Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill to start us off this fall in the House, and I am pleased to participate in this debate.
To start, I would like to talk more generally about the actions of police forces by sharing with members an incident I witnessed this summer.
I stopped at a Tim Hortons restaurant in my riding to get a coffee and work on my work plan. When I entered, there were three people seated at a table: two women and a man. After some time it became clear that the third person did not really know the other two. This third person was a woman in her twenties. She had her head in her hands and was crying. She was obviously very upset. This went on rather quietly for about 15 minutes. Then, two SPVM—Service de police de la Ville de Montréal—police officers walked in. They started to speak to the woman who was obviously upset, and took her outside. There was a long discussion that lasted a good 30 minutes. The police officers were extremely professional. They were very compassionate towards this woman. They asked her questions. This woman may have been suicidal or on drugs, or she may have been going through a psychological crisis. Eventually an ambulance arrived and the police officers helped the woman lie down on a stretcher. The ambulance obviously took her to the hospital.
I shared this story as an example of how wonderful and professional our police forces are, and how patient and attentive they are when they are helping individuals or facing a situation that could turn out badly.
This exemplary conduct on the part of Montreal's finest should not surprise anyone.
I know we are talking about misconduct of police officers, and specifically officers within the RCMP, but I think for every one incident of alleged misconduct or questionable behaviour by the police, there are thousands of incidences every day in the country, like the one I described, in which officers acted in a manner consistent with the highest professional standards, in a manner faithful to their lengthy and rigorous training and in keeping with the highest ideals of service to the community, the same ideals that led them to seek a career in law enforcement in the first place.
On a personal level, the police officers I know in my community are individuals of the highest integrity. They are committed to public service. I think of Roberto Del Pappa, the community relations officer at station 1 in my riding. I think of Paul Dufort, a detective for many years, a gentleman who had a career as a detective with the Montreal police prior to being elected city councillor in my hometown of Kirkland. I think of Michel Lecompte, now retired, but for many years a stalwart presence in Montreal's West Island community as commander of station 1.
There are many police officers serving in the House in a new capacity as elected representatives of the same people they once served as peace officers. I take this opportunity to salute their previous contributions to Canada in their role as members of various police forces.
It is true that what I described did not specifically involve the RCMP, and we are talking about the RCMP's problems today. However, all peace officers are pretty much cut from the same cloth. They are all members of the same family, life members of a true honour society, what used to be called a “brotherhood” before women joined the forces to serve in the same capacity as men and provide the diversity necessary in any public institution that aims to earn and keep the trust, respect and support of the general population.
I came to understand the deep and special bonds that existed within the police community through a friend of mine, the Honourable George Springate, who is now a senior citizenship judge. Many members in the House may have heard of him. He started his career as a policeman and then became a place-kicker for the Montreal Alouettes and helped win the Grey Cup in 1970. After that, he became a lawyer and afterward was head of the police technology program at John Abbott College in my riding. He has been a citizenship judge for a number of years now, doing an exemplary job giving the oath to new citizens. I have come to understand that Judge Springate knows every police officer in the country. Every time he runs into a police officer, somehow he seems to know him or her. Whether it is an RCMP agent or a member of other police forces or municipal police forces, he makes us realize that it is one big community of individuals, men and women, serving society.
It is true that there is some cynicism in our society toward police officers. Even when I was at that Tim Hortons this summer and the police officers were dealing with the situation at hand in an exceptionally professional and noble way, there were people in the coffee shop who somehow thought they were using too much force, which was absolutely not the case. Therefore, there is a level of cynicism toward the police. Obviously, to some extent this bill is intended to reassure the public that our RCMP officers are behaving properly.
However, I would like to suggest that this cynicism is really surface deep. Fundamentally, Canadians truly trust their police officers and feel they are there to maintain order and to do the best in upholding the public good. We just have to think for a moment that everyone here who might have kids probably would have given them the following advice: “If ever you're in trouble, lost or you need some help and there's a police officer around, go to the police officer”. A public that is cynical toward the forces of law and order would not say that to their children.
Also, we all know how much more comfortable we feel if we are in a situation where there is or the potential of a disturbance when we see a police officer not far away. If we see someone speeding on the highway and we just happen to see a police car not far away, we somehow feel much more secure. That means we really fundamentally do appreciate the work of our police forces.
This does not mean that police forces always operate in a perfect way or that reform is not required. Police forces are human creations. They are human constructs and human institutions. As a result, their management structures, procedures and operations are a function of legislation that is created by legislators. Sometimes some reform is required. The system is not perfect and changes need to be brought, especially as society evolves. Fundamentally, Bill C-42 is about changing procedures so that inappropriate behaviours can be dealt with effectively and decisively by the RCMP's internal disciplinary mechanisms. However, it is also about changing RCMP culture.
Organizational cultures communicate signals about what is expected, about what is tolerated and, conversely, about what is not tolerated. I would suspect that, as in any organization, the vast majority of RCMP officers' core personal ethics guide them instinctively toward appropriate behaviour, both as citizens and in their role as police officers.
At the other extreme, there are no doubt those who require clearer signals from the surrounding environment and corporate culture to inform them of what behaviour is acceptable and what behaviour is not.
The RCMP's internal disciplinary structures, policies and procedures must clarify, even simplify, those signals so that expected standards of conduct for a federal police officer are clearly communicated. Obviously, this has not always been the case. One simply has to look at the disciplinary process within the RCMP at the moment to understand how complex it is. It is really hard to wrap one's mind around the various aspects of that system.
Maybe this is one of the reasons why there have been some incidents over the last few years involving the RCMP; for example, the Maher Arar case where matters were not properly dealt with, where the RCMP took some false information to American authorities that resulted in Mr. Arar's imprisonment and torture.
Maybe it is the current system and its failure to communicate properly the inherent, solid values of the RCMP that has led officers to go astray in other ways. For example, in 2004 the RCMP raided the home and office of Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Neill. Soon thereafter, the Ontario Court of Justice ruled that the sections of the Security of Information Act used by the RCMP violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Somewhere there is a problem in communicating, to some officers anyway, what is expected in standards of behaviour. The court also found that the issuance and execution of the warrants in that case constituted an abuse of process by the RCMP and ordered that they be quashed.
Then in 2007, David Brown, a former head of the Ontario Securities Commission, released his report on allegations that senior RCMP officers covered up problems in the administration of the force's pension and insurance fund. He did not find an issue of cover-up, just mismanagement, saying the force requires major changes to its governance and culture: “We need fundamental cultural, structural and governance changes throughout the RCMP”. He went on to say that the RCMP structure and culture “is completely at odds with the reality of running a $3 billion enterprise”.
Today we are debating a bill that is intended to bring some reform, some clarity and perhaps some simplification to disciplinary procedures and other related procedures within the RCMP so they are clearly understood by RCMP officers.
In regard to the bill, we are especially pleased that the government has finally given in on something Liberals have been seeking for a long time: a civilian complaints commission with the power to compel witnesses to give evidence, to review the RCMP's compliance with legislation and regulations and to appoint civilian observers to assess the impartiality of criminal investigations.
One of my colleagues raised this point somewhat in a tangential way a moment ago in her question to the NDP critic. Yes, provincial police forces will be empowered, and I believe they are empowered at the moment, to investigate situations of potential or alleged misconduct by RCMP officers. However, the new complaints commission or complaints office, the name of which escapes me at this moment, will have the power to review investigations to see if they were truly impartial and will also have the power to call witnesses.
That is an important safeguard. Whether it is a perfect mechanism, we will see in committee. We will hear differing opinions on that, no doubt, and we will produce amendments as a result.
The RCMP is an iconic and thus powerful symbol for Canadians, but its identification with Canada and our Canadian values of order and good government is also international. If I am not mistaken, the RCMP or mounted police, as it is known, is the most identifiable symbol of Canada in the world outside our borders. We must restore that symbol's polish not so much to maintain the global community's esteem for Canada, though that is desirable, but more important, so that Canadians can have the confidence they require that our country's laws are being respected by those who enforce them and that the peace officers who work to uphold that respect are carrying out their duties with integrity. In other words, that the values that they represent are real and that there is no double standard in living and applying those values. That is why this bill is important. That is why we must get its detailed provisions right. We cannot afford, as a committee, as a Parliament, to slip up on this important task before us.
I look forward to participating in the study of Bill C-42 in committee and working with my colleagues in amending it where necessary. I sincerely hope that government members on committee will be open to suggestions from the opposition. The government probably has its own point of view of what needs to be amended, but I sincerely hope the government listens to the debate because these debates sometimes uncover issues that people who prepared the bill did not foresee, people within the department or ministers of cabinet. That is going to be an important part of this process, and I hope the government takes advantage of the committee process to make the bill better.
Finally, it is unfortunate that it took a letter from new RCMP Commissioner Robert Paulson underscoring the need for urgent reform before the government saw fit to act. It is also unfortunate, quite frankly, that it took some high profile sexual harassment cases to encourage the government to act.
We Liberals obviously wish to assist the new commissioner in the mandate he has been given to reform the RCMP's structures, disciplinary processes and ultimately its culture and credibility with Canadians. We are looking forward to working on the bill at committee. We will obviously be supporting it at second reading.
