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House Hansard - 336

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 16, 2024 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 336 - Sep/16/24
Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)
  • Sep/16/24 6:45:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Nunavut for bringing this important debate, and I want to thank the House of Commons for recognizing its importance. I have been around a long time, and the idea that we would actually have an emergency debate about the needless deaths of indigenous peoples at the hands of police would have been unimaginable just a few short years ago. Therefore we have come down the road, but have just not come to where we need to be. I would like to begin by apologizing to Shelley Mae Anderson, who died in my hometown, a murdered and missing indigenous woman. I had never even heard her name. I knew nothing. This was in a little town. We all look out for each other. We know everybody. She was taken and killed. Her family was putting up posters and had T-shirts, but she was indigenous. I want to apologize to Shelley Mae Anderson's family, because I think of it being in my hometown and that we did nothing. My colleague talked about people being safe, and it is a fundamental issue: the right of indigenous communities to be safe. Right now, I think of Ricardo Wesley, 22, and James Goodwin, 20, two young boys in Kashechewan, who got picked up one night for being drunk and put in a police station that looked like a crack house. It was not a proper police station because it was so seriously underfunded. A fire broke out and those boys burned to death. For years, Kashechewan talked about safety in the community and the rights of people to make sure they had not just proper infrastructure but proper police services, and we are still having those fights today. I want to be fair to the police officers whom I know who are trying to wrestle with so many issues with the opioid crisis, the gangs coming in and the young gangbangers who are threatening and killing people. These are very complicated times. They do not have the support they need, and they do not have the support in first nation communities. The first nation communities are calling for the ability to be able to use band powers to get predators out of the communities, who are making people sick, causing people to die and causing violence. We need to be looking at this holistically. I want to thank Mushkegowuk Council, which worked with the City of Timmins, and the Fire Keepers, who walk the streets to keep people safe now, to keep people alive. We need this holistic approach of police and mental health, and working with first nations so we can do this to keep people from getting in situations where violence seems to be the solution. I have to admit that I grew up in Pierre Berton's Canada. Pierre Berton's Canada was a great place to grow up. We got taught that the RCMP was like bureaucrats. It kept us all safe. Nobody ever taught me in school that it was the light cavalry, the shock troops to enforce the taking of indigenous lands. That history I never learned. Indigenous peoples knew that history from the get-go and still know that history. We have to confront that history if we are going to make a change, because if we do not confront that history, we do not understand the fact that when my colleague talks about people being safe, it is being safe not just in their home communities but also in Toronto, Winnipeg or Montreal. Are they going to call the police when they have been in a situation where they have faced threat? Absolutely not. There is a term, and I do not know what it is because I don't speak Oji-Cree, but the woman told me what the name for police was: “the ones who take our children”. They do not call the police, because there is not that trust. That is the shame of the colonial Canada that still results in six of our young people dying. Therefore in the time I have, I want to name some names so they are on the record. There is Jethro Anderson from Kasabonika, who was 15 years old when they pulled him out of the McIntyre River in Thunder Bay in 2000. The police told his family that he was just out there partying like a native kid. They did not investigate how this 15-year-old kid, who had to leave his home to get an education because Kasabonika Lake does not bother to provide schools, was pulled out of the McIntyre River. There is Curran Strang from Pikangikum, who was found in 2006 in the McIntyre River in Thunder Bay. Police said that it was accidental and just another native kid. On November 11, 2006, Paul Panacheese was pulled out of the McIntyre River in Thunder Bay. He was from Mishkeegogamong First Nation. Each time, Thunder Bay Police said it was just a native kid partying and it was an accident. As Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler said, these are kids who grew up on the northern rivers; they know how to swim. Is it possible to believe that all these children died in a river because they did not know how to swim? The police then pulled out 15-year-old Reggie Bushie's body from the McIntyre River. He was from Poplar Hill First Nation. Thunder Bay Police said it was just a native kid; it was just an accident, and he was partying. All these children had to come to Thunder Bay because the government would not give them schools and safe communities. They had to leave their families to go live in boarding houses when they were 13 years old. Kyle Morriseau was the grandson of the great Norval Morriseau. Kyle was apparently an incredible artist. The police pulled him out of the river and there was no further police investigation. On February 7, 2011, Jordan Wabasse got off a city bus and was walking back to his boarding house. He was found in the river. There was no further investigation. They said he was just a native kid. He was from Webequie First Nation. Who found him? It was not the police; it was the community members who came down from Webequie and searched the river because they knew that was where they were going to find their boy. The cops said not to go to the river because they would not find him. I also think of Tammy Keeash, who was found in the river in 2017, and within two weeks, so was Josiah Beggs, who was a 14-year-old who went to Thunder Bay for a medical appointment. In every single case, Thunder Bay Police said it was just a native kid partying; there is nothing to see here. Tammy Keeash, if I remember correctly from meeting her family, was found in the reeds in two or three feet of water. She was a strong swimmer, yet she drowned? There have been major questions about the racism and the systemic racism, but it was a police force, and nobody was going to take on the police force. What does that say to indigenous communities anywhere? What does that say to indigenous people in my community about whether or not they should trust the police, when they know there were numerous requests for investigations into how those children were allowed to die, and nobody thought there was a serial killer. I can tell members if there were seven blonde girls found in the McIntyre River, the police would turn the world upside down. I say that while thinking very carefully about what that means. I do not want to pit one group against another, but we need to address the systemic failures. Going forward, we need to address the need to keep communities safe at this time. I am not trashing the police officers who are out trying to do their best and who are dealing with very complicated situations without the mental health supports they need. They are dealing with the PTSD of first responders. I know people who have seen first responders commit suicide, because when there is a child suicide or when there is a killing, they are the first ones in, especially in isolated communities. We need to talk about this, and the fact that we have brought this forward tonight is important. However, I have been in a lot of these emergency debates. We had the emergency debate on the suicide crisis in Attawapiskat. We have had numerous emergency debates. The question is, are we going to do something about it? I want to thank my hon. colleague for raising the issue. I want to say to victims' families and to everyone, from Colten Boushie's family, which we met, to everyone else who has lost a young one to violence, that, as a nation, we have to set a higher standard. That means making sure we put resources into protecting communities, into training for police, and into mental health supports to treat this holistically, and stop treating it as the colonial shock troops enforcing the treaties on behalf of the white power state.
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