Ontario police probe native development fees

Joseph Brean, National Post Published: Wednesday, May 21, 2008

The Ontario Provincial Police are investigating the fees charged by a First Nations group for development on disputed land in southern Ontario, Commissioner Julian Fantino said yesterday.

But, as with other possibly illegal actions in the long-standing disputes over land between natives and the provincial and federal governments, criminal charges remain a tool of last resort, and enforcement of the law is not simply "a turn-of-the-switch situation."

"We have the same kind of role here as we do at a strike," Commissioner Fantino said in an interview. "We advocate peaceful demonstration. We don't take sides on who is right and who is wrong, but we do find ourselves trapped in the middle... It's nothing we can resolve."

The Haudenosaunee Development Institute, which has demanded payments from developers on disputed land, was established last year by by the Six Nations in Ontario to broker deals under the implied threat of paralyzing protests.

The disputed land dealt with by HDI comprises the area within ten kilometres of the Grand River, which flows from a watershed northwest of Toronto into Lake Erie.

Several building sites there, notably in Caledonia, have been disrupted after developers refused to pay the charges, and in response, the city of Brantford has adopted by-laws banning interference with development and unauthorized charges by HDI.

In one recent case, the board of Ancaster Agricultural Society voted not to comply with the HDI's demand for a development fee for a new fairground, estimated at $500, although the fees for residential development are in the thousands.

Michael Bryant, Ontario's Aboriginal Affairs Minister, has said he hopes to include HDI in the currently stalled land claims negotiations, but Premier Dalton McGuinty has urged developers not to pay the fees, maintaining that only municipalities can legitimately charge development fees.

The questions of whether the fees are illegal and what to do about that, however, are among the many delicate matters with which the OPP has to reluctantly deal with, fearful that any action could lead to widespread sympathy protests across the province and the country, Commissioner Fantino said.

He is mindful, for instance, that a national day of action is scheduled for next Thursday, an event that has been marred in the past by violence.

He compared the diplomatic approach on development fees to the occasional refusal of his officers to enforce court orders to disperse protesters, such as happened recently at a disputed uranium mine in Eastern Ontario.

He also said extreme elements on both sides are "predisposed to creating conflict and propelling this thing to a higher dimension." He noted that roughly 50 police officers have been injured in the past two years.