Public Safety Committee on Oct. 30th, 2023

[Joanne Gibb]

I would think dozens.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Dozens. Okay, thank you.

[Randall Koops]

It also comes on top of the existing CBSA and RCMP check-ins that are obligatory in the act, to report to the complainant about the progress of their complaint and the status of the investigation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Mr. Motz, go ahead.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you.

First of all, I think it's important to hear.... This amendment makes it sound as if it's the mission of the agencies or the members inside these agencies who have the complaints made against them to harass complainants so that they change their minds.

I find it rather offensive to even suggest that. However, there are always those “one-offs”, individuals who might overstep and interfere with an investigation. We've seen them from all sides who do that.

Does it make sense, as part of your normal process of checking in with the complainant, whoever that might be, on the status of an investigation, which is legislated, that you would ask those questions as a matter of practice anyway, such as, “Is there anything new to report?”, meaning anything along those lines that would give rise to an opportunity for them to report exactly this if it were actually happening? Is that a reasonable thing to expect from all the agencies when they check in with the complainants during an investigation?

[Joanne Gibb]

The RCMP and CBSA have to send a monthly update letter to the complainant, so it's already being sent. I suppose you could insert something like that. Among our complainants now, there are some who are quite well informed, and when they don't receive their monthly update letter, they will file a second complaint. That is a complaint we will take if they didn't get their monthly update.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Okay. To the agencies, RCMP and CBSA, if you're sending these out and if you have to send the updates to the commission, you're obviously sending them to the complainants as well. Is there an avenue there if they wish to add more information, or is there anything new happening? Is that something that is a matter of practice now?

[Assistant Commissioner Alfredo Bangloy, Assistant Commissioner and Professional Responsibility Officer, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

For the RCMP, as a matter of practice, we just advise them of the status of the investigation, but certainly if the complainant has any other complaints of any type of harassment or anything like that, we definitely take that seriously, and it would potentially result in the initiation of a statutory investigation or another code-of-conduct disciplinary type of investigation.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

That's if they bring it up on their own. I think the intent of Mr. Julian's motion is to provide an avenue so that they can at least get asked.

If I'm hearing you right, you don't necessarily ask them if there's anything new or if they're being harassed or anything like that, but if they say it, you take it seriously.

[A/Commr Alfredo Bangloy]

That's correct.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

That's on their own initiative.

[A/Commr Alfredo Bangloy]

That's correct.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

How about CBSA?

[Cathy Maltais]

We're not under the commission yet, so we're not part of the legislation and we don't have that check-in every 30 days. Our current service standards are 40 days, so we don't usually need a monthly check-in, because the complaint is resolved generally within a month and a week.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

All right. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Is there any further discussion?

(Amendment negatived) [See Minutes of Proceedings])

That brings us to clause 44. Did we amend this?

(Clause 44 as amended agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

We are set to stay here until 2:00 p.m. It's been suggested to me that we might need a bio break, so I think we'll suspend for five minutes or so.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

The meeting is resumed.

Go ahead, Ms. O'Connell.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Mr. Chair, before we get into it—because I don't want to interrupt during clause-by-clause, or at the end if we're rushing over to question period—I have a request. We're making good progress, but at the rate at which we're going, and with all of the other committee work we still have to do before the holiday break, I'm going to humbly request, even though this is never my first suggestion, that the clerk look into additional resources to continue clause-by-clause of Bill C-20, in particular for this Wednesday, if we can't conclude by today. Then, with Wednesday's meeting, we can look at additional resources.

Again, I didn't want to interrupt while we're in the middle of a clause, but I really think, given the timelines and how much we still have left to do, we need to request some additional resources and enable committee members to rearrange their schedules if need be, or find subs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

Mr. Julian, go ahead.

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

I completely agree with Ms. O'Connell on that point.

As I have said a number of times, everyone is working co‑operatively, and that's nice. This is a very complex bill, and we have to take the time we need to go through each clause. These are important issues. Everyone wants to work co‑operatively and in a positive way, but we also want to avoid making mistakes by trying to improve the bill.

That said, I agree that we need to add meeting hours in order to study the bill. That will require, whether it's this week or next week, extended meeting hours, but we can get there. By adding hours, we'll be able to make all the amendments we need to make to the bill. That would prevent us from having to postpone the next study until December. We won't be able to move on to the next study until we have completed the review of the bill.

The best way to do that would be to extend our meetings until midnight, for example, on Wednesday. That would be entirely appropriate. We could study all the amendments and work hard and efficiently to get through them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Mr. Shipley, go ahead.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

That's definitely past my bedtime.

Thank you, Chair.

I want to chime in on this a bit. Recently my staff and I did a bit of an analysis of where we are and how quickly we're going. I'm very confident that we can get through this by the end of next week with no problem; we're moving very quickly. We're still withdrawing lots of amendments, and I know my friend from the NDP mentioned he's withdrawing some amendments. I don't think that's rushing it too quickly.

The Conservatives are more than happy to work as much as we have to work. Our only concern is that it has to work for everybody. Chair, just last week you sent out an email on Friday morning, and I responded within 20 minutes and said that the extra hour that day was not going to work for some of the members of our team, because it was just too quick, and we all had other things on. Within two hours of that, we had notification that the meeting was being extended by an hour, so we're not exactly working as a collegial team on that issue. If we're going to be putting in extra time, we need to agree to it so it fits everybody's time.

You asked what our schedules were going to be like. I was very forthright with you and told you it didn't work for us that day, and we still had that extra hour.

Again, I think we'll be able to get this done quite easily by the end of next week. We're moving along very quickly. We're still withdrawing many. I know, as I said, our NDP friends are withdrawing some. I think if we can all commit to getting it done by the end of next Thursday, everybody might be amenable to that, but we'll see where it goes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, all.

I've already asked the clerk to see what's available for us on Wednesday. I think we're going great guns, moving very fast, and we might even be done with normal hours on Wednesday. I would be very much in favour of extending on Wednesday, so we potentially could get it done entirely on Wednesday, and then we could start on Bernardo next week.

I'm taking it that we have the general consent of the committee to look for extra time on Wednesday. How much extra time remains to be seen with what's available. I understand your concern, but I have to go with the will of the majority here, so we will look for extra time on Wednesday.

Thank you.

(On clause 45)

All right. That having all been said, we can carry on with clause 45.

We have NDP-29.

Mr. Julian.

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

In the spirit of collaboration and to move things along, I am not moving NDP-29.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

There's hope yet, then.