Front Burner - Cannabis megastores stoke tensions in Oka Crisis First Nation

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

35 years ago, the Kanien'kehá:ka of Kanehsatà:ke squared off with the Canadian army to defend their territory, culminating an armed standoff now known as the Oka Crisis, or the Siege of Kanehsatà:ke.Now, some community members worry that same territory is being threatened by an out-of-control boom of unregulated cannabis megastores with alleged connections to organized crime. And a governance crisis exacerbated by that siege in 1990 has left the community with no clear way of resolving the growing tensions.CBC investigative reporter Jorge Barrera — who has covered the community extensively — explains how the deep history of Kanehsatà:ke has led to this pivotal moment, and what it could mean for its future.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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This is a CBC podcast. Hi, I'm Allie Jains in for Jamie Pousson. I don't want anyone else coming on this land and destroying it. You'd think protect our land. You know, these were people who had family that fought in 90, yet they're doing this to our land. It makes no sense. It's a reminder that what we fought for in 90 is what we're still fighting for today. But now it's not against the golf course. It's not against Oka. It's against our own people.

You know, our own people whose minds have been infected by greed. Gawizai Aalbani and Gadio Hedza couples are two members of the Mohawk Nation of Ghana-Sadagi. It's a small community on the Ottawa River west of Montreal. all. About 1,400 people live there. That fight that Albanyan couples are talking about from the 90s, most Canadians know it as the Oka Crisis, were the siege of Ganesadegh. The community's fight against a proposed golf course in their territory culminated in a 78-day armed standoff with the Canadian military. Good evening. At one point, there were as many as 12 native barricades in Quebec, but tonight only one is still standing. The barricade is completely surrounded by the

Canadian Army. The soldiers have dug themselves in after a day of high tension and drama. The infantry major in charge made it clear he was heading for the barricades at any cost and that bullets would be met with bullets. As soon as I'm able to move forward, I move forward. Are you moving right through the barricades? There's a barricade down there? Yes, sir. Then something remarkable. Mohawk women assumed command and cleared their men. Get him out of here! Come on there! The warriors calmed down, although not. much, and they took to taunting the soldiers face to face. I must be number one on the list, me, or you're number one, I'm on the street.

That was 35 years ago this summer. What's concerning Albanyan couples now is disruption to that very same land. There's been a recent, essentially unregulated construction boom linked to dozens of massive cannabis megastores that have sprung up in the last few years. They operate in a legal gray area. And there are concerns over how they might be affecting the environment and even attracting organized crime. CBC investigative reporter Jorge Berrera first reported on the community of Ganasidaga 20 years ago. He recently visited once again to look into the tensions that these cannabis megastores are causing

and how the underlying governance issues that have created this situation all stem from the aftermath of that siege in the summer of 1990. Jorge, hi. It's great, as always, to have you on Frontburner. And it's always great to be invited on. You have reported on Ganesadega on and off for nearly two decades. And, you know, you've obviously seen it change a lot over the years, especially since these cannabis stores started coming in. So just paint me a bit of a picture here. Like, if you were to visit Ganasidagi today and drive down that main stretch of highway through the community, what would you see? Well, if you're driving up from the village of Oka, you go.

down Route 344 up this famous hill from the Oka Crisis or the Siege of Gennesadogah, where you go up that hill and over past the golf course on your right and you go a little past that and suddenly on your right you start seeing these signs flapping in the wind with reds and yellows and blues for shatter and pre-roll and gummies. And then these hulking buildings loom with names like Green Room and Big Cheese Variety and LaRois and Mary Jane's. And some of these, like the Green Room, have big signs with lettering, advertising, a casino. Wow. You keep going deeper down 344.

And then on your left, you'll see these other... Cannabis megastores along the lake of two mountains. And you just keep going, and they're on both sides of the highway. And they range from little shock-like buildings to these multi-story structures. You walk in and there's massive wall of hash or vapes or, you know, shatter in all these colorful brands and magic. mushrooms and gummies, and then they open up to a bar with big screen TVs, and sometimes there's a DJ at a DJ booth playing, and then there's slot machines. You know, these are Las Vegas-esque

type of operations, all the way through the community until you drive out of Geneseadege and into an area of farmlands. Wow, wow. And, I mean, talk to me, you know, a bit more, I mean, just the way you're describing, I can imagine some of this, but what is it specifically, you know, about the megastores and the way that they operate that's causing so much concern in the community? Well, it's the amount of people that they draw into the territory not only through what they sell, but also the events that some of these megastores have put on. events that, you know, drawing thousands of people from, you know, nearby Montreal that turns the, the community into basically a parking lot with so much traffic. And this is a territory with, it's not a huge place. And then you almost double or maybe even triple the population because of some of these events. I mean, last year, they, they even, you know, hosted a set by Snoop Dog. I mean,

And because you're mixing, you know, weed with booze, there's erratic driving and parties going on late into the night that, you know, create hazardous conditions on the highway for the people who live there. They have, you know, people parking on their property, wandering, you know, through their yards. They don't know where they come from. And it's all fueled by, you know, these megastores and these massive parties that they throw on where they make lots and lots of money. too. And there's also this concern that that these places are attracting organized crime, right? Were you able to get a sense of the extent of that problem? Well, if you spend time speaking to people, it's one of the things that comes up. And many people don't want to speak out because they fear retribution. But I did manage to speak with three of the

candidates who were running for Grand Chief who were willing to go on the record. And all three of them stated that, yes, organized crime had infiltrated, and I want to be specific about this particular word, had infiltrated some of the operations, not all of them. It's only some of the operations. So even if our local population wants to change, you're going to have to contend with the likes of the Hells Angels, the mafia. whether that's Italian mafia, Lebanese mafia, Haitian mafia, or any others. There have been conflicts within operations and between operations where there's been arson

attacks in the middle of the night. We also approached the Surtaire to Quebec, Quebec's provincial police and the RCMP about this. Neither agency would confirm or deny or say there's anything particularly, you know, different about Gennis Adaghe. We also reached out to the federal public safety ministry, they said that they were aware of community concerns around organized crimes. So the federal government is aware. So we heard off the top there in the intro from these two women who are trying to protect, you know, this very famous part.

of Ghanesadaga that a lot of people will know the pines, who were talking about some of the environmental concerns stemming from this construction boom because of these cannabis megastores. And they took you on a walk through the woods. So, you know, talk to me about what they showed you in the woods that was so concerning to them. So these women have actually claimed a piece of forested land that sits between two large cannabis operations. operations. And they've put up a sign that was hand-painted by couples on white canvas, you know, protect our lands. And this sign kind of breaks the pattern of colorful placards selling weed, gummies. And this swathophores actually melds into the old front lines under

the great pines from the 1990 crisis or siege. And they took us walking, over down logs. You can see all the trees. They're all torn down. This is all new. This is fresh. And they point out how on some of these feld trees, you could still see the green in the pine needles, meaning that it was a fresh cut. And then he showed us this deep trench that ran back into the forest. was about three feet deep that they said was newly dug out. And we followed the trench for a bit. And then we found a second trench. And this one had this stagnant water, black water, dark water that smelt of sewage.

And we found out later that this was runoff from a septic system. And they said, this is what we're trying to protect, that people forget that these pines are connected to the stand of ponds. that was at the center of the crisis in 1990. The cannabis stores have done way more destruction on these pines than the golf course. Way more. At least the golf course is pretty to look at. It makes me angry. I just want to like get angry. That's all I feel is anger.

And it's not just the pines too. You know, there's stores that are taking up our shorelines. There are gas stations that are near our shorelines. We're here to share the land with our children, with different generations. We're not here to just share it and keep it for ourselves, for our one generation to get rich. All of this development has really only been in the past few years. And talk to me about how it is that these mega stores have been able to build up so fast. Well, it started really with the legalization of cannabis.

And that opened the door for, you know, first. nations across the country to try to cash in on this new economy. And it really took hold in Haudashone territory. And it caught on in Gennesadoggi. And one of the reasons that it has proved to be so lucrative on the territories because Quebec has a very rigid regulatory structure around cannabis retail. But in Gennesadaga, the selection is much wider. The potency is much wider. It has colorful displays.

None of the restrictions that are put on to the Quebec provincially run stores exist here. And that's really attracted people, it seems, and the events that they put around it. And then you put in that you add bars to it. You know, you can go and hang out on a picnic table, look at the lake with a pre-roll and a corona. That has really fueled a lot of traffic to the territory. And because there's no internal rules around these cannabis stores, the Bank Council has no real regulatory authority over anything that's happened because they passed no rules around it, unlike other places like Six Nations.

which is near Hamilton, that has, so it's become kind of a free-for-all. And that has allowed for a lot of money to be made. Guess who just bundled their home in auto with Desjardin insurance? Well, look at you, all grown up and saving money. Yes, I am. told you to do it, didn't she? Yes, she did.

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On now exclusively at ROM. Tickets at ROM.ca. Gona Zadagi is on the Ottawa River, and, you know, as you were just talking about, some of these megastores are on land that backs onto the water. and there have also been concerns about the ways that some of these owners have been extending their land out into the water using potentially contaminated infill materials. You know, just a bit of context here. You know, companies from outside the community are allegedly paying community members to accept this contaminated waste. This is actually a pretty long-standing issue in Ghana-Sadaga. There are, you know, criminal charges, court cases that are still ongoing. I'll actually just quickly shout out the independent outlet the rover in Montreal, which has done a ton of reporting on this.

But you were able to talk to Gary Gabriel, who owns one of these megastores, the green room. And he's actually also connected to some of these allegations of illegal dumping and the court cases there. But what did he say about these concerns about the big parties and about the environmental damage? Yeah, he owns the green room. and that's the one connected to the trench with the stagnant water. And I asked him about that, and he admitted it was runoff. And that's only overflow. So it's not poison water.

It's not contaminated. Around here, all the subtics, they'll have overflows on them. Okay. So there's... And it will be all... Anyways, it's all clean. I'm putting a whole brand new system in everything because the other ones that were here. They didn't do the right system.

He also said... Pascal's cutting cheese on the other side of the finds. And he's cutting the real cheese. We're not cutting no more cheese around here. No more cutting into the force that the women are trying to protect. And he said that the community as a whole benefits from these cannabis developments because it employs a lot of community members, a lot of families are connected to it. And he says that it's brought a lot of wealth to almost everyone on the territory because everyone is connected

in one way or another. It's not the whole reserve. The whole reserve is about most of this reserve is not that big. We're all doing this. And whoever's not doing it, they're working for the stores. We have a lot. All of these stores, we're the thousands of people that work now. Okay.

You know what is? I was, what, 80, 85 people work for my store and the same thing at Josh's. He also says this has also benefited the village of Oka and that their restaurants are doing better than ever. He also kind of scoffs at the idea of organized crime being involved. There's no organized crime in my store. I'm the only owner here. Okay.

I'm the only owner in my store. If anybody was part of it in his store, he would immediately get rid of them. But he said he can only speak for his own operation. You know what? I don't really bug with anybody or go into their business. Okay. But he says overall, because of the money that, coming in, that it's helped many people on the territory, in his words, get off welfare.

And he thinks it's a good thing what's happening. And, but he also says, you know, if there needs to be some control, they're willing to talk about it. And, you know, maybe just a bit of context for our listeners. When you're talking about, you know, these economic opportunities, like, this is a territory that used to be close to 700 square kilometers. And now it's 12 square. kilometers. It's still in a land claim dispute with the federal government. And this was traditionally a farming community. So you can see what it would do, you know, if you whittle away the territory that much, what it would do to the community's economic livelihood. So, you know, how, how does that kind of factor into what we're seeing now with these cannabis megastores, with the illegal dumping, with, I guess,

you know, people like looking for some kind of way to make money. You're right. Ginnisade has faced waves of land dispossession over hundreds of years, beginning with the French and the Sopisian Catholic Order running all the way to today under the federal government and the creation of Canada. They've continuously lost land to settlers and developments. And the shadow of the 1990 crisis has loomed large over the community and made it difficult, uh, for the territory to generate its own revenue because of all these things. Land dispossession and systemic racism and the hangover of the crisis have all hurt its ability to get an economy going.

So I want to talk to you. briefly about a couple other people that you spoke to. One of them is a guy named Serge Simon, who has a pretty different perspective from Gary Gabriel. He was Grand Chief for 10 years up until 2021. He's running for another term in the next election, which we'll get into. But his family runs two fairly small cannabis shops in the community. And so what concerns does he have about this whole situation. He thinks it needs to be reined in. The cannabis development needs to be reined in according to him. I'm fed up with all this and these people who are doing this seem to find any way to justify. The worst thing I could possibly do or any counsel could possibly do is to just step back and say,

you know what, we're just going to let it go. Eventually it's going to implode because they're going too far, too fast. And he says that people in the community need to sit down and really talk to pull the territory from the brink. We have to be able to talk, sit down and honestly talk. Just like our ancestors used to do. Because this situation he fears poses an existential threat to the future of Ganesa Daga. And you also spoke to another...

Grand Chief candidate, Brandt Etienne, and what kind of concerns does he have about what's happening in the community? One of his major concerns is that the organized crime elements are deep in some of these operations, making it very difficult, even if the community rose up and said, we've got to change this. He worries that that element could pose a threat and push back in violent ways. I might get shot. My house might be burnt down. The whole point of this, the whole point of being in governance is to make the, make, you know, our small piece of the world better for the people here. You can't honestly do that if you're afraid of repercussions. He sees the solution as being for the Ban Council to assert governance, to pass laws, to regular.

date this, but, but what I think the common ground, even though they're, they're all, they're all opposing each other, uh, the three main, uh, the three grand chief candidates, you all come to one conclusion that it's up to Gensadage to figure out how to fix what's happening. But it has to be done. It has to be. There's no way things are going to change. Uh, Ganesdaga has degraded over 30 years since the crisis because everybody is afraid to take a stance. All they want to do is go down memory lane and think about a myth about how things were in 90 and pat themselves on the back while the community crumbles around us. To understand how it got this way, we need to go all the way back to the siege of Gama Zadagi in 1990, which we've been alluding to a bit here.

But broadly speaking, how would you characterize the way that the federal government handled, you know, has handled its relationship with the community in the aftermath of that incident? The federal government's approach hasn't been consistent. It's swung wildly in two directions. On the one hand, the federal government has meddled in the governance of Ginnis Adagay, backing certain political leaders over others. And at other times, it's just simply just step back and allowed events to just spiral sometimes out of control and just let things happen. Right after the crisis, you know, the first. federal government intervened to back

who they thought was their preferred leader for the community and they, in the reporting of Dan David, you know, the federal government

basically imposed a government on the community forcing a leadership referendum and an election. But then when things don't go

their way, they just sort of step back and say, well, you know, Genes Dogga, you guys are under what's known

as custom code election. That means we can't interfere in your internal politics. So they just let it, uh, let things fester, which is what's happening now as well. Hmm. So there's this pretty pivotal event that happened in 2004, which isn't very well known nationally, but which as I understand it, has had a pretty major impact on the situations that we're talking about today, which was this attempted police raid on Kanesadage,

which you reported about years ago. And can you just give me a very brief rundown of what happened there? This was another case where the federal government was backing one political leader. In this case, it was a grand chief by the name of James Gabriel. And James Gabriel managed to hold on to power and telling the federal government he was going to clean out the community, organized crime, he, with the help of the public public safety ministry, basically plan what could be called kind of a mini bay of pigs. You know, like in Cuba, where the CIA hired mercenaries to go in on Cuba.

Well, this is kind of what happened in Guinness Dogging in 2004. And the word mercenary is not my word, but it's the word of Quebec minister at the time. because the Surratae Quebec and the RCMP both said no to this operation. And what this operation entailed was the use of 60-plus officers from MiGMA or in Angankan communities were armed with assault weapons to go in and raid the territory, 60-plus officers. But the community caught wind and they ended up surrounding this force inside. the Gennasadoges police station. And it took the police force, the peacekeepers from Gennuwage, which is kind of like the sister Hoshone community, and they sent in their peacekeepers to escort this force out of the

territory. And that was basically the beginning of the end of Gennasaday having a police force. And that led to the end of policing on the territory and basically, basically, set the stage for this situation right now where you have no police agency that patrols or is responsible and accountable directly to the community. Theoretically, the situation with these megastores would be, you know, potentially, like the people that would be there to sort this out, theoretically, would be the, Mohawk Council of Ganesadegh, which is the local governing body. But why haven't they been able to

step in? Well, like other councils before them, this council, or the last council, has been hobbled by pretty deep and intense internal divisions. You know, there was an ousting of the Grand Chief and one of the counselors known as Chiefs. And now the community is in a state of limbo with no one really in charge and it's unknown where things are going to go and it's in a bit of a political crisis right now. So what has afflicted the community in the past continues today and that there's these deep divisions within, you know, at the political level, that can't be papered over. Okay.

So, I mean, you know, as you've just laid out, this is an incredibly complicated situation. So many historical factors contributing to it. Where do you think this goes next? Like, how might this end up getting resolved? You know, Gennis Adaga is, if not, the oldest, one of the oldest, Genangahaga, Mohawk settlement territory on the continent. So this is a very old place. There's deep history here.

It also, this is a territory that has. has maintained its culture and its identity through sheer force of will. I mean, they've gotten no help from anybody, right? It's, it's they exist because they fought to exist. You know, Guinness Adage has this deep, deep history. And, you know, the, the future has always been in the hands of its people. And it's at a difficult time right now. It's one of those many people feel they're at a pivotal moment.

So, you know, where history will flow from here, that's in the hands of the people of this territory. Okay. Jorge, thank you so much as ever. Thank you for having me. All right, that's all for today. I'm Ali Jains. for listening to Front Burner, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.