44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 16, 2024 11:00AM
- Sep/16/24 3:10:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on this day 50 years ago, 32 women across Canada took an oath to become the RCMP's first female officers. They became known as Troop 17. Today we celebrate them and all women who have taken the oath since who selflessly serve in the RCMP to keep Canadians safe.
Can the Minister of Public Safety update the House on the efforts made to encourage more women to follow in their footsteps and join the RCMP?
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- Sep/16/24 3:11:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, 50 years ago, 32 brave women took the oath to become the first female RCMP officers. Despite facing challenges and discrimination throughout their careers, the women of Troop 17 persevered and have inspired thousands of women to proudly serve in the RCMP. Today, more than one-fifth of the RCMP regular members are women, and the RCMP continues its effort to recruit even more women to join the force.
I know all colleagues will join me in celebrating the women of Troop 17 and all those who proudly serve in the RCMP today.
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- Sep/16/24 3:43:53 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, I rise today to seek leave for an emergency debate regarding the recent deaths of six first nations people at the hands of police forces in Canada. The lives of indigenous peoples matter. Report after report, recommendation after recommendation, the RCMP is still instilling systemic racism against indigenous peoples in Canada. For decades, indigenous peoples have been injured and, worse yet, have died at the hands of the RCMP.
From August 29 to September 8, in just 11 days, Canadian police killed six people. All six were first nations. I honour the first nations families that are grieving and deserve justice. The injustices experienced by the first nations killed by the RCMP deserve our attention. Two were hit and killed by police vehicles. One was shot in the chest three times during a wellness check. Another was a 15-year-old child who had called police for protection. Two officers shot at him as he ran away. Two others were shot by police responding to service calls. This should never have happened, and we will not accept it.
With the exception of the APTN, not much other national media is exposing these deaths. Why? Because systemic racism and the deaths of indigenous people is normal and expected.
The government must answer this: Why do indigenous people continue to be victims of violence carried out by the government? As parliamentarians, it is on us to hold our institutions accountable. No more: We must show Canadians that their Parliament is addressing the institutional violence perpetrated in their communities, today.
The NDP and I are seeking an emergency debate so parliamentarians can discuss immediate measures to save indigenous lives, today. We must honour indigenous peoples. No more indigenous children must lose their fathers to the barrel of an RCMP gun. No more sisters must be stolen by the RCMP. No more indigenous children must get bullet wounds instead of help.
I call on you, Mr. Speaker, to ensure the country takes seriously the systemic racism that continues to kill indigenous peoples, to do your part to help indigenous lives and to demand accountability for indigenous peoples.
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- Sep/16/24 6:40:36 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, that is an important question. The response is a complex one, but some of what needs to happen is a true implementation of the MMIWG and TRC reports. They have made great recommendations to make sure that we do see changes in systemic racism.
We need to make sure there is indigenous oversight of law enforcement. That is another recommendation that has been made for years. Right now, with the current staffing of the RCMP, most of its members have always been people I can describe as having come from privileged white communities that have not been given the history and experiences of indigenous peoples.
Part of the reason systemic racism still exists is that there is still too much ignorance. There is still too much denialism about residential schools, for example. We need to make sure we are opening the eyes of Canada.
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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 8:23:10 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, my colleague's intervention was very thoughtful. I agree with much of what he was sharing with us, and I wonder whether he could respond to something that AFN national chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak has suggested, which is that part of the law enforcement problem with RCMP officers is that they are neither being taught de-escalation techniques nor being given enough cultural competency training.
One of the other solutions that we need to discuss in the House is to make sure that RCMP officers are both taught de-escalation techniques and are given cultural competency training so they could better serve the people who need to be protected at the community level.
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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 8:45:31 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 8:58:04 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, I would like to thank the member for her important intervention. This debate is addressing what I feel is like the tip of an iceberg, and I think she agrees.
There are so many examples of other issues with RCMP behaviour. In my riding of Nunavut, I have whole communities that will not call the RCMP because they know that the RCMP will not protect that community from the violence that they are experiencing.
We have seen other issues because of the RCMP's behaviour towards indigenous peoples and towards the Black community. There are stories after stories. As complex as this is, I wonder if the member could talk more deeply about what some of the other challenges are, because I do not think it is just law enforcement.
After this emergency debate was granted by the Speaker, I received a ton of social media, mostly in favour of the debate, but I also received a lot of vitriol, a lot of racism, saying, “Arrest them, arrest the indigenous peoples. They are the ones who are behaving badly.”
I wonder if the member has any messages that she can share with Canadians, showing that this is not an indigenous issue. All of Canada must help make sure that it is not just something that we direct at the RCMP.
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- Sep/16/24 9:02:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague, the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue. I am deeply moved by his words about our friend, my old friend Jonathan Pedneault, who has now stepped down as my deputy leader of the Green Party of Canada. As my colleague put it so well, Jonathan always makes decisions with human rights issues front of mind.
I think my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue is right. It is up to indigenous peoples to decide for themselves how best to protect their society. We need to hire indigenous people in law enforcement so that first nations can exercise their sovereignty. This issue affects all peoples in Canada.
As a non-indigenous person, I do not think I will ever trust the RCMP. I lived in small rural village in Cape Breton, and I know too well that the RCMP are not there to protect our lives.
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