moved:
That this House urge the government to call a full public inquiry into the death of Dudley George, fatally shot on September 6, 1995, at Ipperwash Park, during a land claims dispute related to the land, treaty and cultural rights of the Stoney Point aboriginal people.
Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to have this one hour debate on the untimely death of Dudley George during the tragic events at Ipperwash.
When an unarmed man is shot and killed during a peaceful protest it should be cause for great alarm and great concern. It should be, I argue with the motion, the subject of a full federal inquiry to get to the bottom of what happened.
The facts surrounding Dudley George's death are not in dispute whatsoever. The person who pulled the trigger has been charged, tried and convicted of this wrongful death. Therefore, we do not need any kind of an investigation about the actual killing of Dudley George.
However, what the country does need to know is whether there was political interference in the actions the police took at Ipperwash. In other words, did the premier of the province of Ontario improperly interfere and influence the way the police officers handled themselves in the events leading up to the death of Dudley George?
We have presented this issue to the federal government because we believe it is appropriate and that it is within the federal government's jurisdiction to undertake the inquiry, although it would have been more appropriate if the province of Ontario had undertaken a full provincial inquiry. As more evidence has come forward we know the premier and at least one, and possibly as many as three, of his senior cabinet ministers are in a conflict of interest situation and therefore have steadfastly refused to allow the truth to come out surrounding Dudley George's death.
We do not need a full two year, multimillion dollar inquiry. I know that is the fear some people have. When they think of federal inquiries they think of the Somalia affair or the APEC affair. Frankly, given that it is a very specific thing we need to know, we do not contemplate the need for a two year investigation. It could be very short and focused. I have heard that with any degree of co-operation it could be over in a six week period. Then we would know if there were police involvement in an improper way.
The real point here is that the very definition of a police state is when politicians can interfere with police officers to have them do their bidding for some purpose other than the enforcement of the law.
I will not dwell on the very sad details of Dudley George's death. The point I would like to make is that the federal government had knowledge that the native protesters at Ipperwash were unarmed and had no plans of violent action because it had a CSIS plant among the aboriginal people the whole time. This was readily admitted.
The CSIS report to the federal government during the days leading up to the incident stated that there were between 27 and 35 individuals, many of whom were women, children and elders; that they were unarmed and had no plans for any kind of violence; and that the park they occupied was closed for the season. No tourists were around and no one could be inconvenienced if these aboriginal people occupied the park for a day, a week, a month or even until the next spring when the park opened again.
It seems that no one had any urgency to clear these people out of the park other than the premier of Ontario. He did not want to be seen to be soft on aboriginal occupancy type issues. He remembered that only a year earlier the premier of Quebec had lost an election partly because he was viewed as being soft on the Oka crisis by letting it get out of control. We believe the thought process of the premier of Ontario was similar. He had just been elected to his first term of office and was not going to be namby-pamby about one of these nuisance aboriginal occupancy issues.
Even though the information from CSIS, in the days leading up to September 6, 1995, said nothing about any kind of imminent violence, on September 6, we now know, Premier Harris and one of his cabinet ministers met with the OPP. That evening some 200 OPP officers, armed with rapid fire machine guns and armoured personnel carriers they had borrowed from DND, went in with a great sense of urgency to get these people out of the park that night. That was when the situation hit a crisis fever pitch and escalated into an armed conflict.
No one has ever been able to indicate that the aboriginal people involved were armed at all, although hundreds of shots were fired by the police. Dudley George was killed, another fellow was shot, a dog was shot to death and an aboriginal person was literally beaten to death and then resuscitated on the way to the hospital. The level of violence was extreme.
I made the point earlier in the House of Commons that when some middle class college kids were pepper sprayed at UBC during the APEC demonstration, as vile as that action was, it caused a full public inquiry that went on for years. When an unarmed aboriginal man is shot and killed at a peaceful protest, no full public inquiry is held. I should also add that Dudley George was the only aboriginal man to be killed in the 20th century on a land claims disagreement issue. That in itself should be worrisome to the point where we should be as a nation very interested in getting to the bottom of this matter.
It is not just the voice of the NDP caucus. While this is actually a private member's motion, it is not just my lone voice as a member of parliament calling for a federal inquiry. I am in very good company. I would like to indicate some of the international attention that this issue has generated.
Other groups that are calling for a full inquiry include: the United Nations human rights committee; Amnesty International; the Ontario ombudsman; the Chiefs of Ontario; the Assembly of First Nations; the Canadian Labour Congress; and both provincial opposition parties, the Liberal Party and the NDP at Queen's Park.
Interestingly enough, the former minister of Indian affairs, Mr. Ron Irwin, went on the record a number of times calling for a full public inquiry into the death of Dudley George because, frankly, he was left out of the loop. He had information that the occupancy of this provincial park actually had merit. DIAND had letters on file from the 1930s when the park was formed in which the aboriginal people were complaining that the proposed park was their historical burial ground. DIAND had the historical record on file that at least proved there was some justification for the actions the aboriginal people were taking. I think the reason Mr. Irwin was so offended was that he could have brought some light to the issue if he had been brought into the loop. Instead, it became a matter where we have a letter from the current Deputy Prime Minister, who was then the acting solicitor general, volunteering the loan of an armoured personnel carrier to the OPP siege of the Ipperwash gates.
Therefore there was involvement from the federal Liberal government but not enough involvement from the minister of DIAND, so he was one of those actively calling for a public inquiry.
In its report on the status of human rights conditions in Canada, the United Nations made reference to Ipperwash eight times. In its concluding observations about Canada, it stated:
The Committee is deeply concerned that the State party so far has failed to hold a thorough public inquiry into the death of an aboriginal activist who was shot dead by provincial police during a peaceful demonstration regarding land claims in September 1995, in Ipperwash. The Committee strongly urges the State party to establish a public inquiry into all aspects of this matter, including the role and responsibility of public officials.
Amnesty International went further when it called the killing of Dudley George a possible extrajudicial execution. This is along the lines of a Stephen Biko issue in South Africa.
We have the United Nations human rights committee calling for a federal inquiry. We have a professor, Bruce Ryder, a constitutional law expert, calling for a federal inquiry and reminding us that the federal government has the right to call this type of inquiry under the peace, order and good government clause on any issue, but further, that the federal government is justified and jurisdictionally correct to call a federal inquiry because of the fiduciary responsibility by DIAND for aboriginal peoples and land claims, which was the origin of this whole dispute, and the involvement of DND, as Ipperwash was the neighbouring property to a military base which was the first activism taken by the Stoney Point people.
The third thing, I suppose, would be the issue that DND loaned an armoured personnel carrier to the efforts at Ipperwash to lend further force to the approximately 200 police that were already there to oust the 27 to 35 protesters. If there were more justification needed, the fact that there was a federal government CSIS plant among the aboriginal people the whole time making believe he was a member of the American Indian movement and reporting back to the federal government, surely the federal government cannot deny that it was involved.
We are not looking for blame here. We are looking to find out if in fact the premier of Ontario acted in an improper way and if he did interfere with the police action.
I suppose we are hoping, as a result of a inquiry, if any stated goal were necessary in order to justify opening up such a thing, that we could develop some accepted protocol for dealing with this type of thing in the future, because a lot of aboriginal people and a lot of groups around the country have had to resort to occupying ministers' offices, occupying pieces of property that are under land claims and blocking roads. Incidents like this have been happening across the country and we need to know that these will not resort to lethal force on a regular basis. We need to have some series of tests or justifications before sending in tactical riot squads that are armed with machine guns capable of firing 800 rounds per minute and killing people a mile away. The action taken at Ipperwash was a serious reaction to what was, in this case, a peaceful protest, which many protests are.
We would hope that the recommendations from an inquiry commission would give some direction to the federal government as to how it might conduct itself in the future in cases of occupancy.
I hope I have explained clearly enough that it is not our purpose to open up every aspect of the case. As I said, the actual pulling of the trigger is a stated fact and has been proven in a court of law. Sergeant Deans, who actually pulled the trigger and killed Dudley George, has been charged, tried and convicted. We are not interested in revisiting that. We are interested in the days leading up to the terrible tragedy of the death of Dudley George. Was the premier of Ontario improperly influencing the Ontario Provincial Police in the action it took? I look forward to hearing comments from other parties.