Public Safety Committee on June 6th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

We'll go now to Mr. MacGregor for two and a half minutes, please.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It's good to see some familiar faces around the table again.

I am coming in for Mr. Julian, so I apologize if some of these questions and subjects have already been dealt with.

Grand Chief Benedict, I'd like to start with you. I saw in a CBC news article that you had estimated that your council “gets about three to four calls a month” from members complaining about CBSA conduct. The nature of my question is really just trying to, I think, put on the record for this committee study, the number of complaints you believe come in total, because I think your number is referencing how many are coming to council. How many total complaints come from your members to the CBSA, and do you have an idea of the range of severity of those complaints?

I think it's important to get that on the record, so that we understand the nature of the problem and how frequently it occurs, and so that the government has a good idea of the number of resources it needs to employ in this new commission to ensure that it is acting on behalf of people right across the country.

[Grand Chief Abram Benedict]

I would say that what we receive is probably equal to the number the CBSA receives every month. We encourage our members to file official complaints if it's something more than an misunderstanding. Generally we inform them altogether if we encourage them to do both, or if we will assist in mitigating it directly with the local agency, because sometimes that is better.

I would say three to four per month is probably what we see now going to the official system.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you.

I have only 30 seconds. Mr. Obed, very quickly, can you provide similar information, just with regard to the situation up north with the RCMP?

[Natan Obed]

If you look at data from Nunavut—again, the only jurisdiction in which we can clearly state that there are Inuit complaints—there are roughly 30 per year, and they are in roughly half of our communities, 25 of 51. We don't have any more detailed information.

Like the Grand Chief has echoed for his community, we and Inuit representational organizations channel any concerns that come to us back to these processes and hope that these processes will ensure that those complaints are meaningfully addressed.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. MacGregor.

Thank you to our witnesses today. Thank you for bearing with us through technical difficulties and votes. We certainly appreciate your input. It will be helpful to our study.

With that, we are suspended, and we'll bring in the next panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

This meeting is resumed.

We are starting our second panel.

We'd like to welcome today, as an individual, Mr. Michael Scott, lawyer and partner in Patterson Law; and we have by video conference, from the Canadian Council for Refugees, Jenny Jeanes, vice-president. Welcome to you both.

We will start with up to a five-minute opening statement for each of you. I would like to invite Mr. Scott to make a statement for five minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Michael Scott, Lawyer, Patterson Law, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon.

My name is Michael Scott. I'm a partner at Patterson Law in Halifax.

As the committee members are likely aware, we just finished a public inquiry in Nova Scotia into the worse mass killing in Canadian history. In the context of that inquiry, my colleagues and I were tasked with representing those who were most affected, those being the families of the victims.

In the course of its work, the commission examined a number of police-related issues, and I can say that among those issues were the complaints process and specifically Bill C-20.

Civilian oversight is essential to ensuring public confidence in law enforcement, and we would suggest public confidence in the legitimacy of the complaints process is, to a significant degree, dependent on two essential elements. The first is independence in the investigation of complaints, and the second is timeliness in the handling of those complaints.

Leon Joudrey was a resident of Portapique, Nova Scotia. In the early morning hours of April 19, 2020, RCMP members attended to his house to extract the perpetrator's wife, or common-law spouse, Lisa Banfield. As a result of his interactions with the RCMP, a formal complaint was filed. While the details of that complaint aren't really relevant to the conversation we're having today, the way in which Mr. Joudrey was handled very much is.

The handling of Mr. Joudrey's complaint was anything but independent. Despite a specific recommendation from the CRCC chair that the matter should be referred out of H Division, it was in fact assigned to the direct supervisor of the officers who were under investigation.

The handling of Mr. Joudrey's complaint was anything but timely, inasmuch as he told the Mass Casualty Commission in May 2022, almost two years after the complaint was filed, that all he had received were form letters advising him that there was “no news”. Indeed, on October 4 of last year, counsel for the RCMP, in response to specific questions that were raised about Mr. Joudrey's complaint, advised the Mass Casualty Commission that the matter was still under investigation, and they were unable to provide any indication, even estimated, as to when that matter might be concluded.

Later that month, in October 2022, Mr. Joudrey died.

Mr. Joudrey's story is emblematic of the CRCC's critical weakness, and that is our overreliance on having the RCMP investigate the RCMP. As it stands, the process involves complaints being submitted to an independent civilian oversight authority, which then in turn hands that matter back to the very organization that is the subject of the complaint.

Bill C-20 offers an excellent opportunity to change that model. Unfortunately, the bill, in its current form, simply transposes the CRCC model from the RCMP Act into its own legislation. In substance, all that changes is the name.

The president of the National Police Federation, Mr. Brian Sauvé, appeared before this committee, I believe last week. In the context of the Mass Casualty Commission, I can tell you that families of the victims and the NPF found lots of things to disagree about, so it is notable that I find myself in the position today of being able to advise you that I actually agree almost entirely with the NPF's position as regards Bill C-20.

I think Mr. Sauvé's comments and recommendations on behalf of the RCMP members' union are insightful and worth this committee's consideration. I would urge the committee to recognize that if Bill C-20 is to serve its intended purpose, it will require more than minor amendments. It will require moving past the existing model and its overreliance on police investigating police.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, sir.

We go now to Ms. Jeanes for an opening statement.

You have five minutes, please.

[Jenny Jeanes, Vice-President, Canadian Council for Refugees]

Thank you to the committee for inviting me here today.

I'm speaking on behalf of the Canadian Council for Refugees. It's a pan-Canadian umbrella organization of over 200 organizations that work in direct contact with refugees and migrants. Many of our members have lived experience of forced migration and intersecting oppressions. I work for one of those members, Action Réfugiés Montréal, where I support people detained for immigration reasons at the Laval Immigration Holding Centre.

The CCR has been calling for independent oversight of the CBSA since before it even existed. While we hope to see this legislation passed to fill such a long-standing gap, we are concerned about certain aspects of the bill and recommend a series of changes.

I'd like to share two experiences with you. One was of a young man in detention who faced imminent removal to his country of origin, where he faced persecution. He told me, in sheer terror and limited English, that the removal officer warned him that if he did not co-operate, he would be removed in a bag. I believed this to mean a spit guard, an enforcement tool used by the CBSA. A few days later he was removed. The CCR raised the concern about the use of spit guards with senior CBSA management, but we did not have evidence about intimidation or any possible use of force, as we did not have the individual's consent or testimony.

Another case is of a single mother of a young Canadian child, whom I also met in detention. A few days before they were to return to the mother's country of origin, widespread violence broke out. She met a removal officer to see if a delay was possible due to the rapidly deteriorating situation. Instead, she was detained, accompanied by her young child, and the removal officer refused a deferral request, disregarding ample evidence about the risks.

Her situation raised a variety of intersecting concerns. Some concerns were systemic and others related to officer conduct. Had it not been for an emergency intervention by the Federal Court, she would have been deported just two days after I met her.

In both of these cases the person involved was a Black African. Black Africans and other racialized communities are disproportionately affected by immigration detention and other enforcement measures. Racism is a particularly urgent concern in immigration enforcement because of the immense power imbalance that exists between officials and people without secure status.

Those incidents occurred a few days before a deportation, and the individuals were at the mercy of the removal officers' discretionary powers. Canada Border Services Agency officers have considerable powers to detain and deport, but they also have access to protection measures or status. All of these dynamics create barriers to filing complaints.

For the commission to be effective, there has to be a mechanism to ensure that complaints can be filed by third parties without the need to obtain consent or appoint anyone. We recommend that formal channels be created for non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, and other third parties to file complaints about tendencies and practices, particularly to raise systemic issues.

The bill focuses too narrowly on the officers' individual conduct. NGOs should not only be able to bring forward complaints about systemic issues, but they should also have a formal mechanism to request a review of specific activities. The commission must be free to accept requests for review of specific activities, since the issues at stake are too important. Furthermore, too many years have passed without independent oversight, leaving a wide range of critical systemic issues unresolved. The commission must therefore have sufficient resources.

We're also very concerned that deportation is a barrier to pursuing a complaint or obtaining appropriate redress. In some cases, the removal must be suspended while the complaint is being investigated. Clause 84 of the bill must be deleted and a mechanism must be put in place to allow for suspension of removal as needed.

We recommend further amendments to broaden the range of remedies. One of our recommendations is to ensure that detainees have significant access to complaint mechanisms, and that the time to file a complaint be increased to two years, since many people will only feel empowered to file a complaint once the issue of their status has been resolved.

You will find other recommendations in our summary, as well as a more detailed analysis and context in our brief, which is being translated.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

We'll start our first round of questions now with Ms. Dancho.

Ms. Dancho, please go ahead for six minutes.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being with us today.

Mr. Scott, as the committee is well aware and as you outlined a bit in your testimony, you were the lawyer who represented many of the victims' families during the Mass Casualty Commission. I believe, given your experience, you are uniquely positioned to give this committee very good insight on Bill C-20 and how RCMP and CBSA oversight should be structured, so I was very much looking forward to hearing your thoughts today on this important bill.

You mentioned you agree with Mr. Sauvé of the NPF, or with some of his recommendations. In particular, you agree with the piece he spoke about last week about his concerns with the way the model is set up now—which BillC-20 does not change—whereby RCMP officers have to investigate RCMP officers.

Can you outline any concerns or expand your thoughts on Mr. Sauvé's recommendation and why you support it?

[Michael Scott]

The critical issue is that it doesn't serve the interests of the RCMP or the public to have the RCMP investigating the RCMP. We have heard it can create issues of morale within detachments to effectively pit one member against the other in that process. It's difficult to expect confidence in the process itself, either from a public perspective or as a complainant, when your complaint is given to an independent body that then hands it off to the RCMP.

It's true that under the current model, there is an opportunity that if a complainant isn't satisfied with the outcome, the CRCC can institute a process, and I think the same would be true under Bill C-20. The problem is that we then relegate the independent body almost to an appellate role and we certainly lose control of the timing issue, so we end up with situations like Mr. Joudrey's, when the matter was tied up in an initial investigation for two years.

That's where I think the interests of the public and the RCMP become one, inasmuch as no one is benefiting from the model that currently exists.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you very much for that assessment. I appreciate it.

Part of the Mass Casualty Commission was an in-depth investigation of the RCMP and the really close minutiae and detail of every movement of those horrific days a few years ago, as you're well aware.

Given your experience and how you saw the RCMP operate in that horrific situation, can you provide other thoughts on Bill C-20 and how you believe we can improve it—if you feel that we should—and the oversight of the RCMP? How may that have benefited the public a few years ago in the situation you're so familiar with?

[Michael Scott]

Thank you for the question.

If you go through the Mass Casualty Commission's final report, it reads like a full accounting of the RCMP's failures, and those failures are revealed to be mostly systemic. The failures in most instances had very little to do with frontline members responding to the tragedy, but were in fact institutional and organizational problems.

One of the key components of a public complaints process has to be the ability, obviously, to hold members to account, because we can't have law enforcement without accountability. However, it should also allow for reviews to be conducted at the direction of either the minister or the oversight body. Had that been functional in 2020—and, presumably, in the years before—we may have been able to address some of the systemic issues that appear to have gone on for a number of years in Nova Scotia and were simply waiting in the tall grass when the events eventually happened.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

That's interesting.

When the president of the CBSA union, Mr. Weber, was here last week as well, he raised what they would like to see. Again, he represents the frontline CBSA officers. He flagged that often direction from upper management is part of the issue as well. He asked the committee to consider, in essence, that Bill C-20 be built in a way that would also allow complaints to be made against not just the front line but also upper management.

I know, you know and we know there were certainly issues with regard to the RCMP brass, we'll call them, in those first few days after the mass killings. In your estimation, do you feel there should be some sort of mechanism for holding upper management in the RCMP accountable through this process?

[Michael Scott]

I think there certainly can be. Obviously, the public doesn't have a great deal of visibility on management problems, by its nature, but if we have a robust and well-equipped oversight body, they're in a position, through complaints either within the RCMP or by other mechanisms, to identify, by divisional level or even by individual level at the officer stage, matters that need to be addressed in a way that really isn't captured by the current system, which relies almost entirely on members of the public and an individual interaction they've had with a particular member.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you very much for your feedback, Mr. Scott.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Ms. Dancho. You had five seconds to spare.

Mr. Gaheer, go ahead for six minutes, please.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses for their testimony before the committee.

My questions are for you, Ms. Jeanes.

Your organization will look at the “rights, protection, sponsorship, settlement, and well-being of refugees”. Obviously, the CBSA is intimately involved in that process. I want to talk about Bill C-20. You presented amendments, but I want to talk about what the bill does and maybe how your organization can use it.

When the minister testified before the committee, he made it clear that third parties can make a complaint on behalf of another person as long as there is consent. Do you think your organization will play a role in making third party complaints?

[Jenny Jeanes]

Many of our members would certainly want to support individuals in making complaints when necessary and might have a role as an accompaniment or an advocate in helping somebody bring forward a complaint when they have consent.

We see real limitations in the bill around, first of all, that requirement for consent, because of the many barriers, some of which I mentioned: fear of deportation, fear of detention, fear of not getting status and fear of being sent back for persecution. There are so many reasons that an individual may not be able to make a complaint or may be afraid to make a complaint and who may not, for the same reasons, be willing to give consent. We absolutely need a mechanism whereby third parties like NGOs can bring forward patterns of behaviour in particular. We have specified in more detail in our brief what that would look like.

We also want to make sure that such credible organizations as the Canadian Council for Refugees could ask for or make a formal request for a specified activity review. In the legislation as tabled, that's not possible, unless we're sort of waving a red flag and getting the attention of the commission and the commission then initiates a review. We want that embedded in the legislation.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

That's a point well taken. My riding has Pearson airport in it. I deal with a fair number of cases that deal with refugees or deportations.

We know that the legislation will also allow for the collection of race-disaggregated data. In the refugee context, do you think it's important that this data be collected? Could you speak to how you'd like to see this data be used to inform systemic reviews?

[Jenny Jeanes]

Yes. As I mentioned, systemic racism is at the forefront of our concerns. Racialized communities are very much impacted by enforcement activities.

Just from my own personal experience, when I do my work and we go into immigration detention, we see consistently a very high proportion of racialized communities, and particularly Black Africans, in immigration detention. It's impossible to miss. Certainly having more data will be necessary, and also potentially a specified activity review focused on racism. We all know that racism is present throughout our society, but it's certainly very present in immigration enforcement.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

This is more of an open-ended question. You've answered this a little bit, but could you provide the committee with examples of areas where an increased CBSA review would ensure a better outcome for Canadians?