Indigenous police forces in Quebec claim federal underfunding amounts to discrimination

Kahnawake Peacekeepers say community policing is at the very heart of their daily duties, but that doing so effectively is a challenge since they are severely short-staffed.

“Right now we’re 33 or 34,” Ryan Montour, the community’s Public Safety Portfolio Chief told Global News. “I think we just put one on the streets last week so we’re short 14.”

Twenty-two Indigenous police services across Quebec, including those in Kahnawake, south of Montreal, are taking the federal public safety ministry to task for discrimination.

“We have filed a complaint against Public Safety Canada with the Canadian Human Rights tribunal for the persistent underfunding of indigenous police forces,” Shawn Dulude, president of Quebec Association of First Nation and Inuit Police Directors (QAFNIPD) told reporters at a news conference in Kahnawake.

According to Dulude, Indigenous forces across the province need an extra 200 officers in addition to the 400 already in service.  In Kahnawake the lack of officers means they can’t effectively patrol the territory, which is a major transit point near the Montreal metropolis, Montour argues.

“We have 1.5 million motorists that traverse our community through the Mercier bridge,” he explained. “We have the CPKC Railway that goes through our territory.”

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Dulude believes adding a highway patrol for Kahnawake, for example, would make sense and warns that lack of funding also means a shortage of other resources, such as infrastructure and equipment.

“Sometimes officers are working with bulletproof vests that are five years expired, 10 years expired — doesn’t make sense,” he stressed. “That would never be accepted by the provincial police or the Montreal police or any other police department.”

Another sore point is the salary disparity they say exists between Indigenous police services and non-Indigenous forces. The difference in Quebec, the group claims, can be as high as 30 per cent, meaning it’s hard for some communities to retain officers especially when larger forces come calling.

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“If something somewhere else in a different territory or different force, you tend to lose them,” Kahnawake’s Public Safety Commissioner Lloyd Phillips pointed out.

A lack of police resources, QAFNIPD argues, has implications for everyone inside and outside First Nations communities.

Global News did not hear back from the Canadian Public Safety ministry with a comment before deadline.