Armed protesters who blocked Highway 117 earlier this week were scheduled to meet with Quebec government officials Friday despite criticism that police and other authorities were too lenient toward them.

'They tried many times to do it without having some weapons there. And they were removed from the road like a piece of dirt.'— Guillaume Carle, Confederation of Aboriginal People of Canada

The government agreed to the meeting about forestry regulations after the demonstrators disrupted an important route between the Laurentians and the Abitibi region on Monday and Tuesday.

Guillaume Carle, head of the Confederation of Aboriginal People of Canada, which participated in the demonstration, said he was satisfied with the result achieved by the rifle-toting protesters.

"They tried many times to do it without having some weapons there," he said Thursday. "And they were removed from the road like a piece of dirt. So now, what this has permitted … [is] for people to take notice of what is going on there."

Carle added that the rifles were not loaded.

Demonstrators could still face charges: police

Quebec provincial police spokeswoman Melanie Larouche said sometimes discretion is the better part of valour when dealing with such a demonstration. She pointed out that no one was hurt and the roads were eventually reopened.

She added that police could still try to identify and charge the armed demonstrators who blocked the highway.

Larouche said that after the death of a police officer in 1990 during a police raid on an aboriginal protest in Oka, a Quebec coroner's report recommended that police should try to avoid escalation during similar situations.

'They're non-natives': Algonquin chief

But local Algonquins said Carle and his group are not even aboriginal, and that neither were many of the protesters.

Demonstrators blocked all lanes of Highway 117 for most of Monday.
(CBC)

"They're non-natives," said Chief Stephen McGregor of the Kitigan Zibi Algonquins, who live in Maniwaki, Que., about 100 kilometres south of the blockade.

Algonquin band member Patrick Brazeau said it shouldn't matter who authorities thought the demonstrators were.

"I think the same standards should be applied whether it's aboriginal or non-aborignal," he said.

The protesters, who set up barricades on Highway 117 in La Vérandrye Wildlife Reserve on Monday morning, included both Carle's group and former members of the Barriere Lake Algonquins who left the community during a dispute several years ago.

They said they were protesting the living conditions of aboriginal people living off-reserve in the park and wanted the right to harvest dead wood.

They took down the barriers on Tuesday afternoon in anticipation of a meeting with the Quebec government.