Tensions are flaring in Kahnawake and Kanehsatake as prominent Liberal MNAs and the Parti Quebecois opposition stepped up calls for police raids on the Mohawk communities. Liberal deputies spent a full hour at a meeting on November 10 debating whether the government should order a crackdown on the illegal cigarette trade, which many blamed on the Mohawk communities. Sadly ignored is the 1794 Jay Treaty signed between the United States and Britain, which recognized the right of Mohawks to pass freely across the border without paying taxes. Ottawa and Quebec have refused to honour the treaty despite repeated court challenges and the fact that the 1982 Constitutional Accord grants all treaties with First Nations constitutional status. Mohawks are already exempt from most federal and provincial taxes other than border duties.
The outcry is also strange considering that even the RCMP says most of the people involved in the cross-border cigarette trade are white. Aboriginal people are not the only ones doing it, Cornwall-based RCMP officer Jean Bourassa told The Nation. The majority of arrests are non-native. The vast majority of consumers are non-native. What they are trying to do is label an entire community.
Nonetheless, frequent media reports have portrayed the Mohawk communities as havens for cigarette smuggling, not to mention arms dealing and tax evasion. Kahnawake and Kanehsatake residents briefly went on an emergency footing in mid-November expectation of a police raid, following a statement by Quebec Revenue Minister Raymond Savoie that tougher police measures are needed to put an end to the alleged Mohawk lawlessness. Quebec officials are meeting with officials of the new government in Ottawa to discuss a joint strategy of dealing with the Mohawks.
Meanwhile, RCMP and Sureté du Québec officers continue their practice of stopping cars entering and leaving the Mohawk communities for alleged traffic infractions. In response to the harassment, a human-rights watch at Kahnawake filed 13 complaints with the Quebec police ethics board in spring 1992. But the cases remain unresolved.
