Northern Alberta First Nations want to expand Indigenous-led policing

The grand chief representing First Nations across northern Alberta says leaders want to expand and bolster their tribal-run police service — and they need Ottawa to declare policing an "essential service" to do it right.

Treaty 8 Grand Chief Arthur Noskey's call comes a day after the federal government backed away from setting a deadline to introduce legislation that would decree First Nations policing as "essential."

Noskey says the organization's existing police service, the Lakeshore Regional Police Service, is too constrained by current agreements to properly serve the five communities where it operates.

"The federal and provincial police forces have not been an effective service for our First Nations and peoples," Noskey said at a Thursday news conference in Edmonton. "We are subjugated and subdued to a system based on racial discrimination, and our women and men are missing and being murdered without proper investigation."

Created in 2008, the Lakeshore Regional Police Service works in five First Nations in the Lesser Slave Lake area. Its website says the service has a chief and 14 officers, and seven administrative staff.

Noskey said the service, headquartered on the Driftpile Cree Nation, is too limited by what tasks employees can perform and by its small number of staff.

He said a victim's body lay on a road for two days after a hit-and-run incident because of restrictions on the policing agreement with the federal and provincial governments.

"To the First Nations people, this is very derogatory and demeaning," he said.

Noskey said Treaty 8 chiefs want to expand the service to other First Nations, and bolster its capabilities, including canine units and forensics, so it isn't reliant on the RCMP.

He said treaty chiefs voted unanimously on March 27 to declare policing an "essential service" to make such an expansion possible.

Treaty 8 includes 39 First Nations in northern Alberta, northwestern Saskatchewan, northeastern B.C., and the southern Northwest Territories.

Noskey didn't have a ballpark budget or number of employees Treaty 8 wants to grow the police service.

Federal government drafting 'essential service' legislation

Hereditary Chief Sydney Halcrow said the Lakeshore police is understaffed, often leaving officers to respond to calls alone, or summoning nearby RCMP if they are tied up.

"It becomes a health and safety issue for our police members as well," Halcrow said.

In a Thursday email, Alexander Cohen, director of communications for federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, said the federal government welcomes Treaty 8's announcement.

"Projects like these are the exact kind of First Nations-led initiatives that our government looks to partner with," he said.

The government has also set aside hundreds of millions of dollars for Indigenous-led police funding, he said.

The government has been drafting First Nations policing essential service legislation for the past year-and-a-half with the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) as an equal partner, Cohen said.

However, on Thursday, Noskey also said the AFN doesn't speak for Treaty 8 on negotiations related to policing law.

It's unclear if the federal government is negotiating directly with Treaty 8 on the issue.

The First Nations Chiefs of Police Association has been calling for the federal government to declare policing an essential service since 2017, in an effort to garner funding equal to other Canadian police services, its website says.

There are three Indigenous-led police services in Alberta, which are funded by federal-provincial agreements with participating nations.

The Lakeshore Regional Police Service is funded under the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program (FNIPP), which is a federally-administered program that splits the costs between the federal government taking on 52 per cent, and the provinces at 48 per cent, said Dylan Topal, press secretary for public safety and emergency services, in an email Thursday.

For 2023-24, the provincial government's contribution to the Lakeshore police is $2,143,840, Topal said. 

"The terms of the FNIPP are set by Public Safety Canada, which has limited the scope of the program to fund only front-line policing operations," Topal said.

"Alberta's government has been advocating for the federal government to amend the funding framework in a way that would enable self-administered First Nations police services to provide specialized investigative services more in line with what municipal police services are currently able to do."