Public Safety Committee on July 23rd, 2020

[Benson Cowan]

Again, in the Nunavut context, I think the data tells a very compelling story of what's going on. It's great to collect data and it's important to collect the right data, but where we have it, where the evidence is really clear, there's still a big gap in how it informs policy and operational choices on the part of institutions in the justice system.

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you.

I'll ask the same questions to Mr. Wright.

[Robert S. Wright]

My view is that collecting race-based data is always a positive thing. It's really critical that we begin, as a country, to better understand the real experience of an increasing diversity of Canadians.

In terms of the use of the data, however, that is where I would have a concern in that, if certain data is not reviewed from a critical race perspective by individuals who are informed about the nature of systemic racism, sometimes the data can actually support what I will call “racist claims”. If we take a look at data and we see that in a particular area Black people are committing more crime than white people, if we don't understand that Black people in that area are dramatically overrepresented among the poor, among those who don't experience positive engagement in education, among those who are systemically excluded from employment, for example, then the data isn't really going to help us.

What's really critical as we begin collecting this data is that we have specialized individuals within Statistics Canada who can apply critical race analysis to the data, so that we are not allowing the data to reinforce racist stereotypes.

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

You actually bring up a great point, and I'd like to follow up with you with another question.

You have a lot of experience doing your social work, and from the part of the country you're from, I know Halifax has a report on street checks employed by the RCMP. They condemned the practice as targeting young Black men and creating a disproportionate and negative impact on the Black community, leading to calls for a public apology. The CRCC has undertaken a review of the RCMP's policies and procedures regarding these street checks, but their report has not yet been released.

Are there any law or policy reforms that you think would be helpful at the national level?

[Robert S. Wright]

Yes. We have been concerned about the street check issue since 2003, with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission's report that acknowledged that police had been street checking a prominent Black individual here in our community. The human rights commission said street checks need to be looked at.

Since 2003, police and RCMP were keeping race-based data and did nothing with that data for 14 years. We had the Wortley report. We had a legal opinion on the legality of street checks, and not three hours after the legal opinion declared that street checks were illegal, we had a provincial ministerial directive that suggested how similar checks could be done under some kind of looking into suspicious activity.

We believe the provincial ministerial directive is still directing police to engage in illegal activity in the way they police citizens, and of course, we believe Black folks will be dramatically overrepresented in those stats. Therefore, I think some federal directive simply suggesting that these practices cannot break the law is necessary.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Sikand. We're going to have to leave it there.

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Really quickly, do you think this warrants a public apology, yes or no, sir?

[Robert S. Wright]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Sikand, it was very quick of you to sneak that question in there.

Ms. Michaud, you have six minutes.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to start with Mr. White.

You have a great deal of experience as a member of the RCMP and as chief of police thereafter. You talked about three main areas: training, recruitment, and funding.

Your experience may go back a few years, but was there specific training on culture and the different communities when officers joined a police service?

[Vernon White]

Thank you very much for the question.

My police training was with the RCMP, and we were training police officers to go everywhere and anywhere in Canada. You found out where you were going close to the end of your career. The training was not specific to the location you were about to go to. Instead, it was generally identified nationally as a first nation, Inuit or Métis community, for example. I think we have seen a shift.

Certainly, when I was in the Yukon, when officers came we would oblige them to be educated in the first nation communities in the Yukon. In fact, when they would arrive in a community, they were actually mentored by a local elder in those communities. I think that paid dividends. The Council of Yukon First Nations was very involved in the development. I think it paid dividends in terms of the relationship building and in terms of the knowledge and understanding of non-indigenous officers, or even indigenous officers from other parts of Canada, who had come to the Yukon.

I think that type of model works well. Because the RCMP training facility is so large and has so many people go through, it's more difficult to give them the level of training they would need on every potential location they would go to.

I have to say, though, I am concerned about the fact that our training is still at six months and, like I said, in the province of Ontario it's 13 weeks. I think a review needs to be done as to whether or not the same amount of time that was needed at that time is needed 30 years after I went through the RCMP training academy. I think that would be an important step forward as well.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you.

You also talked about funding. You said that funding should be allocated elsewhere, for example, to mental health organizations. Would it be for the communities or for the officers as well? How do you see that?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I apologize for interrupting you, Ms. Michaud.

Are other people getting translation? No.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

I'm on the French channel.

When Mr. White was speaking earlier, there was no interpretation either.

Is it working now?

[Vernon White]

I'm getting it now.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Could you start the question again, Madame Michaud.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

In terms of the funding, you said that funds should be allocated elsewhere, for example, to mental health organizations. How do you see that? Would it be for the officers themselves or for the people in the communities?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Was that directed to Senator White?

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Yes.

[Vernon White]

When I was a police chief in Ottawa, we had a mobile mental health crisis unit, which meant that we had mental health workers working hand in glove with police officers supporting [Technical difficulty—Editors]. The concern is that it's still a downstream service and I would argue that we would be much better off with a large infusion of funding into both mental illness and drug addiction to try to head off that problem, rather than still having police officers show up at the door.

My concern now is.... The Province of Nova Scotia is an example. In some locations, it's over a year wait-list to see a psychiatrist today. I think we need to actually have an infusion of funds into both mental illness treatment that allows people to see them before it becomes a police phone call. The same would go for drug addiction where the average street addict is committing multiple crimes every day just to try to satisfy their addiction. Many of them are still waiting for months and months or longer to get into residential drug treatment. My suggestion would be the money actually be spent upstream, not downstream.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. White.

Mr. Cowan, you also touched on the issue of funding, which is a divisive issue. Some people talk about defunding, while others talk about having more resources. How do you see that on your side?

[Benson Cowan]

Thank you for the question.

I think that, again, in the Nunavut context, the question of defunding is entirely.... It's a red herring. Most communities have a handful of officers who are subject to arduous conditions, and it's impossible to imagine any positive change taking place unless you had more resources and more stability in community detachments.

I do think, alongside that, you need a massive investment in community resources as well. Certainly, in remote northern communities, policing is so important in a way that it has a different character and flavour than it does in the south. If it's not properly funded, it destroys public trust in a whole range of justice institutions. It makes the communities less safe. It makes vulnerable people less likely to go to the police for help.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have roughly 20 seconds left, so I think we'll move on to Mr. Harris.

Mr. Harris, you have six minutes.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for your presentations.

Let me start with you, Mr. Wright. You didn't want to go into the machinations of carding in Nova Scotia, but you sort of touched on it. A CBC report today says that carding was made illegal and banned in Halifax—or street checks were, rather—in 2019. You say that the provincial government seems to have tried a way around that. That presumably hasn't been successful, but clearly the evidence before the commission was that there was actually a disproportionate targeting of Black Nova Scotians in that situation.

Do you think, as I think you did say, a national ban of some sort might be effective in overriding that? Do you think that's something we should look further into?

[Robert S. Wright]

I think there is space for a national directive to the provinces that oversee policing to ensure that those jurisdictions that oversee policing are ensuring that police are not breaking the law as a regular part of their standard operating procedures. Street checks were declared, through a legal opinion, to be an illegal practice. We believe the current ministerial directive that governs how police should be stopping people is also directing them to do something that is illegal. Rather than the province seeking some kind of judicial or legislative authority to do that work, they simply are doing this thing. All of the local systems to oversee police seem to have been powerless or feckless in their responses to our concerns.

There does seem to be some space for some federal intervention.