Mr. Speaker, last month, a young woman committed suicide in the back of a police car at Kasabonika Lake First Nation. The police had been using the vehicle as a temporary holding cell, because the jail was so run down that she would have frozen if they had kept her inside.
These unbelievable conditions are the day-to-day reality faced by the brave men and women of Nishnawbe-Aski Nation police as they attempt to service the communities across northern Ontario. They are working without backup, in cars without central radios, in third world housing conditions and with increasingly high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder.
The government promised to provide safe streets, but it has left NAP so underfunded that lives are being put at risk. Worse still, the government is set to cut the PORF funding, which will mean more layoffs to an already badly overstretched force.
Why the double standard? It is time we had safe communities all across Nishnawbe-Aski territory and all across northern Canada, for that matter, as well.