Public Safety committee  Personally, I think one important thing is that the proposed changes to the act are a godsend. There's no question this is helpful, and the committee, the government, and the RCMP are all to be commended on having brought this about—the idea of changes—so quickly. One of the thi

Public Safety committee  No, and I'm very familiar with that. To answer your question as to whether it's different in other police agencies, I would say it's certainly different in police agencies in municipal departments in British Columbia. They certainly wouldn't tolerate some of the behaviours that h

Public Safety committee  Thank you.

Public Safety committee  You used of the word “cronyism”. I'm thinking there's a little bit of truth to that. Certainly in some cases I think there's been this overwhelming desire to be remedial. I guess there's been a failure to fully appreciate what it means to be a police officer. There's this sort

Public Safety committee  We may well be missing something here, but there doesn't seem to be a problem in terms of articulating what ought to constitute a violation. I'm not sure changes would be necessary. Again, it's the whole business of deciding on appropriate dispositions. It's two things. First i

Public Safety committee  Let me put it this way. I would say something as close to that as possible, particularly on integrity issues. For example, one could never be hired in any single police force in Canada if there were any indication of an integrity issue, so why would we have a situation, when peop

Public Safety committee  At least in our assessment, the detachment commanders or unit commanders certainly don't know how to deal with the cases. The problem, it would seem to us, is that those people perhaps aren't the best people to make the decision about what ought to happen because they're so close

Public Safety committee  I would certainly hope so. One of the things I'm reminded of from our review, if you can believe it, 85% of the time that there is a code of conduct case, and remember that code of conduct cases are serious, those cases are dealt with in an informal manner. What would be the pr

Public Safety committee  I would say that, again, we were in somewhat disbelief looking at what penalties had been handed down over a five-year window in some 400 different cases. In the vast majority of cases, all that happens to someone is that they're given a reprimand and counselling. In fact, if you

Public Safety committee  Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you. I am speaking to you as someone who has recently completed a number of research projects that I think might relate to the issue at hand. Two of those involved reviews of complaints again

Justice committee  There's no doubt that would be an absolutely stupid thing to do, for a number of reasons.

Justice committee  We are in a ridiculous situation here in British Columbia, where, for example, Vancouver city police have called for “30 strikes and you're out”. Of course they're asking for that, because we know the incredible damage that's done by that collection of people. When Vancouver asks

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you again for the invite back, from a few days ago. I just basically want to make a point. I know the committee has certainly heard arguments for decriminalization and arguments basically pointing to such a change somehow magically causing organiz

Justice committee  To begin with, if we back up here, again, why do we have a problem in British Columbia with organized crime? It's very clear. I think everyone understands now that it's not just about marijuana; it's about cocaine and other drugs. But it is all rooted in drug production, and that

Justice committee  Yes. I've also studied that in the province of Alberta for every single grow-op that came to the attention of police over a period of nine years, and it's the same kind of situation. It doesn't matter what crime you're talking about. By and large, on average, the population of