Public Safety committee  No, no, I did not mean to say that. What I did mean to say is that the bill provides authority for a province or the new complaints and review body to appoint an independent observer to make observations about the impartiality of the investigation, should the RCMP or, frankly, a

Public Safety committee  Mr. Chair, I would simply say that it's a question better posed to the government.

Public Safety committee  What this bill does is strengthen the accountability structures with respect to the RCMP.

Public Safety committee  If the commissioner had his preference, I think as he indicated it would always be a civilian investigative body or another police service that would investigate the RCMP, not because there is actual bias, frankly, based on the reviews that have been conducted from the CPC, who h

Public Safety committee  One of the major drivers for enhancing the civilian review body was to strengthen its powers and broaden its mandate. There were three main areas, as I mentioned earlier, at a high level. The first is to have much greater access to information. One of the criticisms of the curr

Public Safety committee  The last point is that, importantly, the new body will be able to expand its mandate to conduct policy reviews, not only deal with complaints, but undertake policy reviews. This was a major recommendation of a number of reports, similar to the member's question with respect to SI

Public Safety committee  Maybe I can simply add I don't know the context within which that was said. It could very well have been said “in the absence of”, because there are cases where there are no civilian investigative bodies available to do the investigation. In those cases, the next best thing is a

Public Safety committee  Oh, yes, that is true. The new civilian review body is only dealing with public complaints. It is not dealing with criminal investigations. It is the provinces, under the administration of justice, that are responsible for policing—

Public Safety committee  I was just trying to clarify.

Public Safety committee  I will have to check the actual bill, but my recollection is that there is a chair, a vice-chair, and up to three other members. The chair is full time and the other members can be part time. Subject to confirming with the bill, which I will do when the next question likely goe

Public Safety committee  There's a Governor in Council appointee, so there's a process that's established. It's available on the Privy Council website, which says how it's run. Presumably it would be somebody with a background in criminology, law, or policing.

Public Safety committee  It could be a former police officer from another police service, yes.

Public Safety committee  I'm not surprised about the confusion. Life's a little complicated, and this is particularly complicated. If it's a public complaint, if it's a complaint from an individual who is not happy with how he's been treated by the RCMP, he would register his complaint at first instance

Public Safety committee  You could, in fact. Policing is becoming increasingly integrated. There's a lot of cooperation between the RCMP and other police services. In the event that there is a complaint dealing with one of these integrated operations, rather than having two complaint investigations going

Public Safety committee  Actually, it raises a very interesting question that causes a lot of confusion, and I've heard a little bit of it here this afternoon. There are three things going on. You have a complaint from the public as a result of alleged misconduct or what have you—an incident that went a