Ontario to bring First Nations police forces under provincial standards

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Police in many Ontario First Nations communities will be held to the same standards as those in the rest of the province as part of a massive transformation of law enforcement being proposed by the Ontario government.

Legislation introduced on Thursday will allow First Nations communities to create their own police-services boards that would adhere to a new Police Services Act. It would require the Indigenous forces who opt in to the act to meet provincial standards for such things as service delivery, training and equipment – and for governments to provide the funds to ensure that happens.

As it stands, Indigenous policing is just another government program financed by Ottawa and the province. It is not backed by the rule of law. Indigenous communities, especially those in the North, struggle to make do with inadequate police resources, and there is no legal basis to demand better.

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The legislation being proposed by the Ontario government would change that.

"It's a historic day for the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service and for the Nishnawbe Aski Nation [NAN] and for Indigenous policing for the province," said Alvin Fiddler, the Grand Chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, who has fought for years for his force to be brought under the provincial act.

The new law, Mr. Fiddler said, would provide an independent means of ensuring that funding for police matches the needs of the communities. It would entrench the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service as an essential service, and it would raise its officers to the same level as those in other police services in Ontario, he said. At the same time, the First Nations of NAN will continue to be served by a force that is culturally sensitive.

"This is a game changer for all of us," Mr. Fiddler said.

Not all of Ontario's First Nations want to have their police forces covered by provincial legislation and those that choose to remain outside the Police Services Act may do so.

Marie-France Lalonde, the Ontario Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, said the change, which is part of a much larger set of revisions to the way policing is delivered in Ontario, is long overdue.

It was included in the recommendations earlier this year of Justice Michael Tulloch, who conducted an independent review of police oversight in the province.

"We want to support the sustainability of our First Nations policing by enabling the First Nations to choose their policing-service delivery mode," Ms. Lalonde said. "We wanted to create a fair, equitable and accountable process."

The change will mean increased costs for both the provincial and federal governments. Ms. Lalonde said Ottawa is already in discussions with the province and the First Nations about how to move forward under a new system.

Insufficient police resources on Nishnawbe Aski First Nations mean police work without radios or access to investigative services. There is nothing to say that a lone officer should not be on call seven days a week, around the clock. And detachments can be decrepit shacks.

In 2006, two young men who were being held for public intoxication burned to death in the Kashechewan police station, which lacked a working smoke detector, fire extinguisher and sprinkler system.

In February, 2013, Lena Anderson hanged herself in the back of a police truck where she was being held following her arrest on the Kasibonika First Nation because prisoners had escaped through the large holes in the floor of the reserve's detachment.

Providing police services on reserves through program funding instead of through legislation is putting the lives of community members and officers at risk, Mr. Fiddler said. "What this new bill means," he said, "is there is equity in Indigenous policing, not just in NAN territory but right throughout the province."