‘Disgraceful, dehumanizing and violent act:’ minister

OTTAWA • Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller says Canada needs a reckoning over a repeated and disgusting pattern of police violence against Indigenous people.

Miller says he “watched in disgust” video and reports this week of violence against a 22- year- old Inuk man in Nunavut and a 26- year- old First Nations mother in New Brunswick.

In the first, a graphic video shows an RCMP officer in Nunavut ramming the door of his car into the man walking along the road in Kinngait Monday evening. In the second, police went to check on the well-being of 26- year- old Chantel Moore in Edmundston, N.B., Thursday evening, and ended up shooting and killing her.

“A car door is not a proper police tactic, it’s a disgraceful, dehumanizing and violent act,” Miller said, at a news conference on Parliament Hill Friday. “I don’t understand how someone dies during a wellness check. When I first saw the report I thought it was some morbid joke.”

Miller was there to provide an update on the status of COVID- 19 cases in Indigenous communities, but spent most of the nearly hour- long event answering questions about police violence and racism in Canada.

“Frankly along with many Canadians, Indigenous Peoples living in Canada, politicians in Canada, I’m pissed, I’m outraged. There needs to be a full accounting of what has gone on. This is a pattern that keeps repeating itself.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau echoed him in a separate appearance Friday, saying he would be discussing the issue with cabinet and the commissioner of the RCMP.

“We need a larger reflection on changing the systems that do not do right by too many Indigenous people and racialized Canadians,” Trudeau said. Each of the incidents needs to be investigated fully, he said, but there are clearly larger issues that need to be tackled.

The man who was struck by the officer’s car in Nunavut was arrested and later beaten by another man in the holding cell he was placed in, requiring him to be airlifted for treatment. The 22- yearold told CBC News in Nunavut that he wants the police officers to be charged.

The Ottawa Police Service, which does independent investigations of police in Nunavut, has sent a team there but the officer who arrested the man has not been charged or suspended. He was flown out of the community and is on administrative leave.

Quebec’s independent police investigation agency is going to help with the Edmundston shooting.

Edmundston police say their officer encountered a woman with a knife making threats. She was shot and killed at the scene.

Miller said he wants answers, and the family deserves answers, quickly.

“It was a wellness check and someone died,” he said. “I can’t process that.”