Statement: Mohawk Land

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Members of the assembly would know that there’s been a controversy brewing for time in regards to lands that are owned by the Toronto District School Board and lands that are claimed by the Mohawk in regard to the Haldimand proclamation. This is an issue that the government can find a solution for fairly simply. The Toronto District School Board told the Mohawk people that if they access that land that they will charge them with trespassing and use the full extent of the law to prevent them from using land that was given to them, being the Mohawk people, through the Haldimand Proclamation. The government, to fix this, quite simply can do what the Toronto District School Board is asking and, that is, to purchase the land so that the province gets title to the land and in exchange the province would then transfer that land to the Mohawk people.

It seems to me that, if a deal was made some over 100 years ago with the Mohawk people in order to grant that land to them, that certainly we can fix this problem by finding a peaceful solution to a situation that doesn’t need to escalate, but the key is that the provincial government would have to sit down with the Toronto District School Board, and the Toronto District School Board, as I understand it, is prepared to sell the land for a sum of around $750,000. So I call on this government to do that, to enter into negotiations with the Toronto District School Board, and once the land title has been reverted to the crown, that we enact what we had done in the Haldimand Proclamation many years ago and transfer that land back to the Mohawk people so they can use it for their traditional use.