Chief of Anishinabek Police Services Jeff Skye, middle, is joined by UCCM Anishnaabe Chief of Police James Killeen, left, and Treaty Three Police Chief Kai Liu for a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 12.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
The association representing Ontario police chiefs is urging the federal government to reform a policy that does not guarantee funding to Indigenous forces, a situation they say could lead to public-safety risks.
The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police released a resolution statement last Wednesday that calls on Ottawa to overhaul the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program, which provides for Indigenous police forces to be funded on fixed-term contracts, where costs are split between provincial and federal governments. The OACP resolution advocates for FNIPP funding levels to increase “to a level where public safety is the same in Indigenous communities as in non-Indigenous communities.”
Unlike typical municipal police departments, which are considered essential services and are legally protected from running out of money, more than 30 First Nations police forces across Canada are funded through fixed-term contracts. The OACP’s resolution says government officials need to replace them with “predictable and sustainable funding.”
The statement by police leaders in Ontario backs up demands by an array of First Nations chiefs, groups and police services whose stalled negotiations with Ottawa over contract renewals have put some Indigenous police forces in a precarious financial position.
Groups representing more than 40 First Nations in the province have declared states of emergency in recent weeks for fear that their communities will be going unprotected because their police officers may soon be laid off for lack of pay. Three of nine First Nations police forces in Ontario have been going without government funding since March 31, when their agreements expired. Negotiations for new deals have broken down.
Police leaders for the three forces – the Treaty Three Police Service, the UCCM Anishnaabe Police Service and the Anishinabek Police Service – appeared on Parliament Hill last week saying that the situation is now dire. Those forces, which patrol communities amounting to nearly 30,000 people, said they have burned through their bank accounts, are now running off of corporate lines of credit and are down to their last paycheques for staff.
“It’s going to create havoc, more crises in our communities,” said Chief Jeffrey Skye of the Anishinabek Police Service.
Public Safety Canada has said there is no way to route money to jurisdictions with no negotiated deals. However, the department’s minister, Marco Mendicino, last Monday said he would figure out ways to move funds to the affected Indigenous police forces.
“I believe that a number of their concerns in fact have merit,” Mr. Mendicino told reporters outside the House of Commons. “I’ve instructed my department to find solutions quickly.”
The minister’s office did not reply to questions sent Friday about whether any progress has since been made.
Ottawa argues in legal document it is not responsible for paying for First Nations policing
Lawyers representing the Indigenous Police Chiefs of Ontario, of which the three affected forces are part, appeared in Federal Court last week seeking an emergency order to restore funding to communities with expired contracts. A ruling is expected within a month.
If First Nations communities find themselves without a funded police force, that gap will need to be filled by the Ontario Provincial Police, the province’s largest service.
Jurisdictional issues around Indigenous policing are complex. Parliament has passed no laws to settle the question of the federal government’s obligations. The governing Liberals have long promised to produce a bill declaring First Nations policing to be an essential service, but they have not followed through.
Compared with urban centres, the costs of policing remote and rural regions are much higher on a per-capita basis. Indigenous communities usually lack the resources to fund policing themselves, even as many communities contend with crime severity and victimization rates that are multiples of the national average.
Such problems go back decades, and the current funding method was first created in the 1990s as a potential fix. Its formula helped create and sustain more than 30 First Nations police forces across Canada, and the policy is also supposed to ensure that RCMP officers have an enhanced presence on reserves outside Central Canada.
The policy, however, exists only as a federal budget line that is capped. The demand for policing services from Indigenous communities has always exceeded those caps.
The Indigenous forces the program has created are mostly clustered in Ontario and Quebec. Now that these police forces are maturing, they are launching legal actions for more control over their funding.
Problems with the funding model were highlighted by Canada’s auditor-general nearly a decade ago.
“Negotiations of new or renewed agreements have been affected by uncertainty over the level of funding to the First Nations Policing Program,” a 2014 report says.