Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act - Wednesday, November 10, 2021
Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Hansard Blues

Special Committee on

Reforming the Police Act

Draft Report of Proceedings

2nd Session, 42nd Parliament
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
Victoria

The committee met at 9:02 a.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is Doug Routley. I'm the MLA for Nanaimo–North Cowichan and the Chair of the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act, an all-party committee of the Legislative Assembly.

I would like to acknowledge that I am joining today's meeting from the traditional territories of the Malahat First Nation.

I would like to welcome all those listening and participating in the meeting to the meeting.

Our committee is undertaking a broad review with respect to policing and related systemic issues in B.C. We are taking a phased approach to this work and are meeting with a number of organizations and individuals over the fall to follow up on input we've already received and to learn more about new models and approaches that have been drawn to our attention.

For today's meeting, we'll be starting with panel presenters from RCMP detachments in Kelowna, the West Shore, Prince George and the upper Fraser Valley regional district. Each presenter has ten minutes to speak, followed by time for questions from committee members to the entire panel.

As a reminder to our presenters, all audio from our meetings is being broadcast live on our website. A complete transcript will also be posted.

I'll now ask members to introduce themselves. I will begin with my friend Trevor Halford.

T. Halford: Trevor Halford, MLA for Surrey–White Rock.

I'm coming to you from the traditional territories of Semiahmoo.

G. Lore: Good morning. Grace Lore. I'm the MLA for Victoria–Beacon Hill.

I'm calling in today from the territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ peoples of the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations.

Thanks for being here with us.

H. Sandhu: Good morning, everyone. This is Harwinder Sandhu, MLA for Vernon-Monashee.

I'm joining you from the traditional territory of the Okanagan Indian Nations.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Hi. Good morning, everyone. Dan Davies, MLA for Peace River North.

I'm working today in the brisk territories of the Dane-zaa people.

G. Begg: Hi, everyone. I'm Garry Begg. I'm the MLA for Surrey-Guildford.

I'm coming to you today from the traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Kwantlen, the Katzie and the Semiahmoo First Nations.

A. Olsen: Good morning. Adam Olsen, MLA for Saanich North and the Islands.

I'm working today in my constituency office in SETI¸NES, here in Sidney, B.C.

Nice to see you all.

[9:05 a.m.]

R. Singh: Rachna Singh, MLA for Surrey–Green Timbers.

I'm joining you today from the shared territories of the Kwantlen, Kwikwetlem and Semiahmoo First Nations.

Welcome.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you, all.

Ably assisting our committee today are Karan Riarh from the Parliamentary Committees Office and Amanda Heffelfinger from Hansard Services. We have great staff supporting our committee, and we're really grateful to them.

I'd like now to introduce Supt. Kara Triance of the Kelowna RCMP detachment.

Thank you for joining us, Kara. Please go ahead, if you're ready.

Presentations on Police Act

KELOWNA RCMP

K. Triance: Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to present today. I'm Supt. Kara Triance, the officer in charge of Kelowna regional detachment.

I would like to acknowledge that I am presenting to you from the shared, traditional and ancestral and unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan people. It's my privilege to be here.

As the officer in charge of Kelowna regional RCMP detachment, my area of responsibility stretches from Lake Country to Peachland, including Kelowna, West Kelowna and the provincial surrounding area, a population of close to 300,000 people. However, I would be remiss not to include our visitor population, which hits roughly two million additional people per year in our communities, driving up our calls for service and policing demands.

As the commander of Canada's third-largest RCMP detachment, we experience crime as it relates to urban population, and our policing responsibilities are comparative to many of our larger centres in B.C. I speak to you with a wide variety of contract policing experience in B.C., varying from Lower Mainland policing to remote Indigenous communities. I've run detachments throughout B.C., and in each role, I have served with a deep commitment to leading my team through modernization and cultural change to the service that we provide.

It's with this shared vision of modernization that I fully support the work of your committee today. From my diverse policing experience, time and again I've learned that when we work in partnership with our communities, with our partner agencies and across all systems, we have meaningful impact and lasting outcomes. This work is key to decreasing crime in our communities but must be prioritized and directed by the province in order to have streamlined effects across all ministries: Health, Education and justice.

The B.C. Police Act was introduced in 1974, and it set out goals for how the B.C. government would govern policing, which included ensuring adequate levels of policing and policing standards. To focus this today, I will bring three key points: police resourcing, mental health and substance use as they relate to criminality, and trauma-informed policing.

It's important to note that municipalities over 5,000 in population are responsible for their own service levels and the number of funded police officers. Within our province, there is no agreed-upon police resource methodology. How many police officers should we have on the streets policing our communities at any given time? This question is still debated by many. This drives inequities in how each of our communities receives policing services that aren't always apparent to the public.

In our region, we can reference systems of disparity that place pressures on our Indigenous communities against our municipal contracted partners, specifically as it pertains to police resourcing and availability of resources for front-line operations.

Westbank First Nations is self-governing, and this is an exciting time in reconciliation. It requires our government and our police leaders to look at our existing systems that serve our communities. This is positively reflected in our recent RCMP Westbank MOU, outlining how we'll work together and share information, going forward. However, in the case of Westbank, they have city policing demands, but the number of officers dedicated to policing Westbank and its community are much lower than the neighbouring municipalities, such as West Kelowna.

Serving urban Indigenous communities is directly linked with the work in our contracted municipalities, but at the front line, the Indigenous communities are not resourced at the same levels as the contracted municipalities that they border. Police resourcing methodologies would enhance how we determine adequate resource levels for our communities, levelling the disparities in our provincial areas, including for our Indigenous communities.

The complexity and evolution of policing in the 50 years have changed the job of a police officer. Society has broadened and evolved their expectations of a police officer immensely. Our Police Act is not in alignment with these changes in policing or modernized society. The lack of evolution of the Police Act has impacted crime and policing in our communities.

[9:10 a.m.]

For example, in Kelowna, I see this in the social disorder work that our police officers are doing every day. Their work linked to serious substance use and mental health. In Kelowna, we're attending significantly more calls for service every year, year over year, specifically responding to social and health issues. Our officers have less time available for training and education for our police officers. This cannot be neglected as we modernize our organization.

The courts are not holding people in jail to the same degree as in the recent past, charges are not being approved as often, and increased demands are placed on the police to manage offenders at large in our communities. In my 22 years, this has been a slow evolution, impacted by many factors and decisions.

I can provide you with examples from a simple mischief, where our police officers attend a local coffee shop for a well-known repeat offender who is overturning tables. We arrest for a disturbance. Substance use and mental health are factors. We see this in our persistent and prolific offenders, property crime offenders with serious drug addictions, right through to our most serious offences of murder for an intimate-partner violence file. No charges approved, straightforward case, and the individual is left at large in our community.

The result is that the courts are relying on our health systems to address criminality in our community without the structures in place yet to provide adequate care. Without adequate consequence or adequate care, we see increased criminality and crime in our communities.

Reforming the Police Act needs to consider the important linkage to the Mental Health Act — which, more broadly, has influenced police interactions with persons in crisis. This work, in my opinion, doesn't always need to be done by a police officer as the primary responder but could, more appropriately, be diverted to health care professionals and social workers or caseworkers who could assist people in navigating systems and for barriers to health and wellness.

These are complex issues, but there's a growing perception that there is an inability for police or health to adequately respond to crime, especially property crime, associated with the social issues. This situation is breeding decreased confidence and growing frustrations. Demands on local police and municipalities are increasing, neither of which have the scope or mandate to address the underlying issues.

A compounding issue in Kelowna is that our police crisis team isn't fully funded by the Ministry of Health. Despite our detachment being on track to attend 1,000 mental health calls this year, in 2021, we have two dedicated mental health police officers, and only one of them is paired with a health care professional. Approximately one-third of those calls for service result in apprehensions and hospital wait times for police officers.

Policing is extremely costly, and it requires an inordinate amount of training in specialized skills. It's a high-risk profession, set out to address crime in our communities. Funding or reprioritizing workloads to health and social workers that police are left holding would modernize and align with society today. There are many models of crisis diversion that are working well, which would allow us to divert and help individuals with complex needs access the services they need.

When we think of defunding the police, I think, more appropriately, we should say: "Let's shift the funds and appropriate programs to be able to respond to individuals in crisis with complex needs. Let's address trauma early and wraparound services and invest in children and families [audio interrupted] truly and well." To add to the submission by B.C. RCMP Chief Supt. Jeannette Theisen, trauma-informed response to crime must be our practice and our priority across all ministries.

Here in Kelowna and in our region, we can celebrate the Child Advocacy Centre, a centre where child abuse, sexual violence and serious violent crime involving youth are investigated and the child and the family are supported, aligning the work of the ministries of justice, health, and children and families. The work of the child advocacy centres across the province is the best practice to respond to improve outcomes for victims of child abuse and trauma. However, we must work in purposeful collaboration, but alarmingly, these centres have not yet been appropriately funded or embedded into our provincial best practices.

The Kelowna CAC is an incredible facility, where RCMP work as partners to effect meaningful system change and to respond appropriately to those impacted by trauma. However, we've had the doors open for over a year, and we're only just seeing the integration of health now.

In Kelowna, there's not an embedded social worker for the Kelowna Child Advocacy Centre, which addresses, primarily, child abuse. This centre must be fully resourced, a commitment to the best model we know for trauma-informed practice. We need to see our partners in health and child protection agencies step into these models in a meaningful and sustainable manner, consistently across the province, and we need to see these facilities core-funded at the provincial level to ensure our ability to work within the trauma-informed settings.

[9:15 a.m.]

To truly effect change downstream, with individuals impacted by compounding social issues — mental health, poverty, homelessness, violence or substance abuse — we must address childhood trauma upstream. The research is clear. Partnering to divert and interrupt those on a pathway to the criminal stream, directing them to pathways of health care and wellness, is modernization. It's not about how we do it. Every time, we must do it well. For every person, every child, we serve in our community, purposeful partnership and collaboration is our pathway to change.

I appreciate the opportunity to present to you today.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much for that. We appreciate your presentation.

Next we'll be hearing from Staff Sgt. Chris Boucher of the West Shore RCMP detachment.

Please go ahead.

WEST SHORE RCMP

C. Boucher: Thank you very much. My name is Staff Sgt. Chris Boucher, and I'm the acting officer in charge of the West Shore detachment.

Before I start, I'd like to recognize and acknowledge the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations, on whose traditional territories we live, learn and do our work.

The West Shore detachment is responsible for the policing of seven communities. These include the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations, the city of Colwood, the city of Langford, the town of View Royal and the districts of Metchosin and Highlands. The detachment personnel consists of 147 employees, 97 of which are sworn police officers. We have integrated partnerships in the areas of homicide investigation, youth at risk, mental health and domestic violence.

Today I'll be speaking about serving in Indigenous communities, integration of police resources and mental health calls for service as they relate to the West Shore detachment. West Shore detachment has a very strong and positive relationship with both the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations. This is largely due to the full-time First Nations policing officer that we have dedicated to fostering and building a trusted relationship between the police and the community.

The leaders in these communities have expressed their strong support for the RCMP, and the work we do in their communities, to our detachment commander. Specifically, they have expressed the incredible positive relationship their community members have with our First Nations policing officer. Our First Nations policing officer has been in place for several years. I believe the continuity and stability in this position has been advantageous in building strong relationships.

Unlike many remote or isolated detachments, postings at West Shore detachment are not limited in their duration. While transfers in and out do occur for a variety of reasons, stability in our First Nations policing officer position has allowed for the time necessary to build trust and respect, which may not be available to detachments that have more regular transfers. As Assistant Commissioner Stubbs suggested in his submission, localized training in our Indigenous policing communities may be an effective way of educating officers about the uniqueness of the communities in which they serve.

In addition to formalized training opportunities, West Shore detachment is taking steps to bring this important perspective to its officers. An example of how we're providing firsthand cultural learning is our temporary Nunavut relief program.

A minimum of nine months out of the year, our detachment sends two officers for 30-day postings to various remote communities in Nunavut. Our members immerse themselves in the culture of these remote and isolated postings, living and learning the First Nation values and beliefs. In many cases, this is the first experience these officers have in such remote and isolated communities. This program exposes these officers to unique communities and provides perspective they can apply when interacting in our local communities.

We've been working toward bringing First Nation Elders to speak with as many detachment members as possible. This is, again, an opportunity for our officers to gain valuable insight into the uniqueness of the First Nation communities we serve. It is important we hear from them how we can continue to build positive relationships. Compensating Elders or community members who present to officers may be a way to encourage this training opportunity and ensure that officers in all communities receive this invaluable perspective on the communities they serve.

As previously stated, the West Shore detachment is an integrated detachment, comprising seven communities. I believe it has found a number of efficiencies as it relates to shared costs and resources. West Shore detachment has front-line, community policing, traffic, drug, crime reduction, serious crime and bike patrol units that serve all our communities. The consolidation of resources in one detachment has allowed West Shore detachment to develop these specialized units and deploy them throughout its policing jurisdiction.

[9:20 a.m.]

West Shore detachment also benefits from integration with our municipal partners in the region, including the Vancouver Island Integrated Major Crime Unit, Integrated Road Safety Unit, integrated mobile crisis response team, Mobile Youth Service Team and the regional domestic violence unit.

I believe that the West Shore detachment and its communities have benefitted from having access to these specialized and proactive policing units. However, a challenge identified by our communities in terms of integration is the determination of appropriate resourcing. This is especially relevant with detachments that have a municipal and provincial blend.

The issue of fairness is continually at the forefront for community leaders. At times, there can be a perception that municipalities contribute more money and resources than the province to these detachments. The West Shore detachment supports the continued work being done by the B.C. RCMP and the province to identify a standard for resourcing and staffing levels.

A common metric would allow detachment commanders to articulate the funding and resourcing standard to their contracting communities. This is particularly relevant to the West Shore detachment, which serves a rapidly developing municipal area alongside provincially funded areas. An accepted metric and resourcing standard would serve to ensure the continued success of integrated police services such as those offered by West Shore detachment. The absence of an accepted metric and resourcing standard may leave some partners questioning the fairness of these arrangements.

As Chief Superintendent Jeanette Theisen told the committee on July 29, there has been an increase of scrutiny of police involvement with vulnerable members of our community. This includes those experiencing mental health crises, those with addictions and those experiencing homelessness.

Often, the police are called upon to respond to social issues or called when no crime has been committed. In many cases, particularly with mental health complaints, a police response remains necessary to ensure public safety. This is particularly true with cases where individuals are in crisis and pose a risk of harm or injury to themselves or others.

The West Shore RCMP works with its medical and social service partners. The greater Victoria area is serviced by the integrated mobile crisis response team, IMCRT, which is a collaboration between child, youth and family mental health services; adult mental health and addiction services; and Greater Victoria police forces. IMCRT engages with high-risk mental health patients on an ongoing basis.

However, despite the presence of IMCRT in the greater Victoria area, mental-health-related complaints account for a large portion of the front-line policing workload. As Chief Superintendent Theisen noted, mental-health-related complaints are on the rise across B.C., and the West Shore detachment is no different. For the period of April 2019 to March 2020, West Shore detachment attended 1,101 Mental Health Act-related complaints. In the following year, we saw a 13 percent increase to 1,250 Mental Health Act-related complaints.

The number of complaints that are not primarily scored as Mental Health Act may have a mental health component, which officers note on their files using the "study" flag. During the period of April 2019 to March 2020, 1,111 files were noted to have a mental health component. There was a 41 percent increase the following year, to 1,571 files.

The duties of front-line officers are increasingly being impacted by those affected with mental health issues. Between April 2019 and March 2020, the West Shore detachment apprehended 355 persons experiencing a mental health crisis. This means that 32 percent of the Mental Health Act files resulted in apprehension. Between April 2020 and March 2021, West Shore RCMP apprehended 314 persons under the Mental Health Act, which represented 25 percent of those files.

Each apprehension takes an officer off the road for several hours. Adults apprehended in this area are transported to the Royal Jubilee Hospital, which is an approximate 25-minute drive from the West Shore detachment in good traffic conditions. Depending on traffic volumes, this commute could be closer to an hour. Once at the hospital, officers must wait with the patient until they are assessed by a doctor.

Often, officers must wait hours with a patient until a physician is available. Presentation of the patient may dictate the speed with which they are assessed by a physician. Routinely, wait times are more than two hours. One officer spent six hours at the emergency room with a patient waiting to be assessed by a physician. This is time that could be used to respond to calls for service or engage in proactive policing within our own policing jurisdiction.

Clients with complex mental health and social issues draw heavily on front-line resources. Despite the presence of IMCRT and the detachments engaged with it with medical and social services, one such case accounted for 120 Mental Health Act complaints between April 2019 and March 2020 and increased to 340 complaints between April 2020 and March 2021.

[9:25 a.m.]

Complaints associated with this person were often referred to the West Shore detachment from crisis lines or other partner agencies. Once the police are in receipt of this information, an assessment must be made regarding the threat this person poses to themselves and others. This is a significant draw on front-line resources.

Despite efforts to coordinate with our partners, calls for service related to this individual have only increased. The individual and detachment would benefit from a multi-ministry collaborative approach to managing community-based social issues that include mental health, as suggested by Chief Supt. Theisen in her submission.

Integrated ministerial and police groups can work together to address intersectional social issues in a manner that is flexible to the unique needs of the community. Investment in these resources will allow for more widely available services for persons in crisis. Connecting people with the help they need is the ultimate goal.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to present today.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much. We appreciate your presentation.

Now we'll move on to Supt. Shaun Wright, from the Prince George RCMP detachment.

Thanks for joining us.

PRINCE GEORGE RCMP

S. Wright: Thank you. Good morning. I'm Supt. Shaun Wright. I'm the officer in charge out of the Prince George RCMP detachment.

I'm located in the traditional territory of the Lheidli T'enneh people.

I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak with you today. I've been a member of the RCMP for over 25 years. The first two decades of my career were spent in the Lower Mainland, and the last five or so up here in Prince George. I've observed that many aspects of policing are the same everywhere, but there are definitely some challenges that exist in the north that create additional complexities.

Today I'd like to speak of my experience here and how it relates to some more global issues as well. I'd like to touch on four areas. First, the community of Prince George. Second, modernization and sustainability of policing, then mental health and addictions, and then systemic equity and police accountability.

With regards to Prince George, the city of Prince George is by far the largest community in the region. It's the economic social hub community for over half the land mass in the province of B.C. As the result of that geographic isolation and being a hub for such a large area, there's really a regional burden that's shouldered by this city that, I think, is unlike anywhere else in the province. The bulk of services for the north are located in this community, and while there are benefits from that, there are also some challenges.

Many individuals from across the region come to Prince George due to situations of homelessness, mental health, addictions and the fact that appropriate services just aren't available in those more remote, smaller communities. This results in a concentration of those demographics within the city, and it's also home to the only correctional centre in the region, meaning that persons who are uprooted from their home communities after committing the most serious criminal offences are transported here, and once their matters are dealt with by the criminal justice system, often by choice or due to circumstance, they remain in the community here as well.

These regional pressures I've observed really have to be taken into account when assessing not only policing, but I think all government services, and a simple per-capita formula can't be applied uniformly across the province if we're going to expect service levels and outcomes be equal for all residents of the province.

Modernization and sustainability of policing. The monetary costs, everybody knows, for municipalities are very significant. For cities like Prince George, though, there are some additional incremental costs and time delays experienced due to geography. Even shipping goods such as vehicles from the Lower Mainland adds an expense. Specialized services, such as travelling to training courses down in Chilliwack, add significant travel costs and additional travel days on each end for every member who goes down there.

Also, to receive assistance from specialized provincial units, communities such as Prince George typically incur additional costs associated to overtime for travel and accommodations of those units. All of these small, additional expenses contribute together to inequity in the level of policing service that can be provided to the community here. Having worked in the Lower Mainland and in Prince George, I've experienced a tremendous disparity in the level of service I've been able to provide the local community due to the availability, or lack thereof, of those specialized resources.

In order for a city such as Prince George to receive a level of policing service and public safety commensurate with that of more populous regions, I'm very supportive of the examination and current initiatives that the B.C. RCMP is working on to develop appropriate funding and service models to ensure that we can provide specialized police services such as full-time emergency response teams in these areas, as they're desperately needed.

I've observed that provincial police units are spread very thin. This causes police officers from municipal detachments to be pulled to assist for provincial emergencies such as wildfires. This results in resource constraints within these municipal jurisdictions such as Prince George and impacts our ability to provide policing services during those time periods.

[9:30 a.m.]

In my opinion, it would be beneficial if there was an established minimum ratio of provincial police officers to provincial population, to provide additional surge capacity beyond essential front-line policing. As the population trend towards urbanization continues, this would allow for those provincial police positions to then be transitioned from front-line service delivery to provide specialized support to municipal police agencies and municipal detachments throughout the province.

With regard to mental health and addictions…. Obviously, this isn't specifically a policing responsibility, but it is a factor in a very high number of our calls for service. In Prince George, similar to many communities, we partner with the health authority and other agencies to engage in interdisciplinary approaches such as the Car 60 program, partnering a mental health nurse with a police officer. We spearheaded the establishment of a situation table, and we worked with the health authority with their ACT and ICM teams.

There are still some tremendous gaps in service that remain. I think there are two initiatives that can really go a long way to filling those gaps.

The first would be the availability of a mental health professional within the operational communication centres. That would provide the ability to do assessment and support immediately, once the call was determined to be non-criminal in nature. This would reduce the calls for service where police are dispatched to attend for persons experiencing a mental health crisis with no overt criminal act. I think this would be particularly effective in smaller remote communities, as they lack any types of resources except for police to attend those incidents. Programs like this have been shown to be effective in Saskatchewan and other jurisdictions.

The second initiative that I think would be very beneficial would be a provincially funded rollout of the health IM system for all police agencies across all health authorities in B.C. Health IM provides all front-line police immediate access to the mental health history of persons prior to their arrival on scene. It also provides a consistent medically based assessment tool for all members and transmits that information directly to the appropriate emergency department.

Health IM has been shown to result in a reduction of mental health apprehensions by up to 61 percent, thereby reducing the number of incidents where physical force by police may be used on emotionally disturbed persons. For those remaining incidents of apprehension, health IM has also been shown to decrease police wait times in emergency departments from over four hours to less than two.

These two results have improved positive outcomes for the involved persons as well as generated significant savings in resources for both police agencies and heavily burdened health care authorities. Health IM has been implemented in several Canadian jurisdictions, including a recent announcement of a provincewide rollout in Alberta. I firmly believe that a health IM rollout provincewide in British Columbia would be a game-changer for us.

Lastly, systemic equity and police accountability. It has been my experience that general Indigenous history and cultural awareness training on a national or provincial scale is insufficient to address the needs of local communities. I think there should be targeted funding provided directly to local communities to work with police to develop training that's specific to those local communities, based upon the local history and the demographics.

Prince George, like most communities in the North, has a high proportion of the population that's Indigenous. Additionally, Indigenous persons are overrepresented in the marginalized community as well as in the criminal justice system. While we do have an Indigenous court here in Prince George that was established a few years ago, it has limited capacity. Really, there needs to be continued support and resources dedicated to initiatives such as this, to drive them forward and keep them going, if we're going to see any real change in this area.

In regard to the criminal justice system in general, over the last several years, I've seen changes to the Criminal Code, provincial policies and developments in case law that have all served to effectively decriminalize what I would call low-level crimes. These would be breaches of probation and bail, minor theft, minor property damage. Concurrent with these changes, I've observed crime rates and calls for service increase in Prince George.

While incarceration may not be a solution to these issues, appropriate interventions need to be utilized. I don't believe the courts should shut these issues out on the front end. They should be used as a gateway to divert these individuals and mandate access and participation in needed services to address the underlying causes for their behaviour — such as mental health, addictions, housing — that these offending individuals either will not or cannot access independently.

My final point today is in regard to police accountability. I'm a strong proponent of civilian oversight. It's effective in maintaining public trust and transparency. Due to the high violent crime rate in Prince George, unfortunately, police become engaged in a number of use-of-force situations, and this often results in IIO investigations. I've observed some limitations with the current structure in place with oversight, and I believe the policing community in Prince George would be better served if it were modified.

[9:35 a.m.]

Geographic constraints routinely result in delayed response times for the IIO, as they must travel from their office in Surrey. This strains the relationships between police officers and the IIO, unnecessarily complicating these investigations during stressful times. This also obliges the police to undertake some critical investigative tasks on behalf of the IIO in their absence.

It's my opinion that this undermines both the intent of a civilian oversight agency as well as public faith, particularly of the Indigenous community, in such an agency. I believe it's critical that whatever oversight model is in place moving forward, there must be an office located in Prince George to serve the North in order to provide timely, effective and transparent oversight.

Thank you for your time. I'm happy to answer any questions at the end.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much for that presentation.

Now we have our last presenter of this group, Supt. Davy Lee of the Upper Fraser Valley regional district.

Thanks very much for joining us. Go ahead if you're ready, Davy.

UPPER FRASER VALLEY
REGIONAL DISTRICT RCMP

D. Lee: Good morning, Chair. Good morning, committee members. I'm Davy Lee. I'm here to represent the Upper Fraser Valley regional detachment.

The Upper Fraser Valley regional detachment acknowledges the traditional lands of the Stó:lō and the Nlaka'pamux people, on which we are honoured to live, work and pay our respects to the Elders past and present.

The Upper Fraser Valley regional detachment, UFVRD, was implemented in 2002 with a goal of providing a better police service throughout the region and adopting cost savings by eliminating the duplication of administrative processes.

The regional detachment performs its work through four community police offices, formerly referred to as detachments. The members perform their duties across a variety of diverse landscapes, ranging from small rural communities to large urban centres within the Fraser Valley regional district. Communities of note are the district of Kent, Agassiz, village of Harrison Hot Springs, district of Hope, Boston Bar, city of Chilliwack and 23 Indigenous communities.

Similar to other Lower Mainland communities, our region has experienced a large population growth. This includes significant development on Indigenous lands and municipalities like Chilliwack.

To provide service to the region, each of the community police offices, irrespective of municipal or provincial business lines, is blended into one shift schedule. This provides for the coordinated and effective delivery of police services on a 24-7 platform for all the communities, with the exception of Boston Bar. The police office at Boston Bar is on a standalone shift schedule that includes on call for operational needs, including backup.

Members are engaged in the delivery of enhanced police services to Indigenous communities within the region. This includes our Indigenous police service CTA communities as well as our urban Indigenous police service and non-CTA communities. I'll describe more of this later.

Some challenges facing the Upper Fraser Valley regional detachment are mental health and addictions. The community of Chilliwack is seeing a rise in mental health related calls. Chilliwack General Hospital is a designated mental health facility for the region. When a client is experiencing a mental health crisis, whether the event is occurring in Chilliwack or another area, such as Hope, the police are required to take the person to Chilliwack for assessment and treatment.

Currently the city of Chilliwack funds three police officers to assist with mental health calls for service. One of the most consistent issues that police are having to deal with is attempting to assist those with concurrent disorders, drug addiction combined with mental health issues. There are limited resources and facilities available to assist and provide wraparound mental health and addictions services at the same time.

Another area of concern is the lack of resources to assist those living with unresolved exposure to trauma. These individuals often get treated as mental health and apprehended or taken to hospital, which, in turn, causes more trauma. They're not able to regulate themselves in times of crisis and often revert to a primitive fight or flight response.

The partnership of a psychiatric nurse and a police officer riding in the same car together is a model that is currently successful in other communities. This partnership has shown to be beneficial, in the first instance, when dealing with individuals suffering a crisis. Chilliwack is in great need of a program like this.

Chilliwack RCMP work closely with Fraser Health's intensive care case management team, which is the only organized team currently operating out of Chilliwack. This team is co-chaired by RainCity Housing and Fraser Health. Their model is housing first. The team consists of outreach workers, psych nurses, police and a psych doctor. Although there is amazing work done by the team, they cannot cover all of the above-noted issues that require specialized areas of attention and are unable to attend to police files, in the first instance, to begin referring clients to services immediately.

Another challenging issue is homelessness. Similar to other Lower Mainland communities, UFVRD struggles with the rising number of citizens experiencing homelessness. This is particularly evident in Chilliwack and Hope. Homelessness, addiction issues and mental health are all linked. There's a notable lack of addiction services, primarily treatment programs, throughout the region.

[9:40 a.m.]

Our plan to mitigate this situation has been the creation of a Chilliwack RCMP Community Response Team, CRT, which has been key to the city of Chilliwack's homeless strategy. This team provides increased police presence and proactive outreach to the city's most vulnerable.

Central to this approach is a collaborative foot patrol initiative aimed at preventing entrenchment and providing support and access to resources for citizens who may not otherwise be able to navigate the system on their own. These collaborative foot patrols include participants from Chilliwack bylaw department, personnel from a local security company that holds the contract for the downtown business improvement association, members of the Chilliwack CRT team and outreach workers from the community integration and coordination program through the Pacific Community Resources Society.

Together they provide intervention-based, non-emergency response aimed at connecting with the city's vulnerable and offering them support related to substance abuse, mental health and homelessness. By providing proactive support, the aim is to help the city's vulnerable get connected to community partners who can help. The outreach brings the help to those who are experiencing homelessness rather than expecting them to find the help.

The community integration and coordination outreach workers are key in providing front-line intervention, in the form of getting people the help that they need through safe transportation, referral, advocacy and case management. Examples of success include individuals accessing medical treatment, drug and alcohol treatment and housing placement. This integrated community-based approach focuses on a street-level response, which builds connection to an often unconnected population.

The city of Chilliwack has also recently developed a multidisciplinary community safety plan that will focus on prevention and crime reduction. The intent of the plan is to bring together different organizations to address the multiple factors impacting community safety — mental health challenges, substance abuse, homelessness, chronic and prolific offenders and the justice system.

As a Lower Mainland detachment, we have the benefit of participating in Lower Mainland integrated teams, I-TEAMS. The LMD I-TEAMS enable policing jurisdictions to prioritize their resources towards local priorities while being able to access over 330 specialized LMD I-TEAMS personnel at any time, 24-7, for support, and/or assuming responsibility for investigations that would otherwise take resources away from front-line priorities.

The service delivery provided by UFVRD is augmented by the five LMD I-TEAMS, which includes ICARS, collision analysts and reconstruction; IERT, emergency response; IFIS, forensics; IHIT, homicide; and IPDS, police dogs. Similar to the benefit of UFVRD operating as an integrated detachment, the LMD I-TEAMS provide LMD RCMP detachments and participating municipal police departments with specialized policing services.

Funding for the I-TEAMS is cost-shared through the pooling of resources, employment and assets from multiple business lines, resulting in cost savings for LMD detachments and departments by not having to operate and maintain these specialized services internally. The ability to deploy specialized resources by making a quick phone call mitigates detachment financial and human resource pressures while also providing peace of mind, knowing that some of the best subject-matter experts in their respective fields have been engaged.

Finally, I will speak on Indigenous policing. The regional detachment through both the Indigenous police service and urban Indigenous police service provide an enhanced policing service to 23 Indigenous communities. The respective communities are associated to the Stó:lō Nation, Stó:lō Tribal Council and Nlaka'pamux Nation. They are community tripartite agreements, CTA communities, and there are others without the agreement.

Delivery of police service to 23 Indigenous communities are broken down as follows. There are nine in the Chilliwack area, six in the Agassiz area, five in the Hope area, with three in the Boston Bar area.

Community tripartite agreements, CTAs. There are eight Indigenous communities in the UFVRD that associate with the CTA that are affiliated to the Stó:lō Tribal Council. The delivery of the CTA platform is specific to a First Nation policing program. There's an additional ninth Indigenous community attached to the CTA. However, this community is in the policing jurisdiction of the Langley detachment.

Community safety agreement, CSA. In our attempt to build stronger relationships with Indigenous communities, we recognize that while CTA communities have a framework for enhanced policing and reporting, our non-CTA communities do not. Therefore, 62 percent of our Indigenous communities within the UFVRD do not receive enhanced policing service. It was also identified that many Indigenous people live off their communities from many parts of Canada within the UFVRD. This was key in the reason for the development of the first urban Indigenous policing liaison team in B.C. for the RCMP.

The community safety agreement, CSA, was implemented in December 2020 as a UFVRD initiative to provide enhanced policing service to the non-CTA Indigenous communities. Between the two nations, there are 14 Indigenous communities that are associated with our CSA policing program.

[9:45 a.m.]

The strategic focus of the CSA is to improve communication between Indigenous communities and the UFVRD; enhance community safety through enforcement and crime reduction initiatives; internally deliver education-based initiatives; educate RCMP officers of the history of the communities on which they serve — the traditional protocols, laws and development of land codes; cross-cultural training; and RCMP career presentations.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much. I feel like my head is going to explode. There's so much there.

I will now open the floor to questions from members. First I have Garry.

G. Begg: Thanks, Chair.

Thanks, everyone, for your presentations.

Superintendent Wright is the person to whom I'll direct my first question. I am interested….

First of all, thank you for your presentation. I think you get the big picture that we're looking for and the uniqueness of policing in British Columbia. I'm very impressed that you're what I would call a solution-oriented person. You seem to be coming up with programs and protocols that fit your unique community needs.

You spoke briefly about health IMs. I wonder if you could expand, for the benefit of our group, on what that entails.

S. Wright: Yeah. Essentially, it's an app that's loaded on to the smartphones that our members are already issued for their daily duties.

There's a database in there with the mental health history of all individuals. It's collected once the system is first implemented. So members have access to mental health histories prior to their arrival. There can be notes on particular triggers and negative things to stay away from for those persons. Just information that isn't readily available in our current records management system, all collated together.

Upon arriving, the member is presented, once the situation is calm, with, really, criteria on behavioural factors and situational factors to assess whether an apprehension is required or not. I think currently a lot of our members…. Our apprehension rates are very high on calls we attend. A lot of members, if there's any indication of suicidal thoughts at any point, don't want to be liable for it. So they may unnecessarily apprehend persons and take them to the emergency department. Then we're frustrated when they're released an hour or two later.

It's really a scientifically based, medically based system. Then that information goes directly to the emergency department. In the event that you do actually have to apprehend someone — you make that determination — the emergency department has that information in a format that's useful to them, rather than an anecdotal account from a police officer that arrives.

It also allows for direct referral to other mental health agencies in the community, if you choose not to apprehend. You can do that right through the program. It keeps all the information in encrypted servers of the company here in Ontario.

G. Begg: I don't want to monopolize the time of the committee. I'm interested if you have any knowledge of a system whereby psychiatric nurses or mental health professionals are embedded into a comms centre so that there is early assessment of whether or not there is even a need for police.

S. Wright: Yeah. I'm not intimately familiar with that. I do have some general knowledge.

I know Saskatchewan implemented that. A little easier for them. They have a single health authority and a lot of rural communities. So that's one approach they've taken over the last year or two. I know it's been quite successful. It allows them, like I said in my presentation, to really stream out those non-criminal matters and maybe refer people to crisis centres or just resolve the situation, at the time, directly from the call centre.

K. Triance: There's an available program in Alberta, through Edmonton. It's a crisis diversion model. You dial 611, as opposed to 911. It's one digit different. It does crisis diversion for mental health.

G. Begg: Thank you.

Two other quick questions, Chair, if I may. One is about….

[9:50 a.m.]

Superintendent Wright has experience in the Lower Mainland and in the Interior. I'm wondering. One of our concerns, as a committee, is to ensure the quality and level of policing throughout the province is consistent and at a high level. I wonder if you could comment briefly on whether or not that exists or whether we're able to achieve that, just on your observations about the differences.

S. Wright: I think we could achieve it. It's whether we want to put the resources in to do that. Under the current model, I think you have population centres like Prince George that are very sparsely populated compared to, let's say, Lower Mainland communities. They have a lot of infrastructure and other expenses as well, and then they've got a limited methodology to raise property tax from a primarily residential tax base. There's only so much left for policing or other services.

My observation is that the level of service is constrained, in that regard. Then, of course, the concentration of specialized services that aren't local makes it difficult to receive those services. Under the current municipal-provincial funding model, I don't think you'll see that equity across the entire province.

G. Begg: I have one final question, and it's something that the superintendent mentioned in regards to surge capacity. I think it would apply to Whistler, perhaps Kelowna — some of the areas that experience growth in tourist season or other times of the year, yet their available members is static throughout the year. Is there an opportunity to look at that kind of policing to benefit those communities, and would that be a provincial responsibility, or how would that be managed?

S. Wright: Sorry, is that directed towards me, sir?

G. Begg: Yes.

S. Wright: Okay. Yeah, I do think that that would be possible. I think the initiative that the B.C. RCMP has put forward here over the last couple years with the provincial support team is, really, the building block that would be the basis for that. Currently, it's spread very thin just trying to cover front-line policing in remote communities, but I think if that were made into a more robust program, it could certainly provide some of those services.

A. Olsen: Thank you for your presentations, to all four of you. Appreciate your service to our communities.

Just a question, I think, riding off the last question that Garry just asked. I think two of the presentations featured resourcing, and a lack of a methodology to how communities are resourced. Maybe you can provide a little bit of insight. If you're the head of a department and you don't have the human resources that you need in order to deliver the program that we expect of you, what is the process, and what steps do you take to request an increase in human resources?

I'll go to Kara. Let's go to Kara. She's nodding.

K. Triance: We have a few divided topics, but we know we can champion, each of us, the experts in those areas. We've pre-thought of a few of these things. Resourcing is one that I've addressed in small communities, having worked in provincial areas; in our 70-30 communities, we call them — which are sort of our medium-sized communities, 5,000 to 15,000; and then communities over 15,000 solely funded by the city. Those are all through a multi-year planning process that we need to appear as commanders before our, first, city managers and then, ultimately, through our mayor and council, with a budget presentation and a submission for the resources that we need.

At the end of the day, if we put forward a request for resources and our city does not align with our thought process and/or budget submissions, we won't get the resources. It is up to each city to determine their service levels. That is part of the municipal police unit agreement contract that they all have signed, and that is with the province of B.C. We are the service providers, but we do not have that control over service delivery in terms of levels of police officers and resourcing within our community.

There are a lot of models for police resource methodology across North America — some explored in large urban areas, many that don't apply to our rural communities. So if you have a long distance to travel and then you've got a long time in between, with follow-up and/or additional calls that might come in as you move into those communities, and if people see a police officer and have been meaning to let you know about this problem that's been occurring here — a lot of that cannot be captured through those policing resourcing methodologies.

[9:55 a.m.]

Certainly, an agreed-upon and determined methodology would help us as commanders explain to our communities: "Look, one community is getting this service level, providing these levels of services, and they are able to maintain their human resources because their caseloads are lower, their crime rates are lower, and their vacancies are filled." Or they've got the ability to address that through resourcing, and other communities are left running thin, full-paced, unable to respond to the demands of the community.

A. Olsen: Thank you for that response. I'll just ask this question.

I think all of you mentioned your involvement with a myriad of other services in the jurisdictions that you're policing. What kind of resources are in place for you to be able to facilitate those relationships — I'm just thinking — with other social service organizations? I can't remember exactly who it was that raised the….

I'll just leave it at this. What kind of resources do you have at your disposal to be able to be taking the time to go and build the relationship with the other organizations within your jurisdiction in order to, maybe, divert some people who need it, with mental health and addictions calls? I don't want to start answering the question. What resources are you afforded to be able to take the time to build those relationships?

K. Triance: I'm glad you asked. For myself, as a commander — I can speak for some of my colleagues as well, as we've had these discussions — we have very little time left in our day. We are at full capacity across all of B.C. right now — but particularly in our larger municipalities, where we're not resourced as high as other ones.

For myself, we're developing a crisis diversion model here in the southeast district. We're in the early, early stages of discussions with Interior Health and other jurisdictions that feed into our operational communications centre. We've explored models that have worked in other communities and are continuing to drive this forward.

We're doing this on the side of our desks, at the end of our 40-hour work week, wherever we can find spare minutes to do this. We don't have the resources, so that is something that often gets pushed down the road, and we are doing it when we are in planning meetings for other pieces. There is no carved, set-aside time for this, and there is no available resourcing for that.

That is integral in shifting and changing the direction in which we police. We must do it; therefore, we make time. But it will come at the cost of other things, because if we don't do it, we're never going to get ahead of this. That has to be our priority.

In answer to your question on what time we are afforded, we're fully scheduled, and then some.

A. Olsen: If there was some sort of, maybe, a civilian role within your detachments, like if you could take a look at it from a regional perspective, that could do that on-the-ground relationship-building, work with the other service providers, would that be beneficial to your policing organizations?

K. Triance: Absolutely. That would be outstanding. We are unable to contract for long periods of time, as the RCMP is governed by federal Treasury Board guidelines. So we end up in one-off agreements where we can contract as and when required, and then shorter-term pieces. So anything that could be done, in terms of a dedicated staff employee, to this workload, would be phenomenal.

Looking at it regionally, and looking at how we can break this down — be consistent across the regions — and tailor it to our communities….

S. Wright: If I could just add to that. Some of the roadblocks we've run into up here, over the last five years I've been here, is that some agencies are working very much siloed. It was very much more integrated in the Lower Mainland, and I've found that agencies work much more independently up here. But I think it would be extremely beneficial.

In fact, I think it's critical that there is some sort of a position or agency whose goal it is, or whose mandate it is, to make these agencies, these ministries, the police and everybody talk and develop co-operative solutions and really hold their feet to the fire to do that.

A. Olsen: I've got a few other questions. But I'll ask just one more, and then I'll turn the floor over, because I see that there are other hands here.

Kara, you also mentioned, in your presentation, about the partners in health and child wellness — I think these are my words, not your words — kind of stepping into their responsibilities that they have.

Can you maybe just provide us some context to that? What are you seeing with respect to the resourcing on the other side, of the child wellness and health services in terms of their ability to also link with…? You've got limited ability. What do you see from their perspective?

[10:00 a.m.]

K. Triance: Absolutely. We've just had the success of health coming to the table. We've had a clinic open for a year, but we were still sending children in a taxi to Kamloops with their family members who have been impacted by child abuse for physical exams for suspected child abuse and neglect. That has, through a public appeal and really strong convincing, been able to get health in to staff a physician who is trained in this area.

When it comes to child welfare, we have rotating social workers coming through a facility that is a state-of-the-art facility, funded by donors in our community, where the resources exist here in our community to wrap the service around the family and the children, providing them trauma-informed policing services and culturally appropriate services.

We have Westbank First Nations signed on as a governing partner in this child advocacy centre, and in the centre, we bring the child in. It is a safe space. It is a warm space. They have police officers there, they have family support workers there, and social workers will drive from the building downtown to there.

Inconsistently, there are standard operating procedures in integrated work that is done and modelled in Alberta and in Sophie's Place in the Lower Mainland, where the social workers are embedded. They perform work together daily, so they become very well versed in interviewing together, doing this work in an aligned manner so that it impacts the child less. They have to tell their story less frequently, and they understand their role more and more as they begin to work together and build relationship to perform their work in a really experienced way.

When you have social workers rotating in and out who don't know the rules and who are using the facility as a drop-in facility, we're not getting the best practice. If we mandated this and resourced this provincially…. The facility exists. The donors are providing the space, and the cities are coming on to fund parts of the space, but provincially we have no core funding for this.

We have no mandates in which our ministries across health, justice and police, and children and families are mandated to use this. We know this. The research is very clear. This is the best way to interview children who have been impacted by child abuse or sexual violence.

A. Olsen: I just want to say that I really appreciate the perspectives that you have brought, from the community perspective. We've heard from the RCMP, but it was really important for us to hear from folks who are leading our detachments across the province, and I really found this to be a valuable exercise, so thank you. I hope that we will be able to take this forward and help you do your job.

K. Triance: I should have added on that note. We have five full-time police officers, based on our workload and caseload, staffed fully to that centre. So the workload of five police officers carrying 30 active files at any one time, with many families impacted…. The workload exists to have fully embedded teams in that centre.

R. Singh: Thank you to all of you for the presentations. That's some very important information that you have given us.

My question is to Superintendent Wright. In your presentation, you mentioned about, especially, serving in a community like Prince George with a huge Indigenous population, and you said something about the training and that it is not sufficient. Can you just elaborate on that? We are hearing lots about this, about the training that police officers are getting, especially when they are serving the different diverse communities.

S. Wright: Yeah. Over my years, I've experienced a variety of training courses related to Indigenous persons. The problem is that when you roll it out nationally or provincially, it can't be overly specific. Then you come to communities, and every Indigenous nation can be very different from the others. I think it's critical that a lot of that training be developed right at the grassroots level with the local community.

Case in point. For Prince George, we only have a small Indigenous nation nearby, the Lhedli T'enneh. But in addition to their specific story, because we're the urban centre, we have many nations that gather here. I just think it would be very beneficial if those specific stories and the circumstances specific to each nation in that geographic area were incorporated in training. I think it would go a tremendous way to bridging the gap between police and the Indigenous community.

[10:05 a.m.]

R. Singh: Thank you so much for this. In your experience, all over Canada, do we have any such examples? Have you noticed anything, any such specific training for a particular community that has been developed?

S. Wright: I'm not aware of that. Sorry, ma'am.

K. Triance: I may answer that one, and I think that Supt. Davy Lee is really able to speak to this more accurately. I can speak from having worked in small Indigenous communities in northern B.C. as well as in the Squamish Nation and in Whistler, where we worked with a variety of different nations. The training we did was all developed locally through our Indigenous communities, so getting to know the people in the community and bringing them in…. We brought in the Building Bridges program in Squamish.

We've brought in different programs. The Heiltsuk restorative justice program brought in training in Bella Bella on the Central Coast, but we had five nations we provided there. It's up to each individual commander to work with the nations, build that, see what we can facilitate, carve off days, bring in resources to cover our communities and then train police officers who are travelling in and out of the community every couple of years. So there's a lot to learn there and a lot to do and, of course, every nation is very different.

Superintendent Lee, do you have something different there?

D. Lee: Yeah, thank you very much for that. We work very closely with our Indigenous communities. S'olh Nation is primarily a good one to speak of. Incidentally, right now they are offering us some cultural awareness training through their sites in conjunction with the city of Chilliwack, as well, to offer awareness training for Indigenous people.

I think this is a good step towards truth and reconciliation in our communities. We have nine of them surrounding the city of Chilliwack. It literally borders the city limits. You spoke of partnerships, and I think the relationships need to be established first, before the partnerships can be built. So I think that that's key. I know that, for example, we as police officers have dealt with some front-line stuff.

One of the key things that we have experienced already from our urban Indigenous committee liaison team is just the fact of knowing who to contact. So when we have an emergency response to a critical instance, such as the ERT team rolling in, that's very traumatic for the community — to see a whole host of police officers showing up, and they have no idea what's going on.

What we generally tell the police officers, of course, is to sequester folks and contain the scene. They don't liaise with the community. They just tell everybody to back off and stay away from the safe area. Well, having the urban Indigenous team liaison people calling them in and having them liaise directly with the elected officials goes so far to building that relationship. It really staves off further inquiries down the road: why we didn't seem to be respectful of the community and why we're not communicating appropriately.

R. Singh: This is such very important information. Thank you so much.

R. Glumac: Thank you, everyone, for your presentations. It's great to hear all your perspectives from various areas of the province and the RCMP.

I had a couple of quick questions. We had a presentation recently from a police chief in a different jurisdiction, and I was just curious. One of the things he said, and I think this was alluded to in your presentations, is that non-criminal calls to 911 have been going up significantly over time. I'm curious if there is a tracking of this kind of information from your perspective. What is a non-criminal call? Is that information publicly available on a historic basis that we could get access to?

K. Triance: Shaun, do you want to take this one, or do you want me to?

S. Wright: Yeah, I don't mind.

So I know that most of us — I'd say all of us — actually present statistics to our mayor and council on an annual basis. I know, as part of that presentation, that I hive out those numbers, as well. So I would think that they would be readily available in most jurisdictions. I don't know that we all use the same definition, though, of what non-criminal is, which would be the difficulty in collating that. But I do think that the data would be available if that were an undertaking that someone wanted to invest in.

[10:10 a.m.]

In my mind, that typically would be unwanted persons trespassing — really, those sorts of things — and mental health, obviously, where there is no criminal act involved. We've seen a significant uptick — I think I talk for all the communities here — over the last, at least, five years if not longer, as the homeless population really grows and becomes more prominent in the community.

We've moved, in my opinion, from a homeless situation to, really, an addictions situation. I know that years ago when I was working, a lot of the homeless people were simply poor and homeless. Now I would say that it has got to be 95 percent plus that are addicted to opioids. That causes a lot of these nuisance behaviours that, obviously, drive those non-criminal calls for service.

R. Glumac: That's very helpful context. Thank you for sharing that.

One other question. In the presentation that we received, there was an effort by this police chief to cultivate certain qualities in the police force, like trauma-informed responses and things like that — sort of softer qualities, as he described them. I'm curious. What qualities are taken into account for advancement in the RCMP, for promotions and things like that?

K. Triance: There are two separate things. One is around the calls for service, the first part being the social-disorder calls for service and how we respond to them. Those can be divisionally pulled through our ops strategy branch. It would be a significant undertaking, and we'd need to circle back with B.C. RCMP on that one, but there is a consistent methodology in which we could pull that data should that be available or need to be made available. It would be a big undertaking, but it's available.

Second is that advancement and leadership…. There are core competencies in our promotion process that need to be spoken to and written to for each position or job. At the commission level, that is the white shirts that you see on this presentation today. We go through a different process than those who are promoted at the non-commissioned level. It's a little bit more robust for us. We'd need to speak to and write two examples primarily around leadership development, communication, things like change management specific to our organizational cultural values.

Within the investigative services or front-line services, some of our crime prevention teams, there are job codes, and those have a nationally approved process that they write to, and that is then provided to the commander. The top seven of the exam scores that they've written will go through to the commander to make their selection for right fit for the community.

Ultimately, it will come to our positions, as officers in charge of detachments, to select that person. There can be varying, different things that a commander is looking for, for their community that should address their priorities within the community and the needs and gaps within their detachment.

S. Wright: If I could just add a tiny bit to that. We are competency-based, like Kara said, with regard to when we get commissioned as officers for that promotional bump. That process is currently being reviewed, and they're moving more towards a character-based model rather than hard competency. I think that's generally the same direction as you were intimating.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Again, good morning. Thank you, everyone, for your presentations.

First of all, Shaun, good to see you again. Thanks for meeting with me there a few weeks ago. I pre-apologized to all of my colleagues. I was supposed to send a document out on the IM program that Shaun spoke about, but it should be hitting your mailboxes soon. I did send it to Karan just recently, with some good information there. I apologize that I didn't get that out.

It is good to hear a lot of these different perspectives. It's good to hear — I think Adam mentioned it briefly — from the detachment commanders themselves. It gives a very different perspective. Following this meeting with you, we're actually going even smaller — to some smaller detachments — where we're going to hear, again, different issues that the RCMP are facing in smaller communities.

I think, Shaun, you talked about the silos and working…. There are all these different services that are out there and that seem to work independently of each other while trying to deliver the same services. There needs to be a mechanism, I think, to bring them together.

[10:15 a.m.]

I heard that. I did a ride-along with the Vancouver police. They were talking about the same thing. There are so many organizations in Vancouver working independently of each other. There needs to be some coordination. That's something that's something…. I'm sure that we'll have this discussion when we go into our deliberations. It seems like there are a lot of great things going, listening to each of you today. We've heard from different detachments, municipal police forces, all trying great things in their communities. Some are working great; some are trials.

One question I have for you, especially within the RCMP…. There are all of these great things going on and this kind of patchwork approach of things happening across British Columbia and across Canada. What is the mechanism for you, within the RCMP, to share best practices? It's so that this gets pushed up to whom it needs to go to, within your organization, to say: "Hey, this is great. We need to start implementing this." An example is the I am app. How could we support that and get these best practices out? I would love some comments on that.

S. Wright: I'll take a bit of a crack at it. I would say that we do have some internal systems whereby news is shared, on either a divisional — so provincial — or a national level. If there are initiatives, they're often posted there. We do have the opportunity to observe them and then delve into it deeper, to either contact those individuals or research it a little more from the embedded story.

I would say that in large part, it's informal. There are regular communications from the divisional level to the district officers and then from the district officers to all the detachment commanders. I think information flows largely in an informal matter like that. There is regular communication, but I don't think it's necessarily structured like: "Okay, here are best practices, and on Tuesdays, we disseminate this to everyone for discussion." That would be my observation.

D. Lee: If I could just weigh in here for a second. In the Lower Mainland, we do have what they call the ROPMC committee. It's a subcommittee of B.C. chiefs. That's on a monthly basis where the operations officers for all the detachments in the Lower Mainland, as well as the municipal departments, get together and share ideas, talk about current crime trends and share best practices. Often that's very useful. I was on that committee for a number of years, as co-chair, as well.

From that, good ideas get born out of there, but also good relationships and partnerships get developed on some integrated types of strategies on combatting crimes. Here in the Lower Mainland, it's easy to have…. Let's say, for example, the catalytic converter thefts that are running rampant around multiple communities, and the same person is doing it. Instead of each of the detachments focusing on it individually, they can collaboratively work together on it.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Great, thanks. I appreciate that. One final thought, then, speaking of best practices. This is, I guess, maybe more of a comment, maybe to see if you and your detachments are looking at similar things. I think one of you mentioned something earlier.

We had a presentation yesterday by the Stl'atl'imx tribal police. It was really great. One thing that was mentioned…. They brought a member of the Abbotsford police up there and did a shift cycle with them. It was a great experience, from what we heard. Again, of course, they're the only tribal police in the province of British Columbia. They might become very popular after this, doing this ride-sharing. I think it's a great opportunity to do those immersions, I guess, if you will.

Have there been any ideas around something like that, working around Indigenous populations around the province? I'm sorry my questions aren't directed at a member, but at whoever wants to jump in.

K. Triance: Chris or Davy, either one of you can jump in on this one. I could speak to Stl'atl'imx specifically, or on some of the time in the north.

D. Routley (Chair): Good to go ahead, please.

K. Triance: In integrating that work, for us, in Whistler, we worked with the Pemberton provincial area. We also cover the Pemberton provincial area and worked in a very aligned manner with Chief Doss-Cody.

[10:20 a.m.]

On the Stl'atl'imx tribal police, we were divided by Southeast district and Lower Mainland district. In the Sea to Sky region, we are attached to the Lower Mainland district. Chief Doss-Cody is attached to the southeast district on her Lillooet side, and on the north side, we worked a two-door car at times with the Stl'atl'imx officer and a Pemberton provincial police officer.

We also worked in an integrated shift schedule. We covered off 24/7 policing and hubbed our areas sort of informally through a letter of understanding while their resources were down to an unmanageable resource level for over two and a half years, supporting that through the provincial business line in Pemberton — so lots of work to integrate in those communities where you're in direct proximity and policing the traditional territories there.

Here in West Kelowna we have an integrated detachment. Our Westbank First Nation is integrated with out Indigenous policing section and our Westbank First Nations provincial area, and all of them work out of one detachment and police the entire area of West Kelowna and Westbank First Nations.

I could go on about two or three communities. When we were in the Heiltsuk First Nation, we policed with the community constables in that area back in the time, who had the experience. They would just come and do ride-alongs in their community and introduce us to the key contacts.

But this really needs to be specific. There is no one-size-fits-all. There's no one model that's going to work. Every Indigenous community is gong to have a very different lens and perspective on their relationship with the police, on their history with the police, on how their governance system works, on how their traditional governance system works — the hereditary chiefs versus the elected chiefs.

All of that I really believe needs to be a bit organic within the community and kind of led through the commanders and/or the key thought leaders within the detachment, and of course, each detachment needs to have some representative of an equity, diversity and inclusion council where they can go and put some more thought into how we do this police work. All of that is sort of, I would say, an evolutionary process and being done in unique ways across the province, based on the communities that we police and serve.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you.

Go ahead, Grace.

G. Lore: Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you for all the presentations and the questions of my colleagues so far.

I have what might be a specific question about the IM, and I look forward to reading and learning a little bit more. I wonder…. I think the case you're making about the importance of information for those responding to know ahead of time, to have a sense of what some of the features or things that may escalate mental health are important.

At the same time, one of the things that it's making me think of is some of the things we've heard a couple of times about folks' information in policing records and not being able to change it or challenge it or whether there might be, in fact, a risk of the inclusion of that information and the level of control individuals might have or ability to change that information.

I'm just thinking about the incredible number. The numbers you shared for the West Shore and the number of cases involving mental health are just so incredibly high — and what it might mean to people's experience in the medium and long term with that information about them. So potential mitigating any kind of concerns on that front — or whether you've heard anything around that.

S. Wright: I have had some brief discussions there with representatives from the company in that regard, when they walked us through how the entire system works, along with representatives from Northern Health. I don't know exactly what the mechanics would be to either redact or modify information that is in there. I do know that that database and that system has passed the standards for several health authorities who I found to be very extreme with regard to privacy issues and personal information.

Northern Health is currently working through a privacy impact assessment based upon one that Fraser Health has done. This system actually is in place in Delta PD. They're the only jurisdiction in British Columbia so far.

Sorry. I don't have details beyond that.

[10:25 a.m.]

D. Routley (Chair): I would just very quickly ask this question around immersion and relationship-building. Staff Sergeant Boucher spoke about the lack of turnover in his detachment and how that has facilitated the ongoing nature of relationship-building. We've heard from small communities that that's an issue. Where relationships are built and empathy is there, there are better outcomes.

Do you think that we can do a better job of nurturing that without addressing this issue of deployment and having some control over it? I would ask Superintendent Wright.

S. Wright: Sorry. Could you just repeat that, please?

D. Routley (Chair): I'm sorry. We spoke to a chief from Quebec who spoke about an immersion program where they actually have officers going and living for weeks with the people they're policing, without uniform and without a weapon. It's a form of relationship-building and understanding. Then we've seen, in northern communities, that the turnover rate of deployment in detachments affects that. Do you think that there's a way to nurture that relationship-building if we don't have control over the deployment issues?

S. Wright: That's a very good question. We are always going to have turnover in those remote communities. That's just a fact of life, I believe. You know what? Never having worked in a very small community, I think community engagement at the outset, in social activities, when members arrive or prior to it…. I think Superintendent Triance, who has worked in some of those communities, is far better positioned to answer that.

K. Triance: You'll hear a little bit more from our colleagues right after this, with respect to travelling in and out of remote communities, but I had the privilege of working for two years in a two-year LDP and then returned for an additional four years. That's really unique and not commonly heard of. I was at the time where I wasn't a mother yet. I had a spouse who was a teacher and who was able to find employment in the community that we were working in, and we loved what we were doing. It met our personal needs of being able to be on the coast and doing the things we loved.

Not always is that the case. You're travelling with your family, your children. You might be taking that post as an adventure or an experience, but it might not work with your family or your children as they grow into school age or you're looking to aspire to universities or larger communities. So some of the time, holding people into communities becomes really challenging. Then, of course, it is a little bit about the individual police officer, their family and their circumstances, and connecting them with the right community.

I've also heard, conversely, from people who were recruited out of the community that I lived in and served in. The challenges there — it was a very small community — were that they don't want to go back and police their own community and the family and the people that they grew up with. That would present immense challenges for them and huge complications. So you're bringing people in from external communities. She's a phenomenal police officer in an urban environment. However, she doesn't want to return to that small town.

There are really unique staffing needs. We have a national staffing model. We need to respond nationally to demands and priorities. At times, that is our northern communities in B.C., but other times, that might be Nunavut or the Northwest Territories that are needing those police officers with those unique skill sets, and we have to respond nationally to those models. There are some additional benefits in that we bring people in that have the privilege of serving in other communities and can bring that national lens to our communities that we work in. But those present some challenges, conversely.

The RCMP adventure. Some of us sign up because we want to have that experience of being in many different communities — for myself, eight over the last 15 years. It has been an incredible opportunity, but it also is very challenging. I don't have roots in any one community. So I can speak about my experience, and my colleagues will speak about theirs, but those come at a cost to my family and at a toll to those who are coming along with us.

Does that answer a couple of those questions?

D. Routley (Chair): Yeah, thanks. That was very helpful.

I'd like to thank all of our presenters on behalf of the committee. We are determined to make a positive difference through the recommendations of this committee, and you've helped us get further along in filling in and colouring the picture that's in front of us. We hear themes, and we really appreciate you filling in for us so many details that we weren't aware of.

Thank you very much for your service to the province before now, but particularly right now, today, for this committee.

Members, we will take a short recess. We will reconvene at 10:35.

The committee recessed from 10:30 a.m. to 10:37 a.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you for joining us. Welcome back to this meeting of the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act.

For our next presentations, we'll be hearing from a panel of presenters from RCMP detachments in the Northern Rockies, Tsay Keh and New Hazelton, followed by questions and discussion with committee members. Each presenter has ten minutes to speak, followed by time for questions from members to the entire panel.

I'll also remind everyone that all audio from our meeting is being broadcast live on our website. A complete transcript will also be posted there.

Now I would ask members of the committee to introduce themselves. I'll begin with Dan, the Deputy Chair.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Chair.

Good morning, everyone. Great to see you all. Dan Davies. I'm the MLA for Peace River North.

I'm coming to you live from the Dane-zaa territory.

I look forward to the presentations this morning.

A. Olsen: Adam Olsen, MLA for Saanich North and the Islands.

I'm working from my constituency office today in SETI¸NES, which is also known as Sidney, B.C.

Nice to see you all.

R. Singh: Rachna Singh, MLA for Surrey–Green Timbers.

I'm joining you from the shared territories of the Kwantlen, Kwikwetlem, Katzie and Semiahmoo First Nations.

G. Lore: Good morning. I'm really looking forward to hearing from you this morning. I'm Grace Lore. I am the MLA for Victoria–Beacon Hill.

I'm on the territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ peoples of the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations.

R. Glumac: Hi. I'm Rick Glumac, from Port Moody–Coquitlam.

I'm on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

G. Begg: Hi, everyone. I'm Garry Begg. I'm the MLA for Surrey-Guildford.

I'm coming to you today from the traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Kwantlen, the Semiahmoo and the Katzie First Nations.

D. Routley (Chair): A couple of our members will be joining us in a minute.

I'm the Chair of the committee, MLA Doug Routley, from Nanaimo–North Cowichan.

I'm joining from the traditional territory of the Malahat First Nation.

Thank you for the introductions, Members.

I'd like now to introduce our guests. First is Sgt. Jon MacIntyre of the Tsay Keh RCMP detachment.

Thanks for joining us. Go ahead if you're ready.

[10:40 a.m.]

TSAY KEH DENE RCMP

J. MacIntyre: Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee on reforming the Police Act. I am honoured and humbled to share in some of the vast experiences and accompanying challenges our RCMP in British Columbia proudly face.

My name is Jon MacIntyre, and I am currently a sergeant in the RCMP, attached to the province's integrated organized crime agency, as part of CFSEU-BC.

As a member of the Haida Nation, I have worked in this province as a police officer for more than 16 years, and I've spent seven of those living and working on Indigenous reserves in some of the most remote and isolated locations in the province. Today I'll be speaking to you from those working opportunities.

I'd first like to acknowledge the territories from where I speak of my experience: the Ahousaht and Hesquiaht reserves, and their traditional territories of the Nuu-chah-nulth people; and the Tsay Keh Dene and Kwadacha reserves, and their traditional territories of the Sekani people.

As I transition to my brief overview, highlighting some real-life challenges in policing these exceptional locations, it would be highly relevant that I first emphasize the true remoteness of these four Indigenous reserves.

Ahousaht reserve is situated at the south of Flores Island and is only accessed by float plane or vessel from Tofino, B.C. The community houses an estimated 800 people and consists of only on-reserve housing. There's a school, a band office, a general store only accessible by watercraft, and a health clinic where nurses and a physician boat in during weekday daytime hours. A boat ride to Ahousaht takes 45 minutes but can take significantly longer in rough ocean waters. All police members reside in Ahousaht and serve additional areas, including the Hesquiaht reserve, remotely.

Hesquiaht reserve, also known as Hot Springs or Refuge Cove, is situated at the southern end of Sydney Inlet and can only be accessed by float plane or vessel from Tofino. The community houses an estimated 50 to 80 people and also consists of only on-reserve housing. There's an elementary school and a band office. A boat ride to Hot Springs takes 1½ hours but can take significantly longer in inclement weather.

Travel between the two communities of Ahousaht and Hesquiaht takes 45 minutes in mostly protected ocean water. There is a portion of open water, and in unfavourable weather conditions, that has prevented critical operational travel between the reserves on a number of occasions.

The Tsay Keh Dene reserve is situated at the northern tip of Williston Lake and is accessed by small charter planes or vehicles. The closest centre to Tsay Keh Dene is the small northern town of Mackenzie, a distance of more than 350 kilometres on gravel forest service road. The community houses an estimated 250 people and consists of only on-reserve housing. There's a school, band office, a general store and a nursing clinic that has rotational nurses from all over the country who typically work in the community for five weeks at a time. A regular family physician flies into the community for two days per month.

Driving from Tsay Keh to Mackenzie takes five hours. Depending on road conditions due to weather and logging in the area, it can take significantly longer. All police members currently reside in the community of Tsay Keh Dene and police the Kwadacha reserve remotely.

The Kwadacha reserve, formerly known as Fort Ware, is situated on the Finlay River, 75 kilometres north of Tsay Keh. It is also accessed by small charter planes or by vehicle. The community houses an estimated 400 people and also consists of only on-reserve housing. Similar to Tsay Keh, there's a school, band office, general store and nursing clinic. The same family physician flies into the community for two days per month. Travel between the two communities takes an hour or more, depending on weather or road conditions.

One of the key issues raised in servicing these locations, and a topic discussed at several junctures during the RCMP senior management team's presentation to the committee, was the limited duration in which a police officer, and family, serves in a posting and the challenges that come with that in building community trust, developing and fostering police-community relationships and gaining an understanding of the cultures and practices often unique to those locations.

The territories I've been fortunate to serve in have all been two-year, limited-duration postings, meaning that police and their families are sent to a location with an understanding that they will serve in that community for two years. There are a number of challenges that arise through this high turnover, and it must be conveyed that these communities are often underserviced and under-resourced in locations that are both challenging and costly to travel in and out of.

Therefore, there are legitimate obstacles in proposing that police commit to longer-serving terms, realizing that there's a lack of familial and social networks and limitations to health care and other critical services, many of which are often facing similar resource challenges. Higher-than-normal turnover is not unique to police in these communities.

As a recommendation from my experiences, I believe the most effective approach to this challenge of relationship and trust-building was already touched on by Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald and MLA Adam Olsen during the July 29 committee discussion. Removing that historical barrier where the police remain segregated from the community to ensure that unbiased decision-making occurs seems archaic and unnecessary.

In my time, I've been able to separate the work from the non-work environment, becoming very involved in youth and adult sport, social events and cultural events without compromising my role. In doing so, it has been my experience that community members and leaders have requested my extended stay in these communities, offering to write letters of support to senior leaders.

[10:45 a.m.]

With that approach, there is a necessary requirement for further funding in areas for participation in cultural events or cultural-specific training and youth sport, which will provide opportunities for police members to experience, learn and, most importantly, humanize themselves into the community in a much shorter time frame.

What does further funding mean? From my experience, the seamless transition of a police member out and a police member in does not occur. Often no one is to blame for the period where the detachment is understaffed. It's just that the relocation of individuals and their families is complicated by an infinite number of variables at play.

When that delay is one or two personnel of a four- to six-member detachment, the resourcing impacts are massive. The members fielding those impacts are often required to work more hours, be available for emergency callouts on more days and investigate many additional calls for service.

Adding this recommended approach of planning and participating in cultural events, organizing or hosting sporting events, taking on youth mentor roles and planning community social events to expedite those relationships and build that necessary trust can often be insurmountable. Therefore, further funding to programs like the newly developed provincial support teams, the Indigenous policing services programs and local detachment budgets are absolutely necessary to allow for this approach to expand.

The second issue, and very closely related to the first, has been the challenges in segregating the roles and responsibilities as they relate to provincial core policing and federal Indigenous policing positions. Unlike larger urban environments where positions can be more suitably tailored to funding demands of the contracts, in small and remote policing locations, those roles become very blurred.

Federal and provincial partners have expressed difficulty in understanding that in small locations, there is an expectation for both the communities and the local operational demands that the core positions and the Indigenous positions will interchangeably perform in both duties. In my experience, that has been the most effective manner in fulfilling obligations and meeting the expectations of the communities being served.

To be blunt, the communities and their leaderships don't pay attention to what funding line their police officers are contracted through. The expectation of what they can or cannot do is applied to all members wearing the RCMP uniform posted in their community.

To illustrate this challenge, I will highlight an issue I experienced in my time in Tsay Keh. When I arrived in 2018, I learned that a functioning RCMP detachment had been opened in the community of Kwadacha in 2011. Since that time, the community had cried for a permanent police presence. More police presence was their number one request. They wanted us there. Soon I learned that police in the Kwadacha reserve remotely from Tsay Keh was a disservice to both communities and was an added strain on an often understaffed detachment.

In the following months, a business proposal was developed which was supported by RCMP senior leadership. In summary, the proposal would have three members reside in Tsay Keh Dene and have three members reside in Kwadacha. With no added resources and personnel, financial considerations were minimal.

When the business proposal was taken to the province of British Columbia, there were challenges in determining how operations would effectively continue, if only two core positions resided in each community, meaning that the two Indigenous positions were not being viewed as front-line resources.

In my view, there was a failure to see that these positions were already fulfilling their contracts with actually less resources despite the added travel time between the two communities, which was compounding resources and pressures. There appeared to be a disconnect in understanding that in small and remote policing locations, there is a necessary expectation that all police members perform a variety of all essential and non-essential duties in order to deliver a successful service to the communities.

A way forward would be to allow for more freedom in the specified designation of members in small, isolated Indigenous communities, with an understanding that every member, and their family, is critical to development and relationship-building; enhanced police initiatives; and core duties — a more effective approach to have all police members serving the community be adaptable and able to perform in all contexts.

As the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General of B.C., Hon. Mike Farnworth, wrote in his memorandum to the RCMP commanding officer of British Columbia in 2020: "It is essential to me that the RCMP work with community leaders to address local needs and be accountable to communities they serve. This includes fully and collaboratively consulting with Indigenous governments as well as local, municipal or regional governments to identify and implement local priorities."

Thank you all for your time, and I am again honoured and humbled to have been given this opportunity to highlight the truly unique yet challenging work being done by RCMP in this province. I look forward to expanding from my experiences on any questions you may have.

Klecko. Mussi cho. Haawa.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much for that.

Next we'll hear from Sgt. Anthony Fletcher of Northern Rockies RCMP detachment.

Please go ahead when you're ready.

[10:50 a.m.]

NORTHERN ROCKIES RCMP

A. Fletcher: Good afternoon. I am Sgt. Anthony Fletcher. I am the operations NCO for the Northern Rockies detachment here in Fort Nelson. Since about February this year, I've been acting as the detachment commander, and I will be continuing in this role for the foreseeable future.

This will be my first time presenting to this level of government. I am very honoured to have the opportunity to share with you what my detachment is doing to identify and address systemic racism and promote reconciliation at the community level, and the importance of a collaborative approach to this topic.

Before I continue, I would like to acknowledge that the Northern Rockies detachment is situated on the treaty 8 territory of the Dene people of the Fort Nelson First Nation.

The Northern Rockies detachment provides policing service for an area covering approximately 97,000 square kilometres of northeastern B.C. The population is around 3,600. We'll see what it is — it may have declined slightly — as we see the numbers in the next census. Our detachment area borders the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, as well as Alberta to the east. To put this in perspective, some of our responses to calls are the equivalent of a police officer in Surrey responding to a call in Kelowna.

We police 14 communities in the area, which includes two main Indigenous reserves — those being the Fort Nelson First Nation and the Prophet River First Nation, which is located approximately 90 kilometres south of Fort Nelson on the Alaska Highway. Both communities have seasonal and traditional territories within the region that are only accessible by air or off-road vehicles such as an ATV or a snowmobile.

The Northern Rockies detachment has an authorized strength of 17 regular members. Two of those positions are community tripartite agreement IPS, Indigenous policing services, positions.

Earlier this year, through consultation with our local Indigenous governments and partner agencies, I identified that my detachment needed to improve the effectiveness of our service delivery, specifically around crime reduction and enforcement activities. We needed to work collaboratively to identify a way to reduce crime while still respecting and incorporating our local Indigenous community's cultural teachings and utilizing the limited resources that we both have.

Throughout my career, I have policed in ten different Indigenous communities within the province of B.C. On a personal note, my wife and children are proud members of the Nisga'a Nation, and I have had the opportunity to learn and see firsthand the hardships Indigenous people face in our communities and how that relates to policing and the criminal justice system. I have also recognized that there is sometimes a disconnect between traditional laws and processes and the modern-day laws and processes that we see today.

In order for my detachment to provide a culturally competent, bias-free and respectful policing service, we need to ensure that we recognize the impact residential schools continue to have on the people we serve, specifically how Indigenous communities previous ways of dealing with individuals who are in conflict have been eroded over time. We must also ensure that we are cognizant of the role the RCMP played during these times and how it, at times, still has a negative impact on trust and, ultimately, achieving reconciliation.

The Northern Rockies detachment currently has two Indigenous policing services members. The members assigned to these positions have truly been on the front lines of rebuilding trust and respect throughout the province. Whether it's the basics of a school talk or meeting with chief and council, the program is crucial in providing a consistent face that community members get to know as a person, opposed to just a uniform.

When considering Police Act reform, I believe special attention needs to be paid to these positions, which are funded under the community tripartite agreements. I believe that the Indigenous policing services program is instrumental in working towards reconciliation.

An example. I have tasked the Indigenous policing services members here in Fort Nelson with working with our local Elders to develop a new orientation tour. The goal is to have new members to our detachment physically go into the communities and have an opportunity to meet face to face with locals, participate in cultural teachings and hear for themselves the impacts residential schools have had in the communities that they're serving.

[10:55 a.m.]

Often police officers come from all over Canada and may not fully understand the unique challenges our Indigenous communities face. By getting this exposure at the beginning of their posting, the hope is that they can conduct themselves in a manner that is sensitive to the cultural and social barriers that they will face while policing.

Another initiative that the Indigenous policing services members are working with me on is the development of a working group to identify and address systemic racism. It is important that when we are providing policing service to our Indigenous communities, we take the time to identify the unique situations each community is facing. We must also recognize that each nation will have different protocols and traditions.

In my experience, there is no one-size-fits-all service delivery model. In order to see successes, we need to be open to changing our approach from the traditional policing models and identify policies and procedures that may unfairly disadvantage Indigenous people. Because instances of systemic racism are not often overt, I recognized that it was important to establish a working group that could, with my detachment, help identify areas of concern but, more importantly, develop strategies to mitigate these issues at our local level.

This fall we have created a working group, and it's in its infancy. As of right now, it includes the Fort Nelson First Nation, the Prophet River First Nation, the Fort Nelson Aboriginal Friendship Society and then the RCMP. By ensuring that this working group is comprised of service providers from different areas and communities, we can all bring different perspectives and resources to the table.

The task of this working group is to develop a pathway to reconciliation and address elements of systemic racism at a local level, which we see within the criminal justice system. We will all work together to implement a culturally cognizant crime reduction strategy that will empower the community and promote offender rehabilitation and reintegration.

Areas that myself and the Indigenous policing services members are striving to work towards include implementation of a referral process for accused band members being released from either the detachment or the courts on a release order. For some individuals who live in our rural Indigenous communities, this can be a challenge due to the lack of transportation, funds and other socioeconomic barriers that would cause them to miss a court date — for example, for their first appearance. Often that would result in a warrant being issued for their arrest and additional criminal charges.

A solution to this, which our group has decided to try to mitigate this barrier, is to implement a consent-to-release information procedure. This information…. The individual would be able, given the option, to allow the RCMP to advise their respective Indigenous government of their first appearance date and also to ensure the individuals have transportation and proper legal supports prior to their first appearance.

A significant shortfall that I have seen is the lack of meaningful systems in place to reintegrate the accused back into the community after completing a jail sentence. Reintegration is important to break the cycle of negative behaviours that inevitably lead to criminality. By working collaboratively with our local Indigenous governments, we are striving to develop a meaningful offender rehabilitation or reintegration strategy specific to our community.

A component to the strategy is to dramatically enhance the use of restorative justice for our community members living both on and off reserve. I have been fortunate to participate and witness the successes of a strong restorative justice program that is led by the community. An example of such a program would be that managed by the Nisga'a Lisims justice department. This program fosters traditional laws and encourages culturally appropriate accountability.

Although there are marked differences in culture, I am currently working with the Fort Nelson First Nation and Prophet River First Nation on enhancing the restorative justice program in our area. Using my previous experiences, I'm hoping to see that the restorative justice program will include Dene-specific culture.

The goal is to empower the community in working with our offenders to reduce recidivism and also, ultimately, reduce crime. A functioning restorative justice program will also allow incidents that do not require a criminal justice process to be resolved at a community level and, in some instances, without the need of police involvement.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak today. I hope that the modernization of the Police Act and any related acts promotes reconciliation through meaningful dialogue and collaboration between the police and the unique communities that we serve.

[11:00 a.m.]

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much. We certainly all share that hope.

Our final member of this panel is Staff Sgt. Darren Durnin of the New Hazelton RCMP detachment.

Thanks for joining us, and go ahead whenever you're ready.

NEW HAZELTON RCMP

D. Durnin: Good morning. My Name is Darren Durnin. I am the detachment commander for the New Hazelton RCMP. I welcome the opportunity to represent the B.C. RCMP's north district and provide my thoughts on specific issues and opportunities related to the modernization of the B.C. Police Act, based on my own experiences policing in the north.

Before doing so, I first recognize the Hazelton detachment sits on Gitxsan traditional territory. We provide service delivery to seven Indigenous communities, serving both the Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en people. In addition to the elected leadership groups, the territories served are comprised of over 100 hereditary chiefs.

Today I'll focus on the key issue of policing in partnership with Indigenous communities. I had the opportunity to review assistant commissioner Eric Stubbs' presentation to the committee in July and wanted to relate some of the comments made with my own tangible experiences serving Indigenous communities, challenges experienced and how I believe service delivery can be improved.

As it relates to building a relationship based on trust and collaboration, I have seen firsthand how police officers, especially our Indigenous police services officers, can foster meaningful relationships with Indigenous communities. Those relationships start with police officers who are well informed and have an understanding of the history of those served, including the people's history with the RCMP.

The service provided needs to suit the needs of the community, with the ability, where appropriate, to navigate and adapt to the unique service delivery needs of those communities. Given the nature of the policing role, there are challenges in sustaining those relationships. As part of the broader service delivery needs as it relates to building lasting relationships, it is very important that the police, in conjunction with the community served, identify opportunities and allocate non-enforcement–related time to building community relationships and that those efforts start to incorporate hereditary leaders.

Shortly, I'll touch on the broader need to understand each unique community. The long-standing challenge for both provincial and federal governments when attempting to reach agreement with the respective nations as it relates to unresolved rights and title has led to multiple protest events locally and across Canada. These events are increasingly used as a means to emphasize those concerns. They're also being used as a tactic. They're often done in a manner to create disruption, sometimes economic and other times social. They are often emotionally charged. Each time, the events put the RCMP in direct conflict with Indigenous people, communities served, and damage relationships.

Between my previous position in nearby Smithers and my arrival in New Hazelton in January 2020, I've taken part in about ten protest-related events. One involved the occupation of an MLA office. Some occurred on railways, others on provincial highways and streets. Some lasted multiple days. One involved the enforcement of a Supreme Court injunction.

At times, the representative hereditary chief is at the forefront of the event. At other times, simply their anecdotal support is reported as being in place by the group. The approach is often to seek out large numbers to impede police response. Children are often present. While representatives of the clan's house group and supporting houses or other nations are present, at times, persons take part with a solely antagonistic approach, intent on undermining a peaceful resolution.

While a measured approach has always been adopted, the serving complement of police officers is often put in direct conflict with Indigenous people and those communities served, casting police in a negative light regardless of how much care and effort went into the matter. Sadly, some will manipulate the truth of the outcome of a police role to raise their own profile or better suit their broader agenda, compounding the issue when trust is fragile, as those not present are often left only with social media content presented by those people with an agenda and, at times, is not at all reflective of what transpired.

I have found navigating these events challenging, as my decided actions and that of others embroiled in the conflict can have a lasting impact on trust and the relationship with police, the very thing we work so hard to establish. Compounding the challenge is that some, but not all, remain intent on exasperating the conflict.

It is recognized that the negotiations underway between government and the various nations are complex and will take time to resolve. I highlight this issue and lived experience as I recognize that a broader understanding of not only the Indigenous community served but their hereditary systems and leadership structures is of growing importance.

[11:05 a.m.]

It is of particular importance for police to understand who the hereditary leaders are and where the respective nations are in their rights and title negotiation. By investing in localized training in each of our Indigenous policing communities, our police officers can experience and understand the uniqueness of those communities they serve. Importantly, they can understand the range of issues, including rights and title, and be better prepared to navigate those hurdles when they arise and speak to the community from a position of fundamental understanding, recognizing that there's much to learn.

While, broadly speaking, the Gitxsan are one people sharing many similarities, the communities themselves are unique and operate autonomously — as does Hagwilget, a Wet'suwet'en community. Gitanyow, a Gitxsan community, is about to go through a significant transition in its leadership structure. Recently the governments of B.C. and Canada signed the Gitanyow governance accord, which provides a path forward in the B.C. treaty process towards full self-government, led by a restored Gitanyow hereditary governance system.

New Hazelton detachment is a three-year limited duration post, resulting in considerable turnover. Investment in localized training that accounts for delivery of that education — and, importantly, the ability to compensate Elders and/or leaders within the communities served — demonstrates our commitment and provides our police officers with an understanding of each community.

The value of localized training can't be understated. In 2020, I asked an elected Chief to speak with the detachment. They had previously told me parts of their life story, including having been taken to a residential school and the lasting impact it had. They were able to provide a firsthand account of why some in the community struggle and how the police could foster a better relationship through understanding.

Participants identified the presentation as one of the more impactful training experiences. This was one of seven community perspectives. This year I have identified another community leader to speak to the detachment and share their perspective.

Within the Indigenous communities I serve, I am also seeing an increased level of victimization, resulting from, as I understand it, case law and resulting court-sentencing principles, whereby Indigenous offenders — including those with a propensity towards committing acts of violence but, more frequently, property crime — are being released back into their communities by the courts.

While this approach is likely to restore the balance of our prison system, which has a disproportionate number of Indigenous persons serving custodial sentences, it can have a negative impact on those communities they reside in, as often the offender, upon release, has little access to services, support or rehabilitation to influence meaningful change to their behaviour.

Locally non-custodial sentences are supported by the recent creation of an Indigenous court. As I understand it, representatives of the Indigenous communities served are guiding partners in justice delivery. The benefits of its function are beginning to be felt. We also have Unlocking Aboriginal Justice, a restorative justice program for both Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en as an alternative to custodial sentences.

To be clear, I support alternatives to custodial sentences wherever appropriate. However, it is important that we recognize there are underlying consequences to the decisions being made, including, at times, a higher level of victimization experienced by communities, as the offenders need proper supports to guide them toward success.

For Indigenous courts and programming to thrive and continue to serve as viable alternatives to incarceration, it'll be important that the levels of resources dedicated to them are sufficient, as the committed follow-through by the offender to the release plan needs to be closely monitored. Our police officers need to work in conjunction with those programs, in support of those higher-risk offenders, to enhance their likelihood of success and reduce the likelihood of victimization.

As it relates to building a relationship based on trust and collaboration, I've seen firsthand how we, as police officers, especially our Indigenous services officers, can foster meaningful, lasting relationships. Those relationships start with genuine care of our police officers to serve their communities well, to integrate themselves within the broader policing role and their ability to navigate and respond to the unique needs of each community. Creating opportunities and allocating non-enforcement–related time to establish those relationships is critical. Locally, we are intent on it.

In the spring of 2022, we'll introduce the Mounties With Legs project. The initiative was financially supported by B.C. civil forfeiture. Simply put, it involves getting local police officers out of their vehicles and onto bikes —or feet, if they prefer — so that they can get to know each community, with a focus on connecting with those most vulnerable and aligning them with supports.

One of our newly arrived police officers will take on a youth hockey coaching role. Another is considering working with the high school basketball team. It is critical that I, as a leader, encourage and support my team to embrace these opportunities.

[11:10 a.m.]

In recent weeks, our detachment was asked to support three different schools with their annual Terry Fox Run. Beyond traffic safety, the principal reason we engage is so that participants, the youth, see and engage with police in a non-enforcement role.

A traditional practice enjoyed by many Indigenous people is berry- and mushroom-picking. Last year several persons went missing, engaged in the activity — in one case, with a tragic outcome. In response, we proactively sought and were granted support to purchase 100 survival backpacks, complete with related gear, to support the communities. This was a proactive effort, responsive to the need.

Locally, we will receive funding through the family violence initiative after preparing a request seeking suitable video cameras to bring to communities. This was done to support those unable to access a detachment, recognizing the remoteness of locations and barriers for some to access the detachment.

While no single initiative guarantees trust and collaboration, I believe it goes a long way in building trust and respect, a foundation the police can build on.

Explore not only the establishment, at the higher level, of a provincial advisory group, but also establish regionalized groups made up of local police and Indigenous leaders. The regionalized groups would advise on matters involving consultation, relationship-building and reconciliation and be more attuned at a local level to developing issues like rights and title that may intersect with government initiatives or court orders.

I appreciate the opportunity to present to you today.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much. Thank you, all of you.

I have a couple of questions already.

First, Dan. Go ahead.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Hey, good morning, again, and I can say this with confidence. Good afternoon to Sergeant Fletcher, as we are in a different time zone up here.

Thanks again for your presentations. It's really great to hear, again, the different perspectives. I mentioned this with our last presenters, who were from larger detachments. We've also heard from headquarters with the RCMP. Of course, it's great to hear the different perspectives from the communities.

Jon, you had talked about policing and how remote it is in certain areas. I had the opportunity to fly into — because that was, by far, the easiest, safest way to get in — Tsay Keh, a few years ago. I met with the Chief there.

You're right. I just want to echo that policing even then, going back five years ago…. That was a huge issue and a big concern. It is something that I think we need to do better, but we need to be listening to the communities and their needs a little more. Thank you for your comments there.

I just want to talk very briefly about restorative justice, which was mentioned. We are going to be having some presentations this week around it. One thing that I've heard is that newer members…. We've been hearing this theme, especially within the RCMP, about how members come in; they leave. They come in; they leave. Especially in the communities that all of you represent, you often get the new members that are coming out of Depot, for the most part.

Is there something on the ground where you are taking your new members and introducing them to the local resources that are in your communities, whether it be restorative justice programs, addiction programs? Is there that on-the-ground process that really helps to integrate the new members that are coming to your communities so that they are connected to these services and able to better connect everyone else to these services? Just maybe a quick comment from each of you.

A. Fletcher: Sure, I can go first. There is, especially when we're talking about recruits coming into the community…. As part of their field coaching, which is six months, there are components about the local services they need, more of a meet-and-greet and identify what's available in the community.

I think that lacks a little bit. I'm trying to push that one step further, here in Fort Nelson, where they're actually sitting down and spending more time in the community with, specifically, our Indigenous communities, to figure out what the barriers are. It's good to know what our support services are, but what are the barriers that our support services are facing, which ultimately we may face policing? Then just about the RCMP's role in that, as well, historically and present.

So there is, as far as recruits and new members coming in…. We do have an orientation package. I think all detachments do. But how meaningful is a written document and a phone call, as opposed to sitting down in front of people and putting faces to the names?

[11:15 a.m.]

It's been a little bit difficult with COVID. That's been a hurdle — a lot of people working remotely and not bringing people in. But as we, hopefully, transition out of the PHOs that are affecting us, we can be successful in that and have more in-person, meaningful dialogue and introductions.

D. Durnin: From a local level, in New Hazelton, I can speak to…. I'll bring the agencies into the detachment to present to all of the members. Again, I have an upcoming detachment meeting where I have a plan for that, again, to occur. Our Mounties With Legs program is aligned with some of those support agencies, so it's incumbent on all the new members and their trainers to be familiar with what's readily available.

Northern Society for Domestic Peace is one of those key partners that offers a consortium of services and only requires one particular reference. Those are some of the steps that we take locally, in addition to what Anthony mentioned.

J. MacIntyre: I think, from my perspective, it's a little different than the larger centres. From my experience, what I've seen is a lot of turnover in these smaller communities, and the resources are lacking at times. Specifically, up in Kwadacha and Tsay Keh, a lot of those resourcing positions are situated in the urban centre of Prince George. So accessing them and fulfilling those obligations becomes costly and challenging on a variety of levels.

That's my perspective from the smaller, more isolated places. It's a little more challenging for resources.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Thank you for that. Certainly, I can see that in Tsay Keh and Kwadacha. Like I say, it is extremely remote. So to access those…. It's certainly understood.

Just a final quick question and thoughts around…. Is there a local — I don't like to use the word "recruiting," but it's the only word that's coming to mind — way to get Indigenous members from your respective communities in the area engaged in policing? What does that look like on the ground in your local areas?

A. Fletcher: Well, Indigenous policing services in B.C. — that section of the RCMP, out of E division — does have a recruiter. Their full-time job is to, in normal circumstances — once again, COVID has played a role in that — actually attend the community's job fairs, school events, that kind of thing, to promote recruiting. For the Indigenous policing service members — for example, in Fort Nelson, we have two of them — that is one of their mandates as well, to do some sort of recruiting. They report back divisionally and at a detachment level any initiatives that they've done.

Sometimes it's not as formal as having a billboard set up and that. Recruiting can happen at any time. When you meet people that are interested in joining the RCMP and who would be a great candidate and a great member to have — that could be at a cultural event or, really, anywhere — and having those one-on-one discussions with the person and getting them lined up with who they need to, to start the application process….

D. Durnin: An example. In New Hazelton detachment last week, there's a CAPRA project related to one of the new field recruits. I wanted him to devise that project geared toward supporting some of the Indigenous communities. He prepared a presentation at the local high school, which services all seven communities. Part of that….

He's fresh out of Depot and in a really good position to speak to a lot of the youth interested in a career in policing. I was told there was quite a bit of interest. So beyond posters made available at the local high school, we're also presenting and meeting in a more formalized fashion.

J. MacIntyre: Just to finish off. I think, from my perspective as well, other than the formal events — the recruiting drives and, like Anthony mentioned, out of our headquarters — we do have recruiting in the Indigenous policing programs. I think, again, it goes back to getting to know your community.

[11:20 a.m.]

Get to know those youth. Get to know those young adults on a personal level, and them seeing the human side of you outside of work often promotes that or opens up that dialogue for them to think about that as a career.

I think that building those relationships is crucial to recruiting as well.

G. Begg: Thanks to each of the presenters. You did a very impressive job of helping us to understand the needs of small and remote communities. I'm very impressed with your sensitivity, your responsiveness and your ability to capture the unique policing needs of not only the communities at large but of the community groups within.

I wonder if each of you…. It doesn't have to be an exhaustive list. We are charged with reforming the Police Act in British Columbia. This is your opportunity to help us do that. I wonder if each of you could, perhaps, give me one or two obstacles to your success, obstacles to you being able to present a full and adequate policing program to your individual communities.

Maybe we could start with Jon.

J. MacIntyre: I certainly think…. Again, as I mentioned in my presentation, one of the obstacles we face is just resourcing and funding. When you're in these small locations and you only have one or two members available for call-outs at all hours and emergency responses to different communities, it's exhaustive to think…. You want to be able to also build those relationships and do enhanced initiatives that are expected and desired by the community.

That's always an ongoing obstacle. That's why I highlighted prevention with those newly provincial support teams and Indigenous policing programs. Being able to reach or grasp some more funding for those things and develop those programs and have outside resources coming to support that and maybe take some of the weight off the shoulders of the members in the office and allow them to humanize themselves and get out in the community is, certainly, well needed.

A second issue, from what I'm hearing locally, is the court system. I don't know what the easy answer is for changing that. A lot of times we get the support at the front end. Victims are willing to cooperate. They want to pursue justice, but it just loses its flame the longer it drags on. There certainly is no easy answer for the court process. I think time is an issue, and what they're seeing as an outcome is also an issue.

A. Fletcher: I agree with Jon. Resourcing is a major issue. It's not necessarily…. In my detachment, we're a little bit larger, but we're still an isolated post. Our community lacks a lot of other services that then get downloaded onto my detachment — for example, mental health. I'm sure that has been brought up, and I know that has been brought up many times.

I don't have mental health nurses or clinicians that are coming out into the community. If there's a mental health call in this detachment area, which, as I previously mentioned, is quite large, we will be attending with B.C. Ambulance. Then we will be transporting to our hospital, which is very limited in what services they can provide.

There is a mental health clinician with Northern Health — which is staffed right now — who will deal with patients who are in the health care system — for example, at the hospital. They can come up…. They're not 24 hours. They're not on the weekends.

If somebody is committed under the Mental Health Act, we actually require B.C. Ambulance's helicopter to come up and transport them to Dawson Creek. It's a major, major issue because a lot of these individuals…. We ran into this, where our hospital isn't equipped with…. It does have a secure room, but it's dated. It's not that secure. I have to assign police officers to provide protection and security to the hospital staff.

This summer we had an individual with severe mental health issues break into the hospital and destroy the nursing station, which resulted in nursing staff hiding in a storage room.

[11:25 a.m.]

It's a big hurdle. We're lacking those services, and the police are ending up in that role. It's the same thing with the Ministry of Children and Families. After hours or on the weekend…. It's not all the time, but it is difficult, on most occasions, to get a social worker to come to the scene.

Now I have a police officer bringing children back to the detachment who were in an emergency situation where an apprehension needed to occur. Now that police officer is providing — and willingly doing so — care to this child, but it goes under the scope of our duties, which then takes away some of the opportunities where I want community-building, proactive relationship-building, crime reduction strategies — what the police should be doing.

We're picking up the slack. I don't want to make it sound like these agencies that are in our community are not providing the services. They are, to the best of their ability. It's just that their resources, similar to others,' is limited.

D. Durnin: I won't be redundant, but I will say the provincial support team that was recently introduced…. My detachment has relatively consistently been able to access those resources. That has helped me maintain operations. Indigenous policing section. I have seven Indigenous communities, and I have two positions for that specific role — an incredibly important role in my area of responsibility. Some communities have the luxury of a one-to-one ratio.

Certainly, it's having suitable resources to ensure that yes, we can meet the operational needs of the community, do it well, meet the expectations of the court but also take on some of those additional roles critical to build trust for the future, and work toward an environment where reconciliation is possible.

A. Olsen: Thank you for your presentations. Again, as I mentioned to the group that spoke before you, from communities that were slightly larger or much larger, I appreciate the ground-level view that you three have been able to provide us today. It's a really, really important part of our work. We can hear the higher-level officers speaking about the policing challenges as they see it, but I think it's important that we see it from the ground level. I really appreciate it.

I remember attending a Coast Salish–Nuu-chah-nulth wedding. At that wedding, the Nuu-chah-nulth family stood up at the beginning of the wedding, and they deputized security. They were going to have a big dance after the ceremony was done. They asked and they paid for certain individuals within a variety of families to provide the security for the event, and they gave them very specific roles to play during that event.

Just as you were talking about, I think one of the challenges that we're always going to have in this province is policing remote communities. It doesn't matter who's doing it or how much resources we put to it. It's always going to be a challenge. I couldn't help but think, as you were talking about it — the old cartoons or old TV shows, where the sheriff would deputize a bunch of people to go out and look for somebody. Then I was reminded of the wedding that I'd attended, and that there was actually a process where, traditionally, these people were deputized to help with the security of the room that night, and given that responsibility.

I don't know that we're going to have the solution or the answer here, but it just popped into my head as we were talking: the ability for you to police seven communities in the New Hazelton situation, or the Tsay Keh situation, where you've got to look at a community that's 75 kilometres away, as an example. The ability to have those resources within the community that's there, that's trusted, that's able — it might be something that we should look at, or something that we could formalize.

[11:30 a.m.]

I was thinking either a deputized role, or a cadet, for an example — someone who is in that process and has identified themselves as interested in policing. Anyway. I'm trying to solve a problem on the fly here, but it did show up as you were speaking.

I have one question here around the impact of these emergency events. I want to make sure I got this right. Is it Sgt. Durnin? You pointed out that in the New Hazelton department you have the Wet'suwet'en and the Gitxsan, and there has been a lot of heat in that area with First Nations and with resource development and things. Some emergencies have been called, and you have police resources coming from across the province to support the injunction.

I'm just wondering. I'd just like to get, from your perspective…. You spend many, many days building relationships with the Indigenous nations in the area, getting to understand the culture, understanding the elected and the hereditary relationships, which are sticky at best most of the time. I come from a First Nations community myself.

Then you have a flood of human resources coming from detachments across the province that have none of that experience. They have no clue about those relationships on the ground or the cultural implications of saying or doing something that your officers might have the nuances and have the understanding of.

What kind of support is given to those people who are coming in to do a specific job on an emergency, I guess it's called, within the police services contract to ensure that the information that you have about how these communities are best interacted with can get to those officers who are going to be there for a rotation? They come in; they come out. They have very little interest in getting to know the community. They're there to just do a specific job.

D. Durnin: My understanding…. Some of those teams, quick-response teams, dedicated to navigating some of these challenges, actually do get, in advance of their attendance, information delivered to them so that they can better understand what the challenges are so they don't arrive blind. I think they are often in a position to speak, on the ground level, to some of those people in disagreement.

When I have incidents in my community that require me to ask for outside resources to keep the situation safe, I'll often host a briefing for those members and quickly outline what, as I understand it, are the core issues and how to navigate it the best we can. Oftentimes I'm on the front line as well and will be the principal person speaking to some of the individuals involved.

A. Olsen: I'll just leave it as this. I just want to leave as kind of a bookmark in this that we have the ongoing policing, and then we have the special response that's required. I'm sensitive to the fact that we have people there building relationships on a daily basis, year over year, and that we want to ensure their success over the long term, even after one of these events has occurred.

I'm very cognizant of the fact that anything that might happen during that emergency situation has the potential of setting it back for the people who are building the relations on the ground — and just trying to figure out how we can ensure that we can insulate those people as best as possible so that they have a chance of continuing with that relationship after that event is over. That was the point of my question, and I just wanted to, I think, put a note here that we're cognizant of that.

Thank you for your response.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you, everybody. We've reached the end of the meeting now, and we commonly go over time with this committee because we're receiving so much information and we have so many questions. We take very seriously the importance of the work. In that vein, I'd like to thank you on behalf of the committee for your contribution to our work. This has been very, very valuable to members to hear from you, on the ground, in the north.

Personally, I have to say I'm very grateful to the quality of the people who are working in our communities, and you are a good representative of that. Thank you very much.

With that, Members, we are at the end of our time. I'll now ask for a motion to adjourn the meeting.

I have that from Dan, and seconded by Rachna.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 11:35 a.m.

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