Thank you, Chair and committee members, for allowing us to be here to present with regard to a very important topic.
My name is Rae Banwarie. I'm the national president of the Mounted Police Professional Association. We are the group trying to organize and unionize the RCMP. We have with us Mr. Sebastien Anderson, a lawyer who represents a lot of our members in a lot of the cases involving mental health and the fallout. Also with me is Dave Reichert, a retired member who is helping a lot of our members in the transition from currently serving to being retired. As the committee knows, all of our members are veterans who are done with the force.
I've given the clerk copies of my presentation, which has our brief as well as a couple of attachments. One is on an investigation that was done by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada regarding a mental health issue and case. It was very significant. There is also the letter from Blue Cross that was sent to all of our members specifically on health care and the parameters under which our people can get help from it.
Our presentation focuses primarily on four main points: lack of consultation by the RCMP with employees and employee organizations when drafting the mental health strategy that's currently in place; access to Veterans Affairs' occupational stress injuries clinics, which is also regulated by the RCMP health services officer; health services given to our members, which are contingent on the release of members' medical information; and the employer-employee relationship between the RCMP and its psychologists and doctors, which is very problematic.
I'll begin with the mental health strategy—MHS, as it's called—and highlight just a few of the issues.
This process was initiated in 2014 and is a step in the right direction, as it recognizes the importance of mental health for RCMP officers. What is stated in this strategy appears to ensure that the members have the appropriate mental health care necessary to meet the significant demands of police work. However, when you dig deeper into the strategy, you realize that this program was created primarily with the input of sub-group professionals within the organization under contract to the RCMP, unlike the case for other police agencies, such as the city police in Ottawa or Victoria, whose associations' independent bodies are part of these processes.
The RCMP used its own doctors and psychologists from its approved lists, along with the return-to-work coordinators. In all of these situations, right now, in every division across the country, the client of these doctors, physicians, and psychologists is the RCMP. It's not the member; it never has been the member. These groups take their direction from their employer and answer to the RCMP, not to the members whom they're supposed to be assisting.
How much substantial input was sought from the national membership regarding the design and development of this program? Shouldn't our members and their families, the people who would utilize the process and resources, be at the front, as they are the focus of the program? In reality, very little of this was done.
What about our association, which has been advocating for and representing members since 1994? We've had very little, if any, input into this process. We have had little or no input into these processes although we have been the members on the front lines helping and providing physical and emotional support for hundreds of members suffering from the myriad issues occurring in the RCMP, including harassment, bullying, intimidation, PTSD, depression, anxiety, and addictions.
Along with many of the other national officers, I have been providing emotional and physical support for these members and their families on a national scale. The primary thing for a lot of our members—even those going into retirement, at which point Veterans Affairs takes over from our employer-controlled program for currently serving members—is that our people trust us. Right now, as far as a lot of our members are concerned, there's no trust in the employer, especially on the medical side. Sadly, we've lost many good people to suicide. My brief references a study on occupational health and safety that says we have had more than 31 suicides of current and retired RCMP members since 2006. That's a significant number, and that's once they started counting. How many were there before? We don't know.
If our organization were truly committed to the mental health of our people, they would embrace any and all support from any mechanism, including us, to help. I was the one who reached out to our CO, or commanding officer, in the biggest division, E division, and offered assistance in an unofficial capacity to help with outstanding grievance and harassment complaints, usually the precursors that can snowball into worse and worse situations—PTSD, anxiety, OSI, all kinds of issues.
To his credit, he did accept the offer, but this is off the corner of our desk and never in a full-time capacity. Since we have been engaged in this work, we're batting at least a 90% success rate. A lot of it comes down to the fact that we're independent and the members trust us. We need to be able to move on this full time to reduce the harm and reduce all of the issues that are happening in our organization.
I have shared with this committee just a brief overview of one of the points contained in the brief. When the brief is translated and you have it, please take the time to go over it in more detail. We're prepared, and I'm prepared, to present more information to the committee at any time.
I will turn the presentation over now to Dave Reichert, from the Retired Members Alliance. As a retired member, he can talk to the issues from that side of the house.
Thank you.