Review the Independent Investigations Office — Issue No. 4

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

2. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions:

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
Briefing: Independent Investigations Office	23
R. Rosenthal
K. Kilpatrick
B. Kaiway

M. Morris (Chair): I'd like to open the meeting now — the Special Committee to Review the Independent Investigations Office. I welcome folks from the office.

My name is Mike Morris, and I'm the MLA for Prince George–Mackenzie. I'm also the Chair of this committee. What I'll do is I'll start off on my right, and I'll get the committee to introduce themselves. Then I'll have you and your staff introduce yourselves as well. Thank you.

S. Chandra Herbert (Deputy Chair): Spencer Chandra Herbert — MLA for Vancouver–West End and Deputy Chair of the committee.

K. Corrigan: Kathy Corrigan — MLA for Burnaby–Deer Lake and the opposition critic for Justice.

R. Rosenthal: Good afternoon. I'm Richard Rosenthal, chief civilian director of the independent investigations office.

K. Kilpatrick: Good afternoon. I'm Kellie Kilpatrick, and I'm the executive director for public accountability with the IIO.

M. Morris (Chair): Great. Thank you all very much. And of course, we have Susan Sourial, who is our person that keeps us in line, the Committee Clerk; and Ron Wall in the back. Ron is our research person here.

We've got a bit of material to cover, Richard, as we discussed earlier and by the looks of your presentation here. What I was thinking is that we'll go straight into your presentation, and I'll get the committee members, as they have questions, to write them down, perhaps. We'll let you go through your presentation first, and then we can ask questions after, if they are any. Okay?

R. Rosenthal: Thank you. I'd also point out that we do have a PowerPoint. Since we don't have a projector, everyone will have to go page by page. Kellie, or Ms. Kilpatrick, has offered to put her finger up to let you know when to go to the next page.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, Deputy Chair and members of this special committee. My name is Richard Rosenthal, and I am the chief civilian director for the independent investigations office of British Columbia.

As you know, the IIO has the mandate to investigate officer-related incidents of death and serious harm. While the IIO operates independently from the Ministry of Justice, I have a reporting relationship with the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Suzanne Anton, through her Deputy Attorney General, Richard Fyfe.

The IIO also has a strong working relationship with the ministry through assistant deputy minister Jay Chalke and his staff at the justice services branch and confers regularly with assistant deputy minister Clayton Pecknold, who serves as the director of police services and reports to the Solicitor General.

During the course of this presentation I'll be reviewing the organizational context of the IIO; our history; a comparison of the IIO with other oversight agencies in B.C., Canada and abroad; how we went about building the IIO; a discussion of our first years of operation; a discussion of our jurisdictional decisions, investigative process, outreach initiatives and our plan for civilianization; and then, finally, our plan for our third year of operations.

To make sure nobody has lost their place, we're on slide 3, "Organizational context."

With me this afternoon are members of my executive team: Henry Waldock, our legal counsel; Barbara Kaiway, our director of corporate services; and Kellie Kilpatrick, the IIO's executive director of public accountability. As previously mentioned, also present is our policy analyst, Eve Lenkevitch. Not in attendance is the IIO's new chief of investigations, John Larkin, who will be joining our team on July 2 of this year.

Mr. Waldock is with the IIO through a temporary leave of absence from the criminal justice branch. He has 22 years of experience as a Crown counsel and has specific expertise in the legal training of police officers. Mr. Waldock is currently assisting us in the recruitment
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of a permanent legal counsel.

For the first two years of operation we believed that having an experienced Crown assist me in reviewing and forwarding investigations to Crown would be the best course of action. As we are now maturing as an organization, it's time for permanent legal counsel to be hired.

Ms. Kaiway is a long-term public service employee with past experience as staff for Treasury Board. Her areas of responsibility include finance, budget, human resources and facilities management.

Ms. Kilpatrick formerly served as the head of the child death review unit for the B.C. Coroners Service and was the executive director of the IIO's transition team. As director of public accountability, she is responsible for IIO communication strategies, including public reports, providing support for affected people and their families and outreach to all IIO stakeholders.

Ms. Lenkevitch has been with the IIO since January. She is responsible for ensuring that IIO data is accurate, appropriately recorded and available for public reporting. She is the lead on several projects, including our upcoming annual report.

Mr. Larkin will be coming to the IIO with highly specialized experience in the field of police oversight. During his tenure as chief of investigations with the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman's Office he had firsthand experience in developing the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman's culture and transitioning that office from a police to a civilian culture.

You have a hard copy of my presentation slides in front of you. I know that you've had the benefit of a briefing made by ministry staff on May 26. My intent is to build on that, providing greater detail about our operations and our long-term plans for civilianization.

History. As you are aware, the IIO was formed after two inquiries made recommendations to address public concerns about police investigating themselves. In 2007 Justice William Davies examined the circumstances relating to the 1998 death of Frank Paul. The focus of that inquiry was on the Vancouver police department. Its conclusion…. One of Justice Davies's recommendations was the creation of a civilian-based criminal investigation model for B.C.'s municipal police forces.

In 2008 Justice Thomas Braidwood concluded his inquiry into the death of Mr. Robert Dziekanski at YVR. One of his recommendations was to expand on Justice Davies's recommendation and create an independent investigations office with jurisdiction over not only municipal police but also the RCMP. It should be noted that the B.C. Association of Chiefs of Police and the RCMP voiced their support for the proposal as well.

Government acted on those recommendations by establishing the IIO through Bill 12, the Police Amendment Act. The bill was considered by the Legislative Assembly in May of 2011 and received royal assent on June 2, 2011. Although the legislation was in place, it did not provide specific direction on how our service would be delivered or provide for a specific operating model.

In creating the IIO, we did have the benefit of lessons learned from other oversight agencies in Canada. There are currently four other programs in Canada similar to the IIO.

The first was the Special Investigations Unit, commonly referred to as the SIU, in Ontario, which was created in 1990. The second was the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, which was created 18 years after the SIU began operations, in 2008. Third was the Nova Scotia Serious Incident Response Team, otherwise referred to as SiRT, which began operations in April, 2012, about five months prior to the opening of the IIO. The Manitoba Independent Investigations Unit is expected to become operational next year, with an opening date of April 1, 2015.

Internationally, only Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom have programs similar to the IIO-SIU model. It should be noted that programs dedicated to civilian-led criminal investigations of police critical incidents is a concept that does not exist in the United States. There, such investigations remain almost solely under the jurisdiction of local and federal police agencies.

It is important to note that every civilian oversight program, nationally and internationally, is different. There is no accepted best practice with respect to these organizations but instead a best fit, where each jurisdiction chooses the form of oversight in a mandate that will best serve its local, provincial or national needs.

Progress towards civilianization. At its inception, the IIO began operations with approximately 42 percent of its general investigative staff having never been police officers. All of our investigative staff are full-time excluded employees of the public service. Our mandate currently involves on- and off-duty incidents where the action of a police officer may have resulted in death or serious harm. B.C. police agencies are required to notify the IIO of any incident falling within its mandate.

Next, you'll see the Special Investigation Unit in Ontario. It was initially staffed solely by former police officers. Over the last 25 years it has transitioned to include a significant number of investigators with civilian backgrounds. Of its full-time staff of 30 investigators, 40 percent have never been police officers, but the SIU also has 33 as-needed investigators who reside throughout the province, and 24 percent of those as-needed investigators have never been police officers. In total, therefore, 30 percent of SIU investigators, as of the current day, have never been police officers.

The SIU's mandate includes any police-related incident involving serious injury and includes allegations of sexual assault. Ontario police agencies, like in B.C., are required to notify the SIU of any incident falling within the SIU's jurisdiction.
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In Alberta the Serious Incident Response Team is staffed solely with former officers and currently serving police officers who are seconded to ASIRT. ASIRT receives its referrals from government, not through notifications from the police services, and conducts investigations of incidents or complaints involving death or serious harm and matters of a serious and/or a sensitive manner. They may also do investigations of corruption-type activities if requested by the government.

In Nova Scotia the Serious Incident Response Team investigates police-related incidents involving death, serious injury, sexual assault, domestic violence and other matters of public interest. Its investigators are all former and seconded police officers, and Nova Scotia agencies are required to notify the SiRT of any incidents that may fall within its mandate.

Finally, within Canada, in Manitoba the Independent Investigations Unit, or IIU, will investigate incidents of death or serious harm and is expected to be staffed primarily, if not solely, by seconded and former police officers.

Now, in England there is the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which was founded in 2004. It oversees the public complaints system in England and Wales. It has the ability to conduct independent investigations of police-related critical incidents.

In 2010 — which was the first year of public reporting of these statistics, six years after it was created — the investigative staff consisted of 39 percent civilians who had never served with a police service, 49 percent officers and 12 percent ex-police civilians. The investigative staff currently consists of 51 percent civilians who've never served with a police service, 35 percent former police officers and 14 percent ex-police civilians.

Finally, Northern Ireland began its operations of the Police Ombudsman's Office in 2000. The office investigates all discharges of police firearms, all fatal traffic collisions involving police officers and any death which may have occurred as a result of the actions of a police officer. The office conducts criminal investigations into police-related critical incidents, including allegations of historical homicides, and also investigates allegations of misconduct — what we would refer to as an administrative allegation of conduct.

That office started out with an investigative staff of 60 percent seconded and former police officers and 40 percent civilian investigators who had never been police officers. By 2014 the percentage of seconded and former officers was reduced to 32 percent of its investigative workforce, resulting in 68 percent of its current investigators having never served as police officers. So as of now Northern Ireland has the largest percentage of civilian staff, but it took them 14 years to get to that point.

With respect to oversight in B.C., prior to discussing the specifics of the IIO program it's important to note that the IIO is only one part of a larger group of agencies that provides civilian oversight of police in B.C.

The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, usually referred to as the OPCC, has jurisdiction over B.C.'s municipal police services. It monitors and reviews administrative investigations conducted by municipal police professional standards sections and monitors and reviews findings in disciplinary decisions made with respect to both public complaints and officer-related critical incidents. The Police Complaint Commissioner is an independent officer of the Legislature. Unlike the IIO, the OPCC generally does not conduct independent investigations.

The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, which was formerly referred to as the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, has jurisdiction over the RCMP. The CRCC is an independent agency created by parliament to provide oversight over the RCMP's complaint handling and disciplinary processes and makes recommendations aimed at correcting and preventing recurring policing problems, including issues relating to policy and training.

Then there's the police services division of the Ministry of Justice, which is headed by an assistant deputy minister who acts as the director of police services for the province. He is in charge of ensuring best practices and policy-making for police agencies in B.C., including all municipal police agencies and the RCMP.

Finally, most police agencies have their own professional standards sections, which are internal units within police agencies responsible for investigating allegations of misconduct by their own members. Professional standards section members investigate internal and public complaints and submit their investigations to police management for findings and disposition. The ultimate consequence of a police misconduct investigation can include discipline up to and including termination of employment from the police agency.

We do have a memorandum of understanding between the IIO and all police agencies in B.C. It specifically provides that at the conclusion of each IIO investigation the IIO shall give a copy of its investigative file to the involved police service for the purpose of internal proceedings. The reason is so that each agency is in a position to ensure that their officers are acting in accord with policy, training and organizational expectations and are held accountable for any violations in that regard. In addition, the IIO files are also provided to the OPCC and the CRCC as needed and on a regular basis.

Building the IIO. It's within this context of oversight of law enforcement in Canada and B.C. that I arrived in British Columbia on January 8, 2012, after a career as a financial-crime and public-corruption prosecutor in Los Angeles county, California, and after creating two civilian oversight agencies — one in Portland, Oregon, and one in Denver, Colorado.
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I immediately began to work with the transition team, which had begun its work in November of 2011, to establish the IIO's new office within the Ministry of Justice. The team worked with me on numerous aspects of start-up, including designing an organizational structure, securing office space and specialized equipment and developing a budget.

At this time, the IIO also began to work with the Public Service Agency to recruit, hire and position acquired staff. The transition team identified a need for approximately 50 full-time employees across four program areas. The hiring initiative included developing job profiles for unique positions in the public service, establishing competencies and classifications and developing recruiting strategies.

There are three key factors that influenced the IIO hiring initiative. The first was that the IIO was under significant time pressures to meet the government's expectation of becoming operational in mid-2012.

The second was a five-year rule that was set out in our enabling legislation which forbade me from appointing any person as an IIO investigator who was a member of a police force in B.C. at any time during the five years preceding their appointment. Given that the IIO needed to conduct competent investigations on our first day of operations, we had a need for police officers who were current in their experience and training. Due to the statutory requirement, current officers had to be recruited from outside the province.

Third, as the legislation directed that investigators would be members of the public service and excluded from union membership, there would be no provision for overtime. Given that police officers are accustomed to receiving overtime, in order to attract officers with current experience, we needed to be competitive with police services across the country. As such, our base compensation needed to account for the fact that IIO investigators would be on call and required to report to incidents all over British Columbia without compensation for after-hours work.

The transition team identified four team director positions that would need to be staffed by former officers with extensive investigative experience. It was conceptualized that each IIO investigation team would then be able to be staffed by a mixture of former officers and civilian investigators who would together have the skills needed to conduct a competent investigation.

We also decided to support the primary investigative function of the IIO with four specialized investigators. One would be responsible for training, a second for strategic communications, a third for stakeholder relations and community engagement and a fourth for affected persons and their families.

During this time period, we also began to look for a facility that could accommodate 40 to 50 full-time staff in a location that allowed for access to the airport and major highways and that could be modified to meet our security requirements, which included a need for an alarmed, video-monitored exhibit room and a secure location to access confidential law enforcement databases.

Year 1 was fiscal year 2012-2013 for us. At the beginning of our first full fiscal year we started to develop the permanent structure of the IIO. A memorandum of understanding between the IIO and B.C. police agencies was negotiated. I received significant support from the B.C. municipal chiefs of police, from the RCMP E division and from stakeholders, including police unions and staff representatives from the RCMP, civil liberties organizations, the B.C. Association of Police Boards and the police services division.

The underlying concept behind the MOU was one of cooperation and collaboration. The MOU would become critical in directing and supporting the working relationship between the IIO and the police. Upon being signed, it was one of the first documents posted to our new website.

Our investigative structure was developed, which included establishing four general investigative teams made up of former officers and civilians, and these teams would be on primary and secondary call on a rotating basis. We also needed a specialized team made up of former officers experienced and accredited in forensic identification and traffic reconstruction. We needed a public accountability team, which was created to provide support to the IIO investigative operations and provide information to stakeholders, the media and affected people.

Once the investigative model was confirmed, the transition staff initiated a robust staffing action to hire 14 directors and 20 investigators, a team director and four investigators to staff the specialized team and a director and five investigators to staff the public accountability team. For the staffing of the general investigative teams, over 1,200 applications were considered. With the assistance of the Public Service Agency, hiring panels conducted over 200 interviews, and then successful candidates were required to pass an enhanced security check, which included a polygraph examination.

In addition to the standard reference checks, former officers were required to consent to a review of their professional standards histories.

By May of 2012, 14 civilian investigators were hired and started a three-month training program at the Justice Institute of B.C., which I'll refer to as the JIBC or the JI. Emphasis was placed on legal studies, including an introduction to the types of offences, powers of arrest, the Police Act, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the right to counsel and an overview of policing standards.

Course work included report writing, interviewing, statement-taking, court preparation, warrant writing, search and seizure, and crime scene management.
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Investigators were required to take several investigations, including a final examination, and participated in a three-day investigative simulation exercise.

It should be noted that each civilian investigator brought significant and diverse investigative skills to their teams. The majority completed post-graduate education. Their backgrounds included working for the Ministry of Children and Family Development, the B.C. Coroners Service and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. These investigators had prior training and experience in interviewing, gathering evidence, writing reports, working with traumatized persons and exercising authority granted by legislation.

Given the need to conduct competent, fair and unbiased investigations on the first day of operations, it was recognized that we also needed to hire a cadre of experienced former police officers who were not only experienced in conducting criminal investigations but who also were committed to sharing their knowledge and expertise across the organization, which would support our long-term goal of civilianization.

Four more officers were hired, including former police officers from B.C., former officers from other provinces who had recently resigned or retired from policing and former U.K. police officers. These experienced investigators attended advanced training, including major crime management and major crime investigative techniques at the Pacific region training centre in Chilliwack, which is commonly referred to as the PRTC.

The IIO became operational on September 10 of 2012, and shortly after 7 p.m. on that same day, IIO staff were deployed to Prince George in response to a fatal officer-involved shooting that took place earlier that evening.

The organizational focus at the time the office began operations was on developing investigative competence, completing cases in a timely fashion and ensuring transparency through public reporting. By the end of the fiscal year, after less than seven months of operation, we completed 16 investigations. Ten investigations resulted in public reports, and six resulted in reports to Crown counsel.

We're now on slide 10, where we're talking about three key transition team decisions. During the transition I had a number of significant decisions to make regarding how the IIO would look and operate as an organization. One of the first decisions was with respect to where the office would be located and whether the IIO would have satellite offices in order to better serve communities outside the Lower Mainland.

I reviewed the Ontario SIU model, which used as-needed investigators to ensure timely response outside the Toronto metropolitan area. I decided that it was necessary to have all IIO staff in one central location, which would allow for the development of a culture of competency and accountability and which would maximize the opportunities for knowledge transfer from the former police to the civilians. In addition, at the time of the transition it was unknown whether the workload would justify additional offices and, if so, where the offices would need to be located.

Another decision that had to be made related to how the IIO would handle the collection and processing of evidence, the expert examination of evidence and traffic collision reconstruction. I noted that the Ontario SIU model consisted of a stand-alone forensic section but that Alberta and Nova Scotia relied solely upon police forensic assistance.

I determined the creation of a stand-alone forensics team would require a significant expenditure of resources which would necessarily include the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars for specialized equipment and vehicles to transport that equipment. As such, I made the decision to create a peer-review model for forensics and collision reconstruction akin to the Alberta and Nova Scotia models.

We hired four highly accredited investigators and a team director to provide these specialized services. As guided by the MOU, this specialized team would attend scenes and monitor the work completed by local police forensic identification and collision reconstructionists.

A third decision point involved how the IIO would publicly report out on investigations that were closed without a referral to Crown counsel. Although the IIO amendments to the Police Act allowed me to close investigations where there was no reason to believe an officer committed an offence, there was nothing that spoke to how the public would be informed of such a decision. Therefore, I asked the government to amend the act to permit for the issuance of public reports explaining decisions upon the conclusion of an investigation, after conferral with the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

The amendment was made, and the IIO was thereby permitted to issue a public report in any case where it was established that there was no police criminal culpability.

On reports to Crown counsel, section 38.11 of the act requires me to make a report to Crown counsel upon conclusion of an IIO investigation if I consider that an officer may have committed an offence. Crown remains responsible for the charge approval process.

It is important to note that my threshold for referral to Crown is lower than that of police services in British Columbia. Police will only refer a file to Crown when they are recommending that charges be laid and where they believe that it is reasonable and probable that a person will be convicted of an offence. The threshold of an officer who may have committed a criminal offence is substantially lower than reasonable and probable cause to believe that a conviction will occur.

All told, to date I've made 24 reports to Crown counsel. I made six in the fiscal year 2012-2013, which was a seven-month period, 13 in the fiscal year 2013-14 and
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five this year to date. The criminal justice branch has decisions pending on 11 files. They've declined to approve charges in ten files, and they've approved charges in three files.

With respect to the three files where charges were approved, the first involved an officer-involved shooting in Cranbrook, wherein the officer was charged with reckless discharge of a firearm, and that is pending in the courts. A second file involved a fatal motor vehicle incident in Salmon Arm, where the officer was charged with dangerous driving. That is also pending in the courts. A third involved a non-fatal motor vehicle incident in New Westminster where the officer was charged with driving without due care and attention. To date the New Westminster file has been resolved with a conviction.

The legislation directs me to make a report to Crown counsel if I believe an officer may have committed an offence under any enactment. I do not have discretion even in those instances where I am convinced there is not sufficient evidence to support the laying of charges. I have to refer to Crown. In addition, I'm required to make a referral to Crown counsel even if the charge I'm considering is just a violation of the Motor Vehicle Act, such as driving in excess of the posted speed limit, outside of emergency vehicle driving processes.

All told, as of the end of May this year the IIO has sustained jurisdiction in 80 files which fell within our mandate: on- or off-duty incidents resulting in death or serious harm as the result of actions of a police officer. Of those, I've issued a public report in 40 cases and made 24 reports to Crown counsel. Out of the 24 reports to Crown counsel, the charge assessment process has been completed on 13 referrals. Of the 13, three have resulted in the laying of charges. Therefore the percentage of completed investigations resulting in criminal charges currently stands at three out of 53, or 5.6 percent.

It should be noted that IIO investigations are not tradition criminal investigations arising out of allegations of wrongdoing. Rather, the IIO conducts investigations into critical incidents, investigations that are evaluated at their conclusion, to determine whether there's any criminal culpability.

A critical incident investigation does not require an allegation of criminality or misconduct. It is an automatic response to an incident involving death or serious harm, resulting in a requirement on the part of the IIO to conduct a full and complete investigation.

As previously mentioned, where I do not consider that an offence may have been committed, I'm permitted to issue a public report. In year 1 we developed a methodology for public reporting, including the legislative-mandated act of obtaining advice from the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

The OIPC receives a draft of every public report and provides recommendations regarding the release of information which may have privacy implications. Our protocol allows for the distribution of embargoed reports to allow affected families, affected persons and involved officers a brief period of time to review the report prior to its distribution. We also provide affected families, persons and involved officers with the opportunity to speak to me prior to the distribution of any public report.

Year 2 for us — it's slide 12, to make sure we're all in the same place — relates to fiscal year 2013-2014, which was our first full fiscal year of operations. The committee will be able to review our 2013-2014 annual report shortly. It has been delivered to the ministry, and we're awaiting the various levels of approval.

The following statistics are contained in the report. Between April 1 of 2013 and March 31 of 2014 the IIO opened 58 full investigations. Nine incidents involved deaths; 49 involved serious harm. Of the 58 investigations, 33 — or 57 percent — involved the RCMP, 41 percent involved municipal police departments, and one involved the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit. The majority — approximately 66 percent of cases — occurred in the Lower Mainland. Approximately 16 percent occurred on Vancouver Island, approximately 9 percent occurred in the southeast district, and approximately 10 percent occurred in the north district.

In 2013 through '14 we investigated five officer-involved shootings. Four resulted in serious harm. One was fatal. Four were concluded by a public report, and one remains under investigation. The one that remains under investigation was the fatal shooting. The prior year we also investigated five officer-involved shootings. One incident resulted in serious harm, and four involved fatalities.

Of the total of ten officer-involved shooting investigations to date, one remains open under investigation — this is an incident that occurred in January of 2014 — six have been concluded by public report, and three have been referred to Crown. Charges were approved on one file. The charge decision is pending on two.

The time to completion for these officer-involved shooting investigations ranges between 4½ to six months, with one exception. We do have a case pending with Crown that has been open and remaining under investigation for about 18 months. This will happen in some files where there is just significant work that needs to be done, so it is an outlier from the other 90 percent of the files that we've investigated in this regard.

Timeliness of officer-involved shooting investigations represented a significant improvement over the past. Prior to us becoming operational, I've been told that it would have taken anywhere from one to two years for any officer-involved shooting investigation to be completed. We've been able to do the significant majority within 4½ to six months.

The IIO has recognized that the time limits in the disposition of these types of cases is important to the com-
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munity, the involved officers and the police services, and we are committed to improving timeliness in this area as much as we possibly can.

On average, investigations concluded at the last fiscal year were open for 123 days. Those cases where a report to Crown counsel for charge assessment was made were open for an average of 139 days, compared to the 116 days, on average, it took to complete cases where a public report was issued. Investigations into fatal incidents generally took longer than investigations involving serious harm.

Now I'd like to talk about our jurisdictional decision-making. This has actually been one of our most difficult tasks, to determine when to sustain jurisdiction over an incident which will then result in a full investigation and either the issuance of a public report or a referral to Crown.

In order for an incident to fall within the jurisdiction of the IIO, a two-part test has to be met. First, it must be determined that the death or injury was the result of a police act. In essence, there must be a nexus between the police act and the injury or death. Second, if a death is not involved, it must be determined that the injury falls within the definition of "serious harm." The issue of whether a nexus exists between a police act or failure to act in an injury or death can be quite difficult to ascertain. For example, if someone dies after having been released from police custody, it can be difficult to determine if that death was the result of a police act or not.

Similar difficulties can be found with respect to self-inflicted injuries that are committed in the presence of police. Even more difficult is the question of whether an officer's act of ordering somebody who's fleeing to stop or engaging in a foot pursuit is the cause of a person's injury or if the injury is actually the result of their own actions. There is difficulty, as well, in determining whether or not somebody has suffered serious harm.

The definition of "serious harm" in the Police Act is vague enough to lend itself to differing reasonable interpretations. For example, an injury that "may cause death" — what does that really mean? Does the definition depend on the quality of medical assistance that's currently or readily available? How does the word "serious" in "may cause serious disfigurement" affect the analysis?

Finally, what does may have substantially impaired the "mobility of the body as a whole or of the function of any limb or organ" mean with respect to injuries that may be transitory in nature to one person but permanently debilitating to another?

As a result of these challenges, we are currently working on updating the jurisdictional matrix that was developed during the course of the first year of our operations to assist us in ensuring consistency and appropriate decision-making with respect to what incidents will result in IIO investigations and what incidents will not.

Now I was hoping to talk a little bit about the investigative process, and since the Chair said nobody would interrupt me, I guess I will talk about the investigative process. During this year we are working on developing efficiencies in our investigative processes. Briefly, this is how an IIO investigation is likely to proceed.

First, an on-call director will receive a notification from a police service regarding an incident — for example, where a person has been injured while being taken into custody. The director will then document the information and assess whether or not it meets the two-part test of death or serious harm and evidence of an excess. In order to make that determination, the director may check police databases or may review available video or may look at GPS evidence.

Then the director will recommend that I either sustain or decline jurisdiction. I may accept that recommendation, I may decline the recommendation, or I may request additional investigation. In a significant number of cases, we will actually assert jurisdiction to conduct a preliminary investigation, with the objective of determining whether the injury meets the definition of "serious harm" or whether there's reason to believe that there is a nexus between a police act and the injury.

In about 25 percent of the cases, jurisdiction is not sustained and the case is closed by an internal memo. If jurisdiction is sustained, a full investigation will occur. Activities may include investigators attending the scene, obtaining evidence, interviewing witnesses and interviewing involved officers.

Witness officers are required to cooperate with an IIO investigation. Subject officers, who are those who are directly involved in the incident and who have potential jeopardy, are afforded the same right as any citizen under the Charter and are not required to cooperate with an IIO investigation. In many cases, however, subject officers do cooperate by either providing a written statement or report or submitting to an interview by an IIO investigator.

Completed investigations are submitted to me. They're reviewed by myself and my legal counsel. Once I'm satisfied that the investigation is complete and I've had an opportunity to review all of the relevant evidence, then I determine whether to make the report to Crown counsel or to close out the investigation with a public report.

We've also been engaged in substantial outreach activities. Over the course of the 2013-14 fiscal year, the last fiscal year, we started to work with an external advisory working group made up of partners and stakeholders who held an interest in the IIO. The group was instrumental in helping us to shape our mission, vision and values. We met several times throughout the year, and I understand that members of this group may be making submissions to this special committee later on this year as well.

As part of our continuing community engagement strategy, we continued with our outreach activities and
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community visits. In addition to the ongoing orientation we provide to community groups, educational institutions and municipal police forces, we also agreed to provide weekly orientation sessions to RCMP members who are attending ongoing operational skills training at the Pacific regional training facility.

During the last fiscal year we presented to 20 RCMP detachments across the province, made 14 presentations to municipal police forces, made seven presentations to First Nations groups and eight to town councils, and we reached over 1,600 RCMP officers through 76 sessions at the PRTC.

After having developed and implemented the MOU with B.C.'s police services, it was time to develop a similar MOU to apply to B.C.'s special provincial constables. We also have jurisdiction over on- and off-duty officers and special provincial constables. This proved to be quite demanding, as special constables are found across numerous ministries and agencies. In fact, when signed, the MOU will have a total of 26 signatory agencies. The SPC MOU is very similar to the police MOU and is anticipated to be signed by all SPC agencies and posted to our website by the end of this month.

At the inception of our program, we did receive legal advice that we do not have jurisdiction over off-duty special provincial constables, and we proceed on that assumption. The argument relies on the nature of their employment, which falls under the Public Service Act. The opinion is based upon the fact that a person is a special constable only when exercising his or her duties under a specific act. So we have on- and off-duty police but only on-duty special provincial constables, and only when they are engaged in an act that is authorized for them as being a special provincial constable.

Our plan for civilianization. Yesterday three new civilian investigators joined the IIO investigative teams. They began their training at the JIBC in March and have just completed their block 1 training at the JIBC. The training for these new investigators differs from the original JI training provided to our original cadre of investigators in 2012. The 2012 training was developed for 14 investigators at the inception of the program. Given the significant number of investigators being trained at the time, it was possible to develop an IO-centric training program with dedicated instructors training that group as a whole.

This year IO attrition allowed for three investigators to be hired and then trained through the JI. A dedicated training program proved to be cost-prohibitive, and instead, the JI and the IO developed a pilot training project wherein these new investigators would attend portions of what's referred to as block 1 and block 3 training provided to police recruits. Field training for our new investigators will then be followed by block 3 training.

So they did block 1. They'll now have several months of field training within our office. They will go back to the JI for block 3 training in September. After completing the block 3 training, the investigators will return to their teams and be assigned to new files in support roles before gradually taking on the role of primary investigator as appropriate. We've determined it takes approximately 18 months before a civilian investigator can expect to act as a primary investigator on a major critical incident file.

The government has included in the Police Act a goal of complete civilianization of the IIO. No specific timeline has been provided to accomplish this goal. This is in large part the result of an acknowledgment that although the goal of civilianization is important, it must not be accomplished without also ensuring that the IO investigations are competently performed.

As such, the IO has approached the goal of civilianization in a tactical manner. Our initial recruitment drive targeted former police officers, whose experience was deemed essential in the initial development of the program. Our last former officer was hired in May of 2013. Vacancies that have arisen since have been and are being filled by civilians with no prior police experience. Assuming no significant changes in program needs, the IO plans to civilianize through attrition, with recruiting efforts focusing on those who have never before served as police officers.

Slide 17 shows some charts relating to the evolution of our staffing ratios. When the IO began operations, across our four general investigative teams 42 percent had never been officers. Across all six teams — which includes the specialized team, which is all former police, and the public accountability team — 39 percent of investigators have never been police officers.

We are currently recruiting to fill four vacancies with investigators who have never been police officers. Once this has been completed, across the four investigative teams 55 percent will have never been police officers, and across all six teams 48 percent will have never been officers.

The current composition of the four general investigation teams is quite diverse. I thought I'd actually share them in a little bit of detail with you.

Team 1 consists of a director who is a civilian and who was previously employed as an investigative journalist by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Under her supervision are four investigators. One was a former high-ranking member of the Canadian national police service. Another one was a former officer with the Edmonton city police service. Another one is a former coroner and paramedic, and the fourth is a former fraud investigator for the Ministry of Social Development.

Team 2 consists of a director who was formerly a member of the Alberta RCMP. Under his supervision is a former Scotland Yard detective sergeant, a former member of the B.C. RCMP with a seven-year gap in service, a former coroner and a former supervisor with the Canadian Border Services Agency.
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Team 3 consists of a director who was a former member of the B.C. RCMP, with a 14-year-gap in service and who was also previously employed with ICBC. Under his supervision are two former U.K. police officers, a former coroner and a former supervisor with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Finally, team 4 consists of a director who was formerly employed by the Edmonton city police service. Under his supervision is a former Calgary police officer, a former regional coroner, a former investigator with the employment standards branch of the Ministry of Labour and a former ICBC investigator with no police experience.

Now, coming to the end of the presentation, I'd like to share some of my priorities with you for the current fiscal year.

First, we're in the process of developing a two-year strategic plan. We are placing an emphasis on developing our staff, building effective internal systems, developing a unified IO culture, building effective communications systems, strengthening external stakeholder relations and strengthening our leadership capacity. We expect to have our two-year plan completed by the end of summer, some time in September.

We are also working on establishing core performance indicators in all areas of the IIO operations, including investigations, public reporting and finance. The goal is to work collaboratively with other similar agencies to develop a comprehensive and consistent performance measure framework to evaluate the work of the IIO in the future.

We are also working on ensuring that our internal policies are comprehensive and appropriately document the various processes we've put into place.

We are also looking to identify realistic timeliness goals that will serve the needs of affected people, police officers and Crown counsel but that will also recognize the labour intensiveness and realities of our work.

We are also placing an emphasis on increasing workplace satisfaction in order to ensure we're able to retain our employees, in whom we're investing significant training and development resources. We're attempting to expand our outreach to vulnerable populations by comprehensively identifying resources we can use to assist us in our work.

We are working to establish clear guidelines for jurisdictional decision-making. Finally, we will place a continued emphasis on recruiting the best possible investigators who will be able to ensure the future success of the IIO.

I hope that this presentation has provided additional detail to you relating to the IIO program and, hopefully, has addressed some of the prior questions that you addressed to the ministry.

Thank you for your attention. Myself and my executive staff are pleased to take your questions.

M. Morris (Chair): Thank you very much for that. Actually, what we'll do is we'll start on my left with Scott. We'll work our way across, and we'll just keep working until we run out of questions or run out of time — whatever comes first.

S. Fraser: Chair, I have several questions. Should I just start with one and then work our way down?

The civilianization of the force is a mandate, although no timeline has been ordered as far as any of the literature…. You've confirmed that. So we're moving in the right direction. We can see that.

Of the other jurisdictions that have a similar agency, none of them have 100 percent civilianization. Now, I understand the goal and the perception of having a totally independent body that's not linked to police forces directly. I get the perception of that.

Do you have an opinion as to whether this will work? There is no precedent for this, at least in the examples that you've provided us with, in other parts of the country and other parts of the world.

R. Rosenthal: Right. I knew when I took the job that this was the goal. I believed it could be done, but the question was: how long would it take? And what would the process look like? I will say that the biggest challenge we're facing right now would be civilianization in the long term of the specialized team.

In Canada the type of experience you need to process an evidence scene or to do traffic collision reconstruction is generally only obtained in policing. In the U.S., interestingly enough, it is actually civilians who generally do that job. And by the way, there are actually quite a number of Canadians in the U.S. who are doing the work.

What we're going to have to do is, through recruiting efforts, determine what type of pool we have and to what extent we can potentially civilianize in that regard. And there, really, only time will tell.

K. Corrigan: I wanted to talk about challenges that I think have been acknowledged, in terms of retention — maybe a little bit more on that. And maybe just an overview of the numbers of people who have left. — what the turnover rate has been the last couple of years and how much that has to do, if anything, with the challenge of a culture which is essentially a police culture as opposed to a civilian culture.

R. Rosenthal: Right. Thus far we've had seven investigators who have left — three former police and four civilians. There have been a variety of reasons why
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people have left. Some include family issues. Some have been opportunities that have been provided that weren't available elsewhere. Others have been that people didn't feel that they were a good fit with the organization or it wasn't doing what they had expected. So it is a fairly wide variety of reasons.

Definitely culture — the creation of the culture — is a challenge. We spent our first year of operations really emphasizing credible, competent, fair investigations in a timely manner and transparency through public reporting. As a result of our strong emphasis on that, we did not put as much emphasis on the building of the culture in the first year of operations, and that's what we're doing now.

We recognized that we put a lot of resources and effort into the hiring of the individuals, and we want them to stay. Interestingly enough, one of the things I did was I realized from exit interviews with some of the people who were leaving that in some cases people's expectations of what the job would look like and the reality were just different.

What I've done is added into the recruitment process where every investigator who has been interviewed and approved by the hiring panel meets with me. I go through and explain to them exactly what the job will look like, what they're going to be facing, the challenges of being on call, the challenges of writing reports that have to be unbiased, where you can't show your opinion and you can't be the one to try and tell the reviewers what should happen. I think that is going to have a significant impact on, again, making sure that when people come into the office, they know what they're getting into and it's what they want.

We're taking various different strategies to try and make sure that we create a culture — one IIO culture. In fact, one of the comments that we've made…. I've got people repeating this mantra on a regular basis now, which is "One IIO, one team" — the idea being that we have to be aligned in how we're communicating, how we're working. We've created our mission, vision and values now, and I think all of that together should put us in a very strong position for the long term.

S. Chandra Herbert (Deputy Chair): One of the questions — and there are many things that we could look at in this review — is the question, of course, of civilianization.

I think one thing I've heard you say a number of times is the focus now is on no police experience and so on, which could lead some to go: "Well, if they don't have police experience, how are they going to have any investigative experience?" Maybe there's another way of saying experience but in a different world than policing, and yes, they can't be police officers — just in terms of the language of it. I think it would increase confidence that these people do know what they're doing. They just come with different experiences.

But in the push to civilianization and, as well, the diversity of careers that you've laid out of who's working at the IIO, I wonder what kind of work can focus us going into ensuring we have a diversity of cultural backgrounds, racial backgrounds — those kinds of experiences — to ensure that the IIO accurately reflects the makeup of B.C. as a multicultural province.

R. Rosenthal: I may turn this over to my PSA experts here. But in general, one of the most important points, obviously, is that the PSA process requires a merit-based process. To me, the biggest way that we can increase or ensure diversity is in the pool of the applicants. It's one of the reasons why we do an outreach. I'm constantly telling people about the IIO and trying to develop an interest.

One of the other challenges is that the only people we hire are what we refer to as mature practitioners. Unfortunately, when I go and speak to college classes, I'm only speaking to maybe somebody who in ten years can apply for the IIO, not somebody who can apply now. So I am engaged in a very long-term recruitment strategy of trying to get people interested in the office who will apply long after I'm gone.

K. Kilpatrick: I would just add that the investigative positions aren't entry-level positions. What I would hope, as time goes on and we build that foundation of experience, is we would be in a position to be open to more entry-level positions to allow a broader pool of applicants.

S. Chandra Herbert (Deputy Chair): If I could just follow up, I see Barbara Kaiway working through a big list. Just so that I understand — gender breakdown. Do you have a kind of cultural breakdown? Is it a whole bunch of white guys like myself, or is it a mixture of people working at the office?

R. Rosenthal: We have a significant…. Very diverse as far as gender, quite diverse, particularly amongst the civilians, the people with no prior police experience, and fairly diverse as far as ethnicity and what have you. Certainly, the former police, given that most of them are retirees…. Policing 20, 30 years ago was not nearly as diverse as it is today, so amongst the former police it is generally not as diverse.

D. Bing: You're saying that, for investigators, there was no overtime. I was wondering about the frequency in average hours beyond what we consider the normal work week. Do they do…?

R. Rosenthal: It's almost impossible to come up with
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hours for an IO investigator, because critical incidents are completely unpredictable. For example, this morning we had an officer-involved shooting, and everyone had to go out. We had an in-custody death just a few days before. And the moment it happens, the teams get deployed.

There is certainly a lot of office work. When they're not on a deployment, they'll be working in the office, working on files or what have you, and those hours are much more of the traditional government hours. But once you're deployed…. You go when you get called, and you work till the job is done, and it can take many, many hours. You could be working 12 hours. You get a call at two in the morning, and you're working until late that afternoon or evening.

It's very unpredictable, which is one of the reasons why we were challenged, not being able to pay overtime, and we had to make sure that the base compensation level was appropriate. Otherwise, again, retention of employees under those difficult circumstances would be challenging.

D. Bing: Are investigators given, say, time off later on or something to make up for that?

R. Rosenthal: Now, we do not have any formal overtime. In policing, they call it black book time. We do not do that. But obviously, if somebody were out on a Sunday on a deployment, if the time were allowed to do so, they would maybe be able to take off the Monday in lieu of the work that they've done. But they can't keep a book saying: "Oh, I worked 50 hours last week, and therefore I'm entitled to ten hours off at this future time." It just doesn't happen that way.

B. Kaiway: In terms of the gender breakdown, approximately 62 percent of the current investigator complement is male and 38 percent female.

D. Plecas: Richard, I'm trying to wrap my head around the whole matter of what gets referred to Crown and just trying to get a handle on these numbers. Now, you don't actually give us a total of how many cases have been completed since you started. You indicate how many reports you made to Crown, so what I would like to know is: how many have you actually completed?

R. Rosenthal: The numbers that I was reporting related to what would be in the annual report for the end of the fiscal year. One of the problems is, of course, with every day that goes by, the numbers change. But….

R. Rosenthal: Right. Kellie, as part of the public accountability, has to keep track as every case goes in and goes out. The numbers that we have to date are 80 full investigations have been initiated, 67 have been completed, 43 of those resulted in public reports, 24 of those resulted in reports to Crown counsel, and 18 remain under investigation.

It's very interesting that about two-thirds of the files were able to close by public report and one-third resulted in referrals to Crown.

D. Plecas: Right. So there's really a one-in-25 chance that an investigation is going to lead to a recommendation for…. Or I should say….

R. Rosenthal: The number that I came up with was, actually, that at this moment in time it was 5.5 percent that would be charged. But the reality is that that will change as the days go by. We have 11 files with Crown. If Crown decides not to lay charges in all 11, then that percentage goes down. If they lay charges in a couple of them, it goes up.

D. Plecas: But I'm thinking…. It's really three out of 80 that we can say have been completed, and out of those completed, we've got one in 25, basically, one in 27.

R. Rosenthal: Right. And, in fact, it's interesting, because the Ontario SIU actually has, since they have a long history…. About 3 percent of the files they take under investigation result in the laying of criminal charges. That number, which seems very low, is actually very consistent throughout North America for critical incidents.

The idea behind it is…. Remember that if, in fact, it was based upon complaints, it might go higher. But here we will investigate an incident even where the affected person — and we've had them — says: "I would have shot me too. Thank God the officer did what they did, because I was out of control." So there's no complaint, yet there's an investigation and accounting for it.

As a matter of public policy, what the province has decided is that if there's an incident involving a police act that results in death or serious harm, we don't care whether there's an allegation of misconduct or not, we want to know what happened and we want to make sure that there's accountability one way or the other.

D. Plecas: So the other part of that is that you're making a report to Crown counsel one in three times.

R. Rosenthal: Right. And it seems to be a pattern that's holding — under this standard.

D. Plecas: I only ask this out of a concern that it seems that, for the officers who are involved in this whole exercise, it's no doubt a very trying experience. Somebody's told this is being forwarded to Crown. It just seems like a lot of reports going to Crown. One could ask: why so many if, at the end of the day, only one in eight of those is going to result in a charge? Are officers not being unfairly treated?

R. Rosenthal: What I'd point out is that we try and make sure the officers are aware…. We do make sure. So if you're an involved officer and your file is referred to Crown, we make sure you know what the referral standard is.

The CCD, under the legislation — I do not make recommendations. Now, in Ontario their director actually lays the charges. B.C.'s different, because we have a different…. In other provinces the police will actually lay charges. Here it's only Crown.

We make sure the officer is aware of what's happening and what the level is and that it's not necessarily going to result in the charges being laid. However, the reality is it's a public policy issue that government, the Legislature, will need to consider as to what that referral standard should be. Should it be the same as police services? Should it be where it is? Frankly, there are strong arguments on both sides.

D. Plecas: Just to finish, if I may. This number, this basically one in three being moved forward to Crown — how would that relate to other jurisdictions? I know it's different here in B.C.

R. Rosenthal: It doesn't relate, because it's different here in B.C. In every other jurisdiction it is the head of the agency that actually lays the charges and then Crown decides whether to proceed or not. That's the way it works in Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia.

D. Plecas: Would it be worth considering that it may be that you're sending too many cases to Crown?

R. Rosenthal: I don't think so, because I've been very adamant to follow the law. Really, what it comes down to…. I work with legal counsel on each file and look at it very carefully. If I can exonerate an officer of criminal culpability, I do it. If I can't, I push it over to Crown.

One of the examples that I've given, for example, of a file that will go to Crown would be where you have a dog bite case. You have the affected person who says: "The dog was released inappropriately on me." The officer gives an explanation of why the dog was released appropriately. The dog's not talking. You don't have any video. You don't have any audio. In a case like that, I can't exonerate. I have to send it to Crown, and then Crown will decide whether or not there's sufficient evidence to lay charges.

Really, the only other way to do it would be to say that I have the same standard of referral as police agencies, where if I believe that there's a reasonable probability that the officer would be convicted, I recommend charges. Frankly, one of the problems with that that they've had in Ontario is that every time the SIU director recommends charges, the police community gets upset.

One of the benefits of this — although it does take longer when something's gone to Crown, and although it does also put the officers and the community members under pressure because they're waiting and they don't know what the decision is — is that I'm able to make these decisions while still maintaining relationships with both the police community and the civil rights communities. But it's a public policy discussion that has to occur.

I feel very confident, in the files that I'm referring to Crown, that they need to go, under this particular standard.

Frankly, if somebody really wanted to, what they could do is look at each one of my public reports and then look at each of the clear statements by Crown, and I think they would be able to figure out: "Okay, why is it being exonerated here, and why was it referred there?" I think it would lay itself out.

It's really also one of the areas…. This is why we wanted the public reporting. And Crown counsel has been wonderful about every file that we send to them. If they do not lay charges, they issue a clear statement which explains why. For every IIO file, there is public accountability either through a public report by the IIO, a clear statement by Crown or a trial and criminal charges in court.

D. Plecas: I'll finish here. I just wanted to emphasize…. I understand the public policy side of it and how important that is. It's just that it seems there is, again, this downside, so long as we're talking about "may," to the officers involved.

J. Tegart: Thank you for the information this afternoon. I know it takes a lot of time to prepare.

As an absolute layperson, I'm going to ask a question about public accountability. I'm assuming this office came about because there was a grave concern amongst the public in regards to police officers investigating police officers. In your short time of being in place, what sort of perception or measurables are you doing around how the public is feeling about how we're doing this work?
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R. Rosenthal: I can start. Right now there are no survey instruments in place within the province for us to be able to really look at the big-picture public concerns. We have considered the idea of maybe doing surveys of our affected people or our police officers, but one of the problems is that because these are critical incidents, that's not necessarily the population we're actually trying to serve. We're trying to serve the bigger population of the community. In fact, our vision is building confidence in police accountability.

Right now, though, there is no mechanism in place currently by which we could evaluate what were public perceptions before and what were public perceptions afterwards. Thus far, I think I can say that having gone throughout the province and spoken to hundreds of thousands of people over the last 2½ years, there seems to be a lot of satisfaction that there's an independent agency, removed from police, that's conducting these investigations. There seems to be a lot of support, again, for the public reports.

One of the things that I realized from the very beginning was…. My reputation coming into this job may have been, "He'll hold police officers to account," but the first time I issue a decision that supports an officer in a controversial case, suddenly there's no reason to have faith in my decision. The only way to ensure public faith is to be able to say that it's transparent. If I’m going to take an act as an official, I'm going to explain it.

It's one of the reasons the public reports are so expansive. Some of them are 20 pages in length because we really try and put enough detail in the report so that any objective person reading it would understand why the decision was made.

Interestingly enough, all of the other reports — the ones in Ontario and Nova Scotia — are much shorter than ours. I've stuck with the idea that I feel we need more detail so that we can make sure the public is confident in the work we're doing.

I'd also point out — this is again sort of ad hoc, though — that in the past you would really hear affected families and affected people challenging these decisions on a regular basis. Since we've been here, we've certainly had affected people or affected families who have disagreed or not been happy with the decision, but on the whole, they've recognized…. We've gone out, we've met with them and we've explained it to them — and at least they understand.

J. Tegart: Just a follow-up. The other agencies that have been around awhile — do they do any kind of public polling?

R. Rosenthal: The only one that I'm aware of is…. I'm trying to remember if it's Northern Ireland or England.

R. Rosenthal: It's not in Canada. I'm having to think back for a second. No, I'm not aware of any surveys in Canada. I think it's Northern Ireland where they do surveys.

M. Morris (Chair): Before I turn it back over to Scott, just a couple of questions.

R. Rosenthal: I'm sorry. I was just corrected. It's the U.K. and not Northern Ireland that does the surveys.

M. Morris (Chair): Just a couple of questions along the same lines that Darryl was questioning on and just a couple of comments that you made as well. I just need some clarification.

You talked about reasonable and probable grounds for conviction versus reasonable and probable grounds to believe that an offence has occurred. So that's what the police operate under. You mentioned that you don't forward the reports to Crown unless there are reasonable and probable grounds to believe that there could be a conviction. Is that what you're saying?

R. Rosenthal: No. I am required to refer a file to Crown if I believe an officer may have committed an offence. It is irrelevant if I may look at the file and say there's no way charges will be laid. As long as an officer may have committed an offence, I have to send it.

M. Morris (Chair): By saying "may have…." I know the standard in policing is that if you do your investigation and you see all of the elements of an offence within that report…. When you do an investigation and you see all the elements of a possible offence in there, that satisfies that "may"?

R. Rosenthal: Not necessarily, because most of these files also involve issues of self-defence or section 25 of the Criminal Code, that officers are permitted to use force under reasonable circumstances. So I will look at the circumstances, and if I believe that there's no reason to believe the officers did not comply with section 25 or there's no reason to believe the officers did not act in legitimate self-defence, then in those cases, I will not send it to Crown.

S. Fraser: This has all been interesting. Some of my questions have been answered through this process already. One that has not….

You laid out the other agencies in the province that do similar work but not the same, and they have different
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mandates. The first part of the question is: is there any problem with overlap there?

Secondly, there are other similar organizations in other jurisdictions, in other countries too, that have different mandates — some not as far-reaching as ours, some more far-reaching — covering other categories. You mentioned police corruption, stuff like that.

With both of those in mind, the other provincial organizations and the other organizations that are doing your work or similar work to the IIO in other jurisdictions, are there gaps for your mandate, and/or are there overlaps that may be unnecessary or even problematic?

R. Rosenthal: With respect to the B.C. organizations, the roles are fairly structured, and there's not significant overlap other than, for example, the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner. When they review an investigation, they may end up reviewing our investigation plus whatever additional work that professional standards does.

There's definitely interconnection, but there's not really overlap, because our job is critical incident investigations and the evaluation of whether a crime occurred. Then what we have to do is turn it over to the OPCC professional standards or the CRCC. The new name always throws me off. I want to say the CPC.

Then what they do is they take our investigation. They do additional investigation as necessary, because what they're then looking at is: is there a policy violation? Are there conduct issues? Should discipline occur?

Just because an officer is exonerated of criminal culpability does not necessarily mean that the officer acted according to policy and expectations. An officer that may be exonerated by the IIO is still going to be disciplined or could even be terminated by the employing agency, based upon a different set of criteria and a different standard of proof.

At least within B.C., each agency…. We have a very specific job. The OPCC has a specific job relating to police discipline and police complaints, and the CRCC has that with respect to the RCMP. Then you've got police services, and their job is police standards and training. There it's fairly succinct and everyone has their own job. Then everyone has to work together to make it work appropriately. If I were not to share our material with the other agencies, then there would be a big hole, but because we've got the MOUs which allow for the sharing, that works.

With respect to the other agencies and the mandate, there are, as you said…. We do off-duty conduct. That is very uncommon. In fact, Alberta could but generally does not. Ontario does not. Nova Scotia does when it comes to domestic violence or sexual assault. They can do off-duty. England and Ireland have other, broader mandates. It's so jurisdictional as to what each jurisdiction wants the organization to do.

My point is that if we're talking about critical incidents, and we only do serious-harm…. For example, there was an incident in Vancouver where an officer was videotaped punching a suspect in the face who was handcuffed. That was not our file, because there was no serious harm. Of course, if you were then to say, "Well, the IIO should do it in any case involving any injury," now you would have automatic critical incident investigations of a huge, huge number of files, resulting in the expenditure of huge resources.

You could also say: "Well, we want it only done where there's a complaint of this type of force." There are so many different ways to do it. You have to consider…. In Nova Scotia they do domestic violence and sexual assault. In Ontario they do sexual assault. Here we would only do domestic violence or sexual assault if it results in death or serious harm. So there are all kinds of different ways to do it.

K. Corrigan: I'm going to ask two questions and then leave it to see about getting an answer. I'm not sure how many times we're going to get back again.

The first one I wanted to ask…. I'll just ask them both, and then you can answer them. I wanted to know how often, if at all, the civilian monitors, which you have the ability to appoint under section 38.08, have been appointed, and if there are any comments on that.

Then the other question I have. One of the concerns that the public had, I think, if you looked at some of the high-profile cases, particularly Dziekanski, is the suggestion that after a critical incident — in that case, a death — it's possible, generically, that officers can go away and basically talk about their stories. I'm interested in what your office can do to ensure that the individuals that are involved, both witnesses and the subject officer, are sequestered from each other. What powers do you have? Or what is the practical application in that situation?

R. Rosenthal: Well, first, with respect to the civilian monitors, there is a provision in the Police Act that allows me to appoint a civilian monitor to review the investigation and then to report to me on the integrity of the investigation or its completeness or what have you.

Thus far, I've reviewed every investigation. If it's 2,000 pages, I've read 2,000 pages. If they've got interviews, I've either read the transcripts or I've listened to the interviews. I've got legal counsel who does the same. So I've not felt a need at the current time to appoint and hire and spend extra money on a civilian monitor to do the work that myself and legal counsel are doing.

There may come the time where we look at it and say: "You know what? This one, we need to do it." There's been one call for it in one file out of Prince George. I just issued on Friday a 20-page supplemental decision, really in lieu of appointing a civilian monitor, because we had again
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reviewed the investigation so extensively in the coroner's inquest, and I felt really confident that the investigation had integrity and that the decision that we were making was appropriate.

With respect to sequestration, it's actually a really challenging area. One of the issues is that because we're such a large province and because we have a mixture of urban and rural policing — and even in the urban areas there are differences in availability of resources to separate out officers and to ensure their separation — we've really approached it in a twofold manner.

In our MOU we've advised the agencies that they're responsible for making sure that their officers are not communicating with each other prior to being interviewed by us. If, in fact, the officers are in a position to do so, they're responsible for explaining why. If there are only two officers in the detachment that has an incident and you've got a shooting officer and a witness officer and they've got to protect the scene for several hours until the resources come, well, you're not going to be able to separate them, but their policy is it's required to tell them that they shall not speak about it until.

We've worked with the agencies to make sure their policy is in place. In fact, the MOU requires that officers be ordered — that one be told…. It's part of training that they not communicate after a critical incident until interviewed — except for a public safety statement, which means obviously they need to tell other officers about "Oh, the suspect was headed in this direction" or "There's an outstanding suspect" or "There's a victim who's available."

Other than that public safety statement, by policy they're not permitted to talk about it. They're also required to be ordered not to talk about it right after the incident occurs. Then the agency is responsible for ensuring that it doesn't happen.

Our investigators will commonly request and ask as part of the interview: who else have you talked to? Why? What did you say? What did they say? Again, from an investigative standpoint, we try and back it up to make sure that everything has been handled appropriately. It is a great challenge with respect to the incredibly diverse body of agencies we have, as well as the types of incidents that we're dealing with.

S. Chandra Herbert (Deputy Chair): Something you said really struck me. You're having an average of 123 days to close an investigation. In the past, if there was a fatality, it was possible that it could take one to two years, with other police services when they were investigating other police. That, to me, is amazing, if that's the case. That could, of course, be a huge savings financially — 123 days versus two years on the most extreme cases. Anyways, just to reflect on that, but….

R. Rosenthal: If I may just…. You're almost there. The 123 days is the average for all files. That would include a dog bite file — some of the smaller ones. What I was referring to were the officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths. There we've ranged anywhere from about 4½ months to six months, but we've shaved off a year to a year and a half.

One of the reasons why, frankly, is that when homicide units — so IHIT or major crimes units — were doing these investigations, they were done off the side of their desks. They would get called out, they'd go and they'd do their…. They'd interview people and what have you. They'd come back, and two days later there's a homicide. They put this one aside. They work on the homicide. When I reviewed some of the old investigations, you could see how — activity, no activity, activity, no activity. It ended up just taking forever before they could finally put it together and get it submitted.

It's our bread and butter. There's no side-of-the-desk for us for these files. It's one of the reasons we've been able to do it. We've also put into place some very strict parameters where I tell my people: "If you can, I expect you to interview witness officers that night. I expect you to interview civilians immediately." There should not be two-, three-, four-week delays unless there's a reason to do so. So we've also put some prioritization into it.

S. Chandra Herbert (Deputy Chair): Yes, I was just going to say that it's much more respectful to the officers involved but also the families and victims and the people involved.

The question I wanted to get to was the definition of "serious harm" — proven to be vague and often challenging to interpret. I was trying to think through what this could be. Maybe a dog bites you in the butt. Maybe that's serious disfigurement. Maybe you'll never sit again or maybe not.

That's got to be incredibly difficult. The idea of the function of the organs. Well, maybe you have a brain injury or a mental challenge that comes out of an incident because of stress, or PTSD or something like that comes after the incident.

Sometimes these kinds of things don't manifest for months upon time. Thinking about a sexual assault — that could also be a serious harm, potentially, and be covered, I suppose.

How wide-ranging are you? I want to make sure that all appropriate causes are taken into account and that just because it's a sexual assault and maybe it's not physically visible what the wound is, that would still be given due process.

R. Rosenthal: Under the definition…. I had to get in front of a large group of sexual assault workers and social workers, and I had to say to them that forceful rape
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is not necessarily serious harm. I obviously meant that in a legislative manner. Realistically, morally, ethically, of course it is. But we have to look at our definition, so unless there are life-threatening injuries, serious disfigurement or a substantial impact on mobility or function of an organ or limb, it doesn't fall within our definition.

Mr. Plecas mentioned…. It's kind of funny, because I have not really had a lot of trouble in figuring out what files should go to Crown or not. Some of those decisions were more challenging than others, but they've generally been fairly easy, rational decisions that we can make after just looking at the evidence and looking at our standard.

The challenge of figuring out what falls in our mandate has been extraordinary. I would say that the first year there were inconsistencies in how we were applying it. Over time I was able to develop what I refer to as a jurisdictional assertion matrix, which tried to answer all these various questions. There is no consensus that I can find amongst the communities. I can go to one community and say: "What do you think of 'serious harm'? What do you think this means?" I'll get one answer. I'll go to another community; I'll get a totally different answer.

I found that there were truly reasonable interpretations of the definition that are different. So what we've tried to do is that we're working…. It's another project for this year — really trying to focus the jurisdictional assertion matrix, to make it as consistent as we can and as fair as we can and to take into account what we can. But the reality is that as long as this definition remains on the books in the vague way it is, it leaves an enormous amount of discretion to me, and I have to then figure out which are the files that the IIO should be investigating and which ones are not.

The more detail that's provided in the legislation, obviously, the less discretion and then, in a sense, in some ways the easier my job.

S. Chandra Herbert (Deputy Chair): I guess I just asked that specifically because as a committee we're trying to consider how to improve things for both the office and, of course, the public. So a definition of "serious harm," which could be defined in many different ways, is obviously something that I hone in on and try to see if there are ways that we could improve that. Now, that's the Police Act. Maybe as a committee….

Is there any thought that it would be helpful, based on your understanding, to have greater descriptions of what we're looking for as a legislature so that you know what we're looking to have you do?

R. Rosenthal: The answer is yeah, it could be. A lot of it really depends, I suppose, on: "What we're doing now — is that what you want?" Certainly, if the answer is: "No, we expect…."

I'll give you an example. There are certain in-custody injuries or in-custody deaths, and I know there were some people who thought: "Oh, the IIO will investigate all in-custody injuries, serious injuries or deaths." The answer is no, because the statute says that we'll investigate a serious harm or death that is the result of a police action, and in many cases in a custodial facility the injury or death may not be the result of a police action.

We have to consider that, and also, we have to consider, in addition to the definition, that there's a problem, as you mentioned earlier, with the amount of evidence available. We may have somebody who…. We had one incident where the person appeared fine and then died a few days later. Initially, we were notified of it. It was a serious collision. We were told: "He's in hospital. He's under observation." We said: "Okay, we're good." Then two days later we were told, "He just died." So we didn't assert jurisdiction until two days later.

It's very, very difficult. It's not just the definition. It's the amount of information available. Then when you throw in the nexus issue, again, it's quite a challenge.

D. Bing: Of the investigations that you made and where the Crown counsel approved charges, can you tell us what charges were laid and what the outcome was?

R. Rosenthal: We've had three. We had one where it was driving without due care and attention, and that resulted in a conviction. The other two are pending. One was a charge of dangerous driving as the result of a fatal motor vehicle incident in Salmon Arm, and that's still pending. The other one was as a result of an officer-involved shooting in Cranbrook. The officer was charged with reckless discharge of a firearm, and that one is also still pending.

D. Plecas: A question, just following up from the theme I was talking about earlier. Have you done anything to…? Do you know of research done elsewhere which looks at how officers perceive the process and the whole matter of outcome afterwards?

R. Rosenthal: As far as the process is concerned, all I can say is that it's not something that has been really researched by the academics. The research has really been based more on the complaints systems — you know, satisfaction by officers or by complainants with public complaints handling. With respect to critical incident investigations, I'm not actually aware of any real research that's been done in that regard.

I can say from the point of view of what we've been hearing and seeing, at least with respect to this program, that our position has been that officers get treated the same as civilians: with respect and dignity. I have, at least as far as I've been told and in our…. I've kept open communications with the police unions, with the staff reps of the RCMP, and my understanding is that they have
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been satisfied with how their officers have been treated.

As far as the outcomes — much harder to gauge. I don't usually go and ask them: "Well, did you read my report? What did you think of it?" We're not really in a position to be talking to the officers afterwards about their ultimate conclusions as far as the outcomes.

It's not been something that we've done on a systemic basis. We've thought about whether we should do it, and I haven't been inclined to do so. Again, because of the nature of our work, these are populations…. They're certainly stakeholders in the work we do, but they're not the only stakeholders, and the reason the program exists is for a much bigger purpose.

I will point out that I've had a lot of officers who have told me that they supported the creation of an IIO. They figured that if they were investigated by a police agency, people would assume bias and that if they were exonerated by a police agency, people would just assume bias. But if they're exonerated by a civilian agency, they feel that it has more pull with the public.

D. Plecas: I know that you say that you treat officers the same as citizens, but at the end of the day, the process is such that it isn't quite the same. Because there is, importantly and quite rightly, an emphasis to demonstrate ad infinitum that you're going beyond the call of duty in terms of accountability, what goes with that necessarily, it would seem to me, is that the officers involved would, in effect, be picking up the brunt of that.

That's my rationale for saying that there perhaps would be some value in saying, "Let's find out just how officers are perceiving their treatment in all of that," so that we can ensure that at the end of the day, they are in fact being treated fairly.

R. Rosenthal: What I've done in that regard is, again, the open-door policy with the police union and the staff reps. One of the things they know is if one of the officers feels that they were mistreated or not handled appropriately, they know to call me and we'll deal with it. We'll figure out what happened, if something went wrong and what we should do in the future.

D. Plecas: I wasn't meaning in terms of your actual treatment of the officer. I would expect that it is, in fact, fair. I'm just thinking about the whole business of…. In effect, it's a situation where every officer involved in one of these complaints is, de facto, being accused of doing something.

R. Rosenthal: What I'd point out is…. One, you're right in the sense that, certainly, witness officers aren't treated like everyone else. They're compelled to cooperate with us. Subject officers have all the rights of citizens of Canada. But it's true that they may be just doing their job and suddenly, because of an action that occurred, they are now subject to what is perceived to be a criminal investigation.

I've pointed out regularly that we don't do criminal investigations. We do critical incident investigations. At the end of those investigations we evaluate whether or not there's any criminal culpability.

But I'd also point out…. You mentioned sort of the ad infinitum part of the investigation. I would actually say it has changed somewhat. I think that in the past, when police agencies were doing the investigations, there were times they would take investigative actions that they would think were totally unnecessary. They would do it because they were afraid that they were going to be accused of being biased. So they just did it. We don't.

What I do is I look and say: "Look. We're independent. There will be no legitimate claim of bias. We're going to use our reason, logic and common sense. If we don't need to do more, we're not going to." For example, on one of the first files we did, I didn't wait for the autopsy report to come out. In the past every…. The police would never complete their investigation until the autopsy came out. Well, we went to the autopsy. We knew what the results were. We knew it had nothing to do with the police actions.

So I closed out the file, and I said: "Certainly, if anything in the autopsy comes out that would change our opinion, we'll reconsider it." But obviously, there wasn't, it didn't, and we were able to close the file two months earlier.

J. Tegart: As a committee member, now that you've been in the office for a full year and a half, we're taking a look at how things are going. When you look at the experience of the last two years, are there areas that would be worth our while taking a look at and recommending some changes?

R. Rosenthal: That's a difficult question. The problem is that I want to respect the separation of powers here, so I'm a little hesitant to answer that because I'm in some ways the bureaucrat. I'm the one who is supposed to implement the policies that are made by the policy-makers. So can I answer it by saying…?

R. Rosenthal: It's Canada; I can't. But there is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I'm not sure I can really answer that, unfortunately. If you want to throw it at me again, I'll try.

J. Tegart: Well, I guess as a layperson, looking at the work being done by your office, looking at why the of-
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fice was formed in the first place and the fact that you've been put into business relatively quickly, including training your people, moving towards a model that involves civilians, looking at critical incidents, I would be very interested — if not today, then at some point in this process — to actually hear from the people who are doing the work whether there are ways we can improve the work of your office through our responsibilities.

R. Rosenthal: I think there is actually one thing. Mr. Herbert had mentioned it as well. I want to make sure that we are serving the public and the province in the way they want to be served. The one challenge we've had is that I've had to make certain decisions as to when a file falls within our mandate and when it doesn't. As I've said, reasonable people can differ.

Some files were not taken, where somebody would say: "You should." And if the government were to say we should, I'd say: "Well, absolutely. We'll do it." Or there are others where we could be doing them, and you're thinking: "This is not really a good use of public resources." So to whatever extent the committee can provide guidance as far as how we're doing in that regard, it would actually be quite appreciated.

M. Morris (Chair): Before we carry on here…. Determining that jurisdictional issue can be very subjective, just like police work in general is very subjective. You have to make a decision, and I don't know how any kind of statutory determination would ever change that. A statute can only go so far, and then you have to bring that human element into it.

Just sort of following up on the question that Jackie asked. I know you were hesitant to respond there. What I'm thinking: are there any changes in the way you're mandated to operate now that you'd like to see happen? I know we talked a little bit about the jurisdictional issue, but is there anything out there that you see there's a bit of a void, that we could help with? Or some changes that might be needed, from your management perspective, on how things can be done a little bit differently?

M. Morris (Chair): By all means. Would you like about a five-minute recess to discuss this?

R. Rosenthal: I think, to summarize, probably the idea of the committee being a barometer for the work that we're doing and whether it's meeting the expectations of the province would be very helpful. To me, the issue of mandate and what we should be investigating is really a decision for government and the policy-makers.

Obviously, I might have my own personal opinions of what types of investigations we should be doing and which ones we shouldn't. But I really don't think it's my place to say that. It's decisions that need to be made by the policy-makers, and then we need to carry those out. Obviously, if there are recommendations for policy expansion or reduction, then it's my job to tell you what it would take as far as resources and training or such to do it.

To me, I think the best suggestion I could give the committee is, again, you as a barometer as far as how we are doing the job specifically to the challenge of the types of files we're taking. Under the current circumstances, that would probably be the best way to go about it.

Mr. Morris, as you mentioned, one of the things is that the legislation could be very specific, eliminating all discretion, or it could be very general, giving a lot of discretion. To me, that's something that I need to turn over to you, as the committee, and to the government to make those decisions. My job is to let you know where the challenges lie, based upon the mandate and the rules that we've been given.

M. Morris (Chair): We'll just see if anybody has any last questions before we terminate it. I do have to say, from my experience in the Mounted Police for the many years that I was in, I think the creation of the IIO is something very necessary, and I think it's filling a significant void that was out there in taking that perception of bias away from the police-conducted investigations on their own.

I don't think it was government's intent to create another massive, large investigative unit. We'll end up having investigators investigating investigators investigating investigators at the end of the day. A reasonableness has to come into play there. We'll certainly be looking at all these things when we do our deliberations and come up with our final report.

S. Fraser: Thank you very much, Richard, to you and your team for being here today. I know we may have other questions come out of this, but I have just one quick follow-up on Spencer's line of questions around the death or serious injury issue — serious injury being somewhat subjective.

In your response to Spencer, you mentioned, specific-
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ally, death or serious injury as a result of police action. I don't mean to split hairs here, but what about police inaction?

R. Rosenthal: Although the legislation is not specific on that, we have interpreted it to include inaction. If we have reason to believe that police failure to provide medical attention or food — necessities of life — resulted in death or serious harm, we would take that on. Even though it's not specific in the statute, we think that it's implied.

Following up on what Jackie said, I understand that you're not in a position to talk about policy. However, my first question is: are there areas in the operation of the act that are proving challenging, apart from what you've already talked about — for example, the definition of serious harm? Are there areas that you would say are proving, operationally, to be difficult that perhaps you could talk about, which doesn't necessarily mean that you're recommending a change but just simply that you're having difficulties?

The final thing I wanted to ask about was…. One of the issues that we raised at the time that the act was being debated in the Legislature was the concern about the true independence of the office. I have a great deal of respect for the work that you and your office are doing. I think you're maintaining independence, but it is an order-in-council that can be rescinded. You report, essentially, through the ministry.

The recommendation originally had been that the reporting would be through — I think Braidwood said — the Ombudsperson. I think that was the recommendation. We talked about the possibility and others talked about the possibility of reporting to the Legislature.

I don't want to put you in a position in terms of…. Well, how about: do you feel like you are truly independent in the work that you do, considering also that there is a possibility, or not, of a second term? We do have a little experience around this table with those kinds of situations.

R. Rosenthal: I would say the government did create a letter of expectations. Obviously, there were concerns relating to making sure that even though I reported to the Deputy Attorney General, there would be independence in decision-making relating to the organization. There is a letter of expectations which really lays that out.

I would definitely say that when it comes to the decision-making — what files we take, what files I refer to Crown, under what circumstances we do the investigations — we are fully and completely independent. We are certainly not independent when it comes to budget. We have to follow government rules, procurement rules. We have to follow all those rules, but the letter of expectations lays it out fairly specifically.

Interestingly enough, I think that of all the other agencies in Canada…. We call them the IIO-SIU types of agencies. They are all order-in-council agencies reporting to either a Deputy Attorney General or Solicitor General. There is no real…. None of these positions currently are independent officers of the Legislature versus, say, the Police Complaint Commissioner.

On the issue of challenges operationally. It's very interesting, because we actually hit, really, both of them. The first one is: what files do we take?

The second one is the referral standard. Is the referral standard for referrals to Crown the appropriate standard or not? On both I give the same message, which is: reasonable minds may differ, and it's a policy decision. I would be very interested in hearing from government or the committee as to what the views are in that regard. But my job is to implement those policy decisions as opposed to make them.

S. Chandra Herbert (Deputy Chair): There will be more, but I think I'm okay for today.

D. Bing: I really appreciate your presentation and what I've heard today. I think that it really is a good, progressive sign of what's been happening.

I know that when I entered my profession 37 years ago, the College of Dental Surgeons had all dentists in it. Now we have one-third public members, and I think this public oversight gives the organization much more credibility.

I know that sometimes the public would make a complaint, and it'd be investigated, and the complaint would be rejected, and they would feel that the dentists were looking after themselves. But now that they have one-third of the public there with them, they feel that they got a fair hearing, and we don't get those kinds of complaints anymore.

I think what you're doing is sort of similar. It's providing good public relations.

D. Plecas: Yeah, I want to thank you, too, for what I thought was a great presentation. I just think it would be helpful if we could at some point explore more the two questions.

In particular, one from Spencer regarding the whole notion of what constitutes "serious" — in a nutshell, what else could you be doing? And under that, the broader umbrella of the question put forward by Jackie Tegart regarding, at the end of the day, what it is that we could do as a committee to be helpful in enabling you to do your mandate better. Is there anything at all which is hurting that?

I just echo her question, because it sounds like you might need some time to think that through. But at the end of the day, I think that's our primary goal.
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M. Morris (Chair): Yeah, and I think after we do our public hearings and whatnot, we'll have more information. Again, I see us getting together as a group later on this year before we submit our final report, because I'm sure our committee will have more questions as a result of the public input that we'd like to present to you guys.

J. Tegart: My only comment is that I would hope that we guarantee that we will have an opportunity to have further conversation. We'll come back with a much fuller perspective once we've done the public hearings. But I think today has been great. As someone who's learning, brand-new, the presentation was very clear and very understandable. I really appreciate that, and I look forward to seeing you again.

R. Rosenthal: Well, thank you for your attention. Obviously, we will be available for you at any time or any place.

M. Morris (Chair): Yes. No. We'll move adjournment, but we're also open any time that you have something. You can certainly make written submissions to the committee as well, and we'll have a look at them.

I think now we've hit the time limit here as well, so this meeting will be adjourned. Thank you very much.

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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)
	* Dr. Darryl Plecas (Abbotsford South BC Liberal)
	* Jackie Tegart (Fraser-Nicola BC Liberal)
	* denotes member present
Clerk:	Susan Sourial
Committee Staff:	Ron Wall (Manager, Committee Research Services)

Witnesses:	Barbara Kaiway (Independent Investigations Office of B.C., Ministry of Justice)
	Kellie Kilpatrick (Independent Investigations Office of B.C., Ministry of Justice)
	Eve Lenkevitch (Independent Investigations Office of B.C., Ministry of Justice)
	Richard Rosenthal (Chief Civilian Director, Independent Investigations Office of B.C., Ministry of Justice)
	Henry Waldock (Independent Investigations Office of B.C., Ministry of Justice)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO REVIEW THE INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATIONS OFFICE

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO
REVIEW THE INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATIONS OFFICE