Evidence of meeting #71 for Public Safety and National Security in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was commission.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Lahaie and Ms. Gibb, thank you for your insight and for the work you are doing. We all know that you take this work very seriously.
I'd like to talk about how many investigators the commission has. You said you had a staff of 90. How many of them are investigators, and how many are contract employees that you use from time to time to conduct investigations or handle complaints?
Chairperson, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
We have seven full-time investigators right now. They are employees who work for the commission. We also have a list of people we can reach out to when we need experts to look into certain aspects of policing.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
You have seven full-time investigators, but how many of the contract workers you mentioned can you contact to conduct investigations?
Chairperson, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
It depends on our resources, of course. It's a pretty long list. We have about 20 investigators we can hire as contractors, if we have the funding.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Thank you.
This seems to be the issue that comes up repeatedly, the issue of resources. You talked about the fact that the funding, in terms of what you thought would be appropriate—we were talking about $19.4 million, as Madam Michaud mentioned—is the lower end. Could you share with us the resources that you were looking for at the level of 6,000 complaints, 9,000 complaints and 12,000 complaints?
Chairperson, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
My colleague here is pulling up the numbers.
At 6,000 complaints, if I recall correctly, $23.5 million was the amount we were looking for just for the commission itself. For option two, which was 9,000 complaints, it was $35.9 million, and for 12,000 complaints, it was $45.9 million.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Thank you.
This is very helpful, because this issue comes up repeatedly. Given the current level of complaints from the CBSA, it is a reasonable scenario that the number of complaints will increase. In fact, if this system is working, that should be what happens in the normal course of things.
What was the most likely scenario of those three that you saw in your budget submission?
Chairperson, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The one we were expecting was 9,000. Of course, right now, the numbers we get from CBSA are that they get somewhere between 2,400 and 3,000 complaints. With the fact that there's going to be a public education campaign and the fact that you have an external independent agency, our anticipation was that the number of complaints would rise.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Would it be fair to say that the budget allocation currently in place is about half of what your reasonable expectation is for the number of complaints that most likely will come forward?
Chairperson, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
That's a fair statement, yes.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
We're shortchanging you right from the get-go by about a factor of 50%. You're getting only 50% of what the reasonable likelihood is, and even less if there is real success in terms of the public saying that they have to raise these concerns.
In terms of resourcing, you talked earlier about having to already refer complaints back to the RCMP because of a lack of resources. You've talked about the importance of systemic investigations. How many times, even in the current format, have you had something you felt was really important to do but you've had to hold off because of the lack of resources?
Chairperson, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
I would say there probably isn't a month that goes by that I don't see a complaint where I say we should be investigating this ourselves. You heard about the complaint of Mr. Joudrey. That was an absolutely tragic situation that we should have taken on ourselves, but we just didn't have the resourcing to be able to do it.
The other thing, of course, is that we're now looking at the community-industry response group in British Columbia. That's a big investigation. It's taking up a lot of my resources, but it's absolutely critical that we do it. We had to wait for additional program integrity funding to come in before I could actually launch that investigation.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
I still have a couple of seconds left, Mr. Chair.
I would just like to say that it is a major problem that the under-resourcing is so significant.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. Julian.
We'll start round two now with Mr. Shipley.
Go ahead, please. You have five minutes.
Conservative
Doug Shipley Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses.
I want to build off something Mr. Julian just asked about. I was trying to catch it in translation. Did you say that you have only seven investigators at the current time?
Chairperson, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Yes. That's correct. I have seven investigators.
Conservative
Doug Shipley Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
That's out of a total staff of how many?
Chairperson, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
I have a total staff of between 85 and 90, but also, when we're doing reviews, those are lawyers who are doing that. Obviously, I would like to increase my stable of investigators, but we have policy analysts who assist with the investigations. There are seven who are specifically classified as investigators, but my policy analysis team also gets involved in that.
Conservative
Doug Shipley Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
Could you tell me a little bit about the background of those seven? Are they retired law enforcement? What background do they have?
Chairperson, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
We have two who are retired law enforcement. They're former police officers. Neither one of them served with the RCMP. The other five come from a mix of other tribunals or social services backgrounds.
Conservative
Doug Shipley Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
Okay.
We've talked a lot today about resources. You mentioned—I was scribbling this down very quickly—that you have to bump a lot to the RCMP. We heard when they were here, and we heard from their association too, that when they go to do their investigations into complaints, they're obviously taking frontline officers off too.
Do you get push-back sometimes? We're hearing about a lot about resources. If we're going to pass this important legislation and there aren't the resources there to do it, then we're wasting our time. Let's do it right. Are you getting push-back from them also, then?
Chairperson, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
No, we haven't really had push-back from the RCMP. I mean, the process is well established. It's been in place for 35 years. I know that the union has made its point, but there are also the professional responsibility units that are doing a lot of this work as well. The RCMP doesn't push back, but clearly the union is.
Conservative
Doug Shipley Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
Okay.
You mentioned at the beginning that a public education portion is mandatory. You submitted some documents to us. This was the flow chart of how your complaints system works. Quite frankly, I read the flow chart and it's still confusing. How do you make the process...?
If they're a new Canadian or someone who doesn't speak English or French, one of our official languages, how do they possibly get through this system and know where to go? I was shocked when you said that most complaints come to your office. I'll be honest and say that until we started this, I had never heard of your office. I'm from Ontario, so there aren't as many RCMP. They have the SIU here.
Could you explain how we could possibly make this a little easier? How are people finding you now?
Chairperson, Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Because public education right now is a “nice to do” as opposed to a mandated activity, it's something that's done off the corner of a desk and only if I have enough resources left. What I'd like to focus on is the fact that we've had some really big successes.
When you look at the territory of Nunavut, we have been up there five, six or seven times with commission staff. The territory is getting to know the process. The MLAs are engaged. We've talked to the mayors. We've talked to the community justice workers. That's what it's going to be. It's about finding advocates but also building up the team so that we can explain this process, which is complex and needs to be broken down. That's why we have the public complaints forms available in 16 different languages. It's to help with that sort of thing.