Thank you very much.
Breaking Barriers Together is a group of former RCMP officers and public service employees. We're all retired from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We have made a group because we believe strongly in making the RCMP better.
We believe there are four areas within Bill C-20 that need to be addressed. Bill C-20 needs to include internal misconduct and a clear definition of what misconduct is. No RCMP members who are retired or serving or their family members should be involved in investigations of complaints by the commission. The use of non-disclosure agreements should not be allowed through the commission. All of the decisions the commission makes need to be binding. There needs to be some form to hold people accountable for what we feel needs to be done.
Breaking Barriers believes that Bill C-20 must include internal misconduct.
Daniel Touchette created a report that shows that $2.68 billion has been spent or is deemed to have been spent for internal misconduct within the RCMP. Despite all the promises that were made during the Merlo Davidson settlement process, the investigation is still causing incredible harm to the victims. The process is fraught with personal bias, cultural bias, threats and intimidation.
We still need to remember that it's the RCMP investigating the RCMP. We have to remember that hundreds of the complaints, through the Merlo Davidson lawsuit, were originally investigated by the RCMP and were found to be unfounded. As soon as those complaints went to an independent investigation area, they found, all of a sudden, that they were founded. This creates a lot of harm for the victims.
The Honourable Michel Bastarache, the independent assessor for the group, came up with three key areas in discipline that he found were a problem. There was perception of bias and the unfairness of the process, the likelihood of retaliation for making a complaint and the lack of meaningful discipline or consequences for the officers' actions. We've heard from hundreds of serving RCMP officers that this process is still taking place and that it is still a problem within the process.
The problem with the RCMP is the culture. It is a toxic workplace. Bill C-20 has the ability to address that culture and to try to make it a better place to work.
There are 130 of us identified in the Merlo Davison lawsuit who were victims of rape by other RCMP officers. Not one of those perpetrators, even though we have made criminal complaints, has ever come to justice for that. They retired with a pension, and there were no problems.
We need to remember that Bill C-20 is supposed to make all Canadians equal, feel safe and get fair treatment by the RCMP and by CBSA. Therefore, we need to allow internal misconduct to be part of that, so that part can be rectified.
We believe that no RCMP officers or their families should ever be involved in or have anything to do with serious conduct problems within the RCMP. We need to remember that they are part of the group. They have loyalties to the RCMP, even though they're retired. We need to make sure that they are investigated by external organizations.
We also need to remember non-disclosure agreements. The RCMP is famous for, when there's a problem, making sure that they cover things up by using non-disclosure agreements. All that does is allow for the victim to be silenced and for the problem to go away, and no one ever finds out about the problem. They need to be prohibited in Bill C-20 so that we can't hide those problems anymore.
The most important thing is that we can say, “no RCMP members”. We can say “internal misconduct”. We can say all of those things, but, if we don't make the decisions that the commission comes to binding, then we will be in the same place we are.
We've had recommendation after recommendation made for 10, 15 or 20 years that these are the problems, and that's what needs to change.
Until those decisions that the commission comes to are binding and will actually force them to make a decision to follow the direction that is given to them, the problem will continue. It won't change, and then we're right back to where we started.