The committee met at 9:02 a.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

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

I am thankful to be joining today’s meeting from the traditional territories of the Malahat First Nation and very grateful to work from their lands today.

I would like to welcome everyone listening and participating to this meeting.

This committee has been tasked with undertaking a broad inquiry with respect to policing and public safety in B.C. We are taking a phased approach to this work and have a number of presentations with subject-matter experts, community advocacy organizations, Indigenous communities and others scheduled over the next several weeks.

We also invite British Columbians to provide written submissions beginning Monday, March 1. We will review those submissions with a view to inviting individuals and organizations to present to the committee at a later date. Details are available on our website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/rpa. The deadline for written submissions is 5 p.m. on Friday, April 30. Further opportunities to participate will be available at a later phase of the consultation.

For these meetings, presenters have been organized into small panels. We’ll be kicking things off today with presentations from the Vancouver Aboriginal Community Pol­icing Centre Society and the B.C. Government Employees Union. Each presenter has 15 minutes for their presentation. We kindly ask that the presenters be respectful of this time limit.

Following the presentations from the panel, there will be time for questions from committee members. At that time, I ask members to raise their hands to indicate that they have a question, and we will keep a speaking list.

I also ask that everyone please put themselves on mute and wait until you are recognized before speaking.

All audio from our meetings is broadcast live on our website. A complete transcript will also be posted.

I’ll now ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves. I’ll begin with MLA Begg.

G. Begg: Good morning, everyone. I’m Garry Begg, the MLA for Surrey-Guildford.

I am joining you today from the traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples.

H. Sandhu: Good morning, everyone. I am Harwinder Sandhu.

I’m joining you from the unceded territory of the Oka­nagan Indian Nation.

My constituency is Vernon-Monashee.

D. Routley (Chair): And our Deputy Chair, Mr. Davies.

[9:05 a.m.]

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Good morning. Thanks for joining us. Great to see everybody. I’m Dan Davies.

I’m the MLA for Peace River North, the territory of the Dane-zaa.

K. Kirkpatrick: Good morning. I’m Karin Kirkpatrick. I’m the MLA for West Vancouver–Capilano.

I am here on the traditional and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples.

A. Olsen: Good morning. I’m Adam Olsen. My traditional name is SȾHENEP.

I live and work in the W̱SÁ­NEĆ territory.

I’m honoured to represent Saanich North and the Islands.

I’m happy to be here today in the territory of my rela­tives the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ.

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

I’m joining you from the Coast Salish territories, especially the Kwantlen, Kwikwetlem and Semiahmoo First Nations.

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

I’m joining you from the traditional territories of Semiahmoo.

R. Glumac: Rick Glumac, the MLA for Port Moody–​Coquitlam.

I am joining you from the traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples.

D. Routley (Chair): Thanks very much, everyone.

I’ll ask Mr. Leech from the Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing Centre Society to kick things off.

Presentations on Police Act

VANCOUVER ABORIGINAL COMMUNITY
POLICING CENTRE SOCIETY

N. Leech: K̓alhwá7alap nsnekw̓núk̓wa7. I’m Norman Leech, nsnekw̓núk̓wa7. [St̓át̓imcets was spoken.]

Good morning. My name is Norm Leech. I’m actually from T’it’q’et. Our reserve surrounds the town of Lillooet. This is the view from our home reserve, behind me, across the river.

I work at the Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing Centre. We’re located in East Vancouver, which is on the traditional territory of the Musqueam, the Squamish and the Tsleil-Waututh people.

I speak to you from the perspective of an agency that serves the urban Indigenous population of Vancouver. Some 60,000 or 70,000 people live in the Vancouver reg­ion, of Indigenous ancestry, and most of them aren’t from here. Most of them are very far from home. So the diversity of issues that we face, and they face, is vast. The cultures that they represent are at least as diverse, and probably more diverse, than Europe or Asia or Africa. There is no single Indigenous culture.

The issues that they face run the range of the worst is­sues facing all British Columbians today: homelessness, overdose deaths, violence against sex workers, violence against women, displacement. Every trauma imaginable they face on a day-to-day basis. This is on top of the, well, 200 years of intergenerational trauma that our ancestors have survived, especially in British Columbia.

It may seem like ancient history, from the perspective of the history books. But this river in the picture behind me, the Fraser River, Lillooet…. The first European there was Simon Fraser, and that was only 1808, which was barely 200 years ago. Colonization and the trauma associated with that is still pretty fresh for the Indigenous Peoples of British Columbia, and nobody has suffered the effects of colonization, in 200 years, more than the Indigenous Peoples in British Columbia.

Everything has changed from the diseases, the many, many pandemics that swept across the continents from first contact, from smallpox, chicken pox, measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, influenza, the cold, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, COVID-19. All have forced Indigenous Peoples in British Columbia…. Now, especially, the ones who have migrated to Vancouver have suffered the most. We suffer the highest rates of every one of those social health indicators.

[9:10 a.m.]

Now, probably the greatest effect of colonization has been the displacement from land. We’ve gone from managing 100 percent of all the lands on the continent within our territories, successfully for thousands of years, to 0.2 percent. That’s the national average. It’s probably lower in British Columbia, because British Columbia has the smallest reserves in the country.

That displacement has been enforced by law enforcement. We know that their job is not to write the laws. Those laws were written somewhere else. Those laws were written in Ottawa. The Criminal Code was written in Ottawa. The provincial laws are written in Victoria. They were written by someone else somewhere else, and they were not written by us or for us.

They are enforced on us by law enforcement, and that’s done under the auspices of the Police Act. No one is more policed than us. No one suffers the effect of the so-called justice system more than us. I refuse to call it a justice system any longer. We know that it was not written to provide justice to Indigenous People. It was written to advance and complete colonization, and it’s still doing that job perfectly well, as it was originally intended and designed to do.

Our big ask is, of course, because we see the largest effects, the worst effects. After having survived colonization for 200 years here in British Columbia, the people awake to find themselves displaced from their lands and looking for work, and they end up down here in Vancouver. Unfortunately, seeking friends, relatives, people with sympathetic concerns and priorities, they end up in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. You’ve probably all seen the pictures. That’s where we work.

On top of the intergenerational trauma that these peo­ple and their ancestors have survived, they survive, day in, day out, backbreaking poverty, homelessness, violence, often at the hands of law enforcement — granted, also from other citizens of the neighbourhood.

Many of them, unfortunately, in trying to mitigate the effects of their own trauma and their intergenerational trauma, self-medicate with substances. We know that probably 80 percent and probably higher of negative Indigenous interactions with law enforcement — 80 to 90 percent of those — are directly related to alcohol and drugs. Those are really a self-medication problem. These are people dealing with pain, dealing with trauma.

We know through the history of our ancestors and us that we can survive just about anything, but we also know, through our work at the community policing centre, working directly on the front lines with people on the street, that we can heal just about anything as well. Given re­sources, given time, given access, given a safe work environment free of virus, we can offer people a path to healing, to become strong, healthy human beings, to find, through connection to culture, a community, family, spirituality that will enable them to heal and become who they’re supposed to be rather than just survivors.

Granted, they are amazing survivors. Nobody has survived more, ancestrally or on a day-to-day basis. Many of the people we work with have died many, many times already and, through the medicine of naloxone, have been revived many, many times. Unfortunately, COVID has driven people back to isolation, which meant they’re using alone again, and those rates of death have gone up again, back to historically high levels, unfortunately. We’re back to five a day.

[9:15 a.m.]

Again, the big ask is not to nibble around the edges of the Police Act. The Police Act was not ever designed to provide justice for Indigenous Peoples. In fact, it was designed…. It was created…. Police law enforcement was created in Canada to police us, to police the frontier, to police impediments to colonization, which is us. We were here for 15,000 years without any of these laws. We managed these territories fantastically well, so much so that they were better than new when explorers arrived. We were here for thousands of years. The laws came later.

The laws were written to conflict with us, not the other way around. We know that. I hope that I can convince you of that, because maybe, if we had a chance to write the laws instead of having them imposed on us, they would achieve different results. But we know that we don’t write those laws. You write those laws. So we ask you to either include us or write them from our perspective, because this is not justice, as far as we can see. [ St̓át̓imcets was spoken] are my relations.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Leech.

I will now ask Mr. Purdy from the B.C. Government Employees Union to join.

BCGEU

D. Purdy: Good morning, everyone. My name is Dean Purdy, and I am a BCGEU vice-president and chair of the corrections and sheriff services component with the BCGEU.

I come to you from the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ, Songhees and Coast Salish peoples.

I’ll jump right in.

The B.C. Government and Service Employees Union, the BCGEU, is a union that represents more than 80,000 workers in 550 BCGEU bargaining units across B.C. The BCGEU is pleased to have been invited to make this presentation to the Special Committee on Reforming the Pol­ice Act. As vice-president of the BCGEU with component 1, corrections and sheriff services, I will be speaking on recent developments that adversely affect the right of special provincial constables, SPCs, to natural, fair justice and a fair hearing when they are faced with discipline under the Police Act.

SPCs are a distinct category of constable under the Pol­ice Act. They’re often appointed for special roles and are treated differently than municipal constables, special constables under the Police Act.

For example, there are approximately 500 SPCs appointed throughout the public service, almost all of whom are represented by the BCGEU, including two intelligence analysts in the gaming policy and enforcement branch; 28 inspectors and investigators in the liquor and cannabis regulations branch; three senior inspectors in the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources; 131 conservation officers and related positions; nine tax fraud investigators in the Ministry of Finance; 82 natural resource officers in the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development; three special investigators in the Ministry of Health; 54 positions in the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General; 26 positions in the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction and Ministry of Children and Family Development; and 187 court sheriffs and related positions.

Until recently SPCs have always challenged employer discipline using the comprehensive grievance and arbitration process outlined in our collective agreement between the BCGEU and the province. However, in a recent decision, Casavant v. British Columbia (Labour Relations Board) — and I provided this ahead of time, in appendix 1 — the British Columbia Court of Appeal effectively ruled that arbitrators lack jurisdiction over such grievances. The court ruled that complaints, even internal complaints leading to discipline and discharge, must be addressed under the Police Act and applicable regulations. The problem is that there is a comprehensive scheme for other constables to challenge complaints leading to discipline.

[9:20 a.m.]

There is no such protection given to SPCs. While SPCs are appointed under section 9 of the Police Act, the majority of the act, including the portions dealing with misconduct and discipline, does not apply to them.

The relevant provisions of the act are set out in appendix 2. For example, part 11, division 3 of the Police Act sets out a detailed process for dealing with complaints of alleged misconduct, including rules, time limits and procedural safeguards at all stages of the process — the filing of the complaint, the investigation, the disciplinary hearing and the appeal from the results of that hearing. However, these provisions do not apply to special provincial constables.

Under part 2, division 1, section 7 of the Police Act…. Part 2 process only applies to members. “Member” is defined as a “municipal constable, deputy chief constable or chief constable of a municipal police department.” SPCs are not included in the definition and are not subject to part 2. Instead of the detailed process provided under part 2 of the Police Act, the only regulation that covers the discipline and dismissal of SPCs is the extremely bare-bones Special Provincial Constable Complaint Procedure Regulation.

Unlike part 2 of the Police Act or the grievance arbitration process in the collective agreement, the regulation only provides the following recourse to SPCs seeking to challenge discipline. The SPC’s supervisor essentially re­ceives the complaint and has total discretion to informally resolve the complaint, investigate and/or impose discipline, including termination of employment. There’s no hearing at all required under the regulation and, certainly, no right to disclosure, calling evidence or making argument. The SPC is completely at the mercy of their supervisor. If they disagree, their only option is to undertake, on their own, a lengthy and expensive judicial review in court.

In such judicial reviews, the court typically defers to the decision-maker under the review — in this case, a supervisor acting with almost unfettered discretion. As you can see, the court’s appeal decision effectively upended long-established labour relations practice between the BCGEU and the province of resolving all disciplinary disputes for SPCs under the terms of the collective agreement between us.

In doing so, the decision left BCGEU members with SPC status in an impossible position, no longer covered by the robust disciplinary process outlined in the collective agreement and subject, instead, to a Police Act regulation that lacks meaningful and natural justice.

After a thorough assessment of options, the BCGEU believes the situation could be resolved by amending the special provincial constable regulation to clarify that the normal labour relations dispute resolutions process applies to discipline under that regulation. The BCGEU respectfully submits that the best opinion for all stakeholders is to return to the decades-long practice of having SPC complaints dealt with under the grievance arbitration process and the applicable collective agreement.

To that end, we propose an amendment to section 8 of the special provincial constable regulation by adding the language to the effect that where a respondent is a member of a bargaining unit, established under the B.C. Labour Relations Code or Public Service Labour Relations Act, any challenge to the decision of the supervisor to impose a disciplinary or corrective measure must be brought by a member’s union under the applicable collective agreement.

The BCGEU-proposed language for the amendment is set out in appendix 3, and I provided that appendix beforehand. It is the BCGEU’s view that this amendment is in the best interest of the province and SPCs.

Thank you for your time and commitment.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much. That brings us to the questions portion of this panel.

Members, please raise your hands if you have questions.

[9:25 a.m.]

G. Begg: A question for Norm. First of all, thank you for an eloquent presentation. I was very touched by most of what you had to say.

This committee is charged with seeking input to consider that can help us to reform some of the provisions of the B.C. Police Act. I know that you understand that. I wonder if there are some specific things that come to mind right away for you, that you haven’t mentioned, that you think clearly should be in the Police Act or that are in the Police Act and have to be modified or changed or removed or whatever.

N. Leech: Thank you, Mr. Begg. Maybe, specifically…. We get complaints about police, and I have a really hard time convincing people to complete that process or even fully enter that process. In fact, I have a hard time actually feeling good about trying to talk them into entering that process.

If there was a separate, maybe assisted, process for Indigenous people to complete and enter the complaints process that was more respectful and, I guess, reflective of the horrible, horrible history that Indigenous people have with law enforcement in this country and in this province, that might help to get better feedback as to what is actually needed for issues that they face in the system, and maybe some solutions to those challenges.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you.

MLA Olsen.

A. Olsen: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good to see you back in the chair today.

Thank you, Mr. Leech, for your presentation. HÍSW̱ḴE SIÁM. Very eloquently spoken, as Mr. Begg suggested.

My question is for Mr. Purdy. Are you suggesting, then, in your recommendations here that the only oversight provided by special constables be not public oversight but rather oversight through the union collective bargaining process? Is that what your recommendation is to us today?

D. Purdy: Yes, that’s correct. Up until this decision, that was the process for many years.

I’ve worked for 33 years in government. I’m a supervisor at the maximum-security Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre, and I can tell you that I represent sheriffs who fall under that category, and 187 of the ones that are deemed special provincial constables. Prior to that decision, we simply represented them at BCGEU as shop stewards and as staff of the BCGEU [audio interrupted.] That’s changed, and we want to revert back.

A. Olsen: Are special constables office holders?

D. Purdy: Not that I’m aware of.

A. Olsen: Under what you’re suggesting…. The courts, I think, disagreed with this, but under what you’re representing today…. Essentially, what you’re saying is that we give people the power of a special constable, and the only oversight of that would be internally within the collective agreement — that there would be no opportunity for public oversight, as the court suggested is appropriate.

D. Purdy: That’s what I believe would be the process. You see that under the Police Act, it puts provincial constables or police officers in the departments…. They have another right in that process to challenge through their internal process — to challenge it and apply for representation. We wouldn’t have that, so we want it to revert back to the collective agreement.

Now, that being said, there may still be some sort of oversight, as a special provincial constable, from that of­fice. I’m not too sure on that. It’s something I would have seek advice from our lawyers on.

A. Olsen: Do special constables swear an oath?

D. Purdy: Yes, they do.

A. Olsen: If they’re not holding an office, why would they swear an oath? Who is that oath to? Is it to the union, or is it to uphold the principles under the Police Act?

[9:30 a.m.]

D. Purdy: They’re already deemed peace officers as em­ployees of the British Columbia province, right? Then the 187 sheriffs and the other members in our union [audio interrupted] special provincial constables, just over 500 of them, are all peace officers. They are trained and have the training to become special provincial constables and are sworn in as such.

I mean, the big issue here for us is simply not having our members hung out to dry when they’re faced with discipline, if it’s use of force or what have you. We still want the representation under the collective agreement when it [audio interrupted].

A. Olsen: Would you be opposed to, then, also having the ability in the Police Act for there to be more oversight than just the disciplinary processes through the collective bargaining agreement? Or are you suggesting that the collective bargaining agreement should be the only process under which disciplinary processes can occur?

D. Purdy: I would have to get back to you on that. I know we do have until the end of April, I think. I forget what the exact date was. But I will get back to you on that.

A. Olsen: How do you suggest that work, though? I mean, we have a special constable who’s swearing an oath to uphold the Police Act. How do you see that working and the public having any confidence in this if the only process is an internal one through a union collective agreement and not that…?

You used the words “hung out to dry.” I think what the public is looking for is accountability and transparency. Under that collective agreement, I don’t see how there’s any ability for there to be public accountability and transparency for someone who has sworn a public oath to uphold certain laws in certain parts of the jurisdiction that they hold. Can you explain how that works?

D. Purdy: Yeah. Similarly, in my presentation, I mentioned the fact that members of the police have another mechanism where they can seek representation. It’s not solely through the SPC process, the process that’s currently in place. They have a dual process in place.

Currently, under the Casavant decision, we would only have what’s now in place and nothing through our collective agreement. We simply want that process through our collective agreement for them to be represented. If it’s a dual process like the police, then that may be the case.

A. Olsen: Thank you.

R. Singh: Thank you to the presenters.

I just want to make a comment for Mr. Leech. What you have said, we have been hearing from a number of other Indigenous stakeholders. I just want to let you know that we, as a committee, hear you. We are here to make the changes.

I know trust is broken. The effects of colonization and what the Indigenous communities are feeling today we have heard a number of times. We completely understand that.

Just one question for you, and I always say it. I do not want to simplify it. I know there’s a historical context. There’s historical mistrust. What would you like this committee to do?

N. Leech: Well, in our work, we get asked a lot: “What does reconciliation mean to you? What does it look like?” So we’ve talked about it a lot. We’ve explored it a lot, and we’ve kind of abandoned reconciliation. We talk about decolonization, actually.

As I have said many, many times, we lived successfully here for 15,000 years. We know exactly how to live in these territories. It was better than new when anyone else new arrived. If anyone wants to learn how to live in our territories, we would be glad to teach them that.

[9:35 a.m.]

For us, decolonization would be: “Well, let’s pretend ev­eryone just arrived today.” If you wanted to learn how to live in these territories, then ask the experts, which is us, rather than imposing some rules and laws that were written by someone else far away from here — imposing them here and expecting them to work.

We would be thrilled to have that conversation. From our track record, like we say, it was better than new. The last 500 years, we think, have been a disaster. Right? The salmon. I used to catch salmon by the hundreds out of this river. We have not been able to fish for five years in the Fraser River because they’re this close to extinction. The buffalo herds are gone. The old-growth forests are gone. Under our management, they were world-class. They were probably the eighth wonder of the world.

There are many aspects of colonization. We talk about it a lot with our partner agencies — about what the differen­ces are and why that other way doesn’t make sense to us. The ways that we developed, we think, work better, because they maintain the balance better.

We just want to be involved in the conversation.

R. Singh: We heard from some community groups in the last week. There has been what you have been saying — some more involvement, especially where the policing is concerned. Like, when they are hiring police officers, the Indigenous communities should have more say in this. What do you have to say on that?

N. Leech: Well, we get included in Police Academy at the Justice Institute. We get to deliver a presentation on the history of colonization, the effects of that and why the relationship was so bad. We get three hours — three hours out of their 800 — to adjust their approach, their understanding, their relationship with Indigenous People. We would love more, but we know that that three hours has to come from somewhere. Right? Where does it come from? Target practice? Self-defence? Law? Where does it come from?

We also know there’s a context. The VPD — that’s who we work with — are probably the most progressive and the most well trained and have adopted the most changes out of all the police forces in the country. Then there’s a spectrum that runs all the way across municipal forces, and then the RCMP. We know the RCMP has entirely different sets of standards and training, but they’re the ones who have the most contact with Indigenous People across this country.

Again, to Indigenous People, though, all the uniforms look the same. The reaction and the trigger that comes from seeing those uniforms is the same. It doesn’t matter. And it’s historic. That’s who came to enforce the residential school laws — those men in uniforms. That trigger is intergenerational. That’s a 200-year-old trigger that happens when those uniforms show up.

So yes, if we could have a say, and also in the training and the standards, because we’re the ones who…. Unfortunately, when the uniforms show up, the reaction from Indigenous People is this fear, suspicion, mistrust and hatred, because they don’t expect them to come and help — hardly ever.

R. Singh: Thank you. Just one last question, following up on this. You said that they get three hours in the Justice Institute to learn about the history….

N. Leech: Well, from us.

R. Singh: Yeah, from the Indigenous perspective. Do you think there should be more? Like, when they are coming to be trained, they should have a better understanding. Should there be another course — a requirement for that?

N. Leech: Well, if everyone got it in elementary school and high school, they wouldn’t need it. They would probably already have it. That’s often what we hear. Some of them who have taken some college courses have learned a little bit by the time we get to present to them. But there’s very little. And that’s a long, slow process as well.

[9:40 a.m.]

I have asked for…. If I could get a full day with them, we think that we could make a much bigger difference. If I could get a week with them, we think we could make a huge difference. But, again, it’s got to come from somewhere — those hours.

R. Singh: Just for my information, how long is this course, the full course, for the police officers? Do you know that?

N. Leech: It’s about a year. It’s 800 hours of instruction at the Justice Institute, the Police Academy.

R. Singh: Right now it’s just three hours for that understanding of Indigenous relations.

N. Leech: We do a presentation to them about the historic relationship with Indigenous Peoples, with a focus on residential schools.

R. Singh: Thank you so much. I really appreciate that.

K. Kirkpatrick: Mr. Leech, I just want to thank you. I don’t have questions for you. I just want to thank you.

Every day we learn more. We’ve had a number of presentations from First Nations groups, most recently yesterday. Some of the words that you used in describing the historical context resonated even more with me today than other things that I have heard. So I just would like to thank you and acknowledge that.

I do have a question, but the question is for Mr. Purdy. I want to clarify this. Actually, MLA Olsen asked all of my questions I was going to ask, other than…. This is not a public process, then. This is an internal process, a grievance arbitration. If the public has a complaint to bring forward, I don’t understand how the public can bring forward a complaint to be resolved within that closed collective agreement arbitration.

The other piece of that is: how transparent is the outcome of that? Does that become a public record that peo­ple can see?

D. Purdy: The arbitrations, once they’re written up by the arbitrator, become public. They become a public document.

That process, if we stick with what municipal police have in place right now, both mechanisms to deal with the complaint process…. Our argument would be that the primary process would be the collective agreement. If it, in fact, stays with both processes running concurrently, then that would maybe be the way out, I guess.

I can’t remember the first part of your question.

K. Kirkpatrick: The question was on that interface be­tween the public, the collective agreement and the arbitration. Your collective agreement would have to be amended to be able to allow the public to have input into that process or to bring a complaint forward.

D. Purdy: Possibly. I think if a member of the public lodges a complaint against one of our members, who is a government worker, then that process would still start. The excluded manager would start that process, start an investigation.

It’s no different than if they violate part of the code of conduct for public service employees. That process is started, albeit they have union representation. It would be the same if someone lodged a complaint from the public to the management, and then that investigation process would start.

Often now many of the management divisions within government are seeking outside counsel to start that process. There’s still union representation throughout that process.

K. Kirkpatrick: So you would have union representation regardless, if this was a more public process, going through the commission. You would still have the protection of the union, in that they would be representing you in anything that was external to that arbitration.

I don’t know if that’s a comment or a question.

[9:45 a.m.]

D. Purdy: Yes, we would. I mean, we have, over many, many years, fought really hard to negotiate language into our collective agreement to protect workers’ rights. We’re not going to arbitrarily give those up over one decision.

Right now our members are sitting out to dry. They’re at the whim of a supervisor who can make a decision, and there’s no recourse. There’s no appeal, because it doesn’t fall under our collective agreement.

K. Kirkpatrick: Okay. I still have some challenges in getting my head around all of that.

I appreciate your time, Mr. Purdy. Thank you very much.

D. Purdy: Thank you.

T. Halford: Thank you to both presenters.

Norm, specifically to you. We had this conversation, actually, yesterday — I think it was either yesterday or the day before; they’re kind of running together — in terms of making sure, in how we integrate….

Such an important awareness of what you are talking about, whether it’s the Justice Institute or other training programs. Three hours is clearly, in my mind, not enough. I do think that that’s something that’s kind of essential to where we want to go and to help raise not awareness but, also, engagement for some of the things that you talked about today.

Not only that. When you look at current officers, whether police, corrections or others…. I’m assuming maybe a majority of them, particularly ones that are in the later stages of their careers, probably have not had any of that training or any of the courses that you’ve talked about today. I just want to get your thoughts on that.

Mr. Purdy, just a comment on your presentation. To in­tegrate that training…. I understand the large representation you have. I would find it also essential that your members get that training, whether they’re coming in or whether they’re existing members. I just wanted your comments on if that’s something that you guys would support or even language that you would support in your collective bargaining agreement.

D. Purdy: Do you mean…? What are you talking about when you say training?

T. Halford: Well, I’m talking about, whether it’s cultural awareness…. I actually don’t like the word “training.” I think that there’s probably a better term for it. I don’t want to cheapen some of the important work that our Indigenous leaders do.

In terms of awareness, things like that, of Indigenous is­sues, is that something that you guys have championed? Is it something that you guys have mandated? Or is it something that you’re prepared to do?

D. Purdy: Oh, absolutely. We would be 100 percent open to something like that, to include in the training. Sheriffs go through the JI, just like police do. It’s not as long of a process. Our B.C. Corrections are trained right on site.

I am not sure if there currently is a segment or if part of the training is set aside for any Indigenous awareness training at this point, but we would definitely be open to that.

T. Halford: Thank you.

N. Leech: To clarify, we deliver the same training to the Sheriff Academy, as well, at the Justice Institute. We are pur­suing all correctional officers, to include that training for them as well. Actually, all first responders, we think, could use it, simply because there’s such a…. We’re over­represented in those contact areas.

T. Halford: How’s that working out so far, Norm?

N. Leech: We’ve never got an increase since I’ve been here, in five years. It’s three hours with the Sheriff Aca­demy and three hours with the Police Academy. That’s all I have.

T. Halford: It sounds to me that Dean is going to champion for you now.

I appreciate that, Dean.

Maybe we’ve made a link here today where Dean will advocate for this. I appreciate that commitment.

D. Purdy: Yeah. I just want to comment that BCGEU, our union as a whole, has done a tremendous amount of work with Indigenous Peoples in so many different areas. We are advocates.

T. Halford: I don’t want to make a joke about that. I’m really serious about that. I think it’s something that we need to follow up on.

[9:50 a.m.]

I’ve heard it time and time again. It’s something that I need to educate myself on and my kids on, not just on policing or anything but in terms of Indigenous…. I live just near the Semiahmoo Nation. My kids go to school with a lot of their members.

It’s something that I’m pretty serious about. I do hope we really made that connection today, and I look forward to following up with you both.

D. Purdy: Thank you.

Just one comment on that. Norm, another piece or ano­ther angle for you guys might be to look at the universities and the criminology courses. Currently I give a presentation on the corrections and sheriffs segment at a criminology department up at SFU. I’m usually called in once a year, but that might be something that you guys target, as well, because they’re the ones who are going to be out and working in those fields, right?

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you.

Concrete results already. Way to go, Trevor.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, presenters. A really, really good presentation.

Mr. Leech, I just highly appreciate how well you des­cribed. It was emotional and powerful. As Karin said, we learn something more and new every day. I mentioned previously that I worked in human rights and equity and with Indigenous leadership groups and my friends. I thought I was well-versed when it comes to history and that, over the years, I’d learned enough. But every time, I’m learning more.

What opened my eyes recently was I was helping my 14-​year-old daughter to do an assignment on defunding the police and then looking at all those histories. I was jolted to know what the purpose was, why it was created — again, despite having all the cultural competency training, working side by side, being a big ally over the years, when you think you know quite a bit.

There’s no question that this three-hour presentation is not even sufficient. Yes, we do need to expand these hours, no doubt about it. As you have mentioned, if kids learned that in schools, as we’re learning all this as adults, that would really help. That will go a long way, because kids are like wax and they get molded the way you want, in a good way, positively. You teach that history, not the twisted history that a lot of us learned over the years. Now, finally, they’re learning more, and they’re open-minded. That’s how we can bring that change in society.

I still strongly believe…. We heard from many presenters this week that proper screening has to be done. I come from the health care sector. Unfortunately — I won’t say it was large-scale — I witnessed racism and people saying some really disturbing things. I interrupted: “This is not right.” Despite having cultural competency training…. Sometimes people do these courses just for the sake of it, because it’s mandatory. That’s why I strongly believe that proper screening is a must, especially when it comes to police and such departments and, I would say, in every sector. That’s more like a comment.

Mr. Purdy, I have a question. You talked about the shift and having the contract bargaining. Was there a reason when that change happened? Was there a given reason or discussion why that change happened? I know the discussion…. I have similar questions as other committee members about what will happen if we make those changes. Can you please tell me that?

D. Purdy: Yeah. I’m not sure why the change happened. It was a court decision, and it’s something that happened. We essentially lost that ability to represent our members when they were faced with a disciplinary situation. So we want to bring that back.

H. Sandhu: I see. I was just curious. I was curious if there was a complaint or concern brought forward and what happened. So thank you.

[9:55 a.m.]

D. Purdy: There has been from our members to the union. That’s why we’ve been advocating on their behalf to make this change.

H. Sandhu: Thank you.

D. Purdy: You’re welcome.

A. Olsen: The changes, I think, that are being talked about here, particularly when it comes to B.C. conservation or when the Casavant case comes up — it’s come up now a couple of times in this committee — are largely due to the fact that this has been ongoing in the courts, all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, actually, from my understanding. It is really hard to unpack. It is complex.

As Mr. Purdy has pointed out, there are collective bargaining issues. There are also issues with the B.C. conservation service, who we’re going to hear present later today. So we’ve heard the union presentation, BCGEU’s presentation. We’re going to hear a presentation from the B.C. conservation service later today, which is another group that falls under the special constables act. I really strongly hope that this committee also hears from Casavant in this, because it is a complex situation. As Mr. Purdy has pointed out, the courts have ruled on this.

It is important, if we are going to be making recommen­dations to amend the Police Act, which all of this falls under, and we are going to maintain transparency and ac­countability within these, that we also hear and give, I think, a similar opportunity for Mr. Casavant to present. Otherwise, I don’t know how we are going to be able to adjudicate the information that we’re hearing, especially when Casavant continues to be brought up in the context of this committee.

I just wanted to make that comment. I really hope this committee will turn its mind to inviting Mr. Casavant to come and provide that part of the story as well. Thank you.

G. Begg: Norm, in the interest of clarity, I want to sort of reconfirm what you said, which was that the Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing Centre Society has a three-hour session with police members at the Police Aca­demy. Are you aware of other cross-cultural training that takes place at the Justice Institute?

N. Leech: Yeah. They get, I think, coursework on Indigenous law, probably the history too. It is not delivered by Indigenous people, and it does not reflect the personal experience with police. That’s the feedback that we get from the classes that we present to — that this is the first time they’ve heard it directly or have had that close contact with the stories or the effects, the impacts, of colonization and intergenerational trauma that I offer them.

I have never seen the full curriculum that they receive. I do understand that they get some other training in Indigenous law and history in their regular coursework. I also know that it’s jam-packed. It’s very intensive.

G. Begg: Thank you.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you all. I don’t see any more hands up, at this point. Thank you to our presenters. It was very enlightening, and we have a very broadened, huge task in front of us if we are going to make significant and meaningful change that results in more positive outcomes for everyone. That’s what we hope, and you’ve helped us do that.

We also hope, as we move forward, if members have questions or would like to further discuss some of these issues, that you might be willing to either participate or be contacted by the committee. We’d just like, as a committee as a whole, to thank you for your contribution to this important work at this time.

With that, I think we’re into a recess until our next presenters arrive at 10:30. If members could return a few minutes before 10:30, I’d much appreciate it. Until then, we’re in recess. Thank you.

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

[D. Routley in the chair.]

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

I am thankful to be chairing today’s meeting from the traditional territories of the Malahat First Nation.

This portion of our meeting is set up as a panel. Each of our presenters who are joining us will have 15 minutes to make a presentation, and then there will be time for questions.

In the beginning of the meeting, I pull together everybody to introduce themselves. I will do that right now. The Deputy Chair is Dan Davies, MLA. The other members are MLA Rachna Singh, MLA Rick Glumac, MLA Adam Olsen, MLA Harwinder Sandhu, MLA Garry Begg, MLA Karin Kirkpatrick and MLA Trevor Halford.

We welcome our guests. Our guests at this portion of our meeting are from E-Comm — Oliver Grüter-Andrew, the president and CEO; and conservation officer service, represented by Doug Forsdick, chief conservation officer, and Dave Airey, deputy chief conservation officer.

I’ll hand it over first to Mr. Grüter-Andrew for his presentation.

E-COMM

O. Grüter-Andrew: Thank you very much. Good morning. I’m Oliver Grüter-Andrew, president and chief executive officer of E-Comm 911.

I am happy to be able to speak to you today from my home in Vancouver, on the beautiful traditional lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh people.

I will start with introducing E-Comm, what we do and how we do it with respect to police work in British Columbia.

We are the major answer point for 911 calls made by British Columbians, answering 99 percent of such calls made annually, which, in 2020, amounted to nearly two million calls made. Of those, 65 percent are downstream to police for the attention of one of over 150 police departments or RCMP detachments across the province.

E-Comm itself receives the downstream calls for 33 of the larger departments and detachments in the Lower Mainland and on south Vancouver Island. That amounts to about 650,000 police emergency calls answered by us annually, and that’s roughly 50 percent of the total of police emergency calls made in the province every year.

[10:40 a.m.]

In addition, we also answer some 700,000 non-emergency calls for all of those 33 police agencies, which are made to the ten-digit numbers directly, and then we pick those up. The map that you see on the page “Who is E-Comm?” on my slide deck gives you an idea of where those cities are located and which they are.

I’m going to say that I am personally greatly appreciative of the community work our police officers are committed to every day. They balance a very difficult commitment to the safety of all our citizens of all backgrounds, mental health and physical health, languages, cultures and creeds. I personally cannot imagine a more difficult job.

Just to round off our contribution to police work, it is worth mentioning that E-Comm also provides the Lower Mainland radio system that’s used by all police, fire and ambulance workers in the Lower Mainland. That’s over 10,000 radios in daily use.

Now, if you follow me to the next slide, please, I’d like to spend a few minutes talking about how this actually works. It’s relevant to the subsequent part of the conversation. There are two ways to reach police, as I mentioned. One is to dial 911, in the case of an immediate emergency. Then the other is the ten-digit number. If a 911 call is for police, then the 911 call-taker passes that call to a police call-taker. Those are two different people.

The police call-taker records information from the cal­ler in the computer-aided dispatch system. That’s for both emergency and non-emergency calls. The police call-taker takes information to describe the subject of the complaint and the caller’s description of the appearance, gender, age, skin colour, ethnicity, height, weight, clothing, etc. Anything that can help the police officer to identify the subject. It’s all observational information, and it’s not subsequently verified for accuracy. It’s very transactional information, in the moment.

The dispatcher shares that information with officers over the radio, and the officers can also see that information in the computer-aided dispatch screen in their cars. The information moves between the call-taker and the dispatcher purely through the computer-aided dispatch system. Only in very few, exceptional circumstances would the dispatcher talk to the call-taker, even though they don’t sit far from each other. That’s what the diagram shows you between the green E-Comm figure and the blue E-Comm figure. It’s important to understand how that information actually flows.

Now, the principle of all of this — in terms of the training for E-Comm, the policies, the methods that we use — is to understand this is all rooted in a 40-year-old concept of the system. We are designed in our work as a passive information-capture service. At the 911 level, we have very limited triaging powers. Only if the caller does not know which emergency service to need to ask for do we even ask any questions. As you probably know, our question is: “Do you need police, fire or ambulance, and for which city?” If the caller said, “I need police for Saanich,” we don’t ask questions. We just put them through.

Once a call is at the police level, we rarely do a cross-transfer back to fire or ambulance. We may dial in a secondary service, but even that is not very common. Once the call is with us for a given police agency, let’s say Saanich PD, we then act entirely within the policies defined by that agency. It’s those policies that determine our actions at that point. That means what questions we ask, what dispatch decisions we make and what documentation we take.

We don’t have a mandate or training to attempt to re­solve a situation — or very limited training to even attempt to de-escalate a situation. Most of that is left to the in­stincts of the call-taker. We don’t have formal specialist training — say, for a suicidal caller or a mental health breakdown — and the data that we take is only accessible to the officer of that specific agency in whose jurisdiction the incident occurs. The data belongs entirely to that agency; it does not belong to E-Comm.

Our privacy protocols mean that only those operators at E-Comm that worked on the file have access to it — and only during the course of working on the file, not even subsequently. Any further use of that data is entirely at the discretion of the agency. E-Comm does not play any further role in it.

[10:45 a.m.]

With that background on who we are and how we work, I’d now like to speak to two opportunities that we have identified on how the system could be improved for the benefit of all in the context of the special committee’s mandate.

First, we see the possibility of adding new, specialized emergency responder services to 911, such as a mental health crisis response or a social service need response, new responder resources quickly offered remotely to the whole province as well as on site in certain high-need communities.

E-Comm would need to step up the sophistication of its option triaging at the 911 answer point. Instead of simply saying, “Do you need police, fire or ambulance, and for which city?” it would need to be: “Do you need police, fire, ambulance, mental health supports, social services?” We would need to triage with much more sophisticated questions to understand the need. Redirection of those calls could also occur at the second stage — for example, by the police call-taker, who, through their questioning, identifies a certain type of crisis that would benefit from a non-police-led response.

Jurisdictions with comparable sociopolitical contexts to B.C., such as New Zealand, have been gathering experience with these types of solutions for a number of years. In fact, this committee heard earlier in the week from Dr. Craig Norris about the CAHOOTS model in Oregon, which is somewhat similar. This all has the potential to restore 911 as a trusted resource for help amongst vulnerable population segments, where some of that trust has been lost over the years, and could introduce a genuinely new, differently helpful model for communities in need.

The second opportunity I’d like to describe sees emergency communication centres like E-Comm play a stron­ger role in resolving routine calls for service to police, such that police officers’ time is freed up for more serious incidents. In our busiest cities today, some low-priority calls can take hours or even days to be attended by officers and result mostly in the taking of a statement by the officer. Evolving the ability of communication centres to resolve basic calls for police service will free up police officers to focus on more serious crime and crime prevention and to develop their skills interacting with vulnerable and Indigenous people.

This will also allow us to introduce new communication modalities enabled by next-generation 911 in the coming years in ways that are carefully considered, targeted and consistent. This can help police communications feel less intimidating for some members of the public and be more effective.

The same technologies will allow the introduction of cul­turally specialized responder services to become available remotely across the whole province through the 911 network — for example, an Indigenous public safety answer point that offers culturally safe interventions for certain types of calls.

These are two opportunities that we wanted to sketch out here for consideration. Obviously, both would require a lot more thinking and due diligence to be developed.

Now, I also want to outline some of the obstacles that stand fundamentally in the way today from moving us in those directions. The 911 authority for policies and service standards at that first level of taking the emergency call today sits with the 27 regional districts in British Columbia. The authority for police call-taking, policies and standards technically sits with a great many municipalities and agencies individually throughout the province, altho­ugh the RCMP does handle this for many of the Interior and northern municipalities.

For example, I mentioned that E-Comm takes policy and practice instructions from every one of its 33 police partners and has widely varying instructions on how to respond for some types of incidents. So the same type of incident would have different sets of protocols for us in Vancouver, in Delta or in Oak Bay.

This makes the introduction of provincially consistent new services, aiming at reducing inequities, for example, very difficult. Basically, we would need up to 27 agreements to change 911 procedures and achieve gradual evolution there, and changes to process to resolve calls for police service currently must be individually negotiated up to 33 times for E-Comm alone. Even then, that doesn’t take account of Surrey, Coquitlam, North Vancouver, Kelowna, Prince George, who are outside E-Comm’s delivery service.

[10:50 a.m.]

A new responder agency such as for mental health em­ergencies would likely find it very difficult to fit into that world and be called on consistently and with standard information passed to them to enact their services. The pub­lic, particularly vulnerable members of the public, would not find the consistent treatment easily and therefore build the trust that would be needed for a service of that specialty nature to become effective. Realizing the benefits of opportunities in the way that we’re describing and any investments that would need to be made to launch them in the province in the current model would take much longer and be much more at risk than is sensible or necessary.

With these obstacles in mind, I’d like to come to my final slide and present two recommendations. The first rec­ommendation is to move the authority for 911 policy and service standards from the regional districts to the province. This would put B.C. in line with most other provinces in Canada, and it will allow B.C. to establish and devolve one set of rules and practices for 911 answer protocols and downstreaming. Plus, it will ensure consistency as emerging technologies and new responder services provide additional options to assist members of the public.

Two, move authority for police call–taking and dispatch work from the municipalities to the province and support a single, provincially integrated police dispatch service. This will allow B.C. to harmonize police emergency communication protocols consistently across the province with respect to best practices for Indigenous, racialized and other vulnerable populations. It will also further allow consistent integration of any new responder services with police dispatch practices anywhere in the province. Innovations such as NG911 will become less risky and costly to implement for the benefit of everyone.

Such an undertaking will take commitment, time and collaboration. It’s about listening to communities, Indigenous peoples, minorities and vulnerable populations to create equitable emergency services that work for everyone.

Thank you for listening.

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

We will move to our second presentation from the conservation officer service — Mr. Doug Forsdick and Mr. Dave Airey.

CONSERVATION OFFICER SERVICE

D. Forsdick: Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to be part of this important and meaningful discussion. As we all know, sharing knowledge and experience can only benefit this process.

I’m going to start with a little bit of history of the conservation officer service. What is known today as the B.C. conservation officer service actually began in 1905, some 116 years ago. During the early days, policy was minimal, and training was virtually nonexistent. With no budget and mostly volunteer staff, it was not unusual for new wardens to be given a copy of the game laws and a badge and sent on their way.

In 1918, the Game Act was amended, which effectively dissolved the Game Department and gave the provincial police sole responsibility for enforcing the game protection laws. The situation wasn’t ideal, as regular police work always took precedence over the natural resource law enforcement, which often suffered. To address those concerns, the Game Act was again amended in 1929, creating the Game Commission, which would appoint game wardens as necessary.

I’ll take us ahead to 2002, when the conservation officer service was formally established under the Environment Management Act. Currently, the COS is the law enforcement arm of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy. COs enforce a wide range of provincial and federal legislation aimed at protecting the environment, human health and safety, and Crown resources and revenue. At this time, we enforce about 35 pieces of legislation.

The COS also provides a wide range of enforcement for ministries other than Environment and Climate Change Strategy as well. We currently have 166 sworn officers who hold special provincial constable status. Our officers are located in 45 communities throughout the province and are often seen as the face of government in many of the rural areas. The conservation officer service shares a re­cruit academy with all of the western provinces, where our officers are trained for four months.

[10:55 a.m.]

Our agency comprises three primary work units. The first is the provincial operations branch. These are our front-line conservation officers in uniform, largely the folks you see in the public spotlight. We also have a provincial investigations branch. This branch includes the aquatic invasive species inspectors. We have an undercover unit and a general investigation section within that branch. Then we have a program support section which includes our administrative and civilian staff.

I just want to elaborate a little bit on the role of the general investigation section. It’s made up of plainclothes officers that have specialized training in major and complex investigations. The unit provides investigative assistance to our front-line staff, and they target interprovincial, international, poaching, prolific offenders. The conduct complex investigations with the ability to use specialized covert investigative techniques. These can include undercover operations, surveillance, executed tracking warrants, general warrants and the interception of private communication.

The conservation officer service of today has evolved into a natural resource law enforcement agency that is a leader nationally, relating to mandate, training, equipment and investigative skills. Conservation officers are uniform­ed, armed law enforcement officers that drive marked patrol vehicles and maintain their special provincial constable status.

Officers police a vast landscape, often in remote areas, encountering a variety of types of crime. This can range from violations falling under our primary mandate, such as basic licensing violations, to poaching of bear parts and all the way to large-scale environmental violations that threaten human health and safety, such as the Mount Polley mine breach.

The public may not realize that like our policing partners, we also arrest people, execute search warrants, en­force the Criminal Code and utilize similar training, such as use of force, defensive tactics and firearms. COs regularly interact with individuals who are armed and, at times, violent. We work in isolation and alone more than any other law enforcement agency.

It’s important to note that COs regularly back up our policing agency partners, including times of high-risk situations, particularly in rural British Columbia. It is not unusual for conservation officers to be tasked with other policing services during states of emergency, such as wildfires, floods and the ongoing pandemic, which saw officers screen motorists at international border crossings to ensure that their travel was essential and turning away people as required.

Despite our similarities with our policing partners, we do face some challenges due to our current limitations under the Police Act. I’m just going to quickly touch on some of our authorities. Our statutory authority as conservation officers is largely set out under the Environmental Management Act. That provides the foundation of the CO powers and authorities. The COS also has also has other designations to carry out these duties, such as the special provincial constable status.

Under the Emergency Program Management Regulation, conservation officers also act as constables to reinforce police forces in law and order. Under the federal Fisheries Act, COs are designated as federal fisheries of­ficers, and many officers are designated in neighbouring Yukon and Alberta as officers there as well. We are also involved in a number of partnerships and agreements with local governments and Indigenous communities, which are linked to additional authorities there as well.

The Police Act and the COS currently. COs are provided their special provincial constable status pursuant to the Police Act. These appointments enable officers to work alongside our law enforcement partners to help preserve and maintain the public peace; to prevent crime and of­fences against the law; to aid in the administration of justice; to enforce laws in British Columbia, including the Criminal Code; to apprehend criminals and to support the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General with ensuring an adequate and effective level of policing and law enforcement in B.C.

[11:00 a.m.]

Another aspect of the Police Act that directly applies to the COS relates to the Special Provincial Constable Complaints Procedure Regulation. As a result of a recent B.C. Court of Appeal decision, the COS is now bound, by case law and regulation, to manage a misconduct complaint under the regulation.

I’m going to speak now about some areas of opportunity as the Police Act is reviewed. The first area is under standards. Currently, the B.C. provincial policing standards are pursuant to the Police Act and are binding on police, but they are not currently binding on agencies such as the conservation officer service. The COS does, however, utilize many of these standards in our own policies and procedures related to use of force, firearms and other training standards. It is our recommendation that many of these standards pursuant to the Police Act should be binding on agencies such as the conservation officer service.

The second area I’d like to speak about is public complaints and oversight. Conservation officers are currently subject to the independent investigation office of B.C. Under the Police Act, the COS is not captured by complaints or civilian oversight mechanisms of the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner like other policing agencies are.

Under our current regime, a misconduct complaint that concerns allegations that an officer has committed a disciplinary default under our code of professional conduct or failed to comply with the standards of conduct of public service employees is made directly to the COS and, with few exceptions, is managed internally by our organization. The complaint may be dismissed, when warranted, in­formally resolved or investigated.

If an investigation is conducted, the COS may appoint an independent investigator for this purpose. If a complaint is investigated under the Special Provincial Constable Complaint Procedure Regulation, there is no explicit mechanism in that regulation for a complainant to appeal the investigation’s findings or the supervisor’s decis­ion based on the investigation results. Currently, if a complainant is dissatisfied with a finding that is a non–special provincial constable status complaint, such as unsubstantiated, they may appeal that decision to myself, as the chief conservation officer, and my decision cannot be appealed.

This lack of oversight has generated growing public discontent that shows no signs of slowing down. Although we have policies to handle officer conduct complaints, we know and we recognize that a third-party oversight is an­other critical step to ensure public confidence and trust. We want to ensure the public has full confidence and trust in our work and our organization.

Maintaining that public confidence is critical to any law enforcement agency. Many have an external oversight mech­anism to ensure that impartiality and transparency. As such, the COS is fully supportive of implementing an independent civilian oversight component required under the Police Act, such as the OPCC.

The third area we see as an area of opportunity is the designation as a law enforcement unit. Currently, the COS is not designated as a law enforcement unit under the Pol­ice Act, which means we are not bound by many of the standards I mentioned earlier and we have limited access to items such as important information in police databases. Without that full access to some of those databases, our information- and intelligence-sharing is hampered. This can result in officer- or public-safety issues.

A shared database would also benefit other policing agencies, which would be able to access the database currently utilized by the COS for tracking our enforcement actions, records and intelligence that would be available to them as well. We believe that armed law enforcement agencies with wide special provincial constable status such as the COS should be required to be a designated law en­forcement unit.

The last item I’d like to speak about is a rural policing model. In other provinces, there are alternative approaches to rural policing involving natural resource law enforcement agencies.

[11:05 a.m.]

In Alberta and Saskatchewan, for example, conservation officers recently shifted to be included in an integrated rural model. Under this model, COs are mandated to respond to 911 calls, as required, in rural areas.

Here in B.C., we support and provide backup to the RCMP almost on a daily basis, but we are not directly mandated to do so.

In conclusion, I hope that I have helped provide a bit of clarity around the complex role of a conservation officer and the type of work that is involved around the province. As you can see, there are several areas of opportunity identified from a COS perspective where changes to the Police Act, moving forward, would not only benefit our agency but other agencies like us and the public as well.

I’d like to thank you once again for the opportunity to speak to you here today and take part in these meaningful discussions.

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

Members, do I see questions?

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Good morning. Thank you, everybody, for your presentations today.

My one question I have, and I’m sure others will pop up, is to Oliver. We’ve heard on and on, through multiple presenters, around data being gathered. What data, other than, I guess, maybe gender, does E-Comm gather on calls and collect? If you could share that with us.

O. Grüter-Andrew: It’s fundamentally data to help of­ficers identify anyone involved in an ongoing incident. That’s the principal purpose of data collected during a call. The officers will often then gather more data on site to attempt to add to their file in order to progress the file in any respect that seems appropriate. If it comes to laying charges, they may need to gather further data down the road, but that does not involve E-Comm anymore at that point.

During the call, which is the part where E-Comm is involved, it’s about identifying anyone involved — so the complainant, the subject of complaint, possibly witnesses standing by. It’s about physical appearance, for the most part. It might be about languages being spoken, clothing being worn, height, typically, and then other markings. Typically, it’s skin colour; rough body shape; weight, roughly; age; hair colour — these sorts of recognizable markings.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Basically, the information collected is descriptor points to assist in whatever the at­tending member would require.

If someone could help me paint this picture for those that are listening, for the public. A 911 call comes in. Someone’s distressed. It’s obvious someone’s having a mental health issue of some sort. Possibly, addictions are included. There’s hysteria. It’s forwarded to the police dispatch then, at that point. Is it then purely a police…? As it stands and from the sounds of it, there are no other avenues to forward this call. It purely goes by default to the police, then, for a response, correct?

O. Grüter-Andrew: For the most part, yes. Now, typically, it depends on the nature of the call. Typically, these kinds of calls, which are very energetic in nature, go to pol­ice as the primary agency. Even if the caller asks for ambulance and ambulance becomes the primary agency, they would frequently then ask police to come in. They often would go into standby and ask for police to come to the scene first to secure the scene. That’s up to ambulance at that point.

Whichever agency is sent the call first becomes the pri­mary agency, and they, at their discretion, then bring in the secondary agencies. It’s at their assessment to say, “We’ll go in; we’ll wait for you,” or: “We’re not going in un­til you’ve secured the scene.” There are many, many different ways of approaching the scene, all dependent on the specifics of the event.

[11:10 a.m.]

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Just a final follow-up, then. There are a couple of specialized teams cars in the province — Car 67, Car 87 within the community where those services are there?

O. Grüter-Andrew: It varies on the policies of the agen­cy. Different agencies have different cars — 87, 67, etc. It depends on the availability. I believe, for the most part, the cars are actually pre-booked and pre-arranged. I’m not sure that they typically go out impromptu to a situation.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): My final question. Sorry, I know I said that my last one was my last one.

So 911, E-Comm, in British Columbia…. Does it only dispatch — sorry for my ignorance, maybe — police, fire, ambulance? I’m just sitting here looking. Of course, we’ve got the COs service here and others. Does it cross over into those other agencies that may be required, or purely, if it doesn’t fit within those three, is it handed off somewhere else?

O. Grüter-Andrew: That’s correct. We actually dispatch police and fire. Ambulance is dispatched by BCEHS. We don’t have a dispatch relationship with conservation. Our radio gets used by certain other agencies, including conservation officers, but not the dispatch service — that’s right — which speaks to some of my points.

Opportunity 1. Could there be benefit in looking at the dispatch being more comprehensive? It’s not necessarily just about new services. It could be existing services being brought in. Fundamentally, the point is a broader look at dispatch in the province.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): That is a really good point, and it’s something that I’d never thought about, of course. You’ve got 30, roughly, contracts around the province, all with little piecemeal makeup. Yeah, good recommendations there.

That’s everything, Chair. Thank you.

K. Kirkpatrick: Going second means everybody takes all my questions. I had a few that were the same as MLA Davies.

Again, to Oliver, what you’ve said is that there is not the ability to refer out to the crisis centre or 311 or any of those other support agencies. There are a number of different centralized emergency call numbers that don’t necessarily have to do with police, fire.

When you’re talking about the ability to expand those services, are you thinking that those services would be expanded through relationships and agreements with some of these other existing mental health support organizations? Or am I getting too far down the road in terms of how it would actually work?

O. Grüter-Andrew: I think maybe a little too far, in terms of the specifics at this time. I’m really only referring to examples that have been provided, have been developed in other locations.

I mentioned the example of New Zealand, where an equivalent to HealthLink B.C. has essentially established a virtual national mental health emergency service staffed by experienced psychiatric nurses. It’s been integrated with a police call-taking dispatch service, where the police call-taker, when they realize it’s a mental health crisis, can take it out of the police process, send it to their equivalent of HealthLink B.C. They have a very high success rate of de-escalation.

When those psychiatric nurses realize they cannot, on their own, resolve the situation, they can push it right back into the police at the highest priority level to gain immediate onsite attention if the circumstances evolve to become very violent and need that physical police presence. It’s just an example of how it can be made to work. Our circumstances will be different, again, and need to be specifically and carefully developed if that is our desire.

K. Kirkpatrick: I like the direction of that. Just one more question to clarify that I’ve understood this.

[11:15 a.m.]

Right now, when an emergency comes in, you have got a 911 call-taker. If they’re saying police, you’re then sending it to the police emergency call-taker that’s in Saanich or that’s in Vancouver or that’s in…. So your recommendation would be that that second point of contact — the 911 call-taker, that level of the emergency, the police emergency call-taker — is, then, provincial, as opposed to working in one particular jurisdiction?

O. Grüter-Andrew: Well, the call-taker would still be connected, in this example, to the Saanich police. I guess the question is: where is the incident taking place? I’m not talking about changing the jurisdiction of police. That’s outside my realm of responsibility.

I’m suggesting, though, with the current fragmentation — where 911, which happens to be E-Comm, sends the call, and there’s disjointedness of those responsibilities in the different organizations — that we bring that together and that there’s one organization. Whether it’s E-Comm or not, I’m not actually concerned about that.

If there is one provincial organization that then answers the call, whether it’s in Kelowna or in Courtenay or in Saanich or wherever it is, so that we can harmonize the policies, we can provide a single connection point for new services being introduced that specialize in the needs of our most vulnerable communities.

We can introduce new solutions provided through new technologies — I’ve made multiple references to next-generation 911 — bring new benefits and not have this patchwork, frankly, of a new provider, who could bring great benefit, having to talk to six versions of me and my staff to try and figure out how to do that and to do it consistently.

Right now, to be frank, if you work in Vancouver and you live in Surrey, and you need that kind of service, you will have two different experiences. I don’t think that it’s conducive to seeing public uptake, especially amongst a population that is already shy of using these kinds of services, when you don’t have consistency.

K. Kirkpatrick: Thank you very much. I appreciate the answer.

G. Begg: Another question for Oliver in, I think, a similar vein. When it comes to enhanced 911 call triaging and intervention, you say E-Comm sees differences in the handling of like calls among all of its 33 policing partners. My hope is that you don’t see 33 different ways to respond to the same call. Is that what you meant?

O. Grüter-Andrew: Well, maybe not 33, and not on all types of calls, but there are a lot of differences, especially on the non-emergency calls side, of which we actually have more than emergency calls. Non-emergency calls take up more time to answer, typically, than emergency calls, for our call-takers. Most of the basic emergency calls are handled the same — a break-in in progress, for example. The protocols are mostly the same.

Especially with community-type calls — you know, protocols for a nuisance report…. A caller says: “There is somebody who’s drunk and making a nuisance of themselves.” I won’t name any particular communities here, but a large community and a smaller community may give us different instructions on how we deal with that, what we dispatch, how we dispatch it, what instructions we give to the caller. As you can imagine, there might be various reasons why somebody acts as an apparent nuisance in their community. Maybe it’s somebody who’s drunk; maybe it’s somebody in deep distress. Different responses might be required for those.

What’s driving these different communities to give us different instructions? We don’t get to question them — historically, we’ve had no reason to — and it’s more than two different sets of instructions. It’s an overhead for us. From a business point of view, it’s very inefficient.

More importantly, if we thought as a larger community, as the B.C. community, that we wanted to get to the bottom of how we differentiate between the kinds of scenarios that may lead an individual to be an apparent nuisance, and had more responsive kinds of working on those incidents, then we’d need to have a more standardized way of receiving and processing that kind of information. Today we just don’t.

[11:20 a.m.]

G. Begg: You mentioned…. I think the phrase you used was culturally safe interventions for certain types of calls. Obviously, you were referring to certain groups. Could you help me by giving me an example of what you mean by that?

O. Grüter-Andrew: I can’t give you a specific example. But there are calls that come into E-Comm from callers that are very worried about how they are going to be treat­ed. This is not simply a B.C. Indigenous matter. This goes much beyond that.

A number of community leaders have expressed to me that many of our immigrant populations have similar is­sues. Especially more recent immigrants have significant difficulties trusting our police services. This has nothing to do with our police officers. This has a lot to do with the nature of policing in the countries where they came from.

We have people calling us who are in need of police support, but they are deeply worried about having police come to their door because where they’ve immigrated from, you would never think of calling the police. There is something that we can do as a community to change that picture and help those immigrant communities. I believe that E-Comm can play a significant role here because we are that first, first responder. I would like to see us step up to that for the benefit of our immigrant communities as well as our Indigenous communities. That would be an example of where I think we can make a difference.

G. Begg: Thank you very much.

Chair, one question for Doug Forsdick, if I can.

I’m interested in what you said about Saskatchewan and Alberta in relation to some remote and northern com­munities — perhaps some communities in the Kootenays, in this province — where there may be a conservation officer in the area but not a police officer, and the availability of that conservation officer who, you have noted, is armed and trained and has a certain expectation of doing…. I assume what you meant was doing some policing duties.

Would that work here? I like the concept. I’m wondering if it could work in certain areas.

D. Forsdick: It’s a great question. It’s fairly early in Alberta and Saskatchewan. So it would be interesting to see, over the next year, how they feel about it. I think there’s definitely some positive, but there is some drawback as well.

The way it works in those two provinces is…. It’s limited to the 911, first response, public safety–type of issues so the natural resource law enforcement agency isn’t overcome with more of the minor things. It’s the things where the public needs that response immediately and that RCMP member may be further away than the CO. So they can come and take initial action.

I think there’s definitely some possibility. As I mention­ed, we do a lot of that already in B.C. in a lot of the rural areas, but it’s not formalized. In Alberta and Saskatchewan, it’s formalized, and with that comes integration with the radio systems and the databases and everything else — and the dispatch as well — so that it’s a seamless response if that officer is closer than a member of the RCMP.

I certainly think that there is some opportunity there to look at it in B.C., in the rural areas.

G. Begg: It’s not formalized, but it’s not prohibited.

D. Forsdick: Not prohibited at all. It actually occurs all the time. But to have something formalized, I think, definitely eliminates some of those misunderstandings, or a call isn’t missed. If you have that formalized structure, that’s probably a much better system.

[11:25 a.m.]

A. Olsen: Thank you to both groups for your important contributions to this work that we’re doing.

To the questions that were made by Garry to Mr. Fors­dick just in terms of the oversight that you very clearly have requested, or at least suggested, that we look at in detail in this…. Where you have your conservation officers in that role of oversight to ensure that accountability and transparency — that the officers that they’re working with — is an important part of the process.

I’ve got one other question for you, but perhaps there’s some comment to that.

D. Forsdick: I totally agree with you. I think it’s important. It has to happen. It’s just a case of how it happens. Will it happen through this review, or will it be something, if it doesn’t happen through that review, that we create once the review is done? I think the public expects it. They demand it. Quite frankly, it’s the right thing to do to have that transparency and that external oversight. So I agree with you. It needs to happen.

A. Olsen: Thank you for that. I just would like to ask you some questions in and around the relationship with Indigenous Nations around the province and the B.C. conservation service.

As I think we’re all well aware, there are about 200 First Nations in the province. There’s a variety of different relationships with the Crown: there’s the modern-day treaty, there are old treaties, and then there are no treaties. How does the B.C. conservation service prepare your special constables to be able to operate in that environment where there is, perhaps, a variety of different relationships be­tween Indigenous Nations and the Crown?

D. Forsdick: It’s a great question. The foundational piece is….

Training isn’t everything. It’s also the mindset and the way we operate. But all of our new recruits have fairly ex­tensive training — cultural sensitivity and awareness training — that lays that foundation. We also have a small section which is our Indigenous relations section within the conservation officer service that…. Although they don’t open all the doors for those relationships, they have a broad set of contacts around the province where if a particular area is having perhaps a rub,they’re able to help out with that.

As I mentioned, we are in about 45 different communities. Many of those are spread throughout the province, and we truly value those relationships with those Indigenous communities. We’re really working towards local agreements, which I think help those relationships as well. Many of those communities are looking to the COS to partner and to help. They’re progressive with developing agreements and looking for us to partner with them, and I think that helps that relationship as well.

We’re very progressive with providing training to many of the guardian programs that are throughout the pro­vince. They vary. A lot of the guardian programs are looking for Observe, Record, Report–type training, and others are much further along in looking to have their own similar agency to a conservation officer service.

Allowing for our resources and time, we’ll provide them as much of that support as we can. And we have many of those agreements around the province. Westbank First Nation — we actually have one of their members that’s integrated within our organization, and it’s a tremendous example of that partnership.

I’m not sure if that’s really answering your question, but it’s definitely a priority area for us around the province.

A. Olsen: Well, it was a sufficiently general question, I think, or a significantly general question. I’ll get a little bit more specific here.

In terms of a treaty like the Douglas treaties, for ex­ample…. There are 14 of them on Vancouver Island that were signed in the 1850s, 1860s. They provide some pretty broad hunting regulations, and there’s a number of court cases that come out of that.

[11:30 a.m.]

Can you maybe just provide a little insight as to how it is, as those rulings are made, that the B.C. conservation ser­vice amends their approach or amends their relationships with those Indigenous Nations that have those treaties? They’re the ones that I’m the most familiar with, but of course there are the number of treaties in the north as well. I’m just kind of wondering how it is that the approach changes when a court ruling is made.

D. Forsdick: Great question. As you know, it’s constant­ly changing. We do the best that we can to digest those decisions and then communicate that to our staff.

Also, in B.C., as you’re probably aware, any prosecution or charge approval needs to go through Crown counsel. That’s kind of that narrow point where all of those issues are looked at. There is that lens put on at that point. But often, we would rather have things, I guess, figured out long before that. In certain cases — many cases, actually — we would much prefer restorative justice or some kind of diversion or other opportunity like that.

As far as the communication of the evolving case law and policy, we have a mechanism within our organization that alerts our staff to any type of change like that. That’s how we generally do that.

One other point, too. Yearly our officers have three days of block training, where they’re provided…. They’ve got to qualify on certain pieces of their equipment. One day is usually put aside for legal updates and breaking down some of the case law that has come out. That’s also an opportunity where that’s occurred in the past.

A. Olsen: Okay. Maybe finally, Mr. Chair, if I may, one more question to the B.C. conservation service, just in terms of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

A lot of the conversations that we’re having in this committee are around systemic discrimination, bias and rac­ism. These are not terms that have come up in your presentation or in the presentations, necessarily, today.

I’m just wondering how it is that your conservation service is better preparing your officers to understand the declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples and, perhaps, as well, the conversation that’s being had broadly in our society right now around systemic discrimination, bias and racism. Maybe just some comments with the relationship with the B.C. conservation service.

D. Forsdick: Again, I think it’s one of those areas you have to come at from many different angles. Training is one of them, setting that good example, ensuring that those relationships are true — just making it a priority for our organization to have credible and meaningful relationships with all those communities.

It’s something…. You can never really take your foot off the gas. You have to constantly be educating our folks and making sure that we are moving in the right direction related to UNDRIP and DRIPA and the principles. It’s an important part.

It’s something that we make as a priority through our strategic plan. Every year we do yearly work plans at different levels, both at the organizational level and at the regional level. Building those relationships has always been a key deliverable at all of those levels, both at the provincial level as well as the regional and district or zone level.

R. Singh: Thank you to the presenters. Those were really important conversations.

My question is for Mr. Grüter-Andrew. You talked about…. A lot of things have already been asked by my colleagues before, but you mentioned about and we heard about this CAHOOTS model in Portland. You also brought that up and that it is like the E-Comm service in Portland, Oregon that is able to assess the situation, especially related to mental health issues. How do you think, if that kind of model…? Do you think that is something that you’re looking for, here in British Columbia?

[11:35 a.m.]

O. Grüter-Andrew: I don’t know very much about the CAHOOTS model. I only referenced it because I read Dr. Norris’s presentation. I’d have to defer to people like Dr. Norris or the people around the CAHOOTS model.

I am more familiar with what has been done in New Zealand and in some countries in Europe along those lines. I think we need to look at our specific circumstances, our context in British Columbia, and design something that works for us from the learnings of those other jurisdictions.

It’s too early right now to say how exactly it could work. I just think that the indications from other similar jurisdictions would suggest that it can work.

R. Singh: Okay. Thank you.

I just want to know a little bit about making this service more comprehensive, rather than regionalized, and bringing it…. You mentioned bringing it under the province, and you talked about other jurisdictions.

Can you give an example? Is it all other jurisdictions in Canada that have that kind of service, the E-Comm services, under the province? Is B.C. the only one that does not have it?

O. Grüter-Andrew: No, it does vary. The 911 service, in terms of policy and standard-setting, in most other provinces is held at the provincial level.

Let’s say Alberta. Alberta sets the standard at the pro­vincial level for how 911 calls are processed. The calls are still answered in different contact centres, but the way that they work is set by the province, whereas in B.C., we receive instructions from different regional districts.

The Metro Van regional district has a handbook that spells out how we do our work. There is a working group in Metro Van that meets at regular intervals to review how our work is done for certain types of calls and in certain ways.

My suggestion is that for the sake of consistency and the ability to introduce new services equitably across the province, it would be time to look at elevating that standard-setting responsibility to the provincial level.

R. Singh: Thank you so much for that.

You talked about culturally sensitive training. I think that is very important. That is what we are hearing from other stakeholders — an understanding of the cultures and the different circumstances the calls are coming from.

Just for my knowledge, do the staff at E-Comm get any cultural sensitivity training right now?

O. Grüter-Andrew: I won’t say yes, and I won’t say no. Simply because the training that we provide does speak to the need to be culturally sensitive.

Our trainers do refer to calls from the different population segments we have in B.C. We do listen to sample calls that involve people from different ethnic backgrounds. We do provide analysis to our call takers on the effects of people from different backgrounds.

I, personally, don’t view that as sufficient cultural training. Having worked in other industries — in post-secondary, in health care — I’m well familiar with a much deeper level of cultural sensitivity training and much broader ways of coming to understand the implications. I believe, especially in emergency communication, there is a place for a much deeper preparation for the combination of cultural backgrounds and emergency situations, realizing that the majority of people who call us on the 911 line are having the worst day of their lives.

In those situations, much of your cultural heritage can take over. Whatever else you may have adapted to in your chosen home may not be available to you in those mom­ents, quite frankly. Yes, we have a language line. We can dial in 130-something languages, but the language translators don’t help with the cultural translation, frankly.

[11:40 a.m.]

I believe there is room for a lot more of this. I think our people would deeply welcome this. I think it is something that needs to be looked at consistently — again, across the province — for the sake of a consistent experience for our people across B.C.

R. Singh: Thank you so much.

R. Glumac: I have a question for Oliver. You probably won’t be able to answer this question, but I would like to have this question answered. Maybe through the Clerks, we can figure that out.

You referenced what they’re doing in New Zealand, with psychiatric nurses and a line that is available to de-escalate and provide assistance. We know that a certain percentage of the calls to 911 are related to mental health issues. I’m curious, with the New Zealand model, whether there has been a reduction in dispatches of police with this national line set up and a corresponding, perhaps, reduction in funding to police. I don’t know the answer to that, and I’m curious if you know more about that.

O. Grüter-Andrew: You’re right. I don’t have the answer to that. I don’t have the numbers for that. I would be happy to connect the clerks with the people I know in New Zealand that do that work. Perhaps they can obtain the answer.

R. Glumac: Okay, yeah. Personally, I would be very in­terested in learning more about that. I’m a big fan of learning from other jurisdictions, best practices and seeing how things are working over there. I’m glad you brought it up. I wasn’t aware of it. It’s a very interesting model to have that integrated into the 911 line — mental health services on that level. So thank you for bringing that up.

Another question I have. Can you give me an example of…? When you’re talking about the different policies and standards across the province, what is an example of a policy, and how does it affect the dispatch process?

O. Grüter-Andrew: I will give you something fairly in­nocuous, but it does just illustrate it. Burglar alarms. Burglar alarms first became prevalent, what would we say, maybe 15 years ago. People started putting them into their homes. Burglar alarms are tied to alarm companies, and alarm companies have a line to call E-Comm on 911 for those police jurisdictions that we service.

When we receive the call, if the burglar alarm is for a property in Richmond, we have a set of procedures and policies that was given to us by Richmond RCMP. If the property is in Vancouver, then we have a set of policies and procedures from VPD. But they differ quite considerably.

If it’s in one jurisdiction…. I don’t have the actuals for those jurisdictions in my head, so I’ll be just giving made-up examples here. In one jurisdiction, it might be…. If it’s one hit to the back of the property, one alarm triggered, then we might send a car out. In another jurisdiction, well, if it’s three hits to the back and two to the front, then we might send a car out. It could, frankly, be anything in between, between six or seven different jurisdictions.

That was kind of okay, maybe even 15 years ago, when there were very few burglar alarms around the Lower Mainland, even. But now everybody has a burglar alarm, and now even construction workers put burglar alarms on their construction properties, because they just talk through the cell phone towers now.

It’s a very innocuous example, but it shows you how the differences in the policies of different police jurisdictions, driven by their communities — the police don’t make this up; this is driven by their communities — lead to very different ways of treating what is essentially the same incident in many different ways, which leads us to dispatch cars and officers in different ways for essentially the same purpose.

[11:45 a.m.]

Now, you can apply that pattern to any other type of call. It could be a suspected overdose. It could be a disturbance in public. It could be any kind of thing, and there will be lesser or greater differences depending on the type of incident and the jurisdiction.

R. Glumac: I appreciate that. I think that from your perspective, what you’re asking for is that you have some consistency.

I guess the reality on the ground is that there are multiple police forces. There are multiple communities. There are different ways that…. For example, in Port Moody, the motto of the police is: “No call too small.” I think there’s a desire to maybe see more calls being dispatched to the Port Moody police department versus maybe a different jurisdiction.

It’s a tough one. How do you honour the local capacity to attend to calls?

O. Grüter-Andrew: Absolutely. I’m not in any way suggesting that it’s going to be one-size-fits-all, right? What I am suggesting is to bring the discussion together into, essentially, one body in which the discussion can take place. You then look at bringing in what are new services — to have a way to coordinate across all these different policing communities to say how the new services can be brought in.

The example I gave was deliberately innocuous because I don’t want to put the spotlight on what are really difficult examples to work through. But to be able to have conversations in one setting, through one channel, to bring in what are really difference-making service deliveries, such as what we just discussed about the New Zealand model….

How do you bring that into the flow of emergency service communication? Instead of having to work through multiple different levels of policy-setting, standard-setting, let’s have one mechanism in which you can discuss that. That’s what I’m suggesting.

R. Glumac: Last question. On this front, is what you’re suggesting maybe like a provincial decision-making…? Well, maybe not a decision-making but a forum in which there could be opportunities explored for more of that normalization. That doesn’t exist at this point — is that correct? — even the forum in which these could be discussed.

O. Grüter-Andrew: I think there are forums in which some of these things could be discussed. What would you suggest as a forum?

R. Glumac: A body in which representatives from the different jurisdictions can come together and say: “Okay. Well, is there an opportunity to normalize something here?” Rather than the province kind of imposing that on the jurisdictions, maybe the creation of a body, if it doesn’t exist, for people to come together. Maybe there’s an opportunity to normalize.

O. Grüter-Andrew: Oh, absolutely. I even think those bodies exist.

I’m not suggesting an imposition of standards. What I am suggesting is that…. Once standards have been agreed, where are they held? At the moment, they’re held in many different places, which requires many different points of dialogue. So once you have set a standard, where is it held? That’s what I’m talking about.

There are many bodies under UBCM. There are many opportunities within the police community. There’s the B.C. Association of Chiefs of Police as a fundamental body. So there are many forums to have those communications.

R. Glumac: Are you aware if it was these kinds of conversations that happened in those forums and haven’t been implemented — those standards?

O. Grüter-Andrew: Not to the extent that we’re talking about right now, I don’t think.

R. Glumac: Okay. Thank you.

D. Routley (Chair): Rick, you might look at the UBCM website. There is quite a bit on resolutions and letters that have come from the previous government and the current Solicitor General on that issue around a provincewide standard.

[11:50 a.m.]

H. Sandhu: Thank you to the presenters. My question and comment are for Mr. Grüter-Andrew. I want to highlight 911 calls among domestic violence victims. You highlighted that the issue and the sensitivity is not just around Indigenous groups — there are, in fact, immigrant people — and I echo that.

Working firsthand with some of the domestic violence victims, I heard over and over that there is a stigma. There is fear. There is a reluctance to even call 911. The reason is the fear of repercussions from their partner or even the family.

I have seen firsthand that people who are the victims change statements. First of all, it takes a lot of courage. Oftentimes their phone is being snatched away when they say: “Okay, if you don’t stop, I’m going to call the police.” I know that from very close. Then, when police come, in that duration, they’re being talked into…. There’s more fear instilled, and they change the statements.

They are shaking, but they’re saying nothing happened. The police go away, and the abuse continues. It’s happening at bigger and bigger levels. I know MLA Singh asked the question that I had — is there existing training? — and you answered.

I would say training around such sensitive matters is much needed. We have seen domestic violence and homicides by the time these victims received any help. Not just that. The reason I’m highlighting the importance of that training is that regularly, those victims are being shamed afterwards. When incidents happen repeatedly, whether it’s dinner, meetings or discussions, he or she calls the police on her husband….

In some cultures, it’s very, very sad that they get shamed for calling just because there is stigma in the world. So I think we really need to highlight the importance of that cultural sensitivity or some information among 911 operators. These victims are still suffering, and some end up losing their lives as well. I wanted to highlight that.

As we’re talking about having a uniform process, again, it’ll be an interesting discussion even among committee members. How rural settings and some more diverse settings and some Indigenous communities…. The needs or the dynamics are totally different. So we really value your input, and it’ll be an interesting discussion.

I just really wanted to highlight this point that I witnes­sed over and over. It really breaks my heart. I hope we will consider such training. As a committee, if we can do something, we’re more than happy to do so.

O. Grüter-Andrew: Thank you for saying that. If I may just respond for a minute.

Part of where the spirit of our submission comes from is my personal experience over the last few years listening into calls. I have learned a lot about E-Comm’s business and about emergency calls in British Columbia from double-plugging with our staff at E-Comm and listening into calls.

It’s been a heartbreaking experience in many cases, lis­tening to our staff trying to remotely help people in really very desperate situations. And not just in the moment, at times. You can tell in many cases that these are recurringly desperate situations that people are in, and we are only experiencing, in the call, one instance of their desperation.

I am not in any way suggesting that we try and standardize everything and come up with a one-solution-fits-all, where the province determines everything for every community. What I’m trying to suggest is that there are many communities that are underserved by our emergency services because they have been defined as a one-way-fits-all.

Frankly, it’s a 150-year-old European justice model that suits people who are like me, who were born and raised in Europe and shipped out here, in my case, 20 years ago. We do very well, thank you very much. There are many people for whom it doesn’t work.

[11:55 a.m.]

I think to change this emergency model…. I am only speaking for a slice of it, for the emergency communications side that I happen to be privileged enough to be working in. There are some changes needed to allow the diversification of the service; to allow the specialization; to allow the responsiveness to the needs of particular groups; to make that greater responsiveness, that greater fit for our individual communities, affordable; to allow change to occur relatively quickly — within years, not within decades; to listen to our individual communities; and to go through a consultation process that allows us to reinvent and rebuild the service in a way that it truly does work for all of our communities in British Columbia.

Some of the suggestions that I’ve outlined in how to go about this are about achieving that, in my opinion, in a relatively low-risk, relatively expedient time frame.

H. Sandhu: Absolutely. Thank you. That’s a really, really good way. I think it’s always great to look at the bigger picture.

I can share a brief experience. I lived in a rural com­munity in northern B.C., and I used to work night shifts. My mom had my little girl. Mom is always over-anxious and afraid from her previous experiences from India — the time she suffered. She was not comfortable staying alone, and I told her, “Call 911” — that’s years ago — not knowing that that community didn’t have 911 at the time. I didn’t know because we just moved there.

Then a few months later or a year later, there is the news that this community is getting 911, and I’m thinking: “Oh my goodness.” My mom said: “Oh, so all this time you re­assured me with 911. What if something happened?” I was so grateful to have that one unified number, the number that they can call. The reassurance was there, definitely. It’s an experience that I still remember to this day.

You’re right. I think it’ll be great for us to look at all the options. Thank you for sharing your information. I highly value that.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you, all. We’ve gone over time. That’s not completely out of character for our committee. I appreciate everyone’s patience.

I would like to thank Dwight Schmidt from Hansard Services and Karan Riarh from the Parliamentary Committees Office as well as the rest of the staff there.

Many thanks to our presenters in hopes that if we have further questions, we might be able to call on you. Thank you very much for your presentations, your assistance in enlightening this committee.

Over time. I would entertain a motion to adjourn. MLA Begg, seconded by MLA Sandhu.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 11:58 a.m.