44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 16, 2024 11:00AM
- Sep/16/24 6:39:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, let me thank the member for Nunavut and the member for Timmins—James Bay for bringing this very important debate forward. Let me also express my deepest condolences to those who have been impacted.
We have been struggling with the notion of systemic racism in law enforcement for many years and across different jurisdictions. In this particular case, it was in different areas and involved different police services.
What would accountability and truth look like in these cases? I know there cannot be one particular answer because they are all different, but I would like to get a sense from the member of what she feels justice would be.
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- Sep/16/24 6:56:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I come from Ontario, where we do not tend to deal with the RCMP; we have the Ontario Provincial Police. I represent is Treaty 9, with the Nishnawbe Aski Police, NAPs, who were seriously underfunded. I do not know how many times we had to come to the House when they had no backup, with a single officer representing two or three communities, over 200 kilometres, by himself. Who goes into a dangerous situation without backup? The NAPS had to. They did not have backup radios. Why did we have someone die in Kashechewan, when those two young boys died? It was because we did not have proper funding.
There has been a continual pressure to get adequate funding to make sure that police can do their duties. Now, we are seeing the complexity of gangs coming in and we are seeing the opioid crisis and the mental health crisis. As Timmins police have said to me, this is beyond us.
What we need are the other options to be able to come to the table, like in Timmins where we have the Firekeepers, who can actually walk on the streets, keeping people safe, keeping people alive, because everyone deserves to know that their communities are going to be safe from gangs and opioids, and that the police who are doing it are not doing it through a racist lens, that they are doing it because they have the support and the clarity to know how to deal with these increasingly complicated situations.
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- Sep/16/24 7:00:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the subject of our debate today is important. The Bloc Québécois is concerned about it too.
I read a lot about the events that have brought us here tonight and that occurred just about everywhere in Canada except Quebec. That being said, Quebec is not free from this type of violence and injustice. There have been cases like that of Sindy Ruperthouse. Unless I am mistaken, my colleague mentioned her earlier. Sindy Ruperthouse was from the Pikogan community, near Val‑d’Or. Her situation gave rise to the Viens commission, which was launched by the Government of Quebec and which made several recommendations. We are therefore rather concerned about this. Not all of those recommendations were implemented, like so many other recommendations in this regard.
I am trying to sort all of this out. From what I can see, and maybe I am wrong, the police officers who are in the best position to deal with these types of situations are indigenous police officers, those who work in the various communities or who are from indigenous communities themselves, because they are more attuned to these situations and have a better knowledge of the community. I would like my colleague to talk about that. I am also wondering whether they may have more credibility with the indigenous population, which would enable them to respond more effectively.
If so, we understand that adding police officers to the various indigenous police forces would require additional funding.
Does my colleague not think that the solution would be to give more responsibilities to police officers from indigenous communities? I thought that was the case, from the other answers he gave.
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- Sep/16/24 8:00:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as we well know, drugs, abuse, violence and disappearances are a reality in indigenous communities. There are a lot of problems at the moment. We need to work with indigenous communities. Clearly, there are many acts that cause trauma.
If the member were in government, would there be special investigations?
I will give an example. Val-d'Or has a joint police force that works with indigenous communities.
If the member were in government, what measures might her government take?
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- Sep/16/24 8:25:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I believe that we should be raising the bar and the expectations that we have as parliamentarians, and as Canadians as a whole, of our Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I believe that the RCMP, as a law enforcement agency, should be a leader in terms of reconciliation and in looking at ways of dealing with the very serious nature of the issue. That is why I was glad a few years ago that they tabled their first-ever reconciliation report. We have a training centre. I say now, because I believe it to be the case, and I would be disappointed if it is not, that there is a great deal of dialogue with the indigenous community on what is taking place in the training of RCMP.
I realize we should never assume, but I would like to think that the bar is high enough that this is a reasonable expectation. Would he not agree?
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- Sep/16/24 8:44:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, first of all, I want to thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for splitting her time with me. Second, I did not want to interrupt. I think it is the first time I have ever yelled anything out in the House, but I remembered the name Benjamin Perrin. He is doing fantastic work in looking at the evidence and realizing things about the policies he used to espouse when he was in Stephen Harper's PMO, such as being tough on drugs and tough on crime. Despite how much he believed they would be helpful at the time, he says they really come down to being dumb on drugs and dumb on crime.
How does the hon. parliamentary secretary feel we can best address what I hope to get to in my speech? She is sharing her time with me. Can we ensure better training of police officers? They do not get a lot of training and experience before they hit the streets. Does she think that is part of the solution?
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- Sep/16/24 8:45:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, former public safety minister Ralph Goodale said to me one time that police officers need as much training in human rights as they do in criminal justice. The RCMP is working with the University of Regina and working to enhance training. We need to make police services safe places for women, for indigenous people and for racialized people to be able to come in and change the culture within the service. There needs to be better training; we also need to do a better job of recruiting a diverse base. Further, we need to look at whether the RCMP is the right service to be responding in indigenous communities and whether the indigenous communities should be designing their own policing model; we need to leave that up to each individual community.
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- Sep/16/24 8:46:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to extend my condolences to the families affected.
When it comes to the safety of indigenous peoples, could there be police forces?
Earlier, I gave the example of a joint police force in Val‑d'Or. Could more funding be allocated for that? Is that a solution? Could the government also provide benefits for police forces? What else could it do for indigenous communities and organizations?
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- Sep/16/24 8:47:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, yes, absolutely. Police services could be funded better, but I do not know if that is the answer. It falls largely upon the provinces and territories to fund urban police services. However, it is not necessarily having police responding. We need to be supporting those dealing with addictions, mental health issues and homelessness. That would not be driving people into crime, so we need to be getting to the root cause.
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- Sep/16/24 9:27:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the crux of my speech was about how we need to level the playing field between indigenous police services and non-indigenous police services. During my speech, I mentioned the disparities in wages, benefits and training. Those are all pretty important things when talking about policing, and not only with recruitment but with retention. I mentioned the funding model and that many of these police services, like the ones in northern Ontario, were on year-to-year contracts. The deadline for their funding lapsed and they had to run police services on a line of credit. That was pretty troubling to the chief of police and members themselves. They were trying to police 30,000 people as indigenous police services, and they did not even know if their funding was going to continue. As for making it an essential service, I mentioned that a few times in my speech. My answer to the NDP talked about that as well.
I agree with the member that these things do take time, absolutely. In 2022, the Prime Minister promised to work toward making indigenous police services an essential service, but it is three years later and still nothing has happened. The Liberals have been in power for nine years. The Auditor General came out with a report that said some pretty important things needed to be addressed in addition to policing, and here we are talking about them because some tragedies have happened. We need to accelerate this conversation.
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- Sep/16/24 11:55:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, to reinforce something that was indicated earlier today in regards to the RCMP and a number of actions, one of those actions was the first-ever report on how the RCMP needs to work on reconciliation and take specific actions to make a difference in building a healthier, stronger relationship.
It is important, as legislators, that we set a very high bar for our national law enforcement agency, and the expectations that they are moving forward on the issue, and working with and supporting, in particular, indigenous police services.
Would the member not agree that the expectations and the bar do need to be very high for our national policing agency? Part of that is making sure that there is a higher sense of accountability at that level.
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- Sep/16/24 11:56:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Winnipeg North for the question, and of course I do.
What I was trying to articulate at the end of my speech was the fact that not only does the current scenario and culture not serve indigenous people in this country, as the statistics clearly show, but it actually does not serve the police. For new police officers coming into the RCMP or coming into a municipal police service, those cultural elements do not help them do their job better. We need to see reforms to policing in Canada.
The thing that is so frustrating is that those reforms have been articulated in detail, in report after report, and we have not seen action from the government. I am going to read one recommendation:
That the Royal Canadian Mounted Police be transitioned away from a para-military force into a police service model with civilian oversight through a national oversight board with a legislated mandate to make this transition
This has not happened. In fact, reading through the report, which is from 2020, so few of these changes are under way. I share the dismay of others that the progress under the government has been so painfully slow.
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- Sep/16/24 11:57:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, although today is not a day which we celebrate, given the sensitive topic that we are dealing with.
I have two questions, and my colleague can answer both, or perhaps just one. He was just speaking about policing and moving away from the paramilitary style of the RCMP and its long history. There are a number of indigenous police officers. Is that something that he believes, that we should be consulting with those officers, or should that review come from outside?
Second, the member spoke in a lot of broad strokes with some specific examples, as did I in my speech. If he could do one thing moving forward tomorrow, what would it be?
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- Sep/16/24 11:58:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member's question was whether current indigenous police officers be consulted in the transformation of the national police force. I see no reason why that would not take place.
That would be a rational aspect of such a transition. However, there is ample evidence, and we only have to read the report from the standing committee to see all of the evidence lined up for transitioning to a civilian police force and ensuring that officers are getting the training and being given the tools to deal with the situations they are being asked to deal with.
We are actually doing them no favours by putting them into situations where they have no training in dealing with critical mental health crises, where they are put into situations that they are ill-equipped to deal with.
This idea of transitioning the model of the force towards a civilian model with a national oversight board would create much needed accountability. Maybe we will start to see some changes.
Now to the member's question about what one thing would I do tomorrow if I had the ability to enact any of these changes. That is tough because the most important single thing could be to read through all these recommendations as the government, pick one and implement it as quickly as possible.
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