Indigenous and Northern Affairs

The committee was studying Indigenous policing and public safety. Appearing were Grant Buckskin, Chief of Police of the Blood Tribe Police Service; Annick Wylde, Director of the Service de police de Pikogan; Georgina Nagano, Founder and CEO of House of Wolf and Associates Inc.; Cheryl Gervais, Chief of Police of the Treaty Three Police Service; and Una Gair, Chief Operations Officer of House of Wolf and Associates Inc.

Grant Buckskin described 35 years of chronic underfunding, recruitment and retention failures, and the lack of essential service legislation for Indigenous policing, which he said limits negotiating power and leaves his force unable to offer competitive pensions. He asked how many more committees will meet without resolution and urged that Indigenous police services be treated equally to non-Indigenous counterparts. He noted that the Blood Tribe Police Service has lost officers to other forces due to pension gaps and that the current bail system is ineffective, with high recidivism and violent crime.

Annick Wylde stressed that stable, multi-year funding indexed to inflation is essential for planning, training and equipment, and that short-term agreements create constant uncertainty. She called for a dedicated fund for pension plan parity, a full exemption from mandatory training at the École nationale de police du Québec so Indigenous forces can use certified local instructors, and full access to 911 dispatch services. She also advocated for a bilingual Indigenous police academy in Quebec and said that being recognized as an essential service must be enshrined in law.

Georgina Nagano argued that the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program has not been updated since 1996 and that millions of dollars remain unspent while communities lack promised safety. She recommended that Indigenous-led safety programs be recognized as essential services, funded directly through multi-year needs-based agreements, and that nations have data sovereignty to track outcomes. She highlighted community safety officer programs in Yukon that reduced police calls by 40% in one year and said enforcement alone cannot build safety.

Cheryl Gervais said Indigenous police services operate under a model never designed for their realities, and that systemic racism is embedded in funding frameworks that fail to reflect community needs. She noted that one-time funding for innovative programs like body-worn cameras is not sustainable, and that recruitment is hampered by the inability to offer competitive pensions and benefits. She called for true partnership grounded in self-determination and said the principle of “nothing for us without us” must guide all work.

Una Gair added that nations struggle to access disaggregated crime data from the RCMP, which hampers evaluation of their own programs. She said the current FNIPP binary forces small or remote communities into a de facto single option of RCMP policing, and recommended removing Public Safety Canada and the RCMP as program administrators in favour of co-developed models with Indigenous organizations. She noted that every community is different and that training should be trauma-informed and relationship-based.

The committee also heard that the Blood Tribe Police Service recently received federal funding for a new detachment, and that Treaty Three Police Service has implemented community cadet programs and a community-informed operational review. Witnesses agreed that the bail system is failing and that social problems rooted in colonization continue to drive crime. No procedural debate, motions or votes occurred during this meeting.