Court will hear discrimination complaint

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has agreed to investigate allegations that Quebec’s 22 First Nations and Inuit police forces are victims of discrimination due to chronic underfunding.

This complaint was filed last fall by the Quebec Association of First Nations and Inuit Police Directors (QAFNIPD). Quebec and Canada jointly fund police services through tripartite agreements with each of these police services.

“This has been a long time coming. The realities are there, we have a lot of evidence that proves it,” declared the leader of the Kahnawake Peacekeepers, Dwayne Zacharie, also vice-president of the association.

He mentioned the recent decision of the Quebec Court of Appeal last year, which ordered Canada and Quebec to pay $1.6 million in damages to the Pekuakamiulnuatsh Takuhikan First Nation in Mashteuiatsh, in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region, saying he is “cautiously optimistic” about the situation. their chances of winning.

The three judges in the case agreed that both governments had failed in their legal obligations by harming the community’s police force. Quebec has since appealed the decision, meaning the matter is now before the Supreme Court.

QAFNIPD learned its complaint would be heard in court in mid-September, Zacharie said. The association has since contacted the heads of the 22 police forces it represents to ask how they would like to participate in the future.

“First Nations police forces have asked the federal government and provincial territories to recognize First Nations policing as an essential service. They haven’t done it yet. We’ve been asking for 20 years or more,” Zacharie said.

This is despite the fact that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tasked Bill Blair, then Minister of Public Safety, with drafting legislation recognizing these services as essential in 2019. He once again reiterated his commitment to the request addressed to the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) in 2020.

“We’re now on the third Minister of Public Safety since, and they still haven’t done anything,” Zacharie said.

His association is also actively exploring how it might become involved in another human rights complaint from Ontario alleging the same type of discrimination. It was launched last March by the Indigenous Police Chiefs of Ontario (IPCO), about five months after their own complaint. Quebec’s First Nations and Inuit police forces are also funded by Canada, pointed out the defendant in the complaint, Zacharie.

“Some communities could join us as stakeholders. Some cannot, but they might support the complaint. Others may want to sue Canada for damages,” Zacharie said. “There are a number of possibilities, and it is up to each community to determine how they wish to participate or not.

Two reports from the federal Auditor General corroborate long-standing complaints by various associations representing the country’s 36 Indigenous-led police services.

A report released last March by Auditor General Karen Hogan found that Canada is leaving much of its funding for Indigenous-led police forces intact.

“We found that $13 million in program funds related to fiscal year 2022-23 have not been spent,” she wrote at the time. “In October 2023, Public Safety Canada was at risk of not disbursing more than $45 million in funds for the 2023-2024 fiscal year. »

Even though funding for these police forces has increased over the past decade, Hogan wrote that there still remain “critical gaps.”

“Many issues have not improved since we first identified them during our 2013 audit of emergency management on reserves,” she wrote.

This year again, the Kahnawake Peacekeepers had to turn to the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) for $4.5 million in funding to create a specialized highway patrol division. This is an unprecedented decision which comes after requests addressed to Quebec and Canada went unheeded.

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Miriam Lafontaine is a journalist at the Eastern Door. His work has been published in Le Devoir, CBC Montreal, CBC New Brunswick and the Toronto Star.