Review the Independent Investigations Office — Issue No. 1

Present: Mike Morris, MLA (Chair); Spencer Chandra Herbert, MLA (Deputy Chair); Dr. Doug Bing, MLA; Kathy Corrigan, MLA; Scott Fraser, MLA; Scott Hamilton, MLA; Darryl Plecas, MLA; Jackie Tegart, MLA

1. There not yet being a Chair elected to serve the Committee, the meeting was called to order at 12:02 p.m. by the Clerk to the Committee.

2. Resolved, that Mike Morris, MLA, be elected Chair of the Special Committee to Review the Independent Investigations Office. (Scott Hamilton, MLA)

3. Resolved, that Spencer Chandra Herbert, MLA, be elected Deputy Chair of the Special Committee to Review the Independent Investigations Office. (Scott Fraser, MLA)

4. The Committee reviewed and discussed its terms of reference and its draft work plan.

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO
REVIEW THE INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATIONS OFFICE


CONTENTS
Page
Election of Chair and Deputy Chair	1
Committee Terms of Reference and Preliminary Planning	1

S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): Good morning, committee members. Welcome. As this is our first meeting, the first order of business is to elect a Chair. Are there any nominations?

Mr. Hamilton has nominated Mr. Morris. Any further nominations? Any further nominations? Any further nominations?

M. Morris (Chair): Thank you. The next order of business is to elect our Deputy Chair. Do we have any nominations for Deputy Chair?

M. Morris (Chair): Okay. Are there any further nominations? Are there any further nominations? Are there any further nominations?

M. Morris (Chair): This is the first such committee for this. The IIO is a new organization within the province. It's just slightly over a year old or so, and it's been up and running.

Our task, as the terms of reference lay out here, is to review the administration and general operations of the independent investigations office, and to see what kind of progress they've made towards having an independent investigation office that is "staffed entirely with employees and independent investigation office investigators who have never served as officers or members of the police or law enforcement agency."

I think we've got a fairly significant task ahead of us over the next several months. We've been supplied with a fair amount of documentation here to read over and get a good feel for what this IIO office is all about. There's the MOU that we have, which has been signed with all the police forces, as well as the terms of reference. So I think it's something that we can take back and have a good look at over the next little while as we prepare a workplan for how we're going to approach these things coming up.

I wouldn't mind getting together with the Deputy Chair at some time over the next week or so to discuss exactly how we'll do that, and we'll lay it out. Personally, I'm looking at things more from a perspective…. This reminds me of my old job, back as a senior manager in the RCMP, where we would look at internal audits, at the different programs that we had within the police force. I see this as something very similar to that.

I know that Spencer and I had some discussions earlier on. You raised the fact that there may be a conflict of interest with my position as the Chair of this. I've met with the Conflict of Interest Commissioner, and he says he's very satisfied that there is no conflict of interest. I've got a letter from him, and I'd be prepared to share it with anybody that would request that.

At this point in time are there any questions from anybody with respect to what this committee is all about and the tasks that we have ahead of us here?

S. Fraser: Chair, thanks for taking on the task, and thanks, Spence, for taking on the task of co-Chair. This is my third special committee. The first one — the Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture — involved an awful lot of travel, so very time-consuming. The second one, less so. It was the Cosmetic Pesticides Committee.

The office that we're going to be investigating is situated in Surrey, I believe. Are we anticipating travelling there or visiting and interviewing there? Or are we expected to do that just through here, in place in the Legislature, or a combination of both?

M. Morris (Chair): From a cursory look at how we're going to operate so far, and I have to talk with Spencer on this as well as the Clerk, there will be some travel involved in this. I wouldn't mind the entire group of us going to the office and meeting with the folks over there and their staff.

Part of our job will most likely be to interview the investigators, and we'll have to figure out how we're going to do that, to maximize our time with that.

I also think it might be prudent to perhaps visit some of the communities where they've done some work and to talk to the senior police officials there and the people involved with the different situations, to make sure that we cover all the bases there.

D. Plecas: One of the things that some people have said is worth exploring is the notion of merging this office and the office of complaints. Are we going to entertain that notion at all?

M. Morris (Chair): You know, I don't want to prejudge the outcome of our review on this. Maybe the conclusions of the review will lead us in that direction, but I think what we need to do is look at everything independently at this particular time and stick to our mandate letter. We'll make some recommendations, at the
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end of the day.

D. Plecas: I was only thinking that because this mandate letter could be interpreted in a fashion to say that that option would be explored. I'm not saying that we should. I'm not disagreeing with you that we should do this separately and then visit that down the road.

M. Morris (Chair): Yeah, I appreciate where you're coming from, Darryl. But I think that for this initial review, we should keep everything fairly stringent and follow the guidelines. I think the answers are going to creep up as we go through a review like this, as to what direction that we will go in.

K. Corrigan: From sitting on the committee to review…. The Taser committee, we called it. I think that through the stakeholders that we either contact or who express interest that they want to come and make submissions to the committee, we'll probably find that some of those submissions open some of those lines of inquiry and suggestion.

M. Morris (Chair): I believe you're right. I've been involved in some of these before in my previous role. The answers develop as we move along.

S. Chandra Herbert (Deputy Chair): I would just say that there are many different avenues this could go. However, the focus is on the goal of having the entire office staffed by employees and investigators who've never served as officers or members of a police or law enforcement agency — and, of course, the administration and general operation of the independent investigations office.

I think there will be opportunities to, certainly, reflect back what we hear from the community in terms of if there are gaps, if there are other things that could be considered.

In terms of the recommendations that we can make, I agree with the Chair that we will need to be focused, as this review could spiral into many different things, unless we keep it focused. There are so many intense interests around investigations, police conduct, border services conduct. It goes on and on, and it could expand out very quickly unless we're careful.

Certainly, the witnesses will help us. That's where the Chair and I will have to look to you all for guidance in terms of what areas are of real need in your communities, in terms of all legislators in our communities, since there have been some high-profile cases but also ones that I'm sure the IIO will show us we may not have ever heard about but are particularly useful in understanding how the office works or could work better.

D. Plecas: I was just going to ask: the witnesses that we may interview — will those witnesses be speaking to us in confidence and in camera?

S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): That's a decision for the committee to make. If any witnesses request to have their evidence in camera, again, that's a decision for the committee to make.

S. Fraser: Just further to what Susan is saying, I think, if it's possible, the activities of the committee should be as public as possible. If there's a need or a request to go in camera, that should be the basis for making that decision as opposed to any kind of blanket policy.

It's always problematic for the public. I know that the public knows this is happening, and there are certainly people in the public that have spoken out on this and are in the press on this. Some people have some concerns about what we're doing, so I think we should try and keep that as transparent as possible.

I actually had another…. I was a keener; I was the first one in the room. I had a chance to meet with Ron Wall, so I know that one of our key resources is going to be our research staff. It looks like Ron is going to be handling that for us. I just wanted to mention that Ron is here, and maybe he could speak a bit to how he sees his role in supporting us.

R. Wall: I work for Susan in the parliamentary committees office of the Legislature. I'm at your disposal to prepare background information, summaries of research, meeting summaries, and to work with witnesses on any other information requests that the committee might have.

S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): Just that those of you who have worked on parliamentary committees before know the role of the parliamentary committees office. We're here to support the work of the committee and help coordinate both administratively and procedurally,
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research-wise, all the work of the committee.

Certainly, feel free to contact us with any questions regarding the committee's work now or going forward.

S. Chandra Herbert (Deputy Chair): I was just curious if other committee members have had a chance to look at the preliminary workplan and if there were any immediate thoughts that come out of it so that the Chair and I can go back and potentially update it, change it however, to bring back to the committee when we come back with the approval of a business plan. This certainly will help in the work planning.

S. Hamilton: I guess my only question is with regard to the committee hearings and how we see that rolling out. In terms of time frame, having experienced the work that I did on the Finance Committee last fall, we would go from Monday to Thursday for however many weeks it was. It's all a blur now. Do we see this as a hearing a week for eight weeks? Or do we travel half a day here…? In relation to the way we did it in the Finance Committee, maybe we can draw some comparisons and parallels.

M. Morris (Chair): Personally, I don't know how that's going to shake out yet and actually how many we're going to be holding and whether we'd do it as the entire committee or whether it might be broken up, depending on what's out there. It's something that the Deputy Chair and I will discuss. Of course, we would be welcoming any feedback from any of the committee members, as well, as to how that should play out.

J. Tegart: Same sort of question as Scott. Knowing the commitment on the Finance Committee and the amount of time and looking at what the next nine months look like, where do you see most of the public consultation happening? Also, taking into consideration that summertime is a tough time for consultation for the public. Often those are times when it doesn't matter how many communiqués you put out; people are not thinking around preparing briefs and those kinds of things.

It would be helpful to know when the consultation is going to take place within the time frame that we have.

K. Corrigan: Having sat on the Taser committee and the police complaint review, it's really hard to predict. We thought with the police complaint commission review that we would have a huge amount of public interest. Despite advertising fairly widely, we had very, very few submissions. Susan will know about that. It was surprising how few.

I think it has to be a bit of a fluid commitment in terms of how many meetings. We ended up cancelling meetings because there was just no interest — or much less interest than we expected.

S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): Just to speak a bit to Scott's question regarding comparison with Finance. The Finance budget consultations annually are a three-week, four-week public consultation process followed by the report writing. It's an intense four weeks with the travel to numerous communities.

For a committee like this one, the majority of the stakeholders, I would think, are in either Vancouver or Victoria. The committee may decide to go to other centres. That's entirely up to the committee, but I would think that the focus would be those two locations. The majority of the public hearings would be either here or in Vancouver, unless, as I said, the committee members choose otherwise.

In terms of the number of meetings, entirely up to the committee. We've got a preliminary list of possible witnesses. We can add to that list. The committee may also decide to have general members of the public appear before the committee, or that we do a call for submissions. Have the public, rather than appear before the committee, send in written submissions and have, instead, expert witnesses.

It's entirely up to the committee how they wish to frame the consultations and the time period.

S. Hamilton: Well, with that in mind, and with sort of the mandate that we had with the Finance Committee, there was an overarching concern that we provide accessibility to all the regions. To isolate it between Vancouver and Victoria….

Now again, not completely being able to wrap my head around the mandate of this committee and where it is we're going from here, but to suggest that we're not going to hold a public hearing in Prince George or one in Terrace might be looked at as creating an environment and establishing an environment of a closed committee without accessibility to the rest of the province.

This seems to me like it's a committee that should be maybe engaging a little more widely, a little more broadly. Not that I'm a big fan of having to get in an airplane and go to Prince George any time soon, because we travel enough.

S. Hamilton: No — nothing against Prince George. But I wouldn't want it to look like we're coming across as a committee that's sort of isolating ourselves between the two capitals, so to speak, and not reaching out to the
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rest of the province.

M. Morris (Chair): Understandably. The way I'm going to view this — based on my discussion with Spencer, of course — is: where has the caseload been? Number one, has there been a large volume of cases in the Prince George or Terrace region, or something that will require our appearance there?

The other one is: where are we getting the feedback from? Where is the public interest surfacing? That will also dictate as to where we might be looking at for locations as well.

So it's premature. We're in session here till June. We have a lot of preliminary work to do getting set up for this and getting out there in the public. I'm suspecting that we're looking at September as being a busy month for a lot of this and perhaps into October. But we'll see it out. I think September will be quite an active month for us.

Shall we carry on, or grab lunch and come back and have a couple of other discussions on this before we adjourn? Or what is the consensus?

S. Chandra Herbert (Deputy Chair): What I was going to suggest is that yourself and myself get together soon — it could be this week; it could be early next week — and just take a look at the preliminary workplan, take a look at potential witnesses and then draw this committee together again, maybe in two weeks' time, with better information in terms of what we're looking at longer term.

Of course, yes, summer is coming up quickly, but so is September. The sooner we're able to say to the public, "You can have your chance to be heard…." Maybe it's written submissions; maybe it's a few briefings. It could be some field trips that we're going to do as well, of course. Knock off a few of those options early so that we're less pressured at the back end of this — as the report writing and so on can eat up a lot of time — and get at least the initial meetings done in April-May, potentially — the trip out to the IIO, those kinds of things. Then move from there.

If that works for everybody else that you and I come together and say, "Here's a rough draft," and we'll fill in the rest as we're able to make commitments and appointments with others. That would work for me. I don't think we're going to solve those questions here in this meeting.

D. Bing: I was going to say I know summer is not the best time for people. But I think the availability of the committee is important. So if the committee is available, I think we should meet. We could just invite key stakeholders rather than the public, if that's necessary. But I think, if possible, we should have as many meetings as we can so we don't have it all sort of piled up at the end in September and October.

M. Morris (Chair): I agree, and it's exactly Spencer's point as well. So we'll try and get as much of the preliminary stuff done prior to July. Summer is pretty tough to nail everybody down for July and August, and we'll get rolling with a lot of the meat and potatoes after that. But the preliminary stuff should be done first.

D. Plecas: I was just thinking, following up from Doug, that the month of June is probably a good time to load up on things.

M. Morris (Chair): So we'll load you guys up. Spencer and I will meet, hopefully, maybe this week yet and dash a few things together here. Again, I just ask that you go through all the preliminary information that you've got, and any feedback that you have send to Spencer and myself. We'd appreciate it — through Susan, I guess, or….

M. Morris (Chair): Okay, we've had adjournment moved and seconded. Meeting is adjourned until we meet again.

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Chair:	* Mike Morris (Prince George–Mackenzie BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	* Spencer Chandra Herbert (Vancouver–West End NDP)
Members:	* Dr. Doug Bing (Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows BC Liberal)
	* Kathy Corrigan (Burnaby–Deer Lake NDP)
	* Scott Fraser (Alberni–Pacific Rim NDP)
	* Scott Hamilton (Delta North BC Liberal)
	* Darryl Plecas (Abbotsford South BC Liberal)
	* Jackie Tegart (Fraser-Nicola BC Liberal)
	* denotes member present
Clerk:	Susan Sourial
Committee Staff:	Ron Wall (Committee Researcher)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO REVIEW THE INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATIONS OFFICE

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO
REVIEW THE INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATIONS OFFICE