Public Safety Committee on June 2nd, 2021

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Ms. Lucki, you talked about the right people doing the right job.

How will that help to change the culture within the RCMP?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Answer very briefly, please.

[Nadine Huggins]

I feel that—

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Ms. Lucki, in your opening remarks, you talked about the importance of having the right people doing the right job. I was giving you the opportunity to use the rest of my time.

Why is that important in changing the culture within the RCMP?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Unfortunately, Madam Larouche is out of time. Hopefully, you will have another opportunity to answer that.

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

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

Thank you, Chair.

Commissioner Lucki, I'm glad to have an opportunity to speak to you.

I have to say, I am a little shocked that you were shocked at Justice Bastarache's report.

I've had a look at your bio and you and I are both graduates of the University of Alberta, which is wonderful. I see you have 35 years of experience in the RCMP. You've been decorated with the Order of Military Merit and various other decorations in a considerably great career in the RCMP.

Janet Merlo's book was written in 2013, and there were other women speaking out at that time about difficulties in the RCMP.

I'm just wondering, when Justice Bastarache says there was a toxic culture of misogyny, homophobia and racism, including sexual violence, and talked about retribution as part of this culture against people coming out with complaints, how could you be shocked? Did you miss that along the way? It's an honest question. I am just curious about that.

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

It's a fair question.

I was shocked, I think, by the scale of it. I was shocked by the fact that so many women were too scared to come forward, and it took this to come forward. I was shocked by the fact that nobody listened.

When I talked to Linda Davidson, it was a game-changer for me. If you talked to her, you wouldn't even know that she was one of the survivors. She just said, “You know what, Commissioner? Nobody was listening.” I was shocked by that because I said, “How can that happen?” How could people not listen to things like that? That's disgusting and we need to change that. How can we make it safe for those people to come forward?

It really put fuel in my fire, that report.

We've been working on a lot of things. Most of the recommendations in those reports, we've already been working on because the recommendations were not a shock.

What was a shock was some of the stories and the fact that we don't have a mechanism where people feel safe to come forward. That's why you have my full commitment to that and to making our RCMP the most inclusive and the most diverse we can be, and to making it a place that's welcoming and that allows people to flourish in our organization so that not only will they come to our organization, but they will stay and they will flourish and they will not leave because they're dissatisfied, or they will not leave hurt and broken and sad, and treated like that. That can't happen.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

Madam Stubbs, you have five minutes, please.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks for being here, Commissioner Lucki.

I still want to know what will be done about the people, the cases identified in Justice Bastarache's work. Here's the question I'm wondering about: Can you foresee or would you commit to figuring out a way that this independent body that's going to be...? I guess you can't relay whether it's going to be independent, but for whoever is giving input into how this independent body is going to work, can there be some consideration that it be given the power to retroactively deal with the findings in Bastarache's report?

Tangential to that, if you can't comment on that part, do you think there is insufficient information or insufficient evidence in Bastarache's report to launch an internal investigation within the RCMP, particularly with regard to these 15 repeat offenders? I think it's literally the business of the police on a daily basis to identify repeat offenders.

I'm very glad to hear about the work going forward, and I look forward to ongoing reporting about that, but I'm still concerned about doing justice for those people.

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

Yes, I agree with you. I am absolutely concerned as well.

I notice that one person spoke about the investigations in Bastarache. There was no investigation. These were testimonies. Some were hand-written and submitted, and when they got to a higher level, there were interviews, but they weren't your classic interview that we would do for evidence. They were determining the level of harm that the person experienced. It wasn't evidentiary, and besides that, all of those interviews and any paper documents have been destroyed.

That was part of the agreement. It was completely confidential, so we don't know who came forward. They were all numbered and it was under lock and key, so to be able to follow up on that is impossible. That's why internally we've asked people to come forward. Some of my internal broadcasts have been put on Facebook for some of the females to see, with the help of Linda Davidson. There has been talk also since the last time I spoke about Bastarache.

The only thing I can do is to call on people to come forward. If anything criminal has happened to you, please come forward to your police of jurisdiction. You don't even have to come to the RCMP. If you need help or you need support, you should come to us and we will give you that help. We will give you that support.

I have had people come forward with events, but they haven't been part of the Merlo Davidson settlement, just separate ones, and they now have the courage to come forward because they are seeing action. They're seeing a process that will be able to deal with them. It's something that we're taking seriously, absolutely.

I wish I could say.... We did do a scrub-down when we heard that. When Justice Bastarache testified and said that there were repeat offenders, we did a scrub-down of our entire process for anybody who had been in the system, but of course if Bastarache is referring to people who have behaved badly and haven't been reported, investigated or put through any process, then we don't have it. We've only done the scrub-down of the ones who were in the system.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Okay. Thank you, Commissioner. I wish you and the RCMP well. I believe that you're sincere about making this change. I hope you receive the political support, the resources and the will you need to get that done in this institution. I certainly have family members and friends who are both administrative support and RCMP officers within the institution. I think it's important for all Canadians.

Chair, at this time, I'm just going to move a motion because I know that all of us here on this committee share our shock and our outrage, but I know that—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Can we hold that motion until we've finished with Madam Damoff? Then I'll open up the floor to you to move that motion.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Yes. Here's what I'm wondering: Could I move it now, and then we can proceed with additional questions on behalf of all the members and come back to it, or would we come back to me right after, before I move—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Just to maintain some level of order, my thought would be that we finish with Ms. Damoff, you move your motion and then presumably some debate would follow from that.

I just take note that we are eating into the time that we have available with the commissioner.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Chair, if I can do that before we move into any in camera meeting at the end of it, that's perfectly fine with me.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Madam Damoff, you have five minutes, please.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

Commissioner, we haven't talked a lot about Depot. One of the things that was also in the Bastarache report was that the toxic culture actually started at Depot. As a result, the folks that join the RCMP get trained in this toxic culture right from day one.

I have a couple of questions. What are you doing to change the culture at Depot? Will the independent centre for harassment resolution be available to recruits who are doing the training at Depot?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

I'm glad you asked that question because Depot is a regular member's first experience of the RCMP. It's where our culture does in fact start. When recruits learn at Depot, how they learn it will impact them as a police officer. We need to get that right, absolutely.

We started off with a new chief learning officer who has been appointed to strengthen the national standard, the coordination and the oversight for the RCMP learning, including the Depot modernization. That chief learning officer has been mandated to work with experts and conduct what we call a full level-three evaluation of the cadet training program. That's to ensure that the curriculum is reflecting the needs in the field. It will also include that GBA+ lens that we like to use to ensure the content is inclusive, doesn't intentionally reinforce stereotypes and reflects modern reality.

We do have plans as well. We're very lucky that we have the First Nations University of Canada right there in Regina. We're partnering with them to review all of the indigenous content and the cultural awareness curriculum.

When we do anything with gender-based violence, missing and murdered women or anything indigenous, we always bring outside experts in to present the material, so that people get a better sense of how the people are impacted by what police do each and every day.

We're also working to assess that paramilitary aspect that we spoke about. We're ensuring that we can look at some of the paramilitary parts. If parts promote pride or team building, we'll look at those and keep those. If they are not promoting things that are conducive to our core values, we will not keep them in our curriculum.

To answer your question about the ICHR, yes, in fact the cadets will be able to report complaints.

I'd like to throw it over to Gail Johnson because she's actually the person in charge of our training academy. She's done a lot of work on that.

[Gail Johnson, Chief Human Resources Officer, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

Thank you, Commissioner, Mr. Chair and committee members.

With respect to Depot, we have a lot of work under way. We are examining the culture of Depot from a number of aspects.

The commissioner has mentioned the paramilitary nature of the organization. We did have an assessment done by our evaluation group to look at the paramilitary nature of Depot to see if it had an impact on the culture of the organization and the work that we need to do to make sure we have a modern and inclusive training academy.

It's under review right now because we've received the preliminary findings. We're continuing to look at the report, but in the meantime we're looking at the total number of hours that are spent on the paramilitary aspects of activities at Depot. We want to make sure that we have an optimal balance between that and the other cadet training elements. We're also developing an approach so that we clearly communicate the purpose and the desired outcomes of all paramilitary activities to ensure cadets understand how the skills—

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I have another quick question for the commissioner. I'm going to stop you there because my time's almost up.

I want to follow up on something that Mrs. Stubbs asked.

Commissioner, will the independent centre be able to investigate on behalf of these women from the past? Would they be able to file complaints through there?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

Yes. The independent centre will deal with the harassment complaints—

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

That's only current complaints, though.

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

No.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Commissioner, let's say someone has left the RCMP. Would they be able to go there? Could you think about that? I think there's still a fear of coming forward. If someone was an RCMP officer, is there some way for these women to have a place to come forward? I think that's what Shannon was getting at.

In terms of what you're doing, moving forward is great, but for the women and LGBTQ2S who are survivors of sexual violence and assault, is there a way for them to have a process? Perhaps you can think about that.

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

If it is criminal, there is no prescribed time, and it doesn't have to come back into the organization. If it's sexual assault or any type of behaviour like that, that would go to the police of jurisdiction and there is no timeline on that.