Public Safety Committee on June 9th, 2023

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

Everyone has standards, but it's difficult to meet them given the resources you have right now.

The reason I am asking and drilling down on this is just to try to get a sense of how complainants have to wait and how long RCMP officers who are the subject of that complaint have to wait.

How often would you say the investigation finds that the officer is guilty—I'm not sure if that's the right terminology—or that it's unfounded? Can you give me a ballpark assessment of that?

[Michelaine Lahaie]

Our process speaks to “satisfied” or “not satisfied”.

If an individual requests us to do a review, we will issue either a satisfied report or we'll issue an interim report.

In 90% of the cases that come to us on review, we find that we are satisfied with the way the RCMP handled the investigation.

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

I understand. It's 90% of the time, so the RCMP is doing a pretty good job in your assessment.

I think you may have mentioned this as well, but how many more serious cases would you like to take on? Would you like to do all of the use of force and personal liberty issue cases? Is that your vision?

[Michelaine Lahaie]

We'd like to do the serious use of force and personal liberty issues. We will get a use of force allegation, for example, that an individual felt that the handcuffs were too tight. I don't think it's a judicious use of the commission's resources to look at that, but if it's a more significant issue, I would like to take those on.

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

Just to wrap up in our last few seconds here, you've been asked this, but can we nail down what amount of funding from government you feel you would require to fully implement the vision you have for a complex and robust oversight system for both the RCMP and the CBSA?

Could you give us an annual operating budget number?

[Michelaine Lahaie]

Right now we're at $15.2 million. We originally asked for another $23 million. I would say that if we were sitting at about $40 million or $45 million, that would be a reasonable operating budget for us to be able to do these important investigations using our own resources.

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

Thank you very much for your insights.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

Our clerk has checked into the requirements for being on screen, so we have to follow the practice of the House, which is that if you want to be counted in quorum, you have to have your screen on and you have to be in frame. We will try to adhere to these standards more closely.

We'll go now to Mr. Chiang, please, for five minutes.

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Yes, Mr. Julian.

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

I had to step out for a moment. That's something that often happens around the committee table. I didn't understand what you just said, but it seems odd to me. That aspect has never come into question before. We are allowed to get up from the table to get a coffee when we are attending the meeting in person. We also have the right to leave our desk when we are participating virtually via Zoom. I've never heard such a point of order. I just wanted to have that clarified.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

I think that as we are in the room, we step away from our desks sometimes, but we're generally in the room. However, to be counted for quorum in the House, you have to be on screen, and we're supposed to adhere to similar rules here as in the House.

I don't think anybody is going to be concerned if you disappear for a minute, but if there is a quorum call, for example, we may have to give a little bit of latitude there.

Anyway, thank you, Mr. Julian.

Mr. Chiang, go ahead, please, for five minutes.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning to the witnesses. Thank you for your time and thank you for being with us today.

In regard to your comments about reservists, what kind of training do they have? Do they have annual training like regular police officers or is there no training once they are retired from the police service?

[Michelaine Lahaie]

I think that's a question that's better placed for the RCMP. I'm not 100% sure in terms of what their refresher training program is.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you. If there is any sensitivity training or diversity and inclusion training, would you be aware of that?

[Michelaine Lahaie]

I know that in some of our reports we've recommended diversity and inclusion training, and former commissioner Lucki was supportive of that. They have put together some programs that they're using. I'm not sure if reservists are being trained with those new programs or not.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Wouldn't you say it's an important component for policing? With Canada being such a multicultural nation, we have people from all parts of the world living here. It will be important for both full-time officers and reservists to have that sensitivity training so they can better serve the community at large

[Michelaine Lahaie]

I'd say, yes, I agree with you. It's absolutely critical that they have that type of training.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

When you receive complaints about officers or actions that an officer has taken, do you keep track of if it's the same officer causing the same problem repeatedly? Are there there any ramifications? Is there anything you can do about those problem officers?

[Michelaine Lahaie]

The commission kicked off a project about a year and a half ago. It's called the multiple complaint subject member project. We track the number of complaints that are received about certain officers and we share that information back with the RCMP leadership. Once it goes into the RCMP, I will admit we don't have visibility on what happens with that. I would like to see that information shared more broadly through the operational chain as opposed to through the administrative chain, but we are doing that. It is a new capacity that we've built within the commission in preparation for starting to collect more data with this new mandate.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

In regard to public trust, it would be more feasible to have it posted somewhere for the sake of transparency that we are open to accountability for officers who are doing the job that the country has entrusted them to do.

[Michelaine Lahaie]

Sometimes those things will be available, proactively disclosed on our website. There are also privacy concerns that are out there, so we're sensitive to that, but we do highlight cases where an individual has multiple complaints and multiple issues. We will highlight those in the reports.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you so much.

You said you need six weeks to get information from the RCMP about any complaints. Is that adequate or would you need a shorter time frame to get that information from the RCMP?

[Michelaine Lahaie]

Less time is always going to be better. The issue is if they're not meeting the timeline right now, I don't see that reducing the timeline is going to help the situation any more.

Six weeks is what's agreed to in the memorandum of understanding that we have with them.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you.

What are your thoughts on Bill C-20's plan to collect and publish race-based data to help assess and address systemic racism within law enforcement?