Well, yes, that’s a different headline.

I would say to call the local union ahead of time. Call that local union, talk to the health and safety folks, know what you’re going to see and go and learn.

So I’m drawing from various personal experiences. I also was very fortunate growing up. Two of my uncles are now retired police officers and have worked in northern and remote areas in various provinces. One of them was very involved in the Torch Run and connecting police with community. I am glad to have learned a bit from them by osmosis. But also, I grew up in a community that was maybe not typical for many folks in Ontario. I grew up in different places, with my dad’s job. I’m not from Oshawa—but I got there as soon as I could—but small-town Ontario, where it was local police that did bike safety things on the weekend, and that was something that I remember doing. Those are good examples of community policing. I was a little girl who grew up and thought if I got in trouble, I would go to the police.

There are a lot of people in this province who do not feel that way. We as a province and we as lawmakers in this room have a lot of work to do, as we’ve talked about, in how people see the police, how the police interact, the tools that they have or that they don’t have and, I will say, the tools and resources that the police have been asking for, for a long time. Since I was first elected until now, we’ve heard from police about the need for specific training as they are recognizing the need themselves.

I remember talking to—it was actually an interim chief in Durham. We were talking about homelessness. We were talking about the challenges faced by folks in our community, and I remember that—and this is not a direct quote, but the spirit of what he said was: As a lot of people are concerned and complaining about the homeless population that are visible, the interim chief had said that we can move them, like we can have them push their shopping cart down the road, but we cannot house them. We cannot give them what they need. And what they were doing—and now this is me—what the folks are doing in downtown Oshawa that are washing their clothes in the fountain, they’re trying to get by. They don’t have a place to live, right? For the people who are constantly interacting with other law enforcement or community agencies, who are struggling maybe with addictions, often with mental health, often with a combination of both, they don’t have a hope in heck if we don’t care about them. If these are underserved folks, we as a province and you as a government need to be investing in the services that people are clamouring for—transitional housing, affordable housing, just the very basics. We’re talking about food bank use increasing. These are people who have needs, but there’s a lot of desperation that goes with that.

What I was starting to say about having served as the critic for community safety and correctional services, as it was named at the time, it was both my responsibility and my privilege to get to know the local police officers, the local police associations, the provincial police association and to have an understanding. Not everybody gets to hear the ugly side of day in and day out. I want to stand here and make it very clear that I respect and appreciate the work done by uniformed officers, by civilian officers, by those folks who work in policing, whether it’s in the nitty-gritty—I’m going to say—nerdy side of the science and forensics who are doing really neat stuff that maybe we see on TV, or the folks who are going into those hotels and are a kind face in Durham region. We have a coalition which I’ll talk about later supporting those who are victims of human trafficking. The police go in as part of a coalition, and they are working directly with people being trafficked. For those who are getting in the car or walking the beat, we’ve got a lot of struggle in Oshawa as many of our communities do, and I want to thank them for their service and I want to thank them for the work that they do.

Some of what I have heard not too long ago when I have met, as we all do, with our local police associations and with officers, there are a lot of staffing problems. I don’t think anyone in this room doesn’t understand that. There are retention problems. There are a lot of officers that are struggling with PTSD. There are a lot of folks who are not getting what they need to return to work, perhaps in a different role, that were needing a more robust plan with earlier interventions.

When it comes to the officers actually out in the community, they’re getting stuck sometimes in hospitals. That ambulance off-load challenge that we all talk about, we know that we run out of ambulances because there isn’t the staffing, there isn’t the space, there isn’t the support that we need in the hospitals. Well, the police officers are finding the same thing. When they are going to a hospital with someone in their care or with them that they have to stay with until that person has been received or admitted at the hospital, until they can leave, they have to sit there, and it can be hours. That is taking officers off the road, and it’s also a struggle for that individual often dealing with mental health to be sitting in that hallway in public basically, right?

There are better ways of doing things. If the government were really looking at strategies to deal with the mess in hospitals, that’s also a piece of this. I hope that the government is listening to the experience of the front-line officers and pulling out some other pieces and how it connects more broadly, like I said, with health care in that regard.

Something else that we had heard from police in our community—staffing problems in the 911 centre. These are folks that are behind the scenes literally answering the phone when we call in an emergency. It is traumatizing. I have heard that they drive to work and sit in the parking lot and cry because the weight of going into work is too much.

When folks are struggling in all nooks and crannies of law enforcement, how are we supporting them? What is it that that support looks like? We’ve got a lot of the—I’m going to say veterans—experienced police, who have learned a lot along the way, who have seen a lot, more than I can possibly imagine, and they are leaving. They’re taking commuted value and they’re leaving.

So we do recognize that we’ve got to have strategies for recruiting and retaining, but while we recognize that as a priority, we also have to have a really good plan for what that looks like to ensure that the officers coming in have what they need to be successful and have what they need so that the other officers that they’re working with are able to work with them and everyone is safe.

I went back in time because, like I said, this bill just dropped yesterday and, surprise, we’re debating it today and tonight and done tomorrow—quick as they can get it done, let’s get ’er done. I went back to some older reports; like I said, an oldie but a goodie. This is from Police Encounters with People in Crisis. It was a 2014 report, a Judge Iacobucci report recommendation. This was to the Toronto Police Service. I’m going to read just a few of them because when we’re talking about staffing and the recruiting of officers, we’re talking about what police forces need and can look like.

One of the recommendations, recommendation number 7, selection of police officers—this was about recruit attributes. The recommendation is that “the TPS,” the Toronto Police Service, “give preference or significant weight to applicants who have:

“(a) Community service: engaged in significant community service, to demonstrate community-mindedness and the adoption of a community service mentality. Community service with exposure to people in crisis should be valued;

“(b) Mental health involvement: past involvement related to the mental health community, be it direct personal experience with a family member, work in a hospital, community service or other contributions; and

“(c) Higher education: completed a post-secondary university degree or substantially equivalent education.”

At the time, the TPS said that they concur, that they will “continue to actively recruit the best available applicants who have community service, mental health involvement and higher education. Typically, 80% of recruits hired by the service hold post-secondary school education credentials.”

They go on to talk about “specific educational programs that teach skills which enable a compassionate response to people in crisis, such as nursing, social work and programs related to mental illness.” This is what they were recommending in terms of recruiting and selecting police officers.

Also, it says, “Recommendation” that “TPS direct its employment unit to hire classes of new constables that, on the whole, demonstrate diversity of educational background, specialization, skills and life experience, in addition to other metrics of diversity.”

It was interesting actually, Speaker, to look at the Toronto Police Service and their comments on these recommendations. I wanted both sides of it, and they concur. Interestingly, at this time—this is 2014 so, yes, it goes back a bit, and they said:

“Of the 226 recruits hired in 2014, 86.7% have a post-secondary school education, 55.3% speak a language other than English, and 28.8% speak two or more languages other than English. In the January 2015 graduation class, three members held doctorates, one in the field of health science.

“Selection processes now probe for those characteristics through documentation, credentials, references and interviews.”

It’s been an interesting read to look at the recommendations from various reports. I think we know that they all are sort of saying the same thing, that it matters; when a police officer is interfacing with an unknown situation, when they are interfacing with someone struggling with mental health needs, that you want officers to have the training, life experiences they had pointed out, diversity of background and relatability—all of those things are optimal. So if we’re moving towards not having that, I would really encourage this government to make sure that they are investing in training that stays in this area, that looks at mental health training for officers.

But, also, a big part of the recommendations in this report but in others—and again, this was from Police Encounters with People in Crisis. A lot of the recommendations are about supporting the police and their mental health. An officer who responds to four baby deaths in a career—what does that do to someone? And if we are not supporting those officers or if the psychological pieces don’t fit anymore, and that officer is expected to just keep going, and there isn’t that layered support, early intervention all the way along, a check-in, if they are able to be brought back to serve—because that’s a big part of identity for anyone who puts on a uniform. There’s an identity piece there. Is an officer going to—I’m going to be flippant here—put up their hand and say, “I’m not okay,” when it risks their uniform, when it means that they can’t be a police officer anymore? I don’t know.

So working with police and figuring out what it looks like for that officer, who says, “I need support. I need help. I’m not okay, and I am not safe to go out into the community in the state that I’m in”—or, excuse me, to have someone else assess that. Is there a place for them in policing, and what could that look like? These are things that we hear from the front lines, we hear from police. Nobody in the community wants an officer who is unwell to show up at an emergency.

Speaker, I am going to take a moment in this last second to say that I have here the Durham region’s human trafficking model. I’ve shared this almost entirely in this House before. I’m on the record about human trafficking, and I’m very pleased that I participated in a ride-along with members from the human trafficking coalition as well as the human trafficking division, the officers in Durham region. It’s really a remarkable strategy that they’re implementing. It really is a remarkable set-up in terms of that collaborative approach.

I went on a ride-along with the officers. I got to see behind the ugly, ugly, ugly scenes of human trafficking, to some extent. I got to go into a situation with a worker from a women’s shelter who works together with police. I got to go in with Karly Church, who is just a tremendous resource in this province. She’s a human trafficking crisis intervention counsellor. I think she is, if not the first, one of the originals to really have a huge impact. And we—it was together with the police, but we supported that survivor in a way that made them not only feel safe but has increased the number of times that a human trafficking victim will testify or will give information, because it is working with community agencies that support them.

So, in this bill, it deals with the judiciary in schedule 3. Much of what we have heard is that judges and folks in the judicial system are slow to understand this. When it was first new, it was a mess, and it continues to need work. I’m glad to see that there is specific training that will continue to be developed for those folks, and there’s of course work to be done.