Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members.
I am representing the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association this morning. I am currently the Public Complaint Director for the Calgary Police Commission in Alberta.
Today, I will be giving you my professional expertise, my first-hand experience. I spent five years conducting inquiries on national security. So I know the security service and the way it operates very well. I also know the difficulties the members face in their daily work.
For eight years, until 2006, I was chair of the Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP. I know the RCMP culture well. It is a culture that forces its members to preserve the prestige of the RCMP at all costs, certainly at the cost of their accountability to the public that the RCMP has to serve.
The previous government had the courage to call an inquiry into the rendition of Maher Arar. Just so you know, prior to the inquiry being called, I initiated a complaint as chair of the Commission for Public Complaints in Mr. Arar's case. Months later I received a two- to three-page letter in response to the calling of the investigation, saying yes, there had been a few little administrative glitches, but everything had been done well. Knowing what you know about the Arar inquiry, I think that has to bring up a lot of questions about the RCMP's ability to look at themselves and to examine themselves when something goes wrong.
The present government also showed a lot of courage in calling on Mr. Brown to conduct some studies and look at the culture and structure of the RCMP, and he declared the RCMP badly broken. Those were his words.
I have talked about the courage of successive governments in taking some action in shedding light on the problems of the RCMP as well as other agencies involved in national security activities. Now the real test comes when there is enough courage shown by this government, by opposition parties, to bring down the iconic RCMP from its high horse and make it truly answerable for the use of its extraordinary powers, the inadequacy of its training, its outdated policies, and its shameless culture of arrogance and superiority.
As you can tell, after many years of struggling to have the RCMP be accountable--I was chair for eight years and a part-time member for two years, so I was involved with the RCMP for ten years all told--I'm not very good at soft-pedalling my views, because they're based on first-hand experience and a very frustrating experience. Just like everybody else, I grew up looking up to the RCMP, and the biggest shock was being there and looking at what they were doing and having my bubble burst every week, every day I was there. It was a huge disappointment.
But what bothered me equally was that the rank-and-file members were really badly served by the unfair and callous way in which they were treated. It was something I worked on as well, but it wasn't something that was welcomed by the leadership at the time. The members--and I think you will probably have seen some of that in the inquiry that's going on in Vancouver--make a mistake, they're put out to sea, and they're on their own. It isn't fair to the rank and file. I think if there was more answerability, more accountability all around, the members would be better for it, and they would be treated better, certainly, the rank and file, who I admire very much.
I've been on the board of directors of the BCCLA since my departure from the complaints commission, and my involvement with the RCMP has continued, because we have made complaints about all the deaths in custody that have taken place in the past three years. We've also made a complaint about the RCMP income trust investigation during the election prior to the last one. We've been intervenors in the Braidwood inquiry in Vancouver regarding the tasering of Mr. Dziekanski and his subsequent death. Our involvement in these cases has elicited generally dismissive and arrogant responses. We have not received anything of substance, and actually one of the unfortunate responses came from the commissioner himself.
Despite the promises of change in the RCMP, I can tell you that as far as we have seen, nothing has changed. There's been no evidence of any change whatsoever, just based on the kinds of responses and the kind of cooperation we get when we make a complaint. Our goal is to work with them and to do what we can. Our organization, our association, tries to work with the police, and it's not working. It's not working with the RCMP. Up until today, it's still not working.
I am not referring to the dedicated rank and file. These members are dedicated. It's not a matter of the people in the organization. There is a culture that draws new members, who come in and are very dedicated. They have to preserve the culture and prestige of the RCMP at all costs. They do regard themselves as.... I am with the Calgary Police Commission at this point. The RCMP works with the Calgary police. I've been involved in some of the joint investigations as an observer, and it's very clear that there is an approach of superiority that really offends most police services, and I see it again today.
Lack of accountability does not serve the RCMP well. This is quite a personal experience that I had. During the Arar inquiry, the deputy director of CSIS, Mr. Jack Hooper, confirmed his initial resistance. When SIRC was first set up, he was my worst nightmare. I was the first investigator at SIRC who had to go into their files and look at their files. No other civilian eyes had looked upon these files before. He was in charge of liaison, and he resisted for almost a year and gave me nothing but problems. During the Arar inquiry, he confirmed that yes, he did resist, but he realized after about a year, and to this day, that they're a better organization as a result of the civilian oversight. I think that says a lot. He went even further; he said the RCMP would be a better organization with adequate civilian oversight.
Justice O'Connor provided a formula for accountability for not only the RCMP but also for all the other agencies involved in national security operations. The chair of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, Mr. Paul Kennedy, was here just recently. In his testimony before you, he talked about his inability to oversee the RCMP activities and a lot of the conduct that's complained about. It was déjà vu for me, because everything he said I had lived through while I was at the commission. As a matter of fact, in my annual reports during that time I often called upon Parliament for help, and I talked to ministers to ask for help, because I couldn't get the information to respond to complaints. There were all kinds of other issues that members of Parliament were involved with, and this wasn't urgent, I suppose, so nothing happened.
I went to Federal Court on two occasions to ask the court to help me, because I had no place else to turn and I couldn't get the information. There were two decisions in the Federal Court, and I can provide the references. You'll see in there that both the trial division and the appeal court said that it's not possible for you to do your job, that this legislation is outdated, that there are too many difficulties, and that it is the RCMP that decides whether you'll get the information and what information you'll get. My own comment is that it's like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop: they would get to decide what I would see or what I would not see.
Both courts said it's up to Parliament to bring about these changes, that they could not do it: “we interpret the law and agree with everything you're saying, but we are not the legislators, so you have to call on Parliament to do this.”