Public Safety Committee on April 30th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Garrison.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here today.

When we look at the title of the divisions, they talk about national aboriginal policing. Your focus this morning seems to be primarily on rural and northern policing, whereas a lot of the contact between the RCMP and aboriginal people would be in urban situations and off-reserve situations.

Is that part of your mandate in the divisions that you deal with, or is yours really more dealing with remote locations and on reserve?

[D/Commr Doug Lang]

No, it's both. Again, if you look at Manitoba, for example, Winnipeg City Police has the city of Winnipeg, and Brandon has the city of Brandon. We end up with all the rest. Our interaction and where we have first nations policing units and aboriginal policing unit program positions are on our reserves and the first nations that we police.

While our aboriginal policing directorate people would be in Winnipeg managing the program and interacting with elders, chiefs, and councils that exist in Winnipeg, our focus in the service that we do is on where we have jurisdiction. I know we have a lot of work that's being done in Prince George, in Vancouver, and different areas from where people are and where the headquarters of the different first nations are that we have interaction with, but our service delivery is more focused on where we're policing.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I want to go back to the question that was touched on briefly just a minute ago, on recruitment. In terms of the overall RCMP police force, how successful has the RCMP been in the recruitment and retention of aboriginal regular members?

[D/Commr Doug Lang]

We have right now 1,166 aboriginal men who have self-identified and 313 aboriginal women. That's about 7.9% of our workforce. The labour market availability says that we should be at about 4%, so we're doing very well there. The retention we have for aboriginal members is fantastic. We've increased our target to 10% for aboriginal members.

As Superintendent Bates said, it's very interesting inside of our organization. We recruit aboriginal people for their specific cultural and linguistic capabilities in some cases. Then they get in and see the doors that open to them inside our organization. In my 35 years with the RCMP, I've had 14 different careers now in the different things that I've done, one of them doing aboriginal policing in Kamsack, Saskatchewan and Buffalo Narrows, Saskatchewan. That was a riot. I loved that stuff.

To open the door to get to an officer level position and to be a commanding officer or a criminal operations officer, you have to get out and get into the admin world. You have to try these different things. For the first time in our organization, we have an aboriginal commanding officer in the province of Saskatchewan, Russ Mirasty. We have an aboriginal criminal operations officer in the province of Saskatchewan, Brenda Butterworth-Carr, who I think has been here before. We have a Métis commanding officer in the province of Manitoba, Kevin Brosseau. We're watching them now rise up through the ranks of the organization and into positions, but it has been from them following a career path to get what they have to get, come into headquarters, get a look at the real world down here in Ottawa.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

You anticipated the next question. In terms of senior ranks in the RCMP, what kind of presence is there of aboriginal Canadians? Are there none beyond the commanding officer?

[D/Commr Doug Lang]

The commanding officer is assistant commissioner. We have one of our deputy commissioners, Deputy Commissioner Dan Dubeau, who is in charge of human relations and is of Métis ancestry from Bonnyville, Alberta. It's hard to tell, nowadays. In fact, if Tyler hadn't said anything, I imagine most people at the table wouldn't have known that Tyler is first nation.

[Insp Tyler Bates]

I'm Métis from Manitoba.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you.

I want to go back to the question of costs and talk about the question of demand for service. You've been talking about the rural and remote locations, the high costs of providing that service, and the very large amount of demand on the officers in place. You mentioned it in about the third paragraph of your introduction. You talked about being the only government representative sometimes.

Can you talk a little bit about what the demand drivers are in those communities for RCMP services?

[D/Commr Doug Lang]

This answers the other question that I never got to answer about whether there are any savings. Fortunately and unfortunately, the Canada Labour Code and our requirements for officer safety in the past 10 or 12 years have driven us from the model that a lot of us in the room would have seen when we were young: one- or two-man RCMP detachments in certain places and both the guys were six feet five inches tall, weighed 260 pounds, and were capable of looking after themselves. That's not there anymore.

We have come to a model of a three-person detachment. If we were to open a new detachment, we wouldn't open anything less than a three-person one, because that allows us to always have two people on the ground for backup. We can't have one person anymore. We fought that battle occupationally, of not having that kind of backup. We had members in communities who had been shot up in the past number of years, people pointing rifles at detachments and houses and those kinds of things. We can't go back there anymore.

This new reality of having to have a three-person versus a two-person detachment has changed the way we've responded. We have people sitting in places who don't have very much to do. People in the far north get involved in the community doing all kinds of things. You can imagine in the wintertime there's not a heck of a lot of files going on. They're not vaccinating dogs anymore. There's no traffic work for them to do. Their criminal caseload of files to handle is not there.

We've gone through the migration in the prairie provinces. For example, when I was in Manitoba we moved people from the quieter places in the south into the busy places in the north to try to equalize the Criminal Code caseload that a member carries. That's a continual thing. Part of it is getting ahead of getting housing in there for extra members in the communities where the growth is happening and those kinds of things. It takes a while to catch up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You may want to add some of this to another question later.

Mr. Leef.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to both of you.

Deputy Commissioner Lang, you mentioned that you were just in the Yukon, which is the riding I represent. I was wondering if you would have had an opportunity to see some of the work that's being done in response to the “Sharing Common Ground” report, the review of Yukon's police force which Mr. Scarpaleggia talked a little about, throwing financial resources toward policing. We are talking about the cost of policing, but one of the costs of policing is intrinsically tied to the cost of crime. I think of the Yukon as a great model right now, albeit the review of the police force wasn't done as an economics of policing exercise. It was done out of some high profile cases that came about. When I look at what they're accomplishing, I can't help but think that some of the things they're doing right now are going to achieve some substantial savings on the cost of crime end.

The Northern Institute of Social Justice is doing a career orientation program to recruit women and first nations into policing. There's the establishment of the Yukon Police Council. The arrest processing unit now is being taken over by the Yukon government, so a different level of care is being provided to offenders. The RCMP aren't having to deal with cell block services in the community of Whitehorse. They've come up with a specialized unit for a coordinated response for domestic violence and sexual assault.

Communities are now involved in the selection of commanding officers who are coming to the communities. I think four of the communities in the Yukon have undertaken that already. They have community priorities now being established in their annual performance plans because some communities were doing well with that and others weren't, but they are now finding some success in identifying community priorities. They have a communications director to develop communications strategies to enhance citizen engagement, which will ultimately help reduce crime in the communities. They have a commanding officer's first nation advisory committee, which is working well with different groups, women's organizations and first nations organizations.

I was wondering if you had an opportunity to see that in the works. Maybe you could comment on how you see that working in the Yukon and how you see that potentially being rolled out in the rest of Canada, if it's a positive model.

[D/Commr Doug Lang]

In fact, my visit to the Yukon was eye-opening. I was supposed to go up there for the northern symposium in the fall and I couldn't make it. I had a ticket I had to use so I got to go up there and see the things I didn't get to see last year.

I was quite impressed. The changes they've been able to make and move forward on there, especially on community engagement, are something else and a model for other people to follow.

My comment on that, though, is that it was really done with not much of an increase in funding. There were a couple of bodies that had to be added to the mix, but it was done with the resource level they had. If you go in there and ask that commanding officer to make all those changes and live with a 20% budget cut, he ain't doing any of them, because there's simply no fat left there to cut any more.

We've talked about the salary dollars that are the big cost user of our fees. That little piece you have left to do any of those initiative-type things is pretty small, and it takes the whole division getting together with the aboriginal communities and everybody else to move these issues forward. But you have to be there, you have to be at those tables, and you have to be dedicated to doing that.

They have a good group of people up there doing that now and watching that move forward.

I got to meet with all the auxiliaries. They happened to have an auxiliary meeting one night when I was there. I got to meet with a group of five or six auxiliaries and they're all government people, guys who have boring government jobs with the Government of Yukon who want to get out on Friday night and drive around with the boys. They go out and they take charge of the check points during bicycle runs and dogsled races and those kinds of things. They're so happy to be involved with the people.

The interaction in the community up there.... If you had told me about the stuff that went on before the changes, I would not have believed it. The community up there is so supportive of their law enforcement. I had to shake hands with half the people in Dawson Creek when I was there. They were telling me about the great work these guys are doing.

We've pulled some great people out of there, like Brenda Butterworth-Carr from Dawson Creek. I tried to go and see her mom, to say hello and be adopted, but that wasn't going to happen. It's fantastic stuff.

What do you do up there in a community like Faro, which is kind of shrinking? You have a detachment there but everybody from the government on down who I talked to said, “No, this is community safety, a community pride thing. Don't touch our RCMP detachment.” When we talk about there being room to shrink that perhaps because the caseload is down, people say, “No, not our detachment. We want you there. You're part of our community.” If you take away the three Mounties in the community of Faro, you take away the power-skating teacher, the hockey coach, and so on. There is some fantastic stuff going on up there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Monsieur Rousseau.

You have five minutes.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for being here.

I'll ask you to use your earpiece because I'll be asking the question in French.

I am always impressed when I hear stories about officers who work in the north, where they have to be more autonomous and versatile when performing their tasks. My riding, Compton—Stanstead, is on the border and has different divisions. I have spoken with officers from my riding who have served in the north. They told me that the problems up there were like the ones we had here, but there were 10 times as many of them and they were 10 times worse.

An officer has to be a social worker, a mental health professional and a substance abuse professional. How do you manage to do all that with the resources you have, especially when it comes to training? We are told that online services are not very adapted and technology is not really an option. How do you ensure that the officers receive the training and updates they need to be able to deal with all the social issues they face in the north?

[D/Commr Doug Lang]

It's a bit difficult to answer that question. We are actually unable to meet all the needs in the north. That's the problem. Our basic training focuses on the responses police officers must provide as part of their normal duties, such as investigations and basic interactions with people with mental health issues. However, it's not the officers' job to resolve those issues or provide advice on how to get better. Health care professionals have that responsibility. The problem in almost all northern communities is that we are the only government representatives present.

People can ask me what could be implemented to improve community life, but it's not up to police officers to do that. That responsibility belongs to health care professionals—whether we are talking about psychiatric nurses or people who can care for all the community members struggling with alcohol or drug addiction. That's not our role. If all that could be moved from our plate to someone else's plate, the problem would improve in all northern communities. However, that's expensive.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

You said that an attempt was being made to reduce divisions. However, your officers provide community services at the same time. They may be coaching hockey or participating in the community in other ways. The existence of those divisions is extremely important, since the officers are literally part of the cultural life of the community. So it's key for the divisions to remain as they are.

There's something else I would like to discuss. You talked about material resources. Some of your outdated equipment and radios used for communications need to be replaced. Is there any equipment that is absolutely necessary in emergency situations that should really be invested in?

I have an example. My riding is close to lakes Memphremagog and Champlain. I was told that RCMP officers have been unable to use their motorboat for two years because they don't have the money to maintain it. I assume you have similar problems in the north.

[D/Commr Doug Lang]

Yes, we have the same problems in the north. Today, in compliance with the Occupational Health and Safety Code, police forces' needs in terms of material resources and equipment have increased. That probably began 10 years ago and has been emphasized in certain circumstances. For instance, since the Mayerthorpe tragedy, in Alberta, when four RCMP officers were killed, all our officers have had to wear hard body armour, which is different from the soft body armour we used before. Another new piece of equipment is the patrol carbine—which I already talked about—a firearm that's somewhere between a .308 calibre rifle and a shotgun. That's a SWAT carbine our officers will be able to use in school raids where students may have been taken hostage.

When police forces see that other police forces already have that equipment for their SWAT team or their officers, they want it too. We have the same problem. In special circumstances—for instance, when shots are fired at their house—officers serving in the north may ask to be provided with an armoured home or other equipment. We know that sad cases like that happen, so we can't be asked to deny our officers their request.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lang.

We'll move back to the government side now for the last four minutes.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

In the last few minutes, I want to follow up on a few things that my colleague, Mr. Rousseau, was asking about.

We've had some really good testimony from, for example, Prince Albert, where they run something called the HUB and COR program. We've also heard from Calgary. Again, it's a very large urban centre, but a number of agencies have come together and are working on the preventative side of crime. We've even heard from rural areas, such as Manitoba's Selkirk, Stonewall, and Dauphin, where they run something called START. It's initiated out of the community, but the RCMP plays a role.

I guess here's what I'm asking. I think it's a tough issue and it's not one that's going to be solved very quickly, but there's a huge difference between a first nations reserve in northern Manitoba and a tiny town in southern Manitoba. The population might be the same, but we know a very, very different way of living. I know that when I lived on a reserve getting parents to come to parent-teacher interviews was virtually impossible. There was a disengagement for many, many reasons. We know that there are a lot of reasons for some of the disengagement.

I'm wondering, though, because it has been a while since I lived on a reserve—and Superintendent Bates, I think you mentioned that you were policing up north, and you really enjoyed it and saw great value in it—is there an opportunity? Are there first nations reserves.... I'm thinking especially of northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and even Ontario, because we know there are some very difficult...they're the Shamattawas, and certainly in Quebec.... How do we use a model like START or HUB and COR, some of these programs where we are not just involving government agencies, but where the community comes together and says that it wants to participate in helping to prevent crime, where the community says, “We want to take responsibility for our neighbours' kids and for our kids and do this together”?

Are we seeing some movement in that area? Is this more an issue of just how tough life is on a reserve and how many times people are.... Let's face it: again, in a small community in southern Manitoba, if you want to move to another community, you just move. If there aren't jobs or opportunities, you move, whereas if you've lived on a reserve your entire life, there are certainly some constraints, not just physically but even emotionally: how do you leave this place and do you want to leave it?

We've heard such great things about these preventative programs. Do you see any opportunity or a place for them to happen on a reserve like Shamattawa?

[D/Commr Doug Lang]

I'll turn this over to Tyler in a second. It's not that we're not involved with those programs. It used to be Chief McFee, when I knew him at SACP, and now he's with the Saskatchewan government. We used to call that, even in Winnipeg, stepping on a sausage. If the Winnipeg Police Service or the Prince Albert Police Service step hard on a crime problem in their area, we know exactly where it goes, right? The meat goes into the sausage and they come back into RCMP jurisdiction, because we police the outside. We're involved in these.

That was one of the best things about Dale McFee's HUB concept in Prince Albert. Once they got it going, and got all the agencies going in Prince Albert, they involved the RCMP in the rural area. There was no more putting pressure on the little kid from Buffalo Narrows, in Prince Albert, and making him go home. That used to be great crime prevention—isn't that right—send him back home. The whole loop was there. Even if you sent him back to Buffalo Narrows, we have people in Buffalo Narrows ready to monitor his behaviour, to involve the school, so we interacted in those things.

Those tentacles are slowly reaching out. We have a number of those different HUBs going on in Saskatchewan, in Prince Albert, in Yorkton, in Saskatoon. The problem is magnified by the city, but we are involved in a number of those and taking an active part in them.

I'll let Tyler speak to it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We're pretty well right out of time. What I would like to do, though, is make an offer to you. If you have questions that you didn't feel you answered to the extent you'd like to, perhaps you would send the comments in to our clerk. He'll circulate them and we'll all be able to hear the rest of the answer.

Unfortunately, we have another panel waiting for us, and one of them is video conferencing, so we can't go over. I know we'd like to expand this. Aboriginal policing is of great interest, and certainly we appreciate the RCMP bringing you here to instruct us a little bit about what happens there, and the challenges. Thank you for doing that.

We're going to suspend momentarily and we will prepare the teleconference, and our other guests are here as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Good morning, again.

This is the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. We're going to continue our study on the economics of policing in Canada.

With us here in Ottawa we have Chief Bob Herman, the chief of the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service. Our committee appreciates your joining us today, sir.

Also, appearing from the Government of Yukon by video conference from Whitehorse, we have Robert Riches, assistant deputy minister, community justice and public safety, Department of Justice.

We want to thank both of you for appearing. Perhaps you could each give an opening statement, and then we will go into rounds of questioning that we'll take from the government and the opposition.

We'll begin with Chief Herman, who is with us here. The floor is yours for about 10 minutes.

[Chief Robert Herman, Chief of Police, Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, and watchay.

First, I'll give you a little background. The Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service, or NAPS as it is known, is the largest self-administered first nation police service in Canada. We police an area basically above the 51st parallel, from the James Bay, Quebec border to Manitoba, up to Hudson Bay. We police 34 of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation communities. It's quite an extensive area and certainly has a lot of challenges.

I know my time is limited, so I'd like to touch on three issues that are imperative to first nation policing, especially self-administered first nation policing.

The first thing I'd like to say is that first nation policing in the province of Ontario is in a crisis state right now for a number of reasons. The last negotiated line-by-line budget for first nations policing was done in 2007-08. This resulted in an agreement for three years. That agreement was extended for one year and currently is in a second extension into 2014. That extension was essentially forced upon the Nishnawbe Aski Nation due to the fact that the government came out with their funding model about three weeks prior to the deadline of the extension expiring. Because of that timeline, there was no opportunity to actually do a negotiation with the Nishnawbe Aski Nation. The Government of Ontario and Canada are stipulated in the tri-party agreement. We had to sign the agreement because as of April 1, if we didn't, there would be no cashflow. We would not be able to pay our bills, pay our officers, and continue policing.

There are a number of issues when it comes to sustainable funding. As I said, the last negotiated line-by-line agreement was done in 2008, but since then, partly because of the Kashechewan inquiry.... I must say that Canada and the Province of Ontario have been good in funding new capital projects for the Nishnawbe Aski Nation in getting new detachments. We've had 13 new detachments come on line and we have five more nearing completion, but at the end of the day, we still have seven detachments that don't meet the basic standards, such as having a fire suppression system or building codes within our communities.

Anybody who runs a business knows that when you outlay capital dollars to build infrastructure, there are yearly operational costs that are associated with that outlay. We have never received funding to actually cover those operational costs. For example, the cost of operations and maintenance of those detachments is about 72% higher than the rent we were paying in the old buildings we had before. As well, we had to move because our headquarters building wasn't meeting our needs. We had people all over the place in different buildings. In order to consolidate, we had to rent a bigger building at a 115% greater cost than we paid in the old one. Statutory increases to things like employee benefits as well as benefit costs have increased by 31%, almost $400,000. Yet again, we have not received any increase to our budget since 2008 in order to cover those costs.

Quite frankly, we've been robbing Peter to pay Paul, but Peter is not home anymore. We simply can't continue to do this. We are forecasting a $2 million deficit for the current fiscal year ending in 2014. Essentially, we're going to run out of money probably in December of this year in order to operate our police service.

If both levels of government are serious about first nations policing succeeding, then they actually have to step up to the plate and meet their fiduciary obligations and properly fund first nation policing.

I was listening to the statement made by the RCMP. There is a difference in Ontario. A lot of the agreements with the RCMP are community/tri-party agreements, where it's an enhancement. In Ontario it's self-administered police services. There are nine of us in the first nations policing program. The government does come out and say it's an enhancement, but the reality is it's a replacement. We have replaced the traditional policing. The RCMP left in the early 1970s; the OPP left in the 1990s; we've taken it over.

Second, I want to touch on staffing. As I said, there's been no full-time equivalent increases to first nations policing since 2007. You've probably heard about the police officer recruitment fund report, which was a one-time funding by the government. Everyone knew that going into it. It ended on March 31 of this year, but the way Ontario actually handled that money was to add 40 new first nations police officers in the province of Ontario. On March 31 of this year, those officers were laid off because the funding was not extended.

It has been the position of the first nations chiefs of police and the leadership in the first nations communities that those 40 positions should have been rolled into the FNPP to address the full-time complement that we need to address.

I can tell you that the crime severity index in first nations communities in Ontario, in the nine communities, is five times the provincial average. As a matter of fact, the top five in terms of the crime severity index in the province of Ontario are all in first nations communities, policed by first nations police officers.

Our officers work alone for extended periods of time. They are the only person in the community. Many times their backup is a member of the band council.

I was interested in listening to the RCMP say that they have a minimum of three officers in the community. I think I would die to have that luxury.

My officers respond to gun calls on a continual basis. As a matter of fact, around Christmastime we had a gun call where 114 rounds were fired. During that call we had two officers. The most senior officer there had six months on the job. That's normal.

Our incidents of post-traumatic stress disorder are much higher than those of normal police services because of the working conditions our officers have to work under. Five years ago, the Kashechewan coroner's inquest recommended that an operational review be done of first nations or Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service.

That was over five years ago. That operational review has yet to happen. Although there is a commitment by the federal government to actually fund it—that goes back a couple of years—we have received no funding in order to do that operational review. That would really go a long way to actually identify what the needs are.

The last area is infrastructure. It can best be illustrated by this example. We have no radio system, per se. Our radio system is basically an extension of the phone lines in our remote fly-in communities. Somebody phones in to the detachment and it's forwarded to their radio. But the range for those portable radios is about one kilometre. It's not monitored on a 24-7 basis. There is no lifeline. If the officers are alone and need backup, they actually have to dial in a keypad on their radio to get the OPP communications centre in either Thunder Bay or North Bay.

Quite frankly, that would not meet any health and safety standard, whether it be federal or provincial legislation, yet we do this on continual basis. I've been in communities where two officers on a portable radio couldn't talk to each other when they were a kilometre away. That's quite normal.

There is a fix for this problem. It's very minimal when you look at the global budget for the government. It's about $1.5 million. With the provincial and federal share, we could have the same system that the OPP have in their three remote fly-in communities. The system could be monitored by the Ontario Provincial Police.

In summary, I would like people to wrap their minds around the notion that the self-administered first nations policing program in Ontario is not an enhancement; it's a replacement. We are much more efficient. Public Safety Canada has done their own study that shows we've been able to reduce, for example, violent crime in our communities by 30%. Our clearance rates are much higher than most police services throughout Canada, and it's really a community-based policing program.

The first nations policing program has been a program for 17 years. It's time to change that. There is no legislative framework for first nations policing. I do know that a number of subcommittees are actually working on this right now, but it's time to move forward.

As I said, first nations policing in Ontario is in a state of crisis. That's not an emotional statement; that's a fact. We're going to run out of money by the end of this year. It will be very interesting to see what happens at that point.

I can tell you this: the community leadership in the first nations communities that we police want their own police service. They want to be policed by their own people. They want the same services that are afforded to every other citizen in this country. You live in communities where you get proper and quality police service. That's something we should be able to afford all the people in this country, regardless of their race or ancestry.

Meegwetch. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Chief Herman.

We were able to re-establish our connection with Whitehorse. We are very pleased to welcome Mr. Robert Riches, assistant deputy minister, community justice and public safety, Department of Justice.

Are we coming in loud and clear?