To all the Toronto drug dealers migrating north to small First Nations to take advantage of the wounded, listen carefully.

The leaders say your time is coming to an end.

“We are mobilizing our communities, identifying these people… we are going to get rid of these people. We are going to get rid of this pressure that is attacking our children,” said Chief Adam Pawis, of the Shawanaga First Nation, about 270 km north of Toronto.

And First Nations will get a little more help in the future.

Indeed, a historic legal victory on October 30 won by the Mississauga First Nation set a new precedent in Ontario.

Mississauga, on the north shore of Lake Huron, successfully sued one of its own laws in provincial court to deport a suspected drug dealer.

As first reported by APTN News, Mississauga has taken matters into its own hands and hired its own lawyer to enforce the trespassing law.

“It took a long time,” Chief Brent Nigonabe said Thursday, during a special nation-to-nation talk about how First Nations laws can be used to keep drug traffickers out of the country. communities.

Mississauga’s trespass law was developed through its land code.

Twenty First Nations in Ontario have adopted land codes since the early 2000s, meaning they can manage their lands and resources under the Indian Act.

The code also means countries can create more laws, particularly to protect their communities from drug traffickers.

However, for years, no matter how many First Nations laws were passed in Ontario, the police and the Crown failed to enforce them.

This is changing.

Nigonabe said police have already been in contact “about the process to follow” with First Nations laws, which are just as enforceable as any provincial or federal law.

It can’t come soon enough.

For example, in Shawanaga, several suspected traffickers have been arrested by police in the small community of about 200 residents in recent months by the Anishinabek Police Service.

Alexandru Litvin, 41, was arrested in August and charged with trafficking methamphetamine, cocaine and Zanax. Police said he also had a handgun and Batman throwing knives.

Court records show Litvin is from Scarborough. He was also charged with drunk driving.

Terrence Smith, 23, was arrested in Shawanaga in September and charged with several offenses, including trafficking cocaine and violating court-ordered conditions of release on previous illegal weapons charges that are still before the courts.

Smith is originally from Etobicoke and was again charged with carrying prohibited knives when he was arrested in September.

A judge ordered him to return home to live with his mother on September 8.

Smith was arrested again earlier this week in Toronto.

Police allege he stole number plates and also breached his bail conditions by not being present at his mother’s apartment at 11pm each night.

“There’s more money to be made in central and northern Ontario than on Yonge Street in Toronto,” Pawis said on N2N, adding that he takes note of foreigners’ license plate numbers and gives them to the police.

Smith lived in the neighboring Wasauksing First Nation, next to Parry Sound, for most of the summer; that is until APTN heard about him in July, which is featured in the APTN Investigates documentary, “The big change”.

The situation only gets worse as you travel north along the Trans-Canada Highway, between Wasausking and Shawanaga.

Over the past five years, more than 1,000 people have died from toxic drug overdoses in the United States. territory.

There have been more than 600 in Sudbury alone.

“The impact (of drug traffickers) is devastating,” Nigonabe said. “We know who they are. We are having discussions with other First Nations. They say they are the same individuals.

Nigonabe said it was time to stop outsiders from taking advantage of people who have suffered generations of trauma.

Watch the full episode of N2N below to see how Mississauga hopes its efforts will help end exploitation.