Public Safety Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2020

[Mitch Bourbonniere]

Yes, Coming to the table with resources would be leading by example.

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

You mentioned that there are about six groups doing this kind of work, actively patrolling and being in the community on a regular basis, and that they're mostly directed at providing assistance. You and your groups must do a fair bit of mediation as it is, in terms of liaising with police forces who happen to be in a situation.

[Mitch Bourbonniere]

Yes. In fact, if we're on the scene first, we're doing a lot of defusing and de-escalating. Then police don't need to be called in, because we've done the work already.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Harris. I think we're unfortunately going to have to leave it there.

Colleagues, we have 25 minutes' worth of questions to squeeze into 15 minutes. I'm going to run a bit over six o'clock, so with that I'm going to ask Mr. Van Popta for five minutes, please.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here.

Ms. Maynard, I listened to your testimony with great interest. You're advocating defunding of the police. Listening to you carefully, it sounds like you're talking not necessarily about defunding the police but reallocating the resources so that people in need are getting the attention they require.

Can any of that reallocation of resources, in your professional opinion, be done within the scope of current police forces, such as the RCMP or municipal police, right now?

[Robyn Maynard]

Thank you for the question.

I believe that I am talking about reallocation to some extent, of course, as well as substantively cutting police budgets, but also about reducing the scope and power of police, just to clarify.

I think it's very important to understand that these calls are explicitly addressing moving that money out of policing, period, and into a community or another more appropriate organization. This is just because of the ongoing link in the ways that even when police are accompanied by a social worker, it still can lead to the harm and death of somebody in police custody. It really is about minimizing the encounters in order to stop the harms of criminalization, to understand that even though police stops and carding are not a direct harm on the body, those are harmful as well. That, of course, is not only about reallocating but about actually evading that interaction altogether, which can't be done by just moving money around within the police budget.

It's not about training police to be better social workers or better harm reduction and drug overdose responders, but about actually just having appropriate responses to mental health crises, to drug overdoses, etc.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

I don't intend to argue with you, but why could that not be done within the existing police forces? You're saying that the challenges that the police have could not be alleviated with proper education. Perhaps you could expand on that a bit.

[Robyn Maynard]

Sure, absolutely.

I'm beginning to conduct some research on this aspect. I've spoken with people who have been working since the 1980s—after the police killing of Anthony Griffin in 1987 in Montreal, for example. There was a massive community outcry, and what happened afterwards was a promise to have better training with the police. Many Black women and Black community organizers at that time took part in police training. Of course, throughout the 1990s we continued to see an acceleration of police killings of Black people.

As well, after the allegations and systemic evidence came out about policing of indigenous communities in Montreal, again the Native Women's Shelter provided training for the police. Later they went to the media, decrying the way that they were treated by the police; and of course we continue to see it as an ongoing issue.

All of this, as well as evidence based in the United States, suggests that diversity training and all of these other forms of training, while perhaps well intentioned, are not actually effective in addressing the realities of racial profiling, of police killings, of gender-based violence and all the other issues that are at the heart of the problem.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Bourbonniere, I was following with great interest your conversation with Mr. Harris a couple of minutes ago, particularly about indigenous policing and the very good and effective work that you and organizations like yours are doing.

My question to you is similar to my question to Ms. Maynard just a minute ago. Could we, through education and proper training of police within our current policing structures—the RCMP, municipal police, provincial police—improve policing significantly within the current Canadian context.?

[Mitch Bourbonniere]

I would love to improve policing in general. Let's not not do that. Let's improve policing. Let's do a better job at recruiting, training and giving them the skills that they need when they need them.

Let's also add community groups that can do the mental health checks and the foot patrols that can de-escalate situations so that people don't have to have involvement with the police all the time to begin with.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Van Popta.

With that, I'll go to Mr. Anandasangaree for five minutes, please.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank both witnesses.

Mr. Bourbonniere, I want to first of all thank you for the work that you do on the ground. I know it's critically important, and as someone who's worked as a youth worker and run an organization that helped young people in difficulties, I think it's an area that's profoundly important across the country.

Can you tell me, based on the six organizations that you outlined, the percentage of the Winnipeg youth population you encounter and are able to support who are in need and/or involved in the criminal justice system or the child welfare system?

[Mitch Bourbonniere]

For the record, I want to correct the population number. It is is 18% of Manitobans who identify as indigenous, not 10%.

We have a very strong and proud indigenous community in Winnipeg. There are very many indigenous people doing so well right now, but we also have people who are wounded from generations of the effects of the relationship between Canada and its indigenous peoples.

Lots of the folks we encounter in the community who are struggling come from different backgrounds. The areas that we patrol are in the inner city in the north end of Winnipeg, where there is a higher indigenous population. As I said, most community members are doing fantastically well. They're doing wonderfully and they're healthy. However, some of our folks who are struggling are indeed indigenous, and it's visual. When you go to our youth correctional jail, you see that all the youth are of colour or indigenous and all of the staff are white. It's stark. It's striking to see that visual.

Our child welfare is about 90% indigenous children in care, and that's just unacceptable.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Mr. Bourbonniere, I'm sorry to cut you off, but because of the limitation of time, I want to home in on.... Realizing there's significant over-representation of indigenous and other racialized people within the system, let's say you had unlimited resources. What more could you do if you had additional resources to be able to support the young person who's involved with the child welfare system who is also now directly involved with the criminal justice system, someone who is having trouble with school, who gets kicked out of school or who is expelled, who may belong to a gang and who, again, is involved with the criminal justice system? What kind of resources would be adequate for you to be able to do the job that you do, that you have been doing, to be able to address this in a significantly higher way than you're able to do now with the limited resources you have?

[Mitch Bourbonniere]

If you want to look at the really big picture, we have to look at the root causes of inequity. We have to look at poverty. We have to look at privilege.

Right now, I believe there are three things indigenous youth need. They need education, not for the inherent wisdom of western education, but for the credentialism. We need indigenous young people to participate in a good way in the Canadian economy. We also need indigenous youth and all people to understand the history and to understand what went on to get to where we've gotten to today, and then we need to backfill that hurt and that anger with support, nurturance, resources, elders and ceremony. That is what indigenous youth need.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have a few seconds, but because you're from Scarborough, I'm cutting you off.

You have two and a half minutes, Madame Michaud, and I will ask the clerk to indicate to me who the next Conservative questioner will be.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My next question is for Ms. Maynard. I would like to thank her, by the way, for all of her work.

I looked at her work, namely her book about racial profiling, impoverishment, devaluation and ambient racism.

Ms. Maynard, you have studied the historical legacy of slavery and colonialism and the detrimental impact it continues to have on Black communities in Canada. I am referring to a 2018 article that appeared in La Presse, but it is just as timely today, in 2020.

What would you say is the federal government's role in ensuring the issue is no longer timely and in bringing about real progress? I mean, of course, progress in terms of how Canada's Black communities are viewed and treated.

[Robyn Maynard]

I think it's so important to highlight the way that Canada's history of slavery, which is so often erased, is so much a part of the ongoing surveillance of black communities across multiple systems, so I think, of course, that it's really important. I addressed the criminalization of drugs, sex work and poverty through an assortment of bylaws as absolutely crucial.

Of course, ending the mass impoverishment of black communities has always been integral to black people's well-being in this society, but we also need to look at the ways in which federal immigration policies have impacted black communities.

We're thinking of the way that largely black and central American workers are currently in horrifying conditions. The ones who pick the fruit and vegetables for this country throughout the entire summer are most exposed to COVID, as well as the many black undocumented people and asylum seekers who are currently facing possible deportation, including those who have worked as front-line workers in Quebec.

Federal lawsuits substantively increase this if we go to the way that Canada Border Services Agency has been increasingly working with police services in Montreal and in Toronto especially, which means that when people are being racially profiled and are being stopped while driving or are being carded, it can lead to detention or to deportation, given that over half of Canada's black population was born elsewhere.

Those are only a few really important legislative changes that can take place.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Madam Michaud.

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

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

Thank you, Chair.

Ms. Maynard, I'd like to ask you to elaborate on your views on the body cam question.

We've had some positive comments on their use by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Safety. The RCMP are doing a pilot project in Nunavut. You have indicated that research shows they're not effective, but this is proposed as some part of a solution to the use-of-force question in Canada when dealing with racialized or indigenous populations and the black population.

Can you talk about the case against that as a solution, please, a little more elaborately?

[Robyn Maynard]

Absolutely.

The study I was highlighting was in the Yale Law Journal and was published in 2018. That was the most systematic study that looked at every study of body cameras that had been accomplished so far. It found that their use did not reduce police killings in black communities and did not significantly impact use of force.

Another study suggested that police feel confident in the kind of violence that they regularly take part in, so they see no harm in it. Other studies have highlighted the fact that police will often turn off the cameras during violence, so that footage goes missing.

We need to remember that we'd be pushing for reforms that are extremely expensive. A significant public cost is required to implement body cameras, which at best are ineffective and cannot consistently be relied on in the context.

This year, for example, we already had double the police killings by July that we had by that time last year. We're in a crisis, and throwing significant amounts of money into reforms that are not effective is fundamentally not the appropriate solution. It's just a matter of kicking the can forward and not acting on the immediate changes we need to see.

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

In this research you're referencing, I know you mentioned Yale. Is this primarily American data, or is it broader than that? Are you convinced that the conclusions that are reached are applicable to a situation in Canada as well?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Be very brief, please.

[Robyn Maynard]

It is American data. I am absolutely convinced, because of just how systemic a study it is, that it's the most informative to date. I think if we are going to make policy changes informed by research, then we simply must look at the research. The research has been quite clear that this is not a solution to systemic racism—