Evidence of meeting #9 for Public Safety and National Security in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was officers.
A video is available from Parliament.
3:50 p.m.
Bloc
Kristina Michaud Bloc Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC
Thank you.
We are talking about various very important concepts. I'm thinking of the various training courses that must be provided to police officers.
I learned it in a sociology of gender course at university, but society in general is not very aware of what intersectionality is and how it affects people who experience several situations at once.
Do you feel this type of concept should be defined in the training officers receive?
3:55 p.m.
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Absolutely. You know, I'm a relatively light-skinned African Canadian with a high level of education and a fairly high income. That would make my experience different from my father's in terms of experiences with the police. Although I would tick the box “black”, my father was much darker, had an accent and lived in very different circumstances than I do. That would be different again from a young indigenous female, who might be different from an elderly Asian female. I do an exercise in my inequality and criminal justice class on exactly that.
Intersectionality is important. None of us come into the world with just one identity. There are multiple aspects to our identity. When it comes to experiences of oppression, for many the axes of oppression are multiple and overlapping. Again, when we think about the fact that racism in our society increases problems of mental health, then we have the intersection of race and mental health that's very prevalent—for example, in the deaths of many African Americans in the Toronto area, they've been called, of course, because of mental illness.
So yes, it should be examined.
3:55 p.m.
Bloc
Kristina Michaud Bloc Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC
All right.
Statistics Canada has announced that it will begin collecting racial data on victims of crime and those accused of crime. It seems that it will not include data on use-of-force incidents in police services; you mentioned that.
Do you believe Statistics Canada should go further in collecting this kind of data? Why do you feel it's important?
3:55 p.m.
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
On the race data specifically, yes, I do. It has been collecting some from police agencies that provide that data to them. Others have a policy not to provide the data.
Again, going to your intersectionality point, the more data we can collect, the better. I understand that's not always practical in the context of the work that the police are doing, but again, although I've advocated for the collection of race-based data for the better part of a decade and a half, if we don't do it properly it could be quite dangerous.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
3:55 p.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Thank you, Chair.
I want to echo Mr. Vidal's point that we have an impressive group of witnesses, and not only on this panel; that's been all day. It's good that we were able to hear about your experience and hear your knowledge.
Professor Akwasi Bempah, you gave a detailed description of the difference between structural racism, systemic racism and institutional racism. I think I get it, after listening carefully.
One of the problems we have as politicians, in talking to a variety of people, including police officers, retired police officers and RCMP officers, is that they feel that, when we're talking about systemic racism, they're being accused of being racist. Being called racist in our society, of course, is a very negative thing. Is there a simple way of getting through to the people who feel they're under threat and are being called out, just in general, and saying to them what needs to be said to have them understand that they could be part of the solution or be stuck with being part of the problem?
3:55 p.m.
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Just to clarify, my name is Owusu-Bempah.
3:55 p.m.
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
If we're going to address issues around diversity and inequity, I think I should make that clear. Don't apologize; there are a lot of syllables there.
Your point is very, very well taken. We saw this in the United Kingdom, when Macpherson released his report noting that the London Metropolitan Police were institutionally racist. Even though the word “institution” was in the term, police officers took that as an affront to the work they do.
If we're going to talk about institutional racism, I think providing clear examples of the way in which seemingly race-neutral practices and policies have a racially disparate impact can be a clear way of demonstrating that to officers. A lot of the work that's done now focuses on implicit bias. I think that's more comfortable for officers, because it takes the responsibility away. If clear demonstrations of how a practice, when applied equally or appearing to be applied equally, still produces racially disparate outcomes can be demonstrated to police officers, I think they will do a better job of accepting how institutional racism, for example, impacts upon policing. I would suggest the same would be true for structural racism, too.
4 p.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Thank you.
I think your example of the reward system within policing in terms of recognizing the number of arrests versus various other ways of resolving incidents does reflect on that too, because it forces police officers down a particular path that they perhaps don't even realize they're being directed towards. I think some of these examples are quite useful.
Also, I'm very conscious, and this is one of the reasons I was so keen to have this whole study go forward, that we are at a point.... You say you've been working for a decade and a half on some of these issues, in particular data and whatnot. As a result of well-known current events, we are at a point where there is a chance to seize the opportunity to try to implement some systemic solutions to what we are recognizing as systemic problems. It's encouraging that 85% of Canadians see it as a systemic problem, particularly in policing.
It's a version of the questions Mr. Vidal asked. Are there specific systemic solutions that are practical to see happening? You talk about national statistics, and you had fairly granular expectations in terms of what was expected. Is there a practical way of instituting that at a national level? What mechanism would there be? Would there be a Stats Canada role, or should there be some other national standard or national law that would compel this?
4 p.m.
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Yes, this should most definitely be standardized using standardized racial descriptors. The Province of Ontario recently, as part of the Anti-Racism Act, put forth data [Technical difficulty—Editor] standards, which I think provide a good model. What would need to happen is simply a box on the UCR, the uniform crime reports, for example, that would capture race, so the racial categories that would be utilized—there are about a dozen in Ontario—would make their way onto the forms and into the databases that police use and collect.
I should note that although this is not done in a systematic fashion at the moment, we know from all the attention to police carding that the police have been collecting racial information across this country on the people they come into contact with. What we don't have is that being done in any kind of uniform fashion, and what we don't have is that being done throughout the different types of work the police do, and it's not reported to Statistics Canada.
From my perspective, that would take a bit of computer programming to ensure that the databases were proper, as well as the changing of fields in those databases and the forms used. It's a relatively simple thing to do. I say “relatively” purposely.
4 p.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Is that a province-by-province issue, Professor Owusu-Bempah, or is it something that can be done nationally?
4 p.m.
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
It can be done nationally in the uniform crime reporting system. It's a system of reporting information on criminal incidents to Statistics Canada that 99% of police agencies currently use. The whole purpose of that is that all police agencies across the country are sending this uniform data to Statistics Canada. It's simply a matter of updating that information to capture race.
What is different is some of the other forms of information the police capture. When we talk about carding or street checks, although similar forms are used, this is information that is collected about individuals the police come into contact with not necessarily when there has been an incident, but they want to collect information about an individual. There's less uniformity in that sense. Many people would argue that this [Technical difficulty—Editor] should be eradicated, and that's what we see in Ontario—not the eradication of street checks or carding, but their heavy regulation—so the numbers have come down substantially.
4 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Okay, we're going to have to leave it there, Mr. Harris. Thank you very much.
Mr. Berthold, you have three minutes, please.
4 p.m.
Conservative
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
My question is for Professor Owusu-Bempah.
You have had the opportunity—it came through in your remarks—to see what is happening elsewhere in the world in terms of interaction between racialized groups, indigenous communities and law enforcement.
Are there any countries Canada can learn from, or does it need to develop an entirely new system that incorporates the methods of racialized groups and indigenous communities?
4:05 p.m.
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
That is an excellent question, and I would like to hear from some of the other speakers on this.
My sense is that we wouldn't necessarily be able to take a model that's been developed in any one nation. We would have to pick pieces of practice from specific policing agencies, for example. We heard about the example of community support officers, basically, that [Technical difficulty—Editor] on the west coast, but that have also been implemented in the United Kingdom and the United States and have shown great promise and a reduction in the use of force. Actually, when unarmed, semi-uniformed individuals are doing patrols, it still has a similar deterrent effect, so that's a good practice.
The Las Vegas police department, for example, instituted a policy several years ago mandating officers to the extent that they could: if they engaged in a pursuit, they would not engage in use of force, because we know that if their sympathetic nervous system was up and their adrenaline was rushing, they would be more likely to use more force. Their officers also undergo a hundred hours of de-escalation training.
There are models and there are best practices, but as I've said, there's no one national jurisdiction that I would say we could borrow from. What we need to do is find the best practices from individual jurisdictions.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
4:05 p.m.
Executive Director, Native Child and Family Services of Toronto
I would agree with what's already been said. I can really only comment around indigenous peoples, but I would say that each first nation, along with Métis and Inuit people, has very long traditions of justice and public safety within their own cultures. For thousands of years before contact, they had systems established to maintain community safety and wellness and address crime in their communities. I think we have some good models there that are still alive and well within the knowledge base of the indigenous people and that can be brought into the contemporary scenario to develop things. That's what we did with Kwanlin Dün, drawing from the example in the Yukon from the Kwanlin Dün First Nation.
I think where it gets more complex is in urban Canada, where we have large urban indigenous populations that are very diverse. We are serving maybe 80 or 90 different first nations at any given time in the city of Toronto, and there's a lot of complexity there. That's why we focus on community engagement and building these programs in collaboration and co-developing them, in fact, with the communities they're intended to serve.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Thank you, Mr. Berthold.
Now we have Madame Khera.
I'll just say to the Liberals on the panel that no one has indicated to me who the next Liberal speaker is. If I could get that information, it would be helpful.
Madame Khera.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Kamal Khera Liberal Brampton West, ON
Thank you, Chair. I believe that Gary Anandasangaree is going to be the next speaker.
Once again, I want to let everyone know that it has been truly compelling testimony from all of our witnesses. Thank you for being here and for your testimony.
Professor Owusu-Bempah, I want to talk to you a bit more about the race-based data. We know that race-based data collection within policing could be extremely helpful for improving public accountability and for informing police policies and practices, such as the use of force.
Recently, StatsCan said that we'll now begin to collect data on victims of racism and victims of crime and also on people accused of crime. In my riding of Brampton West, I proudly represent one of the most diverse communities in the country, the largest racialized community in the country, and I've certainly heard about the importance of collecting race-based data. I'd like you to perhaps touch a bit more on why that's so significant.
Could you also talk a bit more about any of the considerations in how we collect that data and how it is used, and certainly any concerns about privacy or ensuring that it is not used to further tarnish the community or to reinforce any racist stereotypes? You alluded to that earlier. If you can perhaps shed some light on how to balance that, that would be really helpful for the community, and also on perhaps what more needs to be done within the RCMP in terms of race-based data collection.
Thank you.
4:10 p.m.
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Thank you for the question.
On the whole, I see the benefits of race-based data collection in allowing us, first and foremost, to develop a more comprehensive picture of how members of different racial groups experience policing. The data could be useful for identifying racial disparities in policing outcomes. That doesn't necessarily mean discrimination. As I've said, there are a variety of factors within our society that increase the likelihood that members of certain racial groups are going to come into contact with the police and perhaps engage in crime.
It could also be useful to identify areas of discrimination, as I've said, such as issues related to contact with the child welfare system. Studies from B.C. show that children who come into contact with child welfare are more likely to come into contact with the justice system than they are to graduate from high school. We can start to connect the experiences through social institutions, so that rather than simply looking at policing as a problem area, we can look at solutions before we get to the area of policing.
We can also identify potential discrimination, as I've said, in policing outcomes. Some of what we've seen is with respect to stops as well as arrests. It seems that the threshold for initiating stops with African Americans in the United States, for example, is lower, as is the threshold for effecting an arrest. When we look at what we would call the “hit rates” or the success rates for finding contraband, weapons or drugs, they're lower with black individuals than they are with white individuals, because the police are, again, using a lower threshold. That's where we can look at practices, and likewise with arrests.
If we see, for example, that for every 10 white people arrested, eight of those cases go to trial, versus two for black people, and that the Crown decides to drop the charges in six of those cases of black people, then we might start to look at whether those charges should have been laid in the first place, if the Crown deems there not to have been enough evidence. These are the types of things we can start to do.
As I said, it needs to be comprehensive so we're not just looking at the rates of stop and search. How do we—