Bonspille calls for action against illegal waste disposal in Kanesatake

Victor Bonspille, Grand Chief of the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake (MCK), called on the federal government to take action against illegal dumping in the community at the annual meeting of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) in Montreal this Wednesday. He said it was unacceptable that his calls for action against illegal dumping in the community were being ignored.

Kanehsata’kehró:non and a coalition of Oka residents have been vocal in their opposition to the seemingly endless stream of garbage trucks that come to the community daily to dispose of waste from construction sites outside the community. With no provincial oversight, many fear the truckloads contain contaminated garbage.

“You ignore my emails, my letters and my text messages to your cell phone number. I want to know why you are not listening to my voice and the voice of my community,” Bonspille asked Gary Anandasangaree, Canada’s minister of Crown-Indigenous relations. “I am tired of being ignored. My community is being ignored. When are you going to start listening to my community?”

The MCK Grand Chief also directed his comments at Patty Hajdu, the Minister of Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), who was not present at the meeting, claiming that the Tribal Council was pressured to mandate W8banaki to begin the necessary preparatory work to clean up the notorious G&R recycling site, which Bonspille described as dictatorial in his comments to Anandasangaree.

Five of seven MCK chiefs passed a Tribal Council resolution supporting the hiring of W8banaki, a decision that was eventually upheld by the ISC. However, Bonspille has long maintained that these chiefs do not represent the community.

“You are listening to five deposed people who were deposed twice in my municipality by votes of no confidence in October and November 2023,” he said.

Council President Serge Otsi Simon said if anyone was behaving like a dictator, it was Bonspille and not Minister Patty Hajdu. He added that the vote of no confidence had not followed due process and was not legitimate.

“Minister Hajdu simply agreed with the Council’s decision, which was a majority decision,” said Simon, who is among the bosses who, according to Bonspille, were removed.

“It’s not just his voice that counts, but that of the majority. I find it funny that he throws around the word dictatorship when he is the one who represents his sole authority – that is a dictatorship.”

The Minister for Crown-Aboriginal Relations did not publicly respond to the Grand Chief’s calls for action to be taken against ongoing illegal dumping.

Bonspille said, however, that Anandasangaree had agreed to meet him soon if he approached him thereafter.

“I knew he would avoid it or ignore it,” Bonspille said The east door. “Nobody wants to address this issue – not even the ministers.”

Both Simon and Bonspille told The eastern door As they attended the meeting throughout the week, safety and the lack of police presence in the community were their main issues.

“We have no police. The SQ is completely inefficient. We have no environmental officers. We don’t even have a fire station,” Simon said. “How are we supposed to exercise our jurisdiction and our right to self-government if we don’t have the appropriate governmental instruments? How are we supposed to protect our children?”

In that spirit, Bonspille took the microphone on Wednesday during a plenary session on policing to ask for the AFN’s support, saying the Quebec government has refused to meet with the tribal council and discuss the failure of the provincial police to properly police the community.

“They refuse to talk to me and my community about creating our own traditional police force,” he told the room. “I think something needs to be done about that and also about communities that don’t have police, and those discussions need to be accelerated.”

Discussions that have taken place in the past between the Tribal Council and the federal and provincial governments on the issue have not been fruitful, with Bonspille saying The eastern door “They are simply throwing the issue back and forth” as to who should bear the costs of a possible solution.

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Miriam Lafontaine, reporter for the local journalism initiative, The Eastern Door