TORONTO —
In its 26 years of existence, officers with Canada’s largest Indigenous police force have never shot and killed anyone and no officer has died in the line of duty, despite a grinding lack of resources and an absence of normal accountability mechanisms.
It’s a record of which the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service is proud, especially in light of the recent uproar in North America over police killings and brutality involving Indigenous, Black, and mentally distressed people. It’s a record achieved in communities frequently in social distress, places where hunting rifles and shotguns are ubiquitous.
The key difference from urban, non-Indigenous policing, insiders and observers say, is the relationship building between officers and the people they serve.
“In the past, you might have been the only officer in there,” Roland Morrison, chief of NAPS says from Thunder Bay, Ont. “You would have no radio, you’ve got no backup, so you really effectively have to use your communication and talk to people. You have to develop relationships with the communities in order to have positive policing.”
Inaugurated in 1994, NAPS is responsible for policing more than 38,000 people in 34 communities, many beyond remote, across a vast, largely untamed swath of northern Ontario. Currently the service has 203 officers, about 60 per cent of them Indigenous, Morrison says. Its mandate is culturally responsive policing.
Erick Laming, a criminology PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, says people from First Nation communities — many with an ingrained suspicion of police given the brutal realities of generations of enforced residential school attendance — have a higher level of trust when officers are Indigenous.
In contrast, he said, new RCMP recruits with no such background might find themselves in Nunavut or Yukon confronted with significant language and cultural barriers.
“If you’re from the community, you have those lived experiences. You can relate to people. You just know how to deal with the issues,” says Laming, who is from the Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nation north of Kingston, Ont.
“If you don’t have that history, you can have all the cultural-sensitivity training in the world, you’ll never fully be able to fully integrate into that situation.”
Another example, he said, is the service in Kahnawake, Que., which calls itself the Kahnawake Peacekeepers rather than a police force.
While all officers in Ontario undergo the same basic training, the province’s nine Indigenous police services are fundamentally different from their non-Indigenous counterparts.
For one thing, they are not deemed an essential service, although federal Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said last month that policing First Nations communities should be. Nor are those in Ontario subject to the provincial Police Services Act, which mandates standards, including for an extensive oversight framework.
Now, the process for filing complaints against members of an Indigenous police force is ad hoc, although NAPS does have a professional standards branch and will on occasion call in Ontario Provincial Police. Officers have been disciplined, charged or even fired for excessive use of force.
Another difference is that Indigenous forces are completely reliant on the vagaries of government program funding — with Ottawa footing 52 per cent of the bill and provinces 48 per cent. The current operations budget for NAPS, for example, is around $37.7 million — more than its peers — with expenses approaching $40 million.
The upshot, particularly in years gone by, has been a dire shortage of officers and even of basic facilities and equipment that urbanites can scarcely imagine. In more than a dozen cases, Indigenous self-administered police services in Canada have simply folded.
Now retired, Terry Armstrong, who spent 22 years with Ontario Provincial Police as well as five years as chief of NAPS, says people would be shocked to find out just how poorly funded First Nations policing has been.
Armstrong recounts how a few years ago, in the Hudson Bay community of Fort Severn, Ont., a NAPS officer found himself dealing with a homicide. Besides having to secure three crime scenes and the body, the lone officer had to arrest the suspect and deal with a separate gun call. Bad weather prevented any forensic or other help flying in until the following day.
One thing he always stressed to newcomers as chief, Armstrong says, is the importance of treating people respectfully.
“Some day, they’re going to be your backup. When stuff goes south, you’re going to need people to support you,” he says. “If you’re going to be a dick … when you need help, they aren’t going to be there for you.”
One frigid afternoon in February 2013, the only on-duty NAPS officer in Kasabonika Lake First Nation in Ontario’s far north detained Lena Anderson, an intoxicated young mother upset over the apprehension of her daughter. The new detachment portable was unheated. The old holding cell was unusable because prisoners could escape through holes in the floor.
The arresting officer left Anderson, 23, in the caged back seat of his Ford 150 police truck for warmth while he went to get help from his off-duty colleague. Alone for 16 minutes, Anderson strangled herself.
The tragedy, combined with a threatened strike over working conditions by NAPS officers, caused an uproar. The situation, says Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler, prompted his Nishnawbe Aski Nation to take a stand. Governments, he said, had to do better or face the far more daunting prospect of doing the policing themselves.
As a result, Fiddler says, a new funding agreement was reached in 2018 that allowed the hiring of 79 new officers over five years and critical infrastructure upgrades to detachments and poor or non-existent communication systems. Most importantly, he said, the deal set in motion pending Ontario legislation that would finally allow First Nations police services to opt in to the Police Services Act, putting in place solid standards and accountability mechanisms.
“That’s something our communities and citizens deserve.” Fiddler says. “If they have an issue with NAPS, there should be a forum for them to pursue their grievance.”
However, giving investigative authority to the province’s Special Investigations Unit or Office of the Independent Police Review Director must come with cultural safety built in, he says.
Stephen Leach, current review director, says his office is not yet involved in the opt-in process.
“My expectation is that once the Community Safety and Policing Act is proclaimed and the opt-in process is further along, then I would be involved in explaining how the public complaints process works, and listening to how it might have to be adapted to meet the needs of First Nations communities,” Leach says.
Stephen Warner, a spokesman for Ontario Solicitor General Sylvia Jones, confirmed the government was working on regulations to the new act. Part of the work, he said, was to set clear and consistent standards for policing delivery “informed by, and responsive to, the views of the communities that police are both a part of and serve.”
Toronto-based lawyer Julian Falconer calls the new legislation a game changer. Despite having devoted much of his career to holding police accountable, he says he has no qualms in representing NAPS.
Despite, or perhaps because of, their chronic lack of resources, Falconer says Indigenous police behave much differently from their urban counterparts. He cites the dearth of police killings and racist behaviours that have sown deep mistrust of policing among Indigenous, Black and marginalized groups.
“Mainstream policing has a lot to learn from Indigenous policing,” Falconer said. “The relationship between community and policing is so dramatically different.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 12.
VICTORIA – British Columbia Premier David Eby has announced his government has committed to earlier and enhanced pensions for wildland firefighters, saying the province owes them a “deep debt of gratitude” for their efforts in battling recent fire seasons.
Eby says in a statement the province and the BC General Employees’ Union have reached an agreement-in-principle to “enhance” pensions for firefighting personnel employed directly by the BC Wildfire Service.
It says the change will give wildland firefighters provisions like those in other public-safety careers such as ambulance paramedics and corrections workers.
The statement says wildfire personnel could receive their earliest pensions up to five years before regular members of the public service pension plan.
The province and the union are aiming to finalize the agreement early next year with changes taking effect in 2026, and while eligibility requirements are yet to be confirmed, the statement says the “majority” of workers at the BC Wildfire Service would qualify.
Union president Paul Finch says wildfire fighters “take immense risks and deserve fair compensation,” and the pension announcement marks a “major victory.”
“This change will help retain a stable, experienced workforce, ready to protect our communities when we need them most,” Finch says in the statement.
About 1,300 firefighters were employed directly by the wildfire service this year. B.C. has increased the service’s permanent full-time staff by 55 per cent since 2022.
About 350 firefighting personnel continue to battle more than 200 active blazes across the province, with 60 per cent of them now classified as under control.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – AtkinsRéalis Group Inc. says it has signed a deal with U.K. rail infrastructure owner Network Rail to help upgrade and digitize its signalling over the next 10 years.
Network Rail has launched a four-billlion pound program to upgrade signalling across its network over the coming decade.
The company says the modernization will bring greater reliability across the country through a mixture of traditional signalling and digital control.
AtkinsRéalis says it has secured two of the eight contracts awarded.
The Canadian company formerly known as SNC-Lavalin will work independently on conventional signalling contract.
AtkinsRéalis will also partner with Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, S.A.(CAF) in a new joint venture on a digital signalling contract.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
In an era of increased strike activity and union power, labour experts say it’s not surprising to see more calls for government intervention in certain sectors like transportation.
What’s new, experts say, is the fact that the government isn’t jumping to enact back-to-work legislation.
Instead, the federal labour minister has recently directed the Canada Industrial Labour Board to intervene in major disputes — though the government was spared the choice of stepping in over a potential strike at Air Canada after a tentative deal was reached on Sunday.
Brock University labour professor Larry Savage says that for decades, companies in federally regulated sectors such as airlines, railways and ports essentially relied on government intervention through back-to-work legislation to end or avoid work stoppages.
“While this helped to avert protracted strikes, it also undermined free and fair collective bargaining. It eroded trust between management and the union over the long term, and it created deep-seated resentment in the workplace,” he argued.
Barry Eidlin calls such intervention a “Canadian tradition.”
“Canadian governments, both federal and provincial, have been amongst the most trigger-happy governments … when it comes to back-to-work legislation,” said Eidlin, an associate professor of sociology at McGill University.
Savage said the use of back-to-work legislation peaked in the 1980s, but its decline since then had less to do with government policy than the fact strikes became less common as unions’ bargaining power softened.
But since the Supreme Court upheld the right to strike in 2015, Savage says the government appears more reluctant to use back-to-work legislation.
Eidlin agrees.
“The bar for infringing on the right to strike by adopting back-to-work legislation got a lot higher,” he said.
However, the experts say the federal government appears to have found a workaround.
In August, Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. locked out more than 9,000 workers — but federal labour minister Steve MacKinnon soon stepped in, asking the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order them to return and order binding arbitration, which it did.
The move by the government — using Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code — is “highly controversial,” said Savage.
Section 107 of the code says the minister “may do such things as to the minister seem likely to maintain or secure industrial peace and to promote conditions favourable to the settlement of industrial disputes or differences and to those ends the minister may refer any question to the board or direct the board to do such things as the minister deems necessary.”
“The reason why it’s a concerning workaround is because there’s no Parliamentary debate. There’s no vote in the House of Commons,” Savage said.
Not long after the rail work stoppage, the government was called upon to intervene in the looming strike by Air Canada pilots. The airline said that a government directive for binding arbitration would be needed if it couldn’t reach a deal ahead of the strike.
However, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government would only intervene if it became clear a negotiated agreement wasn’t possible.
“I know every time there’s a strike, people say, ‘Oh, you’ll get the government to come in and fix it.’ We’re not going to do that,” said Trudeau on Friday.
The airline and the union representing its pilots reached a tentative deal on Sunday.
Though Air Canada was asking for the same treatment as the rail companies, Eidlin said the Liberals appeared to recognize that would have been an unpopular move politically.
Since the rail dispute, the NDP ripped up its agreement to support the minority Liberals, and Eidlin thinks the government’s intervention was one of the reasons for the decision.
“That really left them with this minority government that’s much more fragile. And so I think they have a much more delicate balancing act politically,” he said.
Section 107 was never intended as a way for governments to bypass Parliament and end strikes “simply by sending an email” to the labour board, said David J. Doorey, an associate professor of labour and employment law at York University, in an email.
For the Liberals today, Doorey said using Section 107 to end the rail work stoppage was much simpler than back-to-work legislation — in part because Parliament was not in session, but also because the Liberals hold a minority government and support for back-to-work legislation from the Conservatives and the NDP would be far from guaranteed.
Eidlin is concerned that the government’s use of binding arbitration to end the rail work stoppage could set a precedent similar to what decades of back-to-work legislation did: removing the employer’s incentive to reach a deal in bargaining.
“This has a corrosive effect on collective bargaining,” he said.
The Teamsters union representing railworkers is challenging the government’s move.
The breadth of the government’s power under Section 107 is “something that the courts are going to have to decide,” Eidlin said.
If the courts rule in the government’s favour, the status quo could essentially return to the way it was before 2015, he said.
But Doorey believes the labour minister’s directive to the board to end the rail stoppage will be found to have violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The rail stoppage wasn’t the first time the federal government used these powers during a recent labour dispute.
When workers at B.C. ports went on strike last summer, then-federal labour minister Seamus O’Regan used the section to direct the board to determine whether a negotiated resolution was possible, and if not, to either impose a new agreement or impose final binding arbitration.
The last few years have really been a litmus test for that 2015 change, Eidlin said, as workers are increasingly unwilling to settle for sub-par collective agreements and employers “still have that back-to-work reflex.”
With an uptick in strike activity, “of course, there will be more interest in government intervention in labour disputes as a result,” said Savage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
Companies in this story: (TSX:AC, TSX:CNR, TSX:CP)
