Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 5th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you very much.

We have Sébastien for two minutes, please.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, the Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador, Francis Verreault‑Paul, also appeared before the committee and spoke about the importance of establishing a tripartite table bringing together Quebec, Canada and first nations in order to have indigenous police services recognized as an essential service.

You have shown great openness today. Would you be equally interested in meeting with Chief Verreault‑Paul and the Quebec Minister of Public Security, who is also the minister responsible for relations with indigenous peoples in Quebec, within 90 days?

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood—Rouge Park, ON]

I'm supposed to call Mr. Lafrenière this afternoon. I texted him saying I would call him tomorrow. I have an ongoing conversation with him on a range of issues, and I will be more than glad to bring this up.

In fact, when we meet in person, this is one of the agenda items that we have: to be able to do greater collaboration. There are a couple of communities that we are now working on with some tripartite agreements, but I take your point about having a broader Quebec-wide program for first nations communities.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I am very pleased to hear that.

Several police chiefs, including those from the Association of First Nations and Inuit Police Chiefs of Quebec, Director Annick Wylde and Chief Dwayne Zacharie, have called for indigenous police officers to receive the same benefits as their municipal, provincial and federal colleagues. I am talking about equal pay and equal pension plans for work of equal value.

Do you have plans for a pay equity law for indigenous and non-indigenous police officers? Is it necessary to go that far to ensure parity and the sustainability of police services?

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood—Rouge Park, ON]

There's certainly a need for parity. I'm not quite sure, and I don't think I can answer, how we can achieve that right away. The policing space right now and the law enforcement space overall is quite competitive from an employer perspective, because there's also a lot of competition—RCMP, CBSA. You talk to my province, Peel Region, Toronto, Ottawa, everybody is hiring. Everybody's improving the numbers of law enforcement they have. It is a competitive field.

It is also one where there's a disparity in terms of those that are able to pay more, that have better benefits, that have greater retirement benefits and so on. Conversations need to be had. It's a longer conversation that requires many more partners at the table. It can be done only through negotiations, and it is not something we can necessarily mandate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you. Meegwetch.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

That brings us to 6:30. Thank you, Minister, for being here.

Thank you to the committee.

We'll suspend while we switch to the next panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

All right. We'll now go to the second panel. Welcome.

From the Department of Indigenous Services, we have Lisa Smylie, assistant deputy minister, strategic policy and partnerships. The Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness is here as well to answer any questions in the second round. Again, Bryan Larkin from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is here, as well as Chief Superintendent Lindsay Ellis, commanding officer of M division.

Welcome to all. We're going to proceed to the rounds of questions. We have Jamie first, for six minutes, please.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON]

Are there no opening statements?

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

I believe there are no opening statements.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON]

Thank you very much to our witnesses for coming in.

As I mentioned in the first hour and as we have heard in testimony, the ongoing issue being highlighted by the Auditor General and indigenous police chiefs themselves is with regard to the very short-term funding models. They make it very difficult to recruit, to plan and to retain. Are you hearing that with the partners you're working with in the field?

[Talal Dakalbab, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Crime Prevention Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Yes, it is something that we hear and it is something that we have heard in the past, and as the minister indicated earlier, it is something that we are working on.

We have had some successes and we're still working with all the provinces and territories to ensure that whenever we have a lesson learned that is successful, we apply it elsewhere. As the minister has said, some agreements now have been signed for a much longer time, up to 10 years.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON]

In terms of the RCMP, there are cases in which your jurisdictions may overlap. Are there conversations regarding mutual efforts to work together in order to keep these communities safe?

I know response times are obviously a major issue that is being addressed in this committee, but I'm curious to get your thoughts.

[Lindsay Ellis, Commanding Officer of M Division, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

In the Yukon, which is the area in which I am responsible for policing, there are several conversations at the community level and the first nations government level, and also with the territorial government, about community safety initiatives that we can collaborate on and about requirements that the communities may have.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON]

In those northern communities that don't have a full-time indigenous police service and rely on the RCMP—and I get the challenges you're dealing with—what is being done to ensure that there is some constant coverage or reliability of service?

That's not to say it's not happening, but maybe you can explain what is being done there to ensure that those communities are getting service.

[Lindsay Ellis]

The Yukon is fortunate in that the vacancy rate for RCMP members is quite low. It hovers anywhere around 9% to 10% for both soft and hard vacancies at any given time, and that is for the total number of police officers in the Yukon.

There are various things that we do to try to ensure that no community is left without a dedicated policing service in the community. That's within our national backup policy, which is overseen by me and my leadership team in the Yukon. Through the contract police service, we have dedicated relief teams that go out into communities when expected or unexpected vacancies occur, such as through life issues that come up with police officers, but our staffing and our presence have been fairly stable in in every Yukon community.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON]

Well, it is a beautiful place to live, especially in the summertime. In winter, I don't know. I'm not a winter guy.

[Lindsay Ellis]

I will disagree with you. Winter is beautiful as well.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON]

Dr. Hanley disagrees, but I don't know. It's pretty darn cold up there.

We heard during previous testimony that recruitment of indigenous officers is always a challenge for the RCMP, for a whole bunch of reasons—geography or whatever.

What steps are you or the service in general taking to ensure that you're reaching out to indigenous communities to get those voices and those bodies into your ranks?

[Bryan Larkin]

When we look at the challenges that we face, we provide service to 550 indigenous communities, and 450 of those are first nations, 40 are Inuit communities and 58 are Métis communities.

That being said, from a recruitment perspective, we have a lot of young Canadians who are actually interested in joining the mission and serving their nation as an RCMP officer. One of our focuses, though, is to ensure a diverse, gender-based approach to recruiting.

As I alluded to, in this year alone, our applications from Canadian citizens are significant and we're actually facing not a recruiting issue; it's really around processing, training and expediting those pieces.

Specifically to indigenous recruitment, as I alluded to, we have this year alone 405 who self-identified. Last year, 59 first nations, indigenous and Métis applicants graduated from depot. This year already we've trained 37, and that represents about 5% of all graduates coming through depot in Regina. Many of those go across the country, and many of those return to their communities.

In particular, as the minister alluded to earlier, 6.5% of our regular members are indigenous. Although that exceeds the majority of government services in the country, we won't rest on our laurels. As a result of that, we have a specific indigenous recruitment strategy. We have community engagement teams. We're looking at opportunities as we bring young indigenous individuals who are interested in the RCMP to depot to take them through an experience and through a learning piece.

Equally, at the same time for our non-indigenous members who are deployed, we work really hard on cultural competency. We acknowledge the past and we're working on the present, but we want a better future generation, so when a regular member who is not indigenous is deployed to one of the 550 communities, they arrive with a community cultural competency package. They have a whole concept and understanding of where they're heading to work, and that allows them to slowly build trust and integrate into the community.

Of course, naturally, our goal is to have representation in all the communities that reflects the community we provide service to. This is one of our key priorities. Is it perfect? No, but it is a continued work in progress through our contract indigenous policing program. Again, we continue to see the recruitment numbers of those who identify as indigenous increasing, and our goal is to move the numbers forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you.

You'll be able to pull that out in another answer, probably, but that's time.

Brendan, please go ahead.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you all very much for being here.

I am supposed to be in two places at once, so I might have to leave in the middle, but I do want a chance, Chief Superintendent Ellis, to ask you a few questions to give us a very brief portrait of policing in the territory.

You recently took on the commanding role. You've been dedicated to service in the Yukon for many years, and you've established relationships all around the territory. Give me a quick picture of what it's like to police in the Yukon.

[Lindsay Ellis]

The Yukon is a remote and northern landscape. The RCMP has a long history in the Yukon. I would describe it as a progressive policing environment in the Yukon, given the landscape of self-government agreements for 11 out of 14 first nations. The remaining three first nations are Indian Act nations but have many initiatives under way that are extremely progressive.

The policing landscape in the Yukon is continually evolving, modernizing and leading to be effective every day in a sustained way for the Yukon. As I mentioned, the vacancy rate is fortunately very low. There is a robust contract policing resourcing framework. There's also an equally robust first nations and Inuit policing program resourcing framework as well.

At this time, there are 11 first nations—11 out of 14—that have active community tripartite agreements with Canada and the Yukon. The RCMP provides service within letters of expectation to those communities, but all the Yukon communities receive services directly from us.

There have been a few opportunities for success that I'll mention here. Those have been through some funding and some resourcing through the first nations and Inuit policing program. One of those is to the community of Burwash Landing, which has a population of approximately 120. It is a first nations community of the Kluane First Nation on Kluane Lake, Yukon. It is on the most western border of the Yukon and Alaska. The closest police detachment has been the Haines Junction detachment, which was about an hour and 20 minutes by car. The next one is the Beaver Creek detachment, which is on the U.S.-Canada border.

That community had not seen dedicated policing since 1946 until last February, when two positions were provided to the Kluane First Nation. They signed on to a community tripartite agreement with Canada and the Yukon to have two positions that were dedicated to them. Those positions are staffed. The infrastructure discussions are taking place, and the letter of expectation is fully engaged with that first nation.

We saw the need in that community to be more present and to build more meaningful relationships, not just on the drive-by when we're heading to Beaver Creek or vice versa. The real policing needs were acute in that community. Some of the calls for service that we were getting out of our Haines Junction detachment were extremely serious. Some calls for public safety included guns and impaired driving. We were on the back foot of developing those relationships that are key and critical, not only to respond to those issues but also to participate in prevention exercises with the first nation to keep people safe.

I would say that the Yukon is evolving. It's progressive. The RCMP wishes to remain in the Yukon for many years.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso—Antigonish, NS]

I know a lot of chiefs have come to this committee frustrated with the fact that the RCMP doesn't enforce band bylaws. A lot of them have been talking about trying to remove drug dealers and trying to remove people from houses they suspect are selling drugs and hurting their communities. Is it realistic for communities to expect the RCMP to enforce bylaws around removing drug dealers from their community's boundaries?