Mba Attorney General slams Ottawa for cutting 45-year-old band constable program

WINNIPEG – Manitoba is slamming Ottawa for cutting front-line policing on dozens of the province’s reserves.

Attorney General Andrew Swan told a gathering of the governing New Democrats that he just learned of the cuts to the band constable program in January.

He says the 45-year-old program allows First Nations to police their own communities in partnership with the RCMP will be terminated in March 2015.

Swan says cutting First Nation police is part of a federal “line of attack” on aboriginal communities.

He says the federal Tories like to portray themselves as being about “law and order” but he says that’s obviously not the case.

Swan says today the federal government is cutting First Nation policing — tomorrow it could be health care and education.