A state of emergency over a lack of police services was declared November 21 in Winneway, where about half the 800 members of Long Point First Nation (LPFN) reside. Located roughly 100 kilometres from the nearest Sûreté du Québec station in Ville-Marie on Lake Temiscaming, the community has relied on the SQ since 2006, when the local police force was abolished due to a lack of funding.
Community councillor Steven Polson told the CBC that the past four years have seen a spike in impaired driving, vandalism, arson, burglary and substance abuse because police respond only during the day.
“People know cops don’t come around on evenings or nights or weekends,” said Polson. “We just phone and phone and phone and then they say, ‘Oh, we’re on our way, we’re on our way.’ But they don’t show up until the next day.”
Ghislain Picard, Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador, noted the “community is taking matters in its own hands” by creating a four-member foot patrol that works from 11pm to 7am.
“Obviously it cannot be a permanent solution,” Picard added. “Quebec or the SQ or both are not living up to their end of the bargain.”
Former LPFN Chief Steeve Mathias had long pressured Quebec for a solution. Two years ago, the province proposed to conduct a feasibility study on establishing a local police force, promising to send him a letter this past summer to detail their plans. It quickly became apparent that Quebec had not engaged in any talks with the federal government.
“They are leaving us to the mercy of bureaucracy,” said Mathias. “I find that disrespectful and very negligent.”
Mathias said then-Quebec public security minister Geneviève Guilbault should have personally intervened. A spokesperson for Guilbault said a plan is in the works to establish Indigenous policing in the area and that “the file has not fallen through a crack; it is in the process of being worked on.”
In 2021, Quebec announced a rapid response team initiative for the LPFN community. Recent promises echoed by officials such as Guilbault have felt as mere compromises toward a community that has been pressing to have their own police force for years on end.
During the initial inquiries, former Chief Mathias had cited an incident in which a young man in crisis fired a gun in front of the community school during the evening hours. With no police response, civilians removed children from the neighbourhood, prevented people from using the street and confronted the man to convince him to give up his weapon.
“These people are not trained,” Mathias stressed. He said it was fortunate the situation was resolved without violence before the SQ’s eventual arrival.
Current Chief Henry Rodgers says that residents are telling him they are afraid to walk around the community and of being targeted if they try to intervene in incidents.
François Bonnardel, Quebec’s current minister of public security, and Ian Lafrenière, the provincial minister responsible for relations with First Nations and Inuit, said in a joint statement that the situation is “worrying”, but that they have confidence in the police.