Public Safety committee  Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm the chief executive officer of the Legal Services Board of Nunavut, which is the territorial legal aid provider. Nunavut's legal aid context is a little different. There are very few private lawyers in Nunavut. The Legal Services Boa

Public Safety committee  In a Nunavut context, the collection of that data is less relevant, because the vast majority of people are Inuit. As for the rest of the country, it's not within my brief to comment more generally. In a Nunavut context, we can assume almost exactly that the people interacting wi

Public Safety committee  Again, in the Nunavut context, I think the data tells a very compelling story of what's going on. It's great to collect data and it's important to collect the right data, but where we have it, where the evidence is really clear, there's still a big gap in how it informs policy an

Public Safety committee  Thank you for the question. I think that, again, in the Nunavut context, the question of defunding is entirely.... It's a red herring. Most communities have a handful of officers who are subject to arduous conditions, and it's impossible to imagine any positive change taking pla

Public Safety committee  Thank you. It's a really interesting question. Look, I struggle to recruit Inuit lawyers—it's a big focus of what I try to do—to come and work for my organization. The first principle, in my experience, is that Inuit and, more broadly speaking, indigenous people know which orga

Public Safety committee  Yes. I'd also say again, an organization that does not.... The control that the RCMP senior management have over conduct investigations is virtually absolute. The fact that they've struggled at the top level to even acknowledge systemic racism suggests that they would struggle

Public Safety committee  Very briefly, the available resources for diversion in Nunavut are shocking and embarrassingly low compared with any other jurisdiction in the country. There are simply no practical options and there's a great deal of reluctance. I started criminal practice 20 years ago when dive

Public Safety committee  With respect to the CRCC in particular, or just generally with respect to the RCMP?

Public Safety committee  Our experience with the CRCC is that.... I've no doubt that it is a well-meaning organization, but it has a limited mandate and it has a critical funding problem. I'd also say that, as far as I am aware, there are no indigenous or northern commissioners on the commission. I would

Public Safety committee  I think if you look at just about every province—and indeed on the CRCC's website they show the different oversight models for different provinces—you need a combination of civilian investigation of criminal matters and complaint-based independent investigation of conduct matters

Public Safety committee  With systemic issues, what you want is a mandate to do systemic reviews on the part of usually the same organization that does the conduct investigations. Again, I would also look at the use of a civilian board providing direct oversight over the RCMP to hold them accountable on

Public Safety committee  I don't think we have the time for me to recount it in any detail, but I will make sure that the committee has a copy of my two letters that outline various issues with respect to it. With respect to the issue of the strip-searching that took place in December, there were a hand