First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.
TOP STORY
First Nations across the country are actively banishing drug dealers in an attempt to curb skyrocketing rates of drug overdoses, striking a sharp contrast with government strategies prioritizing harm reduction and lenient treatment for drug trafficking.
On Sept. 3, the Ontario Ojibway community of Netmizaaggamig Nishnaabeg passed an anti-drug-dealer law authorizing the Anishinabek Police Service to treat any unauthorized visitor as a trespasser.
As deputy chief Thurston Kwissiwa
, “unfortunately, there’s people coming into the community with these drugs that are taking advantage of our people.”
Netmizaaggamig Nishnaabeg Trespassing and Safety Naaknigewin (Law) now enacted.
The Nation is now governed by this…
Posted by Pic Mobert First Nation on Monday, September 15, 2025
Last month, Saskatchewan’s Buffalo River Dene Nation announced they would begin evicting members from reserve housing for drug activities. In
, the community’s chief and council said they did not “hate” those involved in drug offences and did not consider them “bad people,” but had to consider the safety of the community.
“We are now seeing much more dangerous substances, like meth and fentanyl, creeping into our region … these drugs are deadly. And we cannot afford to ignore the signs,” it read.
Over the summer, Vancouver Island’s Kwakiutl First Nation
to evict members accused of drug trafficking, with hereditary chief David Knox telling local media “we’re tired of watching our loved ones get killed from these toxic drugs.”
This followed an incident on Haida Gwaii in May where the family of an alleged drug trafficker and accused murderer had their home demolished and were forced to leave the islands, with picketers following the family onto the mainland and even intercepting them at rest stops.
“What really stood out to me was all the First Nations along Highway 16 standing in solidarity,” Ellis Ross, the Conservative MP for Skeena-Bulkley Valley,
.
‘Years of history’: Who is the former drug dealer banished from Haida Gwaii? https://t.co/lGTOnXqAMV
— Jorge Barrera (@JorgeBarrera) May 2, 2025
Banishment is not a new practice for Canadian First Nations, nor are tight community controls on drug trafficking.
In fact, there are multiple Indigenous communities, particularly in the North, that enforce blanket bans on alcohol with the assistance of the RCMP. Mounties in the Northern Alberta community of Fox Lake, for instance,
who attempted to smuggle in 124 bottles of illicit vodka.
But these latest crackdowns are coming as Indigenous communities openly accuse authorities of giving free rein to drug traffickers.
That was the sentiment expressed at an official gathering of the Assembly of First Nations in Winnipeg earlier this month. A resolution passed with near-unanimous support called for “legal reforms that reflect the true scale and human impact of the fentanyl crisis, and that prioritize the protection of life over the criminal impunity currently enabling traffickers and dealers.”
Even as Canada tops global rankings for fatal overdose rates, the situation is exponentially worse among Indigenous communities.
In B.C., the rate of fatal overdoses among Indigenous people is currently
than the average. In Alberta, overdose deaths have been
for a sharp drop in Indigenous life expectancy. As of 2023, the average First Nations person in Alberta lives to just 62.8 years old, down from a 2013 peak of 72.4, and well beyond the current non-Indigenous Alberta life expectancy of 81.8.
Canadian government health authorities have long acknowledged that Indigenous communities are getting hit hardest by illicit drugs. Nevertheless, official strategies have largely sidestepped the issue of interdicting drug trafficking.
The official
Canadian Drugs and Substance Strategy
, published in 2023, credits high First Nations drug use to “historical and intergenerational trauma, including the impact of colonization.”
Although the report makes brief mention of targeting “organized drug crime,” it also champions the 2022 passage of Bill C-5, a piece of Liberal legislation that removed all mandatory minimum penalties for drug trafficking offences.
As then Attorney General David Lametti explained at the time, this was done to combat “systemic racism,” as convicted drug traffickers were disproportionately of Indigenous heritage.
“With this law, we have repealed the mandatory minimum penalties that have most contributed to the overincarceration of Indigenous people, Black persons and racialized Canadians,” Lametti said in a 2022 statement.
Just three years later, the Assembly of First Nations is championing measures that would effectively do the exact opposite.
The Assembly’s resolution, endorsed earlier this month, supported the passage of “Harlan’s Law,” a proposed Criminal Code amendment that would make drug traffickers criminally liable for overdose deaths. The law prescribes a 15-year minimum prison sentence for traffickers who sell fentanyl that leads to a fatal overdose.
In recent years, government health authorities have even actively pushed the idea of shipping more opioids into Indigenous communities in the form of government-provided “safer supply.”
In late 2023, B.C. Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry advocated the expansion of a program distributing free recreational opioids to drug users on the grounds that it would steer them away from black market narcotics.
Henry emphasized that the province would
in “Indigenous communities and rural and remote areas.”
At the same time, some First Nations communities have needed to mount lengthy court battles to secure official recognition of their banishment rules.
Last October, the 1500-member Mississauga First Nation secured what they described as a precedent-setting legal victory when an Ontario court
upheld their trespassing order
against an accused drug dealer who had continued to frequent the community.
Mississauga leaders noted at the time that they’d long struggled with having police enforce their community codes. The decision told “not only law enforcement, but other First Nations, that enforcement is a possibility,” Jay Herbert, a lawyer acting on behalf of Mississauga First Nation,
at the time.
IN OTHER NEWS
The unprecedented spike in immigration overseen by Ottawa over the last few years has mostly been justified on the grounds of economic necessity: High immigration helped juice Canada’s GDP numbers and sky-high temporary immigration banished any possibility of a labour shortage. But
a new C.D. Howe Institute report
argues that Canada’s current approach to immigration is mostly damaging the economy, rather than the other way around. “Immigration policy should raise average human capital, rather than focusing narrowly on filling short-term labour market gaps,” it read.
First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.
