One of the long-standing challenges with policing in Inuit Nunangat is that we largely have people who are not from Inuit Nunangat who are given a small amount of training and then put in communities where they really don't have a lot of cultural competency. It also has an element of indigenous and non-indigenous interaction. From all sides, I think we can do better.
We can do better to provide cross-cultural training to these institutions, which would then have a better understanding of communities. There could be more funding for policing within our communities to ensure that there are enough officers and capacity for the RCMP to be able to build connections to communities, rather than just providing bare bones services. In some cases, they're overwhelmed with just the basic policing.
From the side of the community, we could do more interaction with the RCMP and provide more opportunities for employment.
When it comes to complaints and the concerns that communities or individuals have when there is abuse by police, it is to be able to feel that things can be safely handled. I would imagine that there are a lot of cases in which people are fearful of any sort of retaliatory response if they bring abuse forward, so it continues to be, in some cases, a very dysfunctional relationship.
There is a point on border crossing that is larger than this piece of legislation, but I always want to bring it up. It is the arbitrary borders that separate Inuit from Greenland or Denmark from those in Canada and Alaska. We have lobbied and advocated to the Government of Canada for the ability for Inuit to freely pass between our communities, because, in many cases—just like in Akwesasne with the Mohawk—between Greenland and Canada and between Canada and the United States, we have family interactions; we have common hunting areas, and the border crossing is such a huge impediment.