44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 22, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I am not going to say, in the House of Commons, whether someone should be charged in a particular case. There may be other facts of that case that the member did not mention in her question. Therefore, I will leave considerations around that to the appropriate authorities.
I will say that I am supportive of the framework of this legislation, in terms of facilitating civilian oversight. That civilian oversight is not me saying, based on a few select facts given by the member, what should or should not happen. However, I am supportive of a process that would look into cases like the member referred to and that would hold people accountable, if appropriate.
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Mr. Speaker, today we are talking about very important legislation, Bill C-20, which would establish a new public complaints and review commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Border Services Agency. It would enact accountability and transparency mechanisms that would provide a foundation for trust and confidence in Canada's public safety.
Employees of both the RCMP and the CBSA hold a broad range of powers. Public trust that those powers are to be used appropriately is crucial to maintaining respect for the rule of law. There is a balance that needs to be established. On the one hand is Canada's public safety and security priorities. On the other hand is respect for fair treatment and human rights. In our system that balance is supported by ensuring civilian review of public safety bodies, such as the RCMP and the CBSA.
This is a stand-alone bill. It would provide these mechanisms not as part of the enabling statutes of the RCMP or the CBSA, but independently of them. By doing this, we underscore the importance of the independent civilian review of organizations entrusted with maintaining public safety.
Both the RCMP and CBSA employees interact with the public on a daily basis, including with vulnerable populations. One of those organizations, the Canada Border Services Agency, currently has no civilian review mechanism to deal with public complaints. The Canada Border Services Agency Act itself is silent on this matter. This legislation would close a long-standing gap by providing a review body for the CBSA.
The RCMP currently has a civilian accountability body in the existing Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, the CRCC, but over the years there have been calls to update and enhance it. The CRCC itself has advised on the need to strengthen and expand existing review mechanisms for the RCMP.
I want to thank the chairperson, Michelaine Lahaie, and her staff at the CRCC for their thoughtfulness, thoroughness and dedication in recommending the additional accountability and transparency mechanisms included in this bill.
Bill C-20 would see the new public complaints and review commission replace the CRCC. The PCRC would continue the CRCC's existing mandate for complaints and review, but with new accountability tools at its disposal that would apply to both the RCMP and the CBSA. On its own initiative, or at the request of the minister, the PCRC would be able to conduct specified reviews on any RCMP or CBSA activities that do not involve national security.
I would remind the House that national security issues are handled by the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. The PCRC will have the authority to investigate complaints about conduct and level of service in both the RCMP and the CBSA. If a complainant is not satisfied with how these organizations have handled a complaint, the PCRC can conduct a review. When it is in the public's interest to do so, the PCRC may initiate its own complaint and investigation into RCMP and CBSA conduct.
One of the issues that has underscored the need for a renewed and enhanced review system has been the time it has taken the RCMP in the past to respond to CRCC reports and recommendations. Frequent delays led to a Federal Court decision that the RCMP must provide a response to CRCC interim reports within six months. Over the last year, the RCMP has improved the timelines within which it responds to the CRCC. We want to ensure this improvement continues.
Bill C-20 includes timelines that would codify when a response is required to an interim report, review or recommendation from the PCRC. When the PCRC issues an interim report, the RCMP and CBSA would have six months to respond. Should the PCRC issue specified activity reviews and recommendations, the RCMP and CBSA would have 60 days to respond.
Not only must these bodies report back to the commissioner of the PCRC within these codified timelines, the bill would obligate the RCMP commissioner and the CBSA president each to submit an annual report to the Minister of Public Safety. These reports would detail the actions the RCMP and CBSA have taken within the year to respond to PCRC recommendations.
In short, the bill would give the PCRC tools that the CRCC did not have to uphold civilian review of the law enforcement system.
However, there are other tools in the bill that are designed to enhance, at another level, the trust and confidence Canadians have for public safety in our country.
In their recommendations on ways to enhance the CRCC, the chairperson and her colleagues looked beyond the measures that would improve accountability. They considered ways in which a new review mechanism might enhance the public trust, and respect for, law enforcement in general and the rule of law itself.
Among the challenges is the urgent need to increase knowledge about systemic racism in law enforcement. This includes work done by the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, which is in the report entitled “Systemic Racism in Policing in Canada”.
I am pleased to say this bill would respond to the committee's recommendation that the government clarify and strengthen the mandate, independence and efficacy of the CRCC. It provides for codified timelines for the RCMP's responses to the PCRC reports, for the RCMP to report annually to the minister on implementing PCRC recommendations and it provides for the protection of the identity of the complainants.
That which gets measured gets done, and if we are to respond to systemic racism, we must first gather the data that will inform our solutions. The bill would give statutory authority to the recommendation that the new PCRC will collect and publish disaggregated race-based data of complainants, in consultation with the RCMP and CBSA. Moreover, the bill would provide the PCRC with a mandate to implement public education and information programs. These would help inform Canadians on their rights of redress should they have issues with how they were treated by the RCMP or CBSA officials.
The programs will also increase knowledge and awareness of the PCRC's mandate and thus provide a better understanding of the role of civilian review in upholding the rule of law.
As with the collection of race-based data, the public information mandate will be especially important in helping earn the trust of indigenous, Black and racialized Canadians.
The bill before us is a high priority for this government. Twice before, we have introduced bills to address many of these issues. They died on the Order Paper, but in the process we listened to all points of view and remained determined to strengthen transparency and accountability.
The bill before us now would take advantage of what we have learned. It responds to some of the issues that are long overdue, such as the need to provide a review mechanism to the CBSA. It responds to some of the issues that have presented difficulties in the past, such as the need to respond to recommendations in a timely manner. It responds to issues that have gained more attention in recent years, such as the evidence of systemic racism in the law enforcement system and the urgent need to find solutions.
The government has responded to those issues with a stand-alone bill that highlights the importance of civilian review of the law enforcement and border security systems.
I would add that it is extremely important to ensure that we have such mechanisms in place for people to have their complaints heard.
We heard the example moments ago from the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands of the issue her step-daughter had, and that is not uncommon. We hear about these situations all the time, quite frankly. I have heard of situations similar to that. It is critically important that when people experience these situations, whether they are crossing a border or whether it is something with the RCMP, they have an avenue to have their complaints heard. Sometimes those complaints are valid and sometimes they are not, but I do not think we are doing a service to anybody by not having the tool for those complaints to be heard.
In my opinion, having such a tool is not just a benefit to the complainant but indeed a benefit to the individual or individuals that the complaint is being made against. Quite often, especially in the world we live in today, a complaint can be made and amplified through social media, and if it is sensationalized enough, it can gain traction and people can very quickly be made aware of somebody's grievance with a border agent or an RCMP member. We all see people filming and recording just about everything.
A tool like this, allowing those individuals to bring their complaints forward, would give the opportunity for both sides of the story to be heard and the facts to come out with respect to everything that has been represented with individual circumstances and cases. When we empower individuals within the Canadian government and the roles they play to have such incredible discretionary authority like this, there has to be a mechanism for oversight to allow those who have potential grievances to come forward, so they can be heard as well as all individuals who are mentioned in the complaint. They would have the opportunity to ensure that the independent review body has the ability to determine whether there is merit in the complaint, and if so, what the next steps should be.
As I indicated in my prepared remarks, it is critically important that not only do we have this oversight, but that it is annually reported back to the minister, which would happen. By having that tool, Parliament, through the minister's office, would have the ability to scrutinize more collectively what is going on with respect to those complaints, how they are being handled and the timelines to ensure that the proper recourse is being taken. Quite frankly, sometimes it takes quite a long time to get a response, and that is unacceptable. We do not need a court to weigh in on what those timelines should be. Those timelines should be codified, as the bill would do, and set in stone. If timelines are not met, we could properly inquire as to why and get to the bottom of what needs to change, if anything.
I am very pleased to see the legislation come forward. A number of members have spoken about the fact that this is the third time it has been here and, indeed, the third time under this government. However, I hope we can all appreciate that the other two times have helped to inform where we are today. I hope that, because this has taken longer, the one silver lining is that we have even better legislation than we may have had otherwise, because we have been able to inform ourselves along the way of the various aspects of the bill that may need to be improved.
I get the sense, from listening to the comments in the House today, that the bill will be supported by all members of the House. I look forward to it moving along so we can finally get this very important legislation in place.
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to join my voice to the debate on Bill C-20, an act to establish the public complaints and review commission. This commission would replace the current Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP. It is more than just a change of name. There is also change of provisions.
The commission would have an expanded role to also receive and deal with complaints on the activities of the Canada Border Services Agency, or the CBSA. This hits home to my home community of Langley because my community has the RCMP as its police force and is a border community, with a border crossing between the Canadian town of Aldergrove and the American town of Lynden.
Many people in my community have friends and relatives in Washington state. I am one of them. Four of my grandchildren live in Lynden, Washington, which is just a 45-minute drive from my home in Langley, not counting the time we might need to wait at the border, which is sometimes a long time and sometimes very short.
In the hundreds of times I have crossed the border from Aldergrove into Lynden, I have never had a bad interaction with anybody from the CBSA. I can say the same of the RCMP, not that I have had that many interactions with members of the RCMP, but any that I have had have always been good and positive. I have the highest regard for people who work for both agencies.
Our police officers and border security guards are at the front line of public safety and we owe them a debt of gratitude. I think of Burnaby RCMP Constable Shaelyn Yang, who was stabbed to death on October 18, just over a month ago, trying to save a homeless man's life. Constable Yang was attending at a city park along with a bylaw officer from the City of Burnaby to serve an eviction notice on a person who was camped in a public park. On approaching the scene, Constable Yang noticed there was evidence of the man overdosing. She entered into the tent with a naloxone kit. She did not come out alive.
I did not know Constable Yang at all, but I know people who did know her, who worked with her, who trained with her and who loved her. Her death is a reminder to her colleagues, and indeed to all of us, that working on the front line, whether it is with the RCMP or other police services in Canada, is dangerous work. To all police officers and other frontline workers, I thank them for their service to their communities. We owe them a debt of gratitude. We are grateful for their service.
It is in this context that I now want to join the conversation about complaints against the RCMP. During my time on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, I have heard from many witnesses about the failings of the RCMP and other police services across the country.
Last year we studied alleged systemic racism in the RCMP. It was an exhaustive study. It was an exhausting study. There were 19 meetings. We heard from 53 witnesses. The study resulted in a report of 125 pages and 42 recommendations. We heard from community organizations providing services to or advocating for indigenous communities. We heard from academics working in the fields of law, law enforcement and social services. We heard from people working with people suffering mental health and addictions. As well, of course, we heard from representatives of various police services.
Whether there is racism in policing in Canada was the question we were tasked with. The first job, as always, is to define our terms. One of our witnesses, Alain Babineau, a law enforcement consultant, social justice advocate and former member of the RCMP gave us a working definition. Quoting Senator Sinclair, he said, “Systemic racism is when the system itself is based upon and founded upon racist beliefs and philosophies and thinking and has put in place policies and practices that literally force even the non-racists to act in a racist way.”
I have met many police officers. I have a family member who is a RCMP police officer. I went to law school with several former RCMP officers who then went on to become lawyers and with whom I have formed lifelong friendships. I have colleagues who have had full careers in law enforcement prior to coming to the House. I attend church with several people who are RCMP officers, and I can assure the members that not one of them is racist. They are all honest, hard-working people and law-abiding citizens who have, at heart, nothing but the best interests for their communities, neighbours and country.
Our report at the public safety committee was not about whether individuals within the RCMP are racist. The evidence is clear that we do have societal problems. It is not a problem of just the RCMP, the CBSA or the Vancouver Police Department. The problem is in our society.
When we think about racism, we might be tempted to point fingers at others, at the fathers of Confederation and at residential schools and say it was not us. We may think about our ancestors' role in slavery and say it was not us. We were not there.
A little closer to home, we might talk about the Chinese head tax and say it was before our time. Even a little closer to home, in Vancouver, we might think about the Komagata Maru incident, when law enforcement agencies turned a ship around and sent it back to India.
To make it current, we could point the finger at the RCMP, but finger pointing is not going to get us anywhere. It is certainly not going to help us find solutions to racism. We recognize that we are all part of society. We are all a product of our shared history. We are all in the same boat, so to speak, but the good news is that we are all also part of the solution.
It is in that context that I hope people would read the report from the public safety committee, and I hope they do read it. The report is simply called “Systemic Racism in Policing in Canada”.
Here we are today, talking about Bill C-20, an act to establish the public complaints and review commission. This draft of legislation is backed up by the report that I just talked about, that our public safety committee tackled last year.
I mentioned that the report contains 42 recommendations. Five of those 42 deal with what we call, under the current legislation, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission. Evidence we heard at committee made it clear that we have a problem. The current review and complaints structure is dysfunctional, and it needs to be fixed.
Witnesses raised concerns about the transparency of the disciplinary process from the RCMP. For example, we heard from Professor Christian Leuprecht of the Royal Military College. He suggested that the RCMP should be required to make public all disciplinary decisions. That goes to transparency.
Professor Samuels-Wortley of Carleton University pointed out that transparency is required in the disciplinary processes for police who engage in misconduct to ensure public confidence in the system. We want to know what is going on.
Alain Babineau and the hon. Michel Bastarache suggested that the RCMP does not appear to be capable of addressing discrimination within the organization itself, suggesting that change must come from the outside.
All of this evidence, presented to the public safety committee, brought us to 42 recommendations. I am going to highlight just three of them.
The first recommendation was that the Government of Canada should clarify and strengthen the mandate of the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, or the public complaints commission. We were not contemplating then that the whole commission would be revamped and given a new name, but so be it.
This would include creating statutory timelines for a response by the RCMP commissioner to reports coming from the commission and requiring that the commission publish its findings and recommendations. It all goes to transparency.
The second recommendation was that the Government of Canada should increase accessibility and transparency by simplifying the process for initiating a complaint. The third recommendation was to allow for a meaningful engagement of indigenous participation in the complaints commission. Let us not forget that the study was about whether there was racism in the RCMP.
Can Bill C-20, the legislation we are talking about, answer those challenges? The answer is, in large part, yes. The legislation creating the new PCRC, the public complaints and review commission, which in many ways mirrors the existing commission, would require the establishing of timelines for dealing with complaints. That was one of the concerns we heard at committee.
It would also require implementing education and information programs so the public can better understand the process, something else we heard complaints about at committee.
It outlines how complaints would be submitted, investigated and reviewed, and that there would be an annual report to the minister, who would then submit it to Parliament. That report is to include information about whether service standards are being met, the number of complaints and data about the complaints, so we can develop policy based on good, reliable data.
There are a lot of details in the bill also about what information the commission might encounter that would be treated confidentially to protect complainants and for security purposes.
There is information about the hearing process and the powers the commission will have, the powers of the superior court of record, including the power and ability to be able to subpoena witnesses and order them to give evidence. The commission will also have the ability to recommend disciplinary action, but not to carry it out.
The legislation appears to be straightforward at achieving its objectives. We will be supporting this draft bill at second reading, and I look forward to a deep dive at committee into its details, and to listen to experts.
When we are talking about police oversight, which is the police policing themselves, and border staff oversight when possible discipline might happen, we need to ask the question whether these agencies are properly resourced to do their work. We know that police services across the country are facing a recruitment and retention crisis, like almost every sector in our economy. We have a shortage of new people coming into the police services at the same time that older people are leaving, and all at the same time that we are demanding more from our police services.
Police recruitment is down and crime is up. There has been a 32% increase in violent crimes since 2015, when the current Liberal government took office. There were 125,000 more violent crimes last year than there were in 2015. Therefore, crimes rates are going up, and we are expecting more from our police services. We need to make sure they are fully resourced.
We have similar statistics for the CBSA. There is a shortage of workers. People are retiring, with not enough people coming in, and there is a higher demand with respect to their work.
Another study we recently completed at the public safety committee was about guns and gangs. We learned that most firearms used in violent crimes in Canada are handguns smuggled in from the United States. One of our witnesses stated the obvious. We live beside the largest gun-manufacturing society in the world, and we share the longest undefended border with it. This presents a big challenge for us, and we expect a lot from our CBSA to intercept the guns that are being smuggled into our country. It is not an easy problem to solve.
I know we are talking about Bill C-20, but I want to make a quick reference to Bill C-21. Bill C-21, which would make owning a handgun in Canada illegal, or more illegal than it already is, is not going to solve the problem because the people who are committing violent crimes are already illegal gun owners, to state the obvious, so C-21 does not add much value. It certainly does not keep Canadians any safer. It just further stigmatizes legal gun owners and trained and licensed sport shooters who are good and honest citizens.
Bill C-21 does not help our neighbours, but that is for another day. Today we are talking about Bill C-20, the public complaints and review commission.
Our report on guns and gang violence recommended that funding for the CBSA be increased. If we are going to enhance a complaints review process for our workers, it is only fair that we make sure they are properly resourced so they can do their jobs properly. Let us also make sure they are adequately resourced with both people and money, so they can do the work effectively.
We expect a lot from our border security people. They should expect to receive the full complement of a workforce, financial resources and tools to do their job effectively.
I want to take the opportunity to say thanks to CBSA workers, including many who live in my riding of Langley. We live on a border. There are several land border crossings, and I have a lot of friends who work in one or other of those border crossings.
I want to talk about something else that touches on the police. Our safety committee met with Mr. Justice Bastarache, formerly of the Supreme Court of Canada. He presented his report to us a couple of years ago in the 43rd Parliament, entitled “Broken Lives, Broken Dreams”. This retired judge was tasked with the unenviable task of distributing and disbursing court-awarded money under the so-called Merlo Davidson Settlement Agreement to victims of sexual harassment within the RCMP. Merlo and Davidson were the two named plaintiffs in that case.
The judge's report is a stinging rebuke of a culture of sexual harassment within the RCMP. It starts with these words:
For more than 30 years there have been calls to fix sexual harassment in the RCMP.
The report then goes on to talk about the 3,086 claims over that 30-year period. He and his staff conducted 644 interviews with victims. At the end of all his work, they awarded some compensation to 2,034 victims. It is widespread. It is not a good situation.
As I read through the report, I wondered whether my pride in our national police force was misplaced. In our discussion with Mr. Justice Bastarache at committee, I related a story from my childhood, when my parents took me and my siblings to the RCMP Musical Ride. My parents were new immigrants from the Netherlands, and they told us that one of the things they were very proud of about their new country was that we could be proud of our police force, something that is not true, sadly, for every nation in the world.
Mr. Justice Bastarache told me that in his opinion it was still appropriate for us to be proud of our RCMP service. It has a proud history and it is redeemable, but in his opinion it would require outside resources, outside influences, because the RCMP could not reform itself.
I will be voting in favour of Bill C-20 at second reading, for it to go to committee for a deep dive, a line-by-line review. There, I will be looking not only for how the RCMP interacts with the public, who expect the police to keep them safe and to do no harm, but also for how this legislation would steer us towards improving the internal culture of this agency, the RCMP, that we all want to be proud of.
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Madam Speaker, I understand that that is part of the work of Parliament, and I will pick up where I left off.
I repeat that the lack of resources allocated to the agencies does not help. Some customs officers might be exhausted, which can lead to tenser situations with certain travellers. A recent CBC article talked about how the number of complaints against CBSA officers has been growing over the past two years and about how a new complaints commission is in the works.
Bill C-20 will replace the oversight body that deals with public complaints against the RCMP with a civilian review and complaints commission that will handle complaints against the RCMP and the CBSA. If Bill C‑20 is passed, the new civilian review and complaints commission will be able to look into any CBSA activities that are not related to national security, either on its own initiative or at the request of the minister.
Mr. Weber, the union president, said that he would like the new organization to deal with managerial misconduct as well. That is important to note. He also mentioned that if a complaint points to a systemic issue, the commission should tackle that issue rather than focusing on the one person the traveller interacted with. He stated that CBSA officers are often stuck working mandatory overtime and process hundreds of people a day.
The number of misconduct investigations of border officers grew last year, despite a dramatic reduction in international travel due to the pandemic. The misconduct primarily involved granting permits or disrespecting travellers, to name just a couple of examples. The Canada Border Services Agency reported 215 founded investigations of its officers last year, compared to 171 in 2019. We can see that there was an increase. However, that increase came after border restrictions were put in place to control the pandemic. The number of trips into and out of Canada dropped significantly, yet the number of complaints increased.
Last year, the total number of recorded trips in and out of the country by air and land was just over 25 million, a far cry from the nearly 94 million trips logged in 2019. The agency noted, however, that not all of the misconduct cases involved travel. The case numbers vary year by year, and it is important to note that not all misconduct is connected to public complaints or international travel, according to CBSA spokesperson Rebecca Purdy. Jean-Pierre Fortin, former national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, also pointed out that some ports of entry still had high amounts of traffic over the past year.
Third, looking at it from the complainants' perspective, the 200 or so investigations conducted last year resulted in 170 officers being reprimanded, largely with temporary suspensions. Just eight CBSA officers have been fired since 2018, according to an access to information request obtained by CBC News. One officer was let go for interfering in the immigration process. The internal investigation revealed that he had tried to help an immigration lawyer by illegally removing material from a client's file that would have raised questions and issuing a temporary residence permit. Other officers have been let go for belittling clients, making inappropriate comments towards co-workers, abusing their authority and sharing private CBSA information.
The border agency, which employs about 14,000 people, said discipline is managed on a case-by-case basis and is based on the severity of the allegations coupled with mitigating and aggravating factors. The CBSA's statements have done very little to convince Janet Dench of the Canadian Council for Refugees. She believes that there is a need for independent oversight and that there are probably more cases of abuse that we are not currently aware of. This is just the tip of the iceberg, if you will. Ms. Dench is pushing for outside, independent oversight of the CBSA, which is the only public safety agency in Canada without an independent oversight body. She calls the current set-up ineffective.
A bill that would have expanded the mandate of the civilian body that handles public complaints about the RCMP to also cover the CBSA failed to clear the Senate before the end of the last parliamentary session. The federal government has yet to reintroduce the bill, but the CBSA said that, so far this year, it has opened 41 founded investigations, resulting in three terminations.
Documents obtained by CBC through an access to information request showed that, over a two-year period from January 2016 to mid-2018, the CBSA received 1,200 complaints about its own employees, including potential cases of harassment and misconduct. The number of complaints deemed founded was not disclosed, nor was information provided about measures taken to resolve the founded complaints, which included 59 allegations of harassment, 38 allegations of criminal association and five allegations of sexual assault. As the status of women critic, this really concerns me.
A woman deported to Guatemala alleged that CBSA officers seriously injured her by pushing her to the ground and kneeling on her back. The CBSA did not confirm whether its agents used force to arrest the woman in this specific case.
Data provided to The Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act show that between 2017 and 2018, 105 cases of complaints of officer misconduct were deemed founded, representing about 12% of the 875 misconduct complaints filed in that time.
The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group says the definition of “founded” is far too vague to help lead to changes within the agency's culture or for the public to be properly informed and that the limited information shows cause for concern, particularly the allegations of racism and name-calling.
According to one of the reports, a female traveller said that a CBSA officer was rude and yelled at her until she passed out. The officers reported that she was found to be in medical distress and received appropriate care. According to the findings of the investigation, the officer did not play a role in the traveller's medical distress. Other travellers filed complaints because interpretation services were not available and they were denied an interpreter. The government is using the example of a Privacy Commissioner report to illustrate why Bill C‑20 is necessary.
In conclusion, all of these stories are very familiar to me, since I worked for a member of Parliament from a riding on the border. I took a lot of interest in the fact that governments, both Liberal and Conservative, have cut back on investing in border crossings over the years, creating resource shortages and placing a tremendous amount of additional pressure on staff. When I was working for that member of Parliament, the issue was hours of operation and staffing reductions.
I would like to say one last thing. There needs to be a neutral space to independently analyze the complaints and abuses that could occur in the two agencies affected by the bill we are talking about today. We must also keep in mind that this agency and these officers need to see money being reinvested. We should be concerned about the workers who give their time to this very important agency. We need to restore public confidence because everyone will benefit.
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