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In a statement, Klassen said she was trying to get residents what they needed.

Mihychuk said Thursday she never acted out of line.

“I find the accusations surprising, actually, and inaccurate,” she said.

“I will always stand up for people who are in trouble and victimized, and that was the circumstance of the Indigenous evacuees.”

I asserted that this was a completely unacceptable situation, and I'm not going to deny that I was insistent and assertive

The shelter visit occurred at the height of a large evacuation effort involving more than 4,000 people from three Aboriginal communities — Garden Hill, Wasagamack and St. Theresa Point — roughly 500 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

City hotel rooms were already filled with tourists, as well as hundreds of evacuees from another fire, so two emergency shelters were set up — one in a convention centre and one at a soccer complex.

First Nations leaders complained the shelters were no place for the sick, elderly or for people with young children. There were rows of cots in large open areas, it was a struggle to share amenities or have any privacy and people got sick from being in such close quarters.

Many of the evacuees marched in protest to the Manitoba legislature September 7 to demand hotel rooms.

Mihychuk became verbally abusive during a phone call, the Red Cross complaint says, and decided that some evacuees at the soccer complex should be taken immediately to a hotel in Selkirk, Man.. The Red Cross had access to some rooms there, but Garden Hill leaders said they did not want to go.

“Mihychuk then stated, ‘Selkirk is a nice place with a Walmart’ and that she will be taking the lead to go around the shelter and ‘load them up and ship them out’. (Red Cross senior disaster manager Cailin) Hodder aggressively identified that she was not to make a move without consultation with the community,” the complaint says.