Public Safety Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2020

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Justice, thank you very much for your work on this. It's certainly heart-wrenching to read the report, and I can't imagine the process of actually compiling this information, so thank you for your work.

Just to make sure that I do get this on the record, I want to thank all female RCMP officers and female police officers who work diligently and who have faced tremendous challenges. I thank them for the service they have committed to their communities and our country—which is something that I think needs to be stated—and for their bravery, especially when saying that in the context of a report such as this. I wanted to make sure that was on the record.

I represent a largely rural constituency in Alberta in one of the jurisdictions where the RCMP is the contracted police force, and I know I've learned a lot about the similarities that exist in rural and remote areas across the country.

There are significant challenges that exist in policing and the rotations that go in and out of these small detachments, and I'm wondering if you could provide some context for the specific challenges that are faced in the rural and remote context that women would face in policing across our country.

[Michel Bastarache]

One thing that has caused many problems is that they have put the new members, the young members, in areas that are far away from their home and far way from anywhere they have strong social relations. They are put in areas they don't know. They are put in areas where they're completely isolated. If it's the north and it's a small precinct, they can have many difficulties but nobody to talk to. It creates a big problem.

The other thing, of course, is that a lot of these women have children. The system has not accommodated women very much. We've talked a lot about the fact that they don't replace the women who are on maternity leave. That creates a problem with the men, who get more work to do to compensate for the fact that the women aren't there. But there are other problems as well, such as when the spouse is also in the RCMP and they don't put them in the same place, or when they put them in places where there's no day care for their children.

All of the social aspects are very important if you're going to have women in the police who are satisfied with their working conditions. It can't be just not to be subject to harassment; it has to be to accommodate the fact that, according to me, it must be very hard for a woman to be in general policing and have young children. If you separate her from her social support, if you don't put her in the same place as her husband for months at a time, it seems to me you're not really managing the situation correctly.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Are we back on proper translation?

[A voice]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Okay.

You have 30 seconds left, Mr. Kurek.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

My apologies, Chair, my Internet just cut out. I missed the last probably 60 seconds of testimony. My computer seems to have restarted.

Can everybody hear me okay?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We can hear you fine.

In light of the circumstances, perhaps Mr. Justice Bastarache would be prepared to repeat a little bit of what he just said.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

My apologies; the challenges of rural Internet.

Justice, would you mind repeating what you said in about the last 60 seconds?

[Michel Bastarache]

I was saying that accommodating women in the RCMP is very important, because they have problems that are unique to them when they decide to have a family. One problem that has not been resolved yet completely, I think, is the fact that they don't replace women on maternity leave, which increases the workload of the men. They resent that, and they take it out on the women rather than on the RCMP.

The other problem, of course, is that they move people around very much. If you're going to move around people who have young children, it becomes very complicated.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We'll have to leave it there, Mr. Kurek. I'm sorry.

Madame Lambropoulos, welcome to the committee. You have five minutes, please.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you so much, Chair.

I would first like to thank you, Justice Bastarache, for being here to answer our questions today. Thank you also for the incredibly important work that you continue to do and did in this report.

Earlier you said that recruiting good people is one of the best recommendations you made. You also said that the RCMP has good people with good values who are forced to change in order to advance their careers. Some good people are forced to change as a result of certain others who occupy leadership roles.

As we know, the culture in any institution, in any organization, is created at the top by leaders of the organization or of the institution. If the leaders had zero tolerance for these types of behaviours and attitudes, then the consequences for this would be much greater, and it would happen less often.

What kinds of recommendations would you give specifically with regard to the comments I just made—if the leadership is what really needs to change?

My next question will be on training, but I'll get to that afterwards.

[Michel Bastarache]

I think you have to prepare people to exercise roles of leadership. You have to teach them how to manage people, how to establish priorities and how to deal fairly with people who want the same promotion or want access to the same training.

There isn't any indication, I think, in the system that we are preparing leaders. If we prepare them, they'll function better. If you put in people who aren't really capable, I think our experience shows that they become bullies because they want to establish their power. They want to preserve their power over different people. They don't know how to manage, so they become rough and make decisions without much merit.

If you have one person like that, it's a problem, but if you have a hundred people like that, it's a very different situation because then it's the whole organization that's in jeopardy.

I think this is what happened in the RCMP. There were too many people who were put in there who didn't have the qualities needed to manage and who abused their authority. This, of course, can be dealt with.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you.

That's why you mentioned that recruitment is a huge way to change what's going on.

You did give a couple of recommendations as to what recruitment should look like and what the competencies of people should be, including a couple of years of university. What other types of things should they be looking at when recruiting?

[Michel Bastarache]

I think there should be some psychological testing to make sure that you're not really recruiting people who would be violent, who have difficulty working with women or who don't have any respect for the people they work with, whether they be men or women.

The model that you give of a policeman should be different from what it was in the past, and I'm not sure that it is this way now. I think people are conscious of the fact that there has to be a different outlook when you're recruiting people and when you're setting them on a continuum for training, obtaining promotions and then exercising leadership roles.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

With regard to training—I mentioned earlier that I would be asking you about this—you said they tried to break the cadets down in order to mould them into the RCMP mould and to instill an esprit de corps, which women are often not invited into. How can we make this a more inclusive environment for more women?

At the end of the day, I firmly believe that we really change the culture when we invite more women. At the same time, women are not treated well once they're there, so I wouldn't want to subject them to that type of treatment.

However, adding more women could change things. How can we make it safer for women, and how can we ensure that more women would want to—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Unfortunately, Madame Lambropoulos has gone way past her time. You will find that the chair is very harsh about these things.

Please answer very briefly, Mr. Justice Bastarache.

[Michel Bastarache]

The answer is to abandon this model where they break people down and then try to build them back up. I think it's to evaluate the quality of people, determine where and how they should be trained, and develop a plan for their careers with deadlines and a list of courses to take and promotions down the road. This way you will also have a continuum where, when somebody leaves, somebody is there to take over who can do the job.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Ms. Michaud, go ahead for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Bastarache, I heard you discuss maternity leave and young children, who may be perceived as a problem for women in the RCMP. That's completely beyond me. At some point, the RCMP will have to join us here in 2020 and change the way it does things. Even a male-dominated realm like politics has changed: elected officials now have access to day care and some maternity leave. That was actually more of a comment than a question.

For my question, I'm going to continue with the cheese analogy Mr. Iacono used earlier. You discuss priority recommendations in your report. You suggested that people who abuse their powers and injure women should be sanctioned.

What kinds of sanctions could be put in place for those individuals?

[Michel Bastarache]

Some already exist, but the system is poorly organized.

For example, some people are put on paid leave for two or three months. That should be without pay. I think the sanction for repeated abuses should be dismissal rather than a transfer.

Furthermore, if a man abuses his power over women, especially by physically assaulting them, he should no longer be entitled to supervise women at all. He should be assigned somewhere where he can't exercise any authority over women. I would also sanction supervisors who allow situations to persist and who close their eyes to them.

I was told that managers often allow situations to continue because they don't want any problems in the district or organization under their management. If there are any problems there and people complain, they'll be viewed as poor managers and that will harm their own promotion prospects. There are a lot of ranks to climb in the RCMP.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Michaud.

Mr. Harris, you have two and a half minutes, please.

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

Justice Bastarache, women in the labour movement over the years have made great advances in the cause of gender equity and programs to stop harassment within the workforce. We know now that the RCMP is unionized and has a collective bargaining process. Janet Merlo recently made a public statement that women in the RCMP ought to get involved in the union and work with it to try to bring about change to prevent this type of harassment continuing. Do you have any confidence in that approach? One might also say, why should it be left to them to fix it? Should it not be something we should be able to make happen, with outside pressure?

[Michel Bastarache]

One of the things that makes you wonder whether this is effective is the fact that we were also dealing with women who worked with the RCMP, but who are civil servants and they're unionized. I asked every one of the women I met, isn't your union involved? Aren't they protecting you, aren't they doing something? They all said no. I don't know if it's a problem that's particular to that union, but we're sure that the women I met have no confidence in their own union—not in general terms, but with regards to protection against sexual harassment.

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

You talked about training and what goes on at Depot: the militarization, the paramilitary structure, the lack of being able to jump from one rank to another, that you have to go up the chain of command. What influence does that have on the ability of this system and culture to remain pervasive, and should something be done about that?

[Michel Bastarache]

The different elements of the militarization of the RCMP I think are hard to define to someone from outside, because you don't know exactly what comes from there or not. What I was told that is meaningful is that they say, “You know, there's the law, there's justice, but then there's the way we see it, the way we do things.” They keep telling people at Depot.... At a certain time—I don't know how long that lasted or how it is now— they told them, “No, no, forget about what you think the law requires; think about what the RCMP requires.”