Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, honourable members of the parliamentary committee.
My name is Brendan McKenna and I am the spokesman for the British Columbia Mounted Police Professional Association and the co-spokesman for the Mounted Police Professional Association of Canada. I've been involved in the association movement for 22 years. I am a founding member of both the British Columbia Mounted Police Professional Association in 1994 and the Mounted Police Professional Association of Canada in 2010.
The B.C. MPPA is a non-profit provincial association. It's the provincial arm of MPPAC, the national association.
I spent 30 years serving with the RCMP, all in British Columbia, primarily on detachment—including the largest detachment in the country, the Surrey detachment—in both medium-sized and small detachments in the north. I provided relief on a three-person isolated post when the nearest assistance was more than a two-hour drive, so I bring a fairly broad perspective to bear on this.
I'll begin by speaking and sharing my concerns regarding the lack of core components found in Bill C-7. I'll focus primarily on two areas: the factors to be considered in interest arbitration, and restrictions on the scope of bargaining in the areas of staffing levels and equipment.
Last year, the Supreme Court of Canada held that the right to strike is constitutionally protected. RCMP members do not seek the right to strike. They recognize that the work they do is essential. However, what they do seek is that an alternative to striking, interest arbitration, be fair and independent.
As the Public Service Labour Relations Act and Bill C-7 are currently drafted, the interest arbitration process for RCMP members is anything but fair and independent. Rather, an arbitrator must give preponderant weight to two factors, including the government's stated fiscal policy. This skews the whole process in favour of the employer. This is the opposite of fair and independent, and contrary to the charter of rights of RCMP members.
The British Columbia Mounted Police Professional Association calls upon the committee to amend Bill C-7 to allow an arbitrator to give equal weight to all factors and to not be required to consider the government's stated fiscal policy.
Another concern of the British Columbia Mounted Police Professional Association is in the area of restrictions on scope of bargaining in particular with respect to staffing levels and equipment. These two areas have a direct impact upon the occupational health and safety of front-line police officers. They have a direct impact on the quality of the work environment. Front-line officers who are overtasked, inadquately resourced, and underequipped cannot reasonably be expected to consistently deliver the high-quality service that the job demands and that the Canadian public expects.
We're being compared to civil servants under the Public Service Labour Relations Act. The survey of RCMP employees conducted by the previous government resulted in over 9,000 RCMP members clarifying that they wanted separate legislation solely for the RCMP and thus Bill C-7.
We know that the Liberal government is committed to ensuring that the Supreme Court of Canada decision is complied with, but we are concerned that this bill misses the mark.
Bill C-7 as written does not fully meet the spirit and intent of the Supreme Court of Canada decision that provides the right of collective bargaining to the RCMP. I submit that the court's intention was to clarify that RCMP members should be accorded the same rights and privileges as all other Canadians and Canadian police colleagues in the various municipal, provincial, and federal agencies.
The restrictions contained in Bill C-7 would be akin to guaranteeing a person the right to vote and then limiting the placement of voting polls to locations that cannot be accessed. Essentially, vitiating that right.
Those restrictions within Bill C-7, as currently written and unless amended, preclude RCMP front-line membership from having effective and meaningful input into two areas critical to occupational health and safety. This is because Bill C-7 misses many of the key fundamental elements found in collective bargaining in other agencies that enshrine organized labour in Canada.
There are several police associations around the country that have collective agreement provisions regarding minimum staffing levels, including the Toronto Police Association, Sudbury, Windsor, and the Durham Regional Police Association, just to name a few.
Anecdotally, I can provide my own experience in front-line operations. Our detachments are generally under-resourced. There's a variety of reasons for this. I believe the primary reason is that those individuals on the pointy end of the stick have no input. Contracts are negotiated between the federal government and either provinces or municipalities. Fiscal considerations appear to be the prime motivator
Policing is expensive. For many municipalities, it is the single biggest budget item, so it's understandable that they would want to control costs to the extent possible. However, this has resulted in chronic understaffing at detachments across the country, essentially leaving it up to the members on the ground to carry the burden.
In 2009, I was recruited to work at our provincial headquarters in British Columbia. The position was leading the unit, which focused on police resourcing at detachments around the province. One of the goals was to review each detachment in the province every five years to ensure that they were adequately resourced for front-line service delivery. Prior to my arrival, the unit had just completed a study which identified that one Vancouver Island detachment was so under-resourced that it required 26 additional front-line members to address the gap.
This client services unit was supposed to include two NCOs to analyze data and prepare and present the findings, and five public servants to mine and gather the data from computer-based record systems. Only one of the five public servants was hired. The other positions were blocked and the funding reallocated to another project. It was a notable irony that the unit responsible to ensure detachments were adequately resourced was itself so under-resourced that it could not meet its own mandate. Had there been a collective agreement in place, with provisions to ensure minimum staffing levels, it is unlikely that this situation would have been allowed to occur.
Thank you. That concludes my remarks. I'll turn it over to Pat Mehain in British Columbia.