Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for Mr. MacGregor's excellent question. You make reference to “national security”, and it's true that this is a particular problem in Bill C-20, because in the way it's currently worded, what can be considered a matter of national security is very vague, and if history is any indicator, it is incredibly difficult to get full and transparent disclosure from agencies like the RCMP and the Department of Justice.

Public Safety committee  I don't know if it counts as discretion when it's almost 100% of the time, when it's presumptive. I don't think that this would be considered discretion.

Public Safety committee  I don't know that it's as much a matter of threshold as it is of discretion. I think it would be entirely appropriate for an independent oversight committee to identify certain types of complaints and either flag them for informal resolution or as matters that really might be able to be cleared up by a meeting between the member and the complainant.

Public Safety committee  My understanding of Bill C-20 is that it's very much like its predecessor, in that 95% to 98% of those complaints are going to be referred back to the policing agency, and then if a complainant is not satisfied, the complaint will then be referred back for a review process by the CRCC or the PCRC, as the case may be.

Public Safety committee  That's correct. In the overwhelming majority of cases at present—and it doesn't appear to be any different under Bill C-20—the CRCC receives the complaint, but then in almost all cases it hands it back to the RCMP for investigation and determining—

Public Safety committee  It's certainly contemplated, both in the current iteration of the RCMP Act and under Bill C-20, and it simply has been the practice that with some exceptions, most things will be referred back to the policing agency for initial investigation.

Public Safety committee  Well, it's not in my view. They don't, and that's the issue. They can make recommendations, and unfortunately the process, as it stands, puts the CRCC in the unfortunate position of not really knowing what happened, because, for example, in an RCMP investigation, it's the RCMP that has handled that investigation and it's the RCMP that has put forward their recommendation for a disposition.

Public Safety committee  If done correctly, I think that's absolutely true and I think it would go a long way to encouraging public confidence in the RCMP and CBSA.

Public Safety committee  It would be ensuring that the review committee is independent in more than in name only, ensuring that we're putting a body in place that has the ability to subpoena the information they need and hold the parties accountable and ensuring in an unbiased way that there is transparency and accountability for law enforcement.

Public Safety committee  Not in its current iteration.

Public Safety committee  I think there certainly is, Mr. MacGregor. The best way to start is to ensure that the PCRC is strong and independent and capable, so that when other agencies or Parliament or anyone else becomes aware of issues, there's a place for them to take them and there's a process by which they can be addressed.

Public Safety committee  Thank you for the question. If you go through the Mass Casualty Commission's final report, it reads like a full accounting of the RCMP's failures, and those failures are revealed to be mostly systemic. The failures in most instances had very little to do with frontline members responding to the tragedy, but were in fact institutional and organizational problems.

Public Safety committee  I think there certainly can be. Obviously, the public doesn't have a great deal of visibility on management problems, by its nature, but if we have a robust and well-equipped oversight body, they're in a position, through complaints either within the RCMP or by other mechanisms, to identify, by divisional level or even by individual level at the officer stage, matters that need to be addressed in a way that really isn't captured by the current system, which relies almost entirely on members of the public and an individual interaction they've had with a particular member.

Public Safety committee  The critical issue is that it doesn't serve the interests of the RCMP or the public to have the RCMP investigating the RCMP. We have heard it can create issues of morale within detachments to effectively pit one member against the other in that process. It's difficult to expect confidence in the process itself, either from a public perspective or as a complainant, when your complaint is given to an independent body that then hands it off to the RCMP.

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon. My name is Michael Scott. I'm a partner at Patterson Law in Halifax. As the committee members are likely aware, we just finished a public inquiry in Nova Scotia into the worse mass killing in Canadian history. In the context of that inquiry, my colleagues and I were tasked with representing those who were most affected, those being the families of the victims.