Bill C-42 (Historical)

Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act

An Act to amend the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment enhances the accountability of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police by reforming the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act in two vital areas. First, it strengthens the Royal Canadian Mounted Police review and complaints body and implements a framework to handle investigations of serious incidents involving members. Second, it modernizes discipline, grievance and human resource management processes for members, with a view to preventing, addressing and correcting performance and conduct issues in a timely and fair manner.
It establishes a new complaints commission, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (CRCC). Most notably, it sets out the authority for the CRCC to have broad access to information in the control or possession of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, it sets out the CRCC’s investigative powers, it permits the CRCC to conduct joint complaint investigations with other police complaints bodies and it authorizes the CRCC to undertake policy reviews of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
It establishes a mechanism to improve the transparency and accountability of investigations of serious incidents (death or serious injury) involving members, including referring the investigations to provincial investigative bodies when possible and appointing independent civilian observers to assess the impartiality of the investigations when they are carried out by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or another police service.
It modernizes the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s human resources management regime. In particular, it authorizes the Commissioner to act with respect to staffing, performance management, disputes relating to harassment and general human resource management.
It grants the Commissioner the authority to establish a consolidated dispute resolution framework with the flexibility to build redress processes through policies or regulations. It provides for a disciplinary process that will empower managers or other persons acting as conduct authorities to impose a wide range of conduct measures in response to misconduct and that requires conduct hearings only in cases when dismissal is being sought.
It also contains a mechanism to deem certain members as being persons appointed under the Public Service Employment Act at a time to be determined by the Treasury Board.

Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his comment. We truly listened to the witnesses; it really needs to be said. As parliamentarians, when we are in committee, one of our most crucial jobs is to welcome witnesses and hear what they have to say, in order to make our legislation better.

My grandfather, George Harris, was a member of the RCMP and had the privilege of being a member of the musical ride. I mention this just to bring into context my personal association.

I begin my remarks today by paying tribute to the women and men of the RCMP who work every day to help our communities stay safe. The essential service they provide, often in the face of great danger and ignoring many of the individual challenges that surround their work in order to fulfill their duties, deserves to be acknowledged and they deserve the best-quality legislation possible.

That is where our problems with Bill C-42 begin. I have been listening to today's debate and am moved by how passionately Conservatives have defended this bill today and by the fact that no government members have risen to explain why they refused reasoned amendments and recommendations by witnesses. Members of both the Liberal and Conservative parties admit that this bill is not perfect, but neither party is willing to take the time to get it right. New Democrats prefer to get it right the first time. That is what Canadians send us here to do: to pass the best evidence-based laws we can.

The New Democrats supported the intention of Bill C-42, to modernize the RCMP and address issues such as sexual harassment in the force, and voted in favour at second reading so that the bill would move to committee and hopefully be improved. However, after witnesses and experts testified at committee, it became clear that this bill has some deep and serious flaws that would not fix oversight at the RCMP without further amendment. It also needs to be pointed out that Bill C-42 would fail to act on any of the recommendations set out by Justice O'Connor in the Maher Arar inquiry that aim to improve standards of review of the RCMP to meet the needs of Canadians. This is very disappointing.

The Conservatives presented Bill C-42 as the solution to a dysfunctional RCMP, but clearly we are not there yet. The bill would not only fall short on addressing sexual harassment within the force, but it would also fall short in a number of other areas. The New Democrats, as mentioned, tried to address these shortcomings in committee by putting forward a package of amendments meant to ensure Bill C-42 would effectively meet the challenges the RCMP faces.

Those amendments included adding mandatory harassment training for RCMP members. I cannot imagine why the government side would oppose this. It makes no sense. We have clear problems in the RCMP with respect to harassment, and why we would not seek to have our officers receive the best quality training possible to prevent these issues from happening in the future is beyond me.

Ensuring a fully independent civilian review body to investigate complaints against the RCMP was another recommendation. This is something that Canadians, with municipal, provincial and federal police forces, have called for at all levels where such a body does not exist. We have had these kinds of bodies in the past and why we are still not moving toward that at the federal level is a shock.

We called for adding a provision to create a national civilian investigative body that would avoid having police investigating police. All across in the legislation we have numerous instances where self-regulation oftentimes does not work or creates new problems. Recently, with the biggest recall of meat in Canadian history, we have seen where self-regulation has gone with the inspection of foods. There are currently issues before the courts with respect to airline safety and self-regulation. Only 30% of Canada's fleet of airplanes has been inspected by Transport Canada in the last two years. Self-regulation causes more problems than it fixes. So we wanted to see a national civilian investigative body put forward.

We would like to see the creation of more-balanced human resource policies by removing some of the more draconian powers proposed for the RCMP commissioner and by strengthening the RCMP external review committee in cases involving possible dismissal from the force. On the other side, members want to put all the power in the minister's and the commissioner's hands. That is not how we would achieve a transparent and accountable government or national police force.

The Conservatives voted down every single NDP amendment at committee. They even ignored many very good recommendations made by expert witnesses at the committee. The Conservative government is standing by its argument that putting more power in the hands of the RCMP commissioner to fire individual officers will curb the issue of harassment in the RCMP, and that the RCMP commissioner should have final say on all dismissals, ignoring calls for more independence. Witness after witness explained that legislation alone will not help foster a more open and respectful workplace. We need to see an ongoing effort from the RCMP and the government to modernize the RCMP. This bill lacks the transparency and accountability necessary to bring about those changes.

We on this side supported the bill at second reading because we all acknowledge that despite its proud history and its ongoing exemplary service, the RCMP faces some serious challenges. What we are all hearing in our constituencies and have heard in testimony before the public safety committee is that there are at least three major challenges facing the force.

First, and one of the biggest challenges facing the RCMP, is the potential loss of public confidence. For many years the RCMP has been an icon in our society, and trust levels remain high still to this day, as they should. However, any time our national police force begins to lose public confidence we must be concerned as parliamentarians and we must address the causes of that loss of confidence.

The causes centre around a number of unfortunate and high-profile incidents involving the force, which have resulted in death or serious injury to the public. Whenever there are these serious incidents, some of this loss of confidence is to be expected because the RCMP is charged with the use of force. RCMP members are bound to face challenging situations. Some of that loss of confidence is as a direct result of public concern about the structures by which we hold the RCMP accountable. In particular, members of the public are concerned about the police investigating themselves. It is interesting to note that it is not only the public that has lost confidence in these accountability measures, but there is also a loss of confidence among serving RCMP members, who have every bit if not more of an interest in independent investigations.

We also have serious evidence before us of a second challenge, a flaw in the culture of the RCMP. The RCMP has become a workplace with a culture that all too often has tolerated harassment in the workplace and specifically sexual harassment. When we have more than 200 women who have served or are currently serving in the RCMP seeking to join a class action lawsuit alleging they have faced sexual harassment on the job, that is an important issue for Parliament and for the minister to address. The magnitude of that problem cannot be denied.

Finally, it has become clear that there is a problem in the management of human resources and labour relations within the RCMP. This is a flaw that many have acknowledged is responsible for failures to deal with these other challenges in an effective manner. It cannot be denied that procedures are long, complicated, time-consuming and fail to bring about the changes needed to address both individual behaviour and more systemic problems. Therefore, it is again a challenge that we must address.

The NDP has pushed the minister for months to prioritize the issue of sexual harassment in the RCMP. Bill C-42 does not directly address systemic issues in the culture of the RCMP. We want to be clear that the bill, by itself, will not change the current climate in the RCMP. The bill does indirectly give the RCMP commissioner the ability to create a more effective process for dealing with sexual harassment complaints, however, the word “harassment” only appears in the bill once, in a disciplinary context to deal with harassment after it has occurred. We want to see it prevented, to not happen in the first place.

This is opposed to what the NDP proposed, which was to put language in the bill that was more proactive in curbing the systemic issue of harassment and particularly sexual harassment among RCMP members, which the Conservatives sadly refused to do. We agree with Commissioner Paulson in saying that legislation alone is not enough to keep the public trust and that profound reforms to change deep underlying culture problems within the RCMP are needed to foster a more open, co-operative and respectful workplace for all.

I see that my time is rapidly expiring, so I will wrap up my remarks by saying, once again, how sad we are with the state of the committees in the House of Commons, as we see them go, time and time again, behind closed doors and prevent reasoned arguments and amendments from being put into bills before the House.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, many RCMP members are concerned about Bill C-42. They are afraid that in the provisions for whistleblowers they will not be protected under the auspices of the bill and they are worried about their job security.

Could the member address the concern that the bill does not address these concerns?

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this touches on the fact that all the power is going to be put into the hands of the minister and the commissioner. How are people going to feel comfortable bringing issues forward when it is their direct bosses who are going to be responsible for hearing them? This is why we need to have independent civilian oversight for the RCMP in order to make sure that people feel comfortable bringing these issues forward.

We definitely need stronger whistleblower legislation for the RCMP and in other areas of the federal government to ensure that when problems occur public servants and police officers can come forward and not risk losing their jobs.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his very convincing presentation.

I would like him to tell us, in his own words, why we need both an independent complaints commission and increased accountability from RCMP senior officials if we want to ensure that the police force does not end up investigating itself.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in my speech I mentioned other places where self-regulation is taking place and it is not working very well. In Ontario in the 1990s, we had another government, the Mike Harris government, which sought to remove civilian oversight from police forces in Ontario. I would note that three of the primary cabinet members of the current Conservative government were also in that government, so we see perhaps where some of those directions are coming from.

In that instance there was a tremendous loss of public confidence in the police forces because they were regulating themselves. There were no transparent processes put in place and there was no accountability. Above all else, we have to ensure through civilian oversight that we have accountability within our police forces when bad things happen.

[Paulina Ayala, NDP, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Saint-Jean.

A report from the International Labour Office contains data based on a 1996 survey of 15 European Union countries that included 15,800 interviews. It listed 6 million cases of physical violence, which means 4% of workers; 3 million cases of sexual harassment, or 2% of workers, and 12 million cases of intimidation, or 8% of workers. In 2009 here in Canada, over 20,000 cases of harassment have been reported, and the phenomenon is on the rise.

Violence and the workplace have always gone hand in hand, but although work was once a source of physical violence that could go as far as legal power over the life and death of a slave, today it is increasingly associated with psychological violence. This finds its origin largely in the new forms of work organization, and in management methods that emerged some thirty years ago and have led to deteriorating social relations, job insecurity and unemployment.

When referring to cases of violence, we must be sure to call them by their rightful name, so that everyone understands what we are talking about. According to the social and professional communities, one difficulty has to be taken into account: levels of tolerance for violence vary. Some forms of work organization and some situations are conducive to manifestations of violence.

The Conservatives introduced this bill in the House for first reading on June 21, 2012, and second reading on September 17, 18 and 19, 2012. Moreover, at second reading it was referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, which held seven meetings in October 2012, and a further sitting in November, so that a report could be adopted in mid-December. Today we are at third reading, and there really does not seem to have been any development in this bill.

The purpose of the bill was to restore public trust in the RCMP, and provide for clear and transparent accountability. Distancing itself from Canadian values with respect to law and order, however, the government seems to be forgetting that the best way of restoring public trust is to ensure transparency and remove any appearance of a conflict of interest.

Yet how is the public to be rid completely of its cynicism if the RCMP can investigate its own members, or in other words, if the police oversee investigations of their own actions?

I wonder about the fact that of the 14,000 words or so in the bill, the word “harassment” appears but once. As my colleague from Churchill pointed out, “harassment” is not even defined in the bill.

How is it that the committee considering these issues did not meet with a single representative of the RCMP who had filed a complaint of sexual harassment? Were these people not invited to attend the committee’s meetings? We would like to know why the victims were not heard from.

This is probably why Robin Kers, the union’s national representative, pointed out recently in an article in the February 4 issue of the Hill Times that the changes proposed by the government with respect to harassment within the police force were worthless, that they would not change so much as a comma in the RCMP code of conduct, and that the government had missed an opportunity to send a clear signal about accountability for harassment within the police.

Is this really surprising?

A clear and measurable policy to achieve parity between men and women in the forces would be the most constructive, structural approach to the problem of harassment. Representation of women in the forces currently stands at 20%.

On November 20, the assistant commissioner and human resources director, Sharon Woodburn, said that no concrete plan had been put forward to achieve the ratio of 30% to 35%, mentioned last April before a parliamentary committee by RCMP commissioner Bob Paulson.

I am concerned by the constant stream of harassment complaints received by the RCMP. My concern seems confirmed not by the constant number of complaints over the past decade, but by the reaction of the Minister of Public Safety last November, when he reprimanded the RCMP commissioner for discussing the gender analysis, in the interests of transparency. This did not reflect the will expressed in the bill's preamble about transparency.

On another note, the government seems to be acting in a contradictory way. On the one hand, it proposes to protect victims, something with which we agree, and it introduces a bill to increase the safety of witnesses. We talked about it yesterday. On the other hand—and after the NDP proposed amendments to deal with the concerns over human resources policies, in an attempt to rebalance them and, ultimately, reduce violence within organizations—the Conservative rejected all proposals to protect job security for members, particularly when harassment is reported. In addition to being harassed, members will be afraid to lose their job if they report someone. We seem to have here a government with a double standard.

Finally, I would like to quote Paul Kennedy, who held the job of RCMP public complaints commissioner for four years. He feels that the RCMP requires closer government oversight than what is provided under Bill C-42. The extended and repetitive situation that exists in the RCMP confirms the existence of a structural problem. Therefore, more radical solutions targeting the structure itself are required.

This is a worrisome problem that seems to exist everywhere and to be growing rapidly. The legislative approaches vary, as I am going to show.

The 2004 report entitled “L'État social de la France” and prepared by the ODIS proposes an analytical grid to evaluate the reality of moral harassment and specify its nature.

In Quebec, the Commission des normes du travail defines harassment as follows:

Harassment...at work is vexatious behaviour in the form of repeated conduct, verbal comments, actions or gestures: that are hostile or unwanted; that affect the employee's dignity or psychological or physical integrity; that make the work environment harmful.

The definition of harassment in the Act respecting Labour Standards in Quebec includes sexual harassment in the workplace and harassment based on one of the grounds mentioned in the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.

To establish that a case actually involves psychological harassment, it is necessary to prove the presence of all the elements of the definition: vexatious behaviour; repetitive in nature; verbal comments, gestures or behaviours that are hostile or unwanted, that affect the person's dignity or integrity, and that make the environment harmful.

While we agree that the police does not have a monopoly on violence in society, it is critical that the RCMP become a place exempt from harassment. The integrity of our police is at stake. That is why the state, as employer, must ensure that RCMP members work in a healthy workplace and are protected from the situations that I described.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Honoré-Mercier, in eastern Montreal, for her speech.

Her speech raised an important point. The parliamentary committee heard from witnesses from all walks of life: expert witnesses, former RCMP officers, former RCMP complaints auditors, judges, lawyers and harassment experts. These people have all kinds of different backgrounds. They are not opposed to having a modern police force. On the contrary, these people want Canada's police force to be one of the best in the world. Why is it that all of these witnesses were heard, but they were all ignored? They were not respected. Their suggestions were not taken into consideration.

Could my distinguished colleague explain why?

[Paulina Ayala, NDP, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague just touched on a very sensitive point, namely the value of democracy. In a democracy, we must listen to one another, set aside our differences and work together.

When the Conservatives boss us around, they undermine democracy. They do that instead of improving a bill that would benefit everyone. The government's position is dangerous. We are here to represent people and provide them with a better quality of life. We are not the boss of anything and we do not have a monopoly on the truth.

By listening to professionals in the field, we could improve our legislation and truly make life easier for our constituents. In my opinion, our democracy is starting to suffer. The members opposite seem to be going deaf. They are not listening.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened to the questions and the debate today. As a police officer who is on a leave of absence, I am ashamed to hear such rhetoric coming from one side of the House. We, in fact, have 13 police officers on the government side and we take this matter very seriously.

When the member hears members of her caucus talk about listening to the experts, has she read the transcripts that show the majority of the people who appeared in committee supported the government's position and decried the position put forth by her party? I would also like to know the cost that has been put forward by the NDP's proposal because, surely, it would not put a proposal forward to create a new bureaucracy without having costed it.

These are very clear questions. Has she read the transcripts? Why is she denouncing the experts? What is the cost for the bureaucracy the NDP wants to create?

[Paulina Ayala, NDP, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

On the contrary, experts have said that those who investigate cases involving the RCMP truly have to be independent parties who do not come from within the organization. If there is a problem within a family, it will not be resolved within the family. Help needs to come from elsewhere for it to be objective and transparent. Victims need to feel like they are being listened to. That is how to get results when it comes to whistle-blowing. The Conservatives did not listen to everyone in committee. That is clear in the transcript.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, contrary to what the member for Saint Boniface just said, witness after witness agreed with our amendments, except of course for the Conservative members.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Name them.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, will the member for Saint Boniface let me speak?

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. I would ask all hon. members to cede to whoever has the floor. I would also ask the member for Nickel Belt to move to his question quickly.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would gladly move to the question, if the Conservatives would only listen.

Expert after expert said that our amendments were good amendments, except for the Conservatives. Could the member tell me why the Conservatives are against the good amendments supported by witnesses?