RCMP investigation ordered in Bill C-31 case

Judge fears witness who failed to testify may have been intimidated

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The first part of a trial over a controversial amendment to the Indian act has concluded in an RCMP investigation of court conduct.

Judge Frank Muldoon ordered an RCMP investigation Nov. 4 into the possible intimidation of witnesses involved in Sawridge Band Chief Walter Twinn's constitutional challenge of Bill C-31.

Native Council of Canada (Alberta) lawyer Jon Faulds told the court that same day that his witnesses, Francis Jensen and Edith Crowchild, decided not to testify after a telephone conversation with the plainiff's counsel of record, Catherine Twinn.

Catherine Twinn, Senator Twinn's wife, said she had spoken with the two women but emphasized that the witnesses called her.

Muldoon said, however, that the conversation represented a "violation of the client-solicitor privilege."

Two of the three witnessses for the Non-Status Indian Association of Alberta were also to appear in Federal Court that day, said that organization's lawyer Terry Glancy. But the women from the Tsuu Tina reserve near Calgary failed to show up after they had been contacted by an as yet unnamed third party.

The association's third witness, Olive Golar, said an un-named woman called her to say she would "do all right" if she did not testify, Glancy said. Muldoon referred to the incident as a "veiled threat."

RCMP from Edmonton's K Division are investigating, said spokesman Sgt. Loran Thiemann. No further details were available at press time.

The investigation could result in charges of mischief or even contempt of Muldoon's court order forbidding witnesses to talk to each other.

The case which got underway Sept. 20, involves a challenge by members of three Alberta bands to Bill C-31, the 1985 amendment to the Indian act which restored Indian Status to disenfranchised Natives, many of them women who had married non-Indians and their children.

Many of the Indians who reclaimed their status under C-31 were immediately put into band lists by the federal government. But Twinn, along with plaintiffs Bruce Starlight of the Tsuu Tina Nation and Wayne Roan of the Ermineskin band, maintains that only bands can determine membership.

So far, more than 150,000 people have applied for status under C-31. Some 95,000 Natives across Canada have been re-instated. Approximately 10,000 of them are from Alberta.

Uncontrolled increases in memberships threaten the economic, cultural and social stability of bands, Twinn has said.

The NCCA and NSIAA are acting as interveners in the case to support Bill C-31.

The second half of the trial is currently scheduled to last three weeks. It reconvened in Ottawa Nov. 15.