Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister Blair, and thank you, Commissioner Lucki.
It's an honour to be here. I'll say two things at the outset.
Mr. Blair, you are, like me, a talker, so I'll have to ask you to keep your answers a little shorter. I have only six minutes here, and I don't want to be rude.
Second, I want to acknowledge the late Wayne Russett of the RCMP, with whom I had the honour of negotiating some very tense standoffs when I worked with the indigenous communities. Wayne understood policing as a social engagement about de-escalation and about building trust. We are here to ensure that all officers in all departments understand that the role of the police officer, as someone who can actually take on a very difficult and tense situation and de-escalate it, is vital.
With that in mind, I was interested in your comment that systemic racism is deficiencies in the system that bring different outcomes to different people. To me, the deficiency in the system is that 4.9% of Canadians are indigenous, and yet they represent nearly 40% of fatalities in the RCMP. The different outcome is like life and death. These numbers are staggering.
Minister, you talked about young black men being disproportionately involved in the system. When you were chief of police, carding was one of your very strong tools. You were very strong about it in the city of Toronto, and it was heavily used. Given what you know now, as my colleague Matthew Green has said, would you consider apologizing to say that it was a mistake using those tactics? What do you say about the use of carding that happened on your watch?