Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women Committee on Nov. 28th, 2013

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

In the 38 communities in which your members operate, is that as prevalent? Are aboriginal women more likely to come forward to an aboriginal police service, or are the numbers still, unfortunately, very low? Is there a disparity between whether that community was served by the RCMP or by a provincial police force, or whether it's served by a first nations policing authority? Do you know if there's any evidence that there are higher levels of reporting when there are incidents of violence?

[Chief John W. Syrette]

I don't think we have any evidence to show whether they're more comfortable reporting to a self-administered service or to the RCMP. I don't have any evidence of that, sorry.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

That's okay.

In your own communities, then, maybe. You're both chiefs of police for one of these communities. Maybe just put on that hat, if you wouldn't mind, and speak to this. In your own communities, has it been static? Are you still finding this to be a problem? As these education efforts are rolled out, are more people coming forward? Is it staying the same? Is it worse? From your police service itself, what has your experience been?

[Chief John W. Syrette]

I think it's getting better. A lot of work needs to be done. I was offered a common figure a number of years ago whereby a typical young women in this type of situation, in a violent home, often has 30 incidents of violence before she picks up the phone and makes that call to the police. It's our goal that, the first time she musters up the courage to make that call, we're effective. Hopefully that will in turn spread through the community, that we are there for them. We hope that our response was a positive one and it gave them the resolution they were looking for.

I think we have moved it forward, but we still admit that we have a long way to go.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Is either one of you familiar with the family violence prevention program, and if so can you maybe speak to its efficacy?

The program has provided $24 million over two years for the program. Since 2006 it has supported 41 shelters across the country, provided shelter services for over 16,500 children and 18,000 women living on reserve, and offered over 1,800 family violence prevention and awareness activities in aboriginal communities.

Are you aware of these programs? How do you think they're doing, given that there has been a significant funding commitment over the last couple of years?

[Chief John W. Syrette]

I'll be honest with you: I have never heard of this, so it would be really difficult for me to comment on the effectiveness.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Have you, sir?

[Chief John Domm]

Regrettably, I'm in the same position. I haven't heard of it either.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

That's good to know.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

You have one minute.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

If you had to sum it up in one minute, which we have to, what would you say is the main challenge, or what are the main challenges, facing first nations policing services?

[Chief John W. Syrette]

I would say we're chronically underfunded, and I think the limited resources we do have we try to deploy as effectively as possible with the support of our partners in our communities. The young lady raised the issue of the grants coming forward for that sort of event, and that would be such a positive thing for us. It would allow us to create relationships and to build upon what we have now with the limited resources first nations services have and service providers in the community have. This would really help bridge that gap and allow us to create a better response mechanism, a more appropriate and lasting response to violence in our communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Thank you.

We go now to you, Ms. Jones, for seven minutes.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you.

Thank you very much for joining us today.

This is my first time at this committee meeting. I'm filling in for a colleague.

I'd like to ask you to tell me a bit about what you do, what your job is. I know you're chief of the aboriginal police, but what community do you work in? What people do you serve? How many people work with you in providing that service? I'm just trying to paint a picture in my mind of what you do on a daily basis.

[Chief John W. Syrette]

My police service is responsible for 16 individual first nations in Ontario. We have a board, which has a representative from each one of the communities. The board identifies the priorities they feel the police service should be addressing in their community, and it's my job to try to develop a plan to provide an operational response to meet the needs of those individual communities. We have a lot of common issues, but each one of our communities also has its own priorities, which may differ from one community to the next. So as the police chief, I try to find the most effective way of deploying our resources to ensure that we address the concerns as well as we can.

[Chief John Domm]

I work in a small community about one hour north of Toronto, and we're host to one of the three significant commercial casinos in Ontario. So it's a bit of a unique setting whereby it's sort a of semi-rural setting on the shores of Lake Couchiching, which is just outside of Orillia, Ontario. The casino is a significant attraction to the city of Toronto and elsewhere, so it is a unique kind of blended community, if you will.

Certainly, primarily as the chief of police, I am responsible for overseeing the organization, overseeing the work that's done, liaising with the community, whether it's individual members, department heads or the political leadership, and things of that nature. Furthermore, like my friend John Syrette, I represent the nine self-administered first nations police services in Ontario at the provincial police chiefs association level. I participate on a couple of national committees through the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. When we do things like this, we really represent first nations policing. We represent our organizations, but we also represent and speak to the issues we have experienced and are trying to move forward on at a broader level. Whether it's a provincial table or a national table, we bring those issues forward.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

The work you do is certainly admirable. I have a large aboriginal constituency and I know the challenge that comes with policing, along with delivering other services in many of those communities.

The aboriginal policing information management system outlines that first nations policing programs are currently dealing with criminal incidents that are 3.8 times higher than the rest of Canada. It also includes certain key indicators: violent crime is at 5.8 times the national average, assaults are seven times the national average, and drug trafficking is at 3.8 times the national average. These are alarming statistics, no doubt, for any sector of our population in the country.

How do we starting bringing those numbers down? It's not that we haven't been bringing them down—I'm not saying that—but how do we bring them down even lower than they are today? What kind of resources do we need to start investing in first nations communities to make this happen?

[Chief John Domm]

I think it's a holistic approach in terms of tackling a number of social factors, from basic health, to clean drinking water, education, and proper housing. These are all basic, foundational core things that are required for any human, any family across Canada. Without these, it goes back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You've got to start with the building blocks and get that good foundation and move forward from there. Without the foundation, it's very difficult to try to go off on one stream and be entirely successful.

It's a very complex, very difficult question and proposition, and many great minds haven't figured it out yet today, but I'm encouraged that we're talking about it. I think it is very important, but I don't think it's any one specific area that we can tackle and say, “If we do this, we'll eradicate that.” I think it is far more complex than that.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

In the first nations communities that you currently provide policing services in, are you feeling that those basic needs are being met in those regions?

[Chief John W. Syrette]

I can't give a blanket statement, but I can say that some of our communities are very advanced and they are addressing some of the issues that John has raised. It's through the political leadership, and some of the leaders really see it as a priority that they need to fix, not only the community itself, but the mindset of the community in that this type of behaviour is no longer accepted. Kids need to have education as a priority. In those communities, I could see such a huge difference from the other communities within my police service that have not gotten to the point where they've raised these as priorities.

There is no one-size-fits-all. Each community is in its specific level of development, but I am confident and praying that at some point, when I ultimately retire from this job, we'll have moved it that much further, and together we'll have developed a process and a service that have addressed a lot of these.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

I guess we all know that first nations policing programs did not receive any increase in funding between 2007 and 2012, and the funding increase that you were given this year is probably not likely to keep up with inflation and will not deal, I'm sure, with the chronically underfunded programs that you have.

As an association, have you looked at making some estimations around financial resources, in terms of how you can be adequately funded to do the job better?

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

We have time for a very, very short answer on that one.

[Chief John W. Syrette]

We've done a couple of sector studies, and out of that it showed that there is a lot of disparity from normal police services that are out there. We're hoping that at some point we'll have moved forward, but, again, 2013-14 was another zero year. It's not until 2014-15 that we see that modest increase of 1.5%.

[The Chair, Conservative, Stella Ambler]

Over to you, Ms. Block, for seven minutes.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Could I actually trade my speaking spot with Ms. Brown, because she was just saying how much she wanted seven minutes? I thought I was just getting five.