Public Safety Committee on June 6th, 2023

[Grand Chief Abram Benedict]

I definitely think that being independent from the agency itself is very helpful. The community will feel more comfortable filing the complaints knowing that an independent body will review and take action if appropriate.

Akwesasne being the 70% user of this port of entry is extremely important because it's unlike any other port of entry. If a traveller complains about a border officer, the likelihood of them having an interaction with that officer again is very minimal, but in my community, it's very high. If somebody complains about an officer's conduct or about the service they received, the likelihood of them encountering that officer again is very high. There's no other border crossing in Canada that would be like that.

Having said that, doing this outside of the agency is definitely helpful in ensuring that it's a fair and independent process and a process where the person who is complaining—and I would argue the officers themselves—can be assured that it's more of an objective process than an internal process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Shipley.

We'll go now to Ms. Damoff.

Ms. Damoff, please go ahead. You have six minutes.

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

Thanks, Chair.

Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here today. It's nice to see both of you.

President Obed, I'm going to start with you.

I know the CRCC has developed some of its brochures, complaints forms and other documents to be available in Inuktitut. I'm just wondering if that has helped to increase knowledge about the CRCC within the territory.

[Natan Obed]

I'll ask Chris to start this and then I'll add something.

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

Sure.

[Chris Stewart]

We have certainly been encouraged by CRCC's efforts in Nunavut to translate their materials, to have website adaptations and to travel to some of these communities to meet leaders within the communities and talk to members of the legislative assembly in an effort to explain a complex process. I think it's too early to see the impact of that at this point. However, we do hope to see this in other regions as well.

[Natan Obed]

It's good to see you as well.

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

Thank you.

Did you want to add to that?

[Natan Obed]

Yes, absolutely.

At the heart of some of these challenges with the inclusion of Inuktitut, our language, in the services being provided is that Inuktitut is not an official language of Inuit Nunangat or of Canada.

In our homeland, over 75% of Inuits' mother tongue is Inuktitut. In Nunavut, it's even higher than that. In Nunavik, it's almost 100%. You have jurisdictions or large parts of the country where there are majority Inuit populations and communities that have no right to receive government services in the majority language.

This is a challenge that we've brought forward to the Government of Canada very pointedly over the last decade, and still the Government of Canada has not responded with any sort of consideration of the request for official language status or something equivalent that would allow for service provision. With the best efforts at our point in time, we would like to see that being mandatory in Inuit Nunangat so that Inuit can receive service in the majority language and our mother tongue.

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

As part of that, there will be a public education campaign once Bill C-20 is passed into law, which we hope will happen quickly. How important is that public education? That won't be legislated. I think I know the answer, but I'd like you to have the opportunity to put on the record the importance of public education being available in the language that people are speaking in your territory.

[Natan Obed]

For Inuit to access the full benefits of this particular piece of legislation, communications in Inuktitut are essential to achieving that end goal.

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

Thank you.

Grand Chief Benedict, thank you for being here. It's nice to see you again as well.

I wondered if you could speak a bit about the Jay Treaty and the unique position that your reserve occupies within Canada and the U.S., with a border that was not defined by indigenous peoples but by colonizers. I'd love your thoughts on whether or not the training for CBSA agents needs to include the inherent rights that your people have to cross the border.

[Grand Chief Abram Benedict]

Absolutely, and thank you for the question.

In relation to the Jay Treaty, it's recognized by the United States but not recognized by Canada. The daily implications are that any indigenous person or member of a tribal nation.... In the case of Akwesasne, we have both: We have members who have a status card and members who have a tribal card. Many have both, but not all. The ones who have only a tribal card, who are part of the community, are not able to enter into Canada as a right. There's a process set up with the Government of Canada right now to examine legislative ways to implement the Jay Treaty itself.

In day-to-day operations, and I think as it relates to Bill C-20, you'll have a member arriving at the port of entry—and this is where it's important for CBSA officers to understand it as well—and asserting that this is part of their territorial lands. In the case of Akwesasne, it's a Mohawk, who doesn't have the right of entry under Canadian legislation, which, again, could lead to a negative interaction between the customs officer and, in this case, the Mohawk, and could result in a complaint under this process.

It's important that the reviewers, the BSOs, the border service officers, understand why this person is making this assertion. Also, there could be cases where a person has a right to have a status card but they choose not to. That's again back to the inherent right and back to the border being a fabricated line that was placed on top of us.

Absolutely the training for reviewers and for officers to understand inherent rights, whether it be for the Mohawks or any other indigenous group, is extremely important for this to be successful. Otherwise, you're sticking to black and white, and that's not very helpful.

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

Thank you very much.

I think that's my time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

That's it. Thank you.

Ms. Michaud, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Benedict, welcome back to the committee. You talked about the particular situation of your community, its border situation, its geographic location and how its members interact quite frequently with the Canada Border Services Agency. Everyone agrees that it's high time the government set up an independent complaints body.

You stated that you generally agree with Bill C‑20, and that's a good thing. I think it's fairly unanimous. However, I wonder if you have any concerns. You talked about elders and their difficulties, with no access to smartphones or computing, the Internet and so on.

I tried to get more information from officials and the minister on how long it takes to handle complaints. When we want a change, but it doesn't end up happening because there are too many complaints to handle for the number of resources allocated to an entity, we think we won't necessarily get there.

At this point, given the information we have on the bill, do you have any concerns about the handling of complaints or other factors?

[Grand Chief Abram Benedict]

Thank you for the question. It's great to see you, as always.

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, this process needs to be simplified and accessible, not only to elders and persons with disabilities, but in various languages as well. The previous panellist spoke to the importance of that.

As I mentioned in my testimony, it needs to be either written or by telephone. It's very easy to provide feedback, complaints, positivity and inputs online. As we saw during COVID-19, the government took the position that the ArriveCAN app was mandatory, and I can tell you that lots of people were having issues with that. I will say that was not in my community. Because of certain provisions, we were able to manage that. However, that just shows that not all travellers have the ability to go online and file that.

I would say that during implementation, ease of accessibility needs to be seriously considered, so that people who may have been wrongfully treated, or feel they have been, simply have access to the appropriate avenues.

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

Thank you.

The CBSA and RCMP officers have had some bad press in recent years. I don't necessarily want to throw officers into the spotlight, but when you see abuse like this, you realize that it doesn't necessarily come from a single individual.

The organizations that the committee has heard from have told us about the need for a culture change. Let's not kid ourselves. While Bill C‑20 is a good thing, it won't change or improve everything within these organizations. However, it is a good step forward.

Should the RCMP and the CBSA take other measures to improve their own internal organizational culture and how they interact with travellers or with members of your community in any situation?

[Grand Chief Abram Benedict]

Predominantly around training and awareness is where it begins. There have been lots of recommendations through several inquiries and reports that talk about awareness and training abroad, and this is definitely one of those areas where it should be implemented.

Having said that, I can tell you that CBSA has an indigenous affairs secretariat, which is working very hard to ensure this is happening across the coast. As you know, you can't control individual officer interactions, and this is where you're leading into these problems.

It does start from the top. There needs to be a continued approach that says it's important and why this should happen. I can tell you that specifically in Akwesasne, we work directly with the CBSA to deliver specific training to the Cornwall officers. That is done by Akwesasne Mohawks to educate them on a wide variety of things—our history, our people and why these fundamental rights are so important to us. This should be done across the international border, at all crossings.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Obed, I'd like to hear what you have to say about the change in organizational culture within the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency. You mentioned earlier that there were challenges with the types of policing. Can you tell us more about that?

As I mentioned, Bill C‑20 is a good thing. However, should these organizations be doing more about how officers interact with various members of the community?

[Natan Obed]

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.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'm sorry, sir. I'm going to have to cut you off there.

Thank you.

We go now to Mr. Julian for six minutes.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses.

I will start with you, President Obed. Unusakut. Thank you for being here.

I was very surprised for you to note that there is no data. I understand that there was a work plan signed last year but that generally the RCMP has not been providing residents—the Inuit communities, the ITK—with information about important data.

My first questions are around that work plan. How is that coming along? How is the RCMP engaging so that the important information, the data that you've talked about, is actually available to the community?

My second question is around language capability. It is stunning to me that less than 10% of RCMP personnel, non-administrative, are Inuit, which means, I'm assuming, that less than 10% have the language capability that is so important.

What does that mean for a community if 90% of its police officers have no capacity to speak the language that is the language of the majority, particularly in Nunavut? What are the impacts, and what are the personal stories that you know because of that lack of comprehension, where you have policing that doesn't relate at all to the community?

[Natan Obed]

First, in relation to our work plan with the RCMP, the number one item is in relation to accessing data for suicide and suicide attempts and self-harm. In trying to implement our national Inuit suicide prevention strategy, to date we have not had a comprehensive picture of deaths by suicide that is disaggregated, Inuit-specific data. The RCMP can help with providing that dataset. We are just at the very beginning of having conversations about how to access datasets in an Inuit-specific way while also keeping all the established structures in place for confidentiality, disaggregation of data and those sorts of things. It's essential in order to do better for our communities.

On the language issue, in cases where there is a threat of violence or in cases where there have been deaths, where the RCMP has actually killed an Inuk, the family members, especially in a time of crisis, are going to want to speak their mother tongue. They're going to want to speak their language. The inability of many people in a time of crisis to be able to understand what is happening to them, what has happened to a loved one or what the next steps will be creates an unfortunate, tragic response where people feel as though they were not served. They feel their loved one was taken from them. They don't feel there's any accountability for the system to interact with them as human beings.

Ultimately, that's what I've heard a lot from individuals who have experienced these things. They don't feel they're treated as human beings. We can do better. I know we can do better within Canada to provide policing services to Canadian citizens.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

As a follow-up to that, are you aware of how many Inuit are currently in depot or currently training, or whether there are Inuit outside the regions you've mentioned who are RCMP police officers but haven't been stationed in the area where their language abilities would make a difference?