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

[The Deputy Speaker]

That is not a point of order. We have about 20 seconds.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think this is an important point to bring up about the G20. It spells it out in the report. I am happy to give this report to my friend across the way. It also shows that when the RCMP participated in the kettling at Queen and Spadina, they actually arrested five people, two of whom were undercover police officers. I think urban people in Canada are very engaged with this issue. You have just insulted a wide swath of the Canadian population.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Again, could I direct all members of the House to direct their comments to the Chair and not to each other or other members of the House?

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Mr. Speaker, on days like today it is discouraging to listen to what our adversaries opposite have to say. That just cannot be.

I am very disappointed, but not surprised by this government's approach, which is unproductive, indifferent and unfocused and whose failings have been laid bare. Today, the government is on the defensive because of its indifference. It is very evident this morning. Amendments put forward by the NDP included mandatory harassment training for RCMP members, a civilian body to investigate complaints against the RCMP, and an independent review body to avoid police investigating police. All these amendments were very reasonable and in keeping with what the many witnesses said. All these amendments were rejected.

Contrary to the recommendations in the O'Connor report on the Maher Arar case and the many witnesses who appeared before the committee, the government rejected the amendments and continues to favour an internal, perhaps even arbitrary, approach at the RCMP, as we would unfortunately expect, rather than an independent, external and transparent approach.

Unfortunately, Bill C-42 will not resolve the very serious problems that will continue to plague the RCMP. In the meantime, many people will suffer. We are obviously thinking of the women who experience sexual harassment.

Therefore, it is with great regret that we must oppose this bill for all the reasons mentioned and especially because of the lack of transparency and the government's blinkered approach to official opposition amendments.

The people in my riding of Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher sometimes ask me whether I am fed up with Conservatives' behaviour. Of course we are fed up. We cannot take any more of this closed-mindedness, this sense of divine authority and omniscience, the way the Conservatives do not want to listen to and consider other points of view, the bad faith. We are fed up with how the Conservatives always make their ideological agenda a priority, but especially with how, particularly lately, they are always using the buzzword “transparency” and talking about accountability when they are the champions of silence, the champions of working behind closed doors.

I cannot help but see something that is very suspicious in the Conservatives' attitude. What are they hiding by always calling for transparency and officially talking about accountability, when they have an agenda that they will never reveal?

This is very disappointing for us, particularly for those of my colleagues who have been asking for reforms for a long time, such as the member who is sitting right beside me. It seems that we are still working on the issue of harassment within the RCMP. The NDP has been asking the government for ages to take care of this situation, which affects many people, particularly women. It is a governance problem within the RCMP, a problem with the internal culture.

The bill that the government put forward is not a solution at all. We were hoping for a proactive approach and a strategy to prevent these regrettable situations from happening again, but unfortunately, the outcome we are seeing today is a dry, disciplinary, impersonal and ill-considered bill in which the word harassment appears only once. It is unbelievable. As I was saying earlier, although the amendments we proposed in committee were very positive, they were rejected, and the opinions of many witnesses and experts were ignored.

Once again, as is often the case, the Conservatives took a serious, systemic problem affecting the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and addressed it in a simplistic and—quite frankly—lazy manner. What is needed today to change the RCMP and reassure the public is a major change to the culture of this organization, something that this bill does not allow for. On the contrary, in a few years, we will once again be faced with the same problem because harassment will continue to be a serious problem within the organization. This bill does not reassure Canadians that their formal complaints will be examined with the attention they deserve.

Robert Paulson, Commissioner of the RCMP, has repeatedly said that a cultural change is needed. He said the following before the Standing Committee on the Status of Women:

It's the culture of the organization that has not kept pace... We haven't been able to change our practices and our policies...

[T]he problem is bigger than simply the sexual harassment.

David Brown, who led a working group on the issue in 2007 at the request of the federal government, also said the same thing. The name of that group was the Task Force on Governance and Cultural Change in the RCMP. It could not be clearer than that.

And yet rather than a real change of culture on the inside and outside, through unambiguous leadership and listening on the part of the minister’s office, we have been treated instead to a sort of “light reform”, which ultimately will do nothing to solve the fundamental problems we have been raising in the House for several months now, if not several years. It will do nothing to change the problems that have brought us to where we are and that this bill is supposedly intended to solve.

The system proposed in this bill for investigating the police completely fails to meet the test of logic and common sense. Bill C-38, which was cloned to produce the bill that is before us today, had provided that the RCMP would investigate itself in certain cases.

The strange structure we are presented with in this bill provides that in the case of serious incidents involving the RCMP—deaths and serious injuries—the provinces will step in and assign the investigation to an investigative body or police service. Otherwise, the RCMP may assign the investigation to another police service, and if that option is not available, the RCMP will carry out the investigation itself.

This means that the job of overseeing the RCMP is assigned in the first instance to provincial bodies, in spite of the fact that such bodies exist in only four provinces: British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Ultimately, and unfortunately, oversight of the RCMP is too often shifted to the provinces. This amounts to the federal government abdicating its responsibility and once again downloading the federal government’s costs onto the provinces.

I thought that the Conservatives wanted to reduce the size of government, since they told us they did, but that cannot mean that responsibility for the oversight of federal institutions has to be shifted to the provinces.

We are opposed to this Byzantine system because it can be simpler and more effective. We tried to do this through an amendment in committee, proposing that a national, independent civilian group be created that would systematically handle this and report to Parliament. Obviously, that amendment was rejected. We have to put an end to this system of the police investigating the police. Even the mayors of some municipalities are opposed to it.

We made proposals here and in committee to that effect. Our amendments and the recommendations from reports, task forces, commissions and witnesses have been waved off by a government that is running headlong toward disaster. Its stubborn insistence on doing nothing of any real effect is astounding, and we find it particularly tiresome.

The bill before us is also an abdication of the minister’s responsibilities. The proposal to significantly increase the powers of the commissioner of the RCMP amounts to running toward the nearest exit; it is the easy solution.

This is another abdication: the government should have led the charge against harassment inside the RCMP with a vigorous reform. Instead it is choosing to set up and endorse a system that massively increases the commissioner's powers, in the hope that this will change something.

All the witnesses and experts who are familiar with this issue say that we do not need more powers concentrated in the hands of a single person and that what we really need is a new system of transparency and independent oversight.

The Task Force on Governance and Cultural Change in the RCMP, which the government created in 2007, had another idea in mind. It proposed reforms that would bring the RCMP into line with the internal governance methods and structures used in civilian bodies, with a board of management that would oversee and could challenge decisions of the commissioner, that would require accountability, that could hear complaints from employees and that would exist within a transparent structure.

Unfortunately, what the government is proposing is, once again, the complete opposite. Clearly, the solution in this bill, which is to put more powers than ever in the hands of a single person, when what is needed is to overcome an organizational problem, will solve nothing. In fact, it may well create more internal problems and discontent.

This is a clash between two different philosophies. When the Conservatives are faced with a complex problem, they propose more powers in the hands of a single person, more order, more hierarchy, more unchallengeable or arbitrary decisions and more discipline. When we look at the same problem, we call for a system that is structured, transparent, well thought-out and systematic and that will act in the public interest and respect the rights of RCMP members, certainly, but most importantly the rights of the public.

In this bill, what the Conservatives are proposing is unprecedented: an enormous reform that will replace the existing commission that examines complaints against the RCMP and reports its findings to the minister with a commission that will examine complaints against the RCMP and report its findings to the minister. That is very impressive.

In conclusion, the people in my riding are not taken in by this kind of obsession with the rhetoric of transparency and accountability, and they hope that we are going to oppose this sham as long as we can.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what the member does not understand is that the system his party is proposing cannot be integrated into the RCMP Act. It just cannot be done. The power needs to be implemented within the RCMP Act first, in relation to the Commissioner of the RCMP.

To say that only the Commissioner of the RCMP would hand out all or any punishment or any other types of things is simply incorrect. The Commissioner of the RCMP would automatically provide options for deputy commissioners, assistant commissioners, chief superintendents, superintendents and anyone of commission rank They could also provide guidance or discipline to members across this great country.

The RCMP has to fix itself from within, because since 1873 we as parliamentarians have done it that way. We created the RCMP Act. Therefore, I believe that Bill C-42 goes in the right direction.

My question to the hon. member is this: does he believe that not supporting Bill C-42 would solve anything?

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

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

I used to work in communications and media relations, so I can tell the Conservatives that this is what I see as their biggest problem. They march in authoritatively with their solutions, as though they had divine power and knew everything. They refuse to listen to suggestions from others and disregard what witnesses have to say. That is what is most pathetic.

We cannot support a government that asks for our trust, when history has shown that it has duped us on many occasions.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to share with the House and the member who was speaking a comment from Paul Kennedy, who, as the former commissioner for the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, has all the credentials in the world to make comment on this bill.

He recently wrote:

The Government, at the cost of many millions of dollars, established a major initiative in the form of the O’Connor Inquiry to specifically provide policy recommendations upon which a new legislative regime of civilian review would be based. Bill C-42 presumably is a response to those recommendations. Having appeared as a witness before that Inquiry I am familiar with its key recommendations and can attest to the fact that Bill C-42 falls well short of the standard of review set by Justice O’Connor. It will serve neither the needs of Canadians nor the RCMP.

I am profoundly disappointed that a bill that purports to improve things for the RCMP falls so far short in the view of this expert. I ask my friend from Longueuil for his comments.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands for her question.

It is very sad to see an experienced and eloquent person, like the witness she quoted, be completely ignored. That is exactly what the NDP is referring to when we say that the government does not listen, and the Green Party clearly agrees.

These people have their agenda and a one-track mind. We cannot support a bill like this because it is too little too late.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, RCMP Commissioner Paulson indicated in an open letter in May 2012 that the government needs to enhance the powers of the commissioner in order to take disciplinary action and cited issues such as sexual harassment.

The Liberal Party believes that we need to deal with this.

My question to the member is this: does he believe that passing Bill C-42 would make the current law weaker?

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am not an expert on police forces, but like many of my colleagues, I have a lot of respect for the work they do.

These people live under huge amounts of stress. It exists everywhere, but if this bill does not properly address the unbelievable stress caused by sexual harassment, we might as well take it back to the drawing board and address real problems.

These people, who have complicated jobs and put their lives at risk on the front lines to protect us, need to feel that we understand their reality and should not feel that we are denigrating it.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to have an opportunity to speak to Bill C-42 at third reading. It is an important area of public policy that needs to be addressed by the House. Unfortunately it is our conclusion that it has not been addressed properly by the House, because the bill would not do what it is expected to do.

As previous speakers have said, the RCMP is a storied institution in Canada. As the member for Kootenay—Columbia said, it goes back to 1873. It has not always been a perfect institution, and we all know that. It has been open to criticism from time to time in its history for some of the uses to which it was put by various governments.

When I started practising law, the RCMP was regarded as the senior police force in the country. Police forces around the country looked up to the RCMP for standards and training and discipline and proper procedures.

Of late, unfortunately, people have become disconcerted with the way the RCMP has been able to handle matters, particularly those of an internal nature. We have heard complaints for a number of years about harassment, particularly the harassment of women. There are outstanding lawsuits by 200 women complaining about harassment within the force and the apparent inability of the force to deal with that issue. As a result of some constant prodding by the NDP in the House, legislative action was deemed necessary and taken. Unfortunately, the bill does not address the kinds of issues that caused the need for this legislation to take place.

We have talked about the need for a more respectful force in terms of having a proper method to deal with sexual harassment and a proper response to the concern about that harassment, the need for a broader and more balanced human resource policy and the removal of some of the more draconian powers that are proposed for the RCMP commissioner. None of these were accepted in committee.

The government's response to these problems is to create a more powerful hierarchy within the RCMP and to give the commissioner more draconian powers than ever. As the member for Kootenay—Columbia said, the commissioner is going to delegate all of these powers to various deputy commissioners and others. Instead of having a more balanced approach whereby people would have a right to have their grievances dealt with and issues responded to, we are going to have a top-down hierarchy, which will not inspire confidence but create more of a paramilitary organization. That is an anachronism when it comes to modern policing in Canada.

Obviously there needs to be discipline within a police force, and all of that should take place, but when it comes to matters such as complaints about sexual harassment, there has to be a safe place for people to go. People have to know that these matters will be dealt with. They should have a clear expectation that the professional police officers throughout the force, from the bottom to the top, are well aware of and sensitive to what sexual harassment is and what it can do. Previous speakers have outlined some of the particular ways in which that should happen.

Through some 18 amendments at committee stage, we talked about what could be done to meet some of these needs. All of these amendments were rejected by the government. These amendments included adding mandatory harassment training for RCMP members, and specifically adding those measures to the RCMP Act itself, so that it would be clear that this was a response to the problem. We wanted to ensure that there would be a fully independent civilian body that would be able to review and investigate complaints against the RCMP.

This is important. The model that was proposed was a model like SIRC, which oversees CSIS. It is independent, with decision-making power, not just the recommendation power in the bill. That was provided for as well. It was turned down by the government.

Third, we wanted to add a provision creating a national civilian investigative body. We still have the situation of the RCMP being able to investigate itself when complaints are made of improper behaviour by police officers. That is not right. There is an elaborate procedure in place that maybe the provinces would undertake something first and if not, then the RCMP would do it and potentially there would be some civilian role in that, but that is not good enough. Some of the provinces do not have the capability of an independent review. Also, there are three territories that do not have an independent police force, and the RCMP does the work there. It is going to be a situation of RCMP officers investigating cases involving their own activities.

The fourth one, which I just talked about, was to have a more balanced human resources policy, removing some of the powers that were proposed for the RCMP commissioner and strengthening the external review committee so cases involving possible dismissal from the force could have an outside review. Now the situation is that the final authority is being given to the RCMP commissioner, with no possibility of appeal or independent review. That is not right.

One of the complaints about that was made by the president of the Canadian Police Association, Mr. Tom Stamatakis, who stated, “Without any additional, and most importantly, independent avenue for appeal, I would suggest there is a possibility that RCMP members could lose faith in the impartiality of a process against them, particularly in situations in which the commissioner has delegated his authority for discipline”. The contrast to that would be the example in Ontario, where a police officer subject to a disciplinary process has the right to appeal that decision against an independent civilian police commission.

These two go hand in hand. Having a proper policy and proper disciplinary process, but also an expectation by police officers themselves that the process is fair and impartial would allow for the cultural change that is required to take place. As the commissioner said, cultural change is required, but legislation cannot bring about all of the cultural change. In fact, he said that the culture of the organization had not kept pace. Commissioner Paulson stated:

—the problem is bigger than simply the sexual harassment. It is the idea of harassment. The idea that we have a hierarchical organization overseeing men and women who have extraordinary powers in relation to their fellow citizens, which requires a fair degree of discipline.

It is the hierarchical system that he says has been part of the problem. Instead of making mandatory sexual harassment training part of the solution, instead of having a more balanced approach in terms of management and perhaps a board of managers to oversee this, what we have done is strengthened the hierarchical system. We have not found a solution to the problem that caused and brought about the need for legislation. Instead of solving the problem, this legislation has actually made it worse.

The member for Kootenay—Columbia asked why members would not vote in favour of it since, in part, it went in the right direction. In fact, we think voting in favour of this bill would not provide a solution at all.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, once again, I would like to congratulate the member for St. John's East on his speech. I must say that it is always a pleasure to listen to his fine analysis and his vast legal expertise as he picks apart bills that are brought before us.

I cannot help but draw a parallel between Bill C-15, which we are currently studying in the Standing Committee on National Defence, and the fact that the Conservatives refuse to hand more power over to people outside the system. That is what is happening with National Defence and military justice, and it is also what is happening here with regard to giving people outside the RCMP more opportunity to see what is going on within the system.

I would like to hear his thoughts on that parallel. Does he see a pattern in the Conservative government's actions?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his work on the defence committee.

Yes, we are going through a similar process as we went through on Bill C-42, for which the NDP brought forward a significant number of amendments. We are not through all of them yet, but so far the government has accepted none of the amendments we proposed, and that is the case here.

If there is a problem that requires a solution, legislation is brought forward. If it is inadequate and we provided means to address the problem for which the legislation was created in the first place, we would expect the co-operation that reasonable members of Parliament would address to an issue.

However, it appears the Conservatives say that it is their bill and they will not make any changes. They do not care what arguments are made and what support there is for them logically and from people who are experts in the field. They will continue to do what they want. This seems to be what happened here as well.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is the official opposition's national defence critic. I know that he is aware of the issue of sexual harassment in the armed forces, which is another government institution. I served in the armed forces. During my recruit course, I had sexual harassment training sessions, and they were given every year.

Does my colleague believe that they could have discussed this issue with other federal departments that have taken measures to prevent sexual harassment? Does he find it acceptable that the issue is not addressed in this bill, even though we know that in many cases it is very important to have women who are able to intervene and who are capable of doing the work of intervening in certain situations?

I would like to hear him speak some more and perhaps compare what he knows about sexual harassment at National Defence with the RCMP.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, there have been complaints in respect to both organizations, but what is comparable between the military and the RCMP is that we have hierarchical organizations in which the people who are senior in rank have an enormous amount of power over individuals below that rank. Therefore, in order to counter that, the culture has to have a very strong and robust anti-harassment policy and clear ways of dealing with it.

Neither in the bill nor anywhere else has the Minister of Public Safety mandated the adoption of clear anti-harassment policies within the RCMP containing specific standards for behaviour and specific criteria for evaluating the performance of employees. We need that kind of commitment from the government if the RCMP is to have the tools to deal with that, and the support and ability for discipline to take place and a fair process to deal with it. What is lacking is leadership by the government.