Public Safety Committee on April 30th, 2013

[Chief Robert Herman]

The province has been good. The province actually enhances the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service through a number of programs. For example, there have been initiatives by the provincial government such as the community safety enhancement programs, and there has been funding through PAVIS, which is the provincial anti-violence intervention strategy. We have an additional six officers funded through those programs. They're fully funded by the province, as opposed to having the federal government—

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

That's ongoing funding?

[Chief Robert Herman]

That's correct. It's in perpetuity and, of course, perpetuity means the life of the government, so....

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Yes.

Let me ask you about infrastructure, because I know that's one of the biggest concerns in the remote communities in particular.

How does infrastructure work for police in these communities? Is it the responsibility of the first nations to supply the housing? Who pays for upkeep and so on? How does that work?

[Chief Robert Herman]

As a police service, we're not allowed to own infrastructure. That's a government rule. Because of that, the first nation is supposed to supply housing for our officers, which they have a tough time doing because they can't even supply housing for their own people. Yet on the other side of the coin, Health Canada has nurses, and there are teachers and emergency medical staff up there who have housing supplied for them by the government. They actually live in very nice housing compared to some of the places that my officers have to stay in.

For detachments, the agreements are between the band and the two levels of government, but the operating costs actually fall upon the police service. It's supposed to be part of our overall funding model, but as I said, 13 new detachments have come online, with four more coming on in the next year, and we've never received any money to actually operate them.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

I was having a chat a little while ago with a member of Parliament who used to be a police officer, an OPP officer. He indicated that when the OPP transferred the service to NAPS, the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service, everything was fine and everything worked well. What's happened since then? Why the dilemma that you're in now?

[Chief Robert Herman]

I'm not quite sure about it working well. First of all, the RCMP left the province of Ontario in the early seventies and turned it over to the OPP. When the OPP did it, they basically had the band constable program, which was a tiered level. The OPP would fly in to the communities—the northwest and northeast patrols—to provide policing, but first nations communities didn't want that. They wanted policing. They wanted the same level of policing that was afforded to everybody else in the province. We've tried to provide that, but we just don't have enough resources to do it.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Chief Herman, you have a lot of experience in policing. You've spent most of your career in Thunder Bay in the Thunder Bay Police Service, and you ended up as the chief of police in Thunder Bay. You retired and now have moved over to NAPS, so you know about urban first nations policing too. I wonder if you could make a comment on aboriginal policing in an urban setting and the challenges that you have as a police service in the isolated communities.

[Chief Robert Herman]

Well, first of all, I guess what was an eye-opener for me is when I actually started flying. I've been to 22 of the 24 fly-in communities and have met with the leadership and the officers. I can tell you that in terms of the standards that are in the northern policing communities, if I had tried to get away with that when I was the chief in Thunder Bay, I would have had the Ministry of Labour giving me orders to correct all those deficiencies.

The big question for first nations policing is about what legislation actually applies to it. Because that's iffy, it's hard to get people to come in and say, “No, you have to meet these standards.” I can tell you that the challenges are much greater in first nations policing. The experience that the officers get in one year is probably the equivalent of five years' experience in a municipal setting. They learn to be community officers. It's a different type of policing altogether.

I've spoken to the current chief in Thunder Bay. I've said to him, “For one month, give me the 10 officers who are causing you the most problems. I'll send them up north, and when you get them back, they'll be very happy to work for you.” That's the type of environment we work in. It's sad that I have to say that, but that's the reality.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Could you, very briefly, talk about retention of officers? I know that's a problem.

[Chief Robert Herman]

In our service, we've lost about 50% of our officers in the last three years. About 52% of our officers are non-native and 48% are native. It's very difficult to recruit native officers from the communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. Gill, please.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also want to thank our witnesses.

My question is for Mr. Riches.

Can you tell us what, in your view, are currently the greatest inefficiencies within the criminal justice system as it affects remote areas, and what solutions are currently being proposed to the ongoing problems in these remote areas?

[Robert Riches]

In Yukon, which is what I can speak of, as other people have said, the RCMP or the police are often all things to all people, and they're an expensive option. For us, the ability to move other service providers into the communities is sometimes limited, so part of the issue is how we support the RCMP and other police in their work, but also support communities with appropriate responses.

We're a small jurisdiction; we have very little ability to achieve economy of scale. We have three-member detachments in which members need holidays or need to move out, so we need to backfill them. Often this is done by air. It's all very expensive.

I would have to agree with others who have spoken that there are issues for which we need to have different resources, and things such as SCAN are part of this. Social services responses are part of it. Providing social services is really the largest cost.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

What immediate changes do you feel can be made to facilitate and increase policing efficiencies using existing resources in remote areas?

[Robert Riches]

I think we need to talk about how we help police forces, how we help detachments, how we help one community serve another community, providing for better economy of scale in places that are close enough together to do that. Yukon is a big jurisdiction, and detachments are a long way apart. These are some of the things we need to do.

Among some of the things we have done, we have a correctional centre that's been built for holding prisoners. Actually, holding police prisoners there has created an immediate efficiency. Instead of valuable police time being spent on detention, it is now being spent out on the streets working which is what they should be doing.

This is something we can't accomplish in communities, but the numbers of arrests and the numbers of people we hold in communities is very small in Yukon.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Is there any technology currently being used to track and share information among the parties involved in reducing crimes in these remote areas?

[Robert Riches]

I would say that the only mechanisms are informal mechanisms between people talking to each other. We have one police force in Yukon. We have the RCMP, and the RCMP communicates very well within its own organization. But as far as working with social service agencies and others is concerned, informal links are developed over time.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Can you tell us whether resources in mental health and social services are having a direct impact on day-to-day policing operations in some of these areas?

[Robert Riches]

What I can tell you is that resources are thin, and as I said, the geography is large. We do our best here to get services to communities. Most mental health services, etc., are centred in Whitehorse at this time, and people are brought to Whitehorse for those services. Certainly the community nursing stations in Yukon do an excellent job of working with people in the communities as a first point of contact, but for long-term care, it's necessary to move people to Whitehorse.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Would you be able to share with us whether you're aware of any other projects that you consider successful in increasing efficiency in policing efforts and that result in overall crime reduction?

[Robert Riches]

We're talking about crime reduction. One thing that is successful is the prolific offender management program, in which we have social service agencies, mental health staff, corrections staff, and police all working together on a caseload of about 20 or so people who are the most prolific offenders, whom we see the most. They provide wraparound services and structured case management, and those people tend to not be involved in as many criminal acts.

The one thing that does happen, though, is that there's an increase in breach charges. Administration of justice charges are increased over the short term, but over the long term they begin to decrease as the people are monitored for longer on the program. I think the prolific offender management program is a good model.

The community wellness court model is another one. It is also an integrated case management model, for people with substance abuse or mental health issues, who enter a different court stream. It's a case-managed court stream. We operate it out of a community wellness centre in the community. It's also an integrated approach. We work a lot with people with FASD and others.

These are things that aren't high cost to operate; they mostly use existing resources that are just rechannelled into more intensive case management and wraparound services, because we're managing the clients by risk.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Here is another quick question for Chief Herman.

Chief Herman, policing costs are increasing across Canada at a time when governments are taking action to reduce deficits. What do you see as an additional effective measure that can be taken to streamline efforts, reduce costs, and maintain the high quality of policing and protection for all Canadians?

[Chief Robert Herman]

I'll be very frank about this. I think you need to fund self-administered first nations policing properly, which would mean increasing the budget. At the end of the day, if first nations policing fails and they walk away from this model, the cost to the government will be approximately three times what it is now to police those communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you. The time is up.

We will now go to Mr. Scarpaleggia, please.