RCMP to enforce local COVID-19 bylaws on northern First Nations

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This article was published 25/05/2021 (1598 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, First Nations in northern Manitoba will finally get police help to enforce local restrictions.

An interim agreement signed Tuesday will have RCMP officers enforce band council rules that go beyond provincial orders, as Parliament considers ways to restore autonomy to reserves over issues such as alcohol bans.

The pact comes as First Nations struggle to implement rules meant to stop novel coronavirus spread, Misipawistik Cree Nation Chief Heidi Cook told MPs on Tuesday.

“People started to know that the RCMP would not do anything to help, and so they were much more brazen in defying the public health orders,” Cook testified to the House committee on Indigenous affairs.

“We felt abandoned, and we were struggling to control the spread.”

The community sits adjacent to Grand Rapids, 400 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.

As cases rose last fall, the band enacted a checkpoint along Highway 6, turning away drivers headed toward the reserve’s gas station.

But people soon realized the checkpoint was at the band’s directive, and not part of the province’s northern travel ban.

“We started to get a lot more dangerous-driving complaints and racist insults directed toward our workers and, eventually, we just had to take it down,” Cook said.

She claimed the RCMP declined a request to have its officers leave the local detachment and circulate the reserve in their cruisers, to at least imply people should follow the rules.

“We could have had help from the RCMP by using the drunk tank, using laws that they could enforce, to stop people. In some cases, positive cases were going house to house, looking for a party or a bed,” Cook said.

The band ultimately gave up on its second-wave orders and hasn’t set any in place since.

“What good is the law if it’s not enforceable?” Cook told MPs.

She said the reserve is now facing a third wave, with exposures of the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant in local schools and daycares.

MPs are studying how Parliament could fix a law that has barred the RCMP from enforcing certain band orders since 1999. A process launched in 2014 for bands to apply to Ottawa for bylaws to be enforced, but MPs were told it has never been put to use, due to red tape.

Officials from Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak told MPs on Tuesday this has been an issue in enforcing drug and alcohol bans in northern Manitoba.

The Free Press has previously reported on Manitoba Infrastructure barring band constables from searching bags at airport arrivals for alcohol, and Canada Post delivering ingredients used to create drugs reserves have tried to ban.

“Communities are in crisis due to the uncontrolled bootlegging and drug-dealing, fuelled by longtime non-enforcement” of band bylaws, said MKO Grand Chief Garrison Settee.

Recently, the Pallister government pledged to give band officers the authority to search and detain people on grounds that are currently only available to full-fledged peace officers.

On Tuesday, MKO inked an agreement with the RCMP that will allow the Mounties to enforce local COVID-19 bylaws on 26 northern reserves, up until Sept. 30.

The chiefs hope that by then, Ottawa will have legislation to allow Mounties to enforce band bylaws.

At a Tuesday news conference, a senior Manitoba RCMP official said the new rules will help reserves better protect themselves, since breaching bylaws could now lead to prosecution.

“It is our hope that this will foster a stronger relationship in the communities that we police in Manitoba,” said Supt. Scott McMurchy.

“It has been a learning process for us, and an important step toward a new chapter in our reconciliation story with Indigenous communities in Manitoba.”

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca