Nakurmiik, Mr. Chair.
It's good to see everyone here in this committee.
As I have been introduced, I'm Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the representational organization for Canada's 70,000 Inuit. In our homeland, Inuit Nunangat, there are 51 communities. There are roughly 70,000 Inuit in Canada, the majority of whom live in those 51 communities. They're from northern Labrador, northern Quebec, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. Seventy per cent of our communities—all except those in northern Quebec in the Nunavik region—are serviced by the RCMP, so this piece of legislation has the possibility of bringing forward some very positive transformative change to our relationship with the RCMP.
Our communities are grappling with severe problems of disproportionate police violence, which is more than just isolated incidents and is part of a much broader systemic problem closely tied to social inequity. The challenges faced by our people are not just in relation to the point-in-time policing challenges we face, but also in relation to accessing justice and also accessing the socio-economic quality of life that most other Canadians enjoy in areas such as housing, access to health care, education, employment and food security.
The interconnected nature of these issues exacerbates police violence in our communities. Also, the challenges in how the police force itself is constructed play a role in the scenarios we face today.
The evidence that we have paints a distressing picture of police-related deaths within our communities. We don't actually have aggregated data to bring you the very clear picture we would like to bring forward about how much more at risk of dying at the hands of the RCMP people in our communities are than perhaps Canadians are of dying at the hands of police forces in the rest of Canada. This grim reality is starkly evident in Nunavut, where we know that police-related deaths, especially in the last 10 years or so, are much higher than they are in Ontario, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.
These issues are at the heart of why this particular piece of legislation could be so transformative. We need essential data and an essential understanding of how police systems are serving our communities. We need oversight mechanisms to be able to hold police accountable, but also to be able to inform this body of how to improve policing and broader outcomes for our communities.
I come back to examples of the policing force. Right now, say for Nunavut—again, we don't have data for all regions and sometimes we don't have up-to-date data, 2023 data—of the 146 RCMP officers in Nunavut, one of our four regions, only 14 are Inuit. In the administrative positions it is a bit higher. There are 14 Inuit out of 32 positions within the jurisdiction of Nunavut.
You can see that we have a challenge with the type of policing provided to us in that many of those providing services are itinerant by design. Many of those members, even if they have served across Inuit Nunangat only, are in a certain community for a certain point in time. These communities are also chronically under-resourced so that you have just one or two police officers who are active within a community, so there isn't a lot of time to build a connection to communities. There is time to undertake only the bare bones of policing duties.
I talked in December 2020 to this very committee about many of these issues, especially in relation to systemic racism within policing. I think a lot of that conversation is still relevant today when we ae discussing Bill C-20.
The legislation is designed to change the existing legislation for police oversight, but it falls short when considering mandatory Inuit representation within the commission on matters relating to the Inuit. While the bill contains some provisions allowing for the temporary involvement of technical experts to assist the commission, we need to have a more distinctions-based and specific focus on the ability for Inuit to participate within the mechanisms that are, ultimately, going to influence the way in which the Inuit are serviced across Inuit Nunangat.
This also links to the issue of murdered and missing indigenous women and girls. This particular piece of legislation should also link into action 6.12. This action demands an amendment to the legislation to ensure the commission is truly a distinctions-based body that is inclusive of first nations, Inuit and Métis representation. This call for a broader and more inclusive representation aligns directly with call for justice 5.7 of the MMIWG final report—