Report From Parliament Hill

Eric Melillo, MP, Kenora Riding

Dear Constituents

First Nations and Inuit police services provide an essential service to the residents of the communities they serve, but after 8 years of this NDP-Liberal government, they have not been a priority.
Recently, the Auditor General released a scathing report on First Nations and Inuit policing. She found the NDP-Liberal government is failing to work in partnership with First Nations and Inuit communities to ensure they have equitable access to police services compared to non-Indigenous communities. 
The government likes to boast about how much money they are spending, but the Auditor General report shows the government has no plan to equitably allocate funds to these police services. 
The government is also not negotiating with them in good faith to renew agreements and placed discriminatory conditions in the agreements to prohibit financing police infrastructure, expenses for legal representation, and specialized police services, such as canine units and homicide investigation teams.
This caused three First Nation police services in northern Ontario to take the government to court to obtain continued funding and relief from these conditions. While the court ordered an additional year of funding and granted relief, the funding agreement expired on March 31, 2024.
These three police services serve 45 First Nation communities and around 30,000 people across the region. The lack of action on negotiations demonstrates the government does not make policing a priority. Their delay is putting the lives of Indigenous people at risk.
Conservatives are calling on the NDP-Liberal government to do what they promised and support First Nations policing so that people can feel safe in their communities.
Working for You 
If you’re planning to be in Ottawa and are interested in attending Question Period or taking a tour of Parliament, please let me know and my office can help reserve Question Period and tour tickets. 
As always, if there is anything my office can assist you with, please call me at 807-223-2182 (Dryden) or 807-468-2170 (Kenora) or email me at [email protected].
Sincerely,
Eric Melillo
Member of Parliament
Kenora Riding