Public Safety Committee on Nov. 18th, 2020

[Michèle Audette]

There's something that's very close to my heart on a very personal level—I would say “free moccasins” in this case. The Baie-Comeau CEGEP has offered law enforcement techniques in an indigenous environment and in the regions, which will be a first. Needless to say I'm disappointed because it's only a temporary project. This type of program should be available across Canada to help the next generation of police officers.

I was approached by former Quebec police officers who now work in restaurants or stores. They told me that they had seen me on television, and they thanked me for what I was doing. Some of them had worked for the Sûreté du Québec, others for the RCMP. They told me that working in communities they weren't prepared for crushed them. I'm talking about men from Quebec or Canada who were not prepared for this striking and traumatic—but also enriching—reality. There is beauty and goodness.

So, if we create formal programs, such as the Baie-Comeau CEGEP initiative, which has a curriculum that includes internships in an indigenous environment and indigenous expertise, we will be able to abolish prejudices. Students will tell themselves that, in the end, the Anishinabe, the Blackfoot and the Haida, for example, are fascinating people.

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

Thank you.

You mentioned Joyce Echaquan. This case did not involve the police, but it still involved an institution we trust. The police have a responsibility to protect us and keep us safe, but so do health care institutions. We have to trust these institutions.

How could we rebuild that bond of trust with institutions that has been broken or that never existed? I'm thinking of the testimony you gave us of the lady who feels as if she's had a target on her back since she was a little girl.

How do we restore this trust?

[Michèle Audette]

The governments—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Unfortunately, we're going to have to leave that question unanswered for the time being. I'm sure you'll be able to respond.

Mr. Harris, you have five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks to both of the witnesses for their testimony.

Ms. Audette, I'm interested in asking you something about the recommendations from the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls report. In particular, I want to focus on one recommendation that may be helpful to us.

In section 9.4, it says, “We call upon non-Indigenous police services to ensure they have the capacity and resources to...protect Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people.” It goes on to say, “We further call upon all non-Indigenous police services to establish specialized Indigenous policing units within their services located in cities and regions with Indigenous populations.” I'm focusing on that, because I think we're looking for ways of policing in not only indigenous communities but in urban areas.

Is this a potential method for allowing at least a practical start to indigenous integration into police services to better serve the huge indigenous population—more than half—who are in urban areas? Would this work?

Second, because I may not have a chance to have a second question, as someone with some experience with the provincial government in Quebec, do you think this could be funded by the Government of Canada to support its indigenous mandate in non-federal policing?

If you have any questions, please let me know.

[Michèle Audette]

I will do my best to respond. I'm a bit rusty in English. My life has been very French or Innu for the past year.

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

French is fine.

[Michèle Audette]

Perfect.

When you travel across Canada as commissioner, you are certainly very aware that not all of Canada's 300 police forces have the chance or opportunity to hire indigenous staff. However, it can be difficult to attract an indigenous workforce in the field of public safety, which we are aware of.

In a transition, the important thing is to promote this expertise and richness in workplaces and to ensure that institutions are ready to open up to it. This may involve one or more people, be they elders or front–line or second-line workers, or even future police officers.

There have been successes in some regions. People have hired indigenous people to patrol, which gives confidence and can make the intervention beneficial.

The federal government could establish pilot projects with the provinces, municipalities and communities that would be interested in trying this out. I invite you to propose it.

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

Thank you.

Am I finished, Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

No, you have a minute and a half.

Ms. Audette has given an excellent example of multi-tasking.

[Michèle Audette]

Oui, grandmother, mom.

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

Another element, since you talked about transition, is that we'd like to make recommendations that can be implemented very quickly, because that will start the ball rolling in some respects.

Another recommendation refers to calling upon “all police services to establish and engage with a civilian indigenous advisory committee for each police service or police division”.

Would that be something that could also be made available to each police service, in terms of whatever funding might be required or any initiative that might need to be taken? That's something that could start building an indigenous-police relationship that would be on a more solid footing.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have about 30 seconds.

[Michèle Audette]

If you have the magic fix, the power to do it, do it.

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

That's something you would recommend that we recommend, I take it.

[Michèle Audette]

Yes, sir.

Thank you, my granddaughter.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

Mr. Kurek, you have four minutes, and Mr. Motz has eight seconds.

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

Thank you very much. I'll make sure to take full advantage of that extra eight seconds.

Thank you to the witnesses, and thank you to Ms. Audette's granddaughter as well for adding a little bit of fun here in the midst of a very serious conversation.

I will just make a note before I get into a couple of questions.

Ms. Audette, your statement that training has to be more than simply something that lasts a few hours or simply a handbook—and I'm paraphrasing—really resonated. I agree. There has to be an attitudinal and cultural shift to ensure that these issues are taken seriously.

I'm curious to hear your comments on what barriers you see to indigenous women who want to get involved and who are seeking positions in policing or other roles that would reduce community violence or barriers to justice.

[Michèle Audette]

In a few seconds, I would say that the barriers are multiple. There's mistrust, for sure, and the relationship is broken because people aren't believed or they feel they're being judged when they call the police.

So there's a whole extremely important task of raising awareness. We need to use places where we go to see families who have testified and former RCMP officers who were doing normal work. They would explain the mandate, the procedure, the protocol and the leeway, and as soon as communication was established between the family and the police force or officer, you could see a palpable trust.

This tells us that people, humans, are capable of doing this. It's examples like these that are important to maintain and develop. It's also important to accept that people can be angry with the police, rightly so.

However, after having done this work, there are organizations and groups—and Mr. Niemi will be able to give you examples—through whose collaboration we can overcome these barriers of prejudice or fears, to say that we are doing good things: we are saving lives, we are doing our job, and we are getting better.

We must not give up because it's a long-term undertaking, but it's important to start.

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

I appreciate that very much. Thank you for that.

We have heard about the calls to ensure that there is oversight and accountability of police, including the RCMP. I'm wondering what that would look like, practically speaking. I think it always comes down to how public policy has practical implications for making life better for Canadians, and in this case, for indigenous peoples, who have had these negative experiences, in many cases, for generations and generations.

Maybe I could ask the chair how much time I have left.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have about 25 seconds.

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

I'll go to Mr. Niemi.

What practical solutions would you suggest for accountability and oversight?

[Fo Niemi]

Thank you very much.

The first thing is basically to have public and community accountability. I try to be as operational as possible. I believe the police commissioners and leaders should really get out there, meet the community, and create structures to bring policing back to its community-based orientation.

After 9/11 we moved away from a community-based policing model, and now we need to go back to one. We need to be fully [Technical difficulty—Editor] leaders need to know the community leaders as a first step. In the 1990s that happened, and it helped a lot.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Okay, we're going to have to leave it there, unfortunately.

Madam Khera, go ahead for four minutes, please.

[Kamal Khera, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses for being here and for your very important testimony.

Mr. Niemi, perhaps I can start with you. I want to talk a bit about race-based data collection. You recently said that race-based data collection is instrumental to any campaign or any struggle to combat racial profiling in policing. We know that can be extremely helpful for improving any public accountability and for informing public policies.

As you may know, over the summer the government announced that Statistics Canada will now begin to collect data on race for victims of crime and people accused of crime. Perhaps you can touch a bit more on why that is so significant and talk a bit about anything we need to take into consideration when collecting that data and how that data will be used, because there are certainly concerns about privacy and about seeing that the data doesn't tarnish a community or reinforce any racist stereotypes.

If you can shed some light on how we balance that, it would be extremely helpful for the committee.