lawrence River near the city of Cornwall. It's intersected by the international borderline between the United States and Canada.
As most of you are aware, it is a multi-jurisdictional working environment. Part of our community is in the United States, part is in Canada, part is in the province of Quebec, and part is in Ontario. This is mostly not by our making but due more to the way constitutionally Canada evolved with Upper and Lower Canada, which were later defined as Quebec and Ontario. Naturally the international border has created the international line through our community. That gives rise to some of the situations we find ourselves in.
Because of our unique geography and close proximity to urban centres such as Ottawa, Toronto, Syracuse, Boston, and Philadelphia, it provides a prime opportunity for crime families to take advantage of this geographically strategic area in order to move goods back and forth across the line. We saw the bulk of that happen in the early 2000s up until about 2009. I understand from the previous presentation that there was a peak in 2009 and it's slowly declining, probably being picked up by the CBSA enforcement agencies at the border.
Part of the issue that we have, quite frankly—you all have a copy of my speech and I'll leave that for reference, hopefully—is that our community made a huge, large investment in ensuring that the St. Lawrence River is a safe environment to recreate in. That river means a lot to us. It probably defines our identity and who we are. Most of us as young people grew up with that river. We made a living off that river. We fished in the river. We trapped off the river. We used the river for transport.
Periodically throughout history we have these waves. From the 1930s with prohibition there was the movement of liquor into the United States. In the 1960s there was the movement of soft drugs, and the movement of gasoline. Now we find ourselves dealing with the movement of what is considered to be contraband tobacco by the authorities. I say “by the authorities”, because in a roundabout way, we don't really consider that as contraband until it leaves the territory.
The investment we made was to clear that river to ensure that we again had some sense of ownership over it so that we can conduct our customary activities over a 24-hour period. There was a period of time when it was absolutely dangerous for community members to go out onto the river at night and conduct any sense of, let's say, fishing or transportation at night because we didn't know who was out there. They could be from Akwesasne; they could be from Montreal; they could be from any of the crime families that were operating in that area. It was just a dangerous place to be. We've cleaned it up.
Where that comes in is there's a thought that this particular bill, Bill C-10, will have the effect of encouraging those people who have a lot to lose from engaging in trafficking activity.
On the contrary, what it will do is identify those who really don't have a lot to lose, the high-risk people. It will encourage the gang families to again come back out onto the river and make it again a dangerous place. That's what we're concerned about. It's a law that Canada is proposing that will have an impact on our community. Whenever there's an adverse impact on the community, it is at that time that we have to step forward and we have to bring that to the attention of the government. This is the government right here.
One of the other issues we have is that it seems to be that the objective of Canada is to, how would you say, directly disengage the crime families in Canada. At least that was the stated objective in the Senate hearings. If that is the stated objective, then why are we looking at a law that goes after traffickers? Why are we not looking at a law that goes after the crime families? Why are we not looking at a law that is a RICO-style law, as they have in the United States? Why is there not a law on the table that talks about going after the crime families in Canada? Why are we looking at a law that is at the lower end of the totem pole, that has low impacts and just goes after the symptomatic issues that are associated with this type of activity?
It would seem to me that we should be looking at a law that is much more dynamic and more direct, but on the other hand, how you intend to approach this is entirely up to Canada. We're here because we're concerned with the impact this will have on our communities.
In terms of policing, this could have an adverse effect on the manner in which we police our communities. Our policing services have not received any significant increase since 2004, and even at that time they were underfunded. The police agencies were established to basically provide road patrol. We are not able to patrol community. You read in the paper all the time that 60% of the activity is on the river. We are not equipped for marine patrol, yet we are being asked to conduct and engage in activities and be responsible for those activities without substantive and equitable funding for it. It's an issue.
The other issue I bring to the table comes from a slightly different area. It was just a while back that we had a Supreme Court decision. I think it was the Gladue decision. In that decision, the Supreme Court basically said that if there is a native person convicted of a crime, then what needs to be considered by the judge in the sentencing exercise are the cultural and socio-economic factors. That was put into practice. We have in place bilateral agreements between Akwesasne and Quebec and between Akwesasne and Ontario for diversion programs, for community sentencing programs.
This bill has no accommodation for that. In fact, it appears that it degrades the intent of the principles of the Supreme Court in that decision. It does that by introducing minimums and maximums. It takes away the discretion of the judge to divert certain cases back to the community. It criminalizes those cases. In a roundabout way it seems that it's counterproductive to what the Supreme Court's explicit intent was at that time.
These are issues that are of grave concern. These are some of the practical issues that I don't see. If Canada is going to proceed with Bill C-10, a very practical question is, what are we talking about in terms of tobacco? How have you defined tobacco? Is tobacco just tobacco? What are we going to do with ceremonial tobacco? What are we going to do in those cases where Akwesasne is planting spiritual tobacco and decides to trade that tobacco with Six Nations or Kahnawake? Somebody said that the police will tell the difference. The police don't know the difference. They don't know the difference. That ceremonial tobacco is an entirely different species and it's not even addressed in this law.