The committee met at 9:06 a.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

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

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

I would like to welcome all those who are listening and participating to this meeting.

Our committee is undertaking a broad consultation with respect to policing and public safety in B.C. We are taking a phased approach to this work and have been meeting with subject matter experts, community advocacy organizations, Indigenous communities and others.

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

Today we’ll be hearing from a number of organizations about police, policing and law enforcement. Each presenter has 15 minutes for their presentation, and of course, we’ve kindly asked that presenters be respectful of the time limit. Following presentations, there will be a time for questions from committee members. For the information of the guests, we recognize that the time allotted for questions may be a little slim. If we do have more questions than our agenda allows or predicts, we would like to continue beyond the time that has been indicated, if you’re comfortable with that. Thank you.

All audio from our meetings is broadcast live on our website, and a complete transcript will be posted.

I’ll now ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves, and I’ll begin by calling on MLA Kirkpatrick.

K. Kirkpatrick: Thank you very much, Chair.

I’m Karin Kirkpatrick, and I’m the MLA for West Vancouver–Capilano.

We are located on the traditional territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

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

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

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

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

[9:10 a.m.]

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

I am working today from the W̱JOȽEȽP village in the beautiful W̱SÁNEĆ territory.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Hi. Good morning. Thanks for joining us. Dan Davies, the MLA for Peace River North.

I’m coming to you from the territory of the Dane-zaa.

H. Sandhu: Good morning. I’m Harwinder Sandhu, the MLA for Vernon Monashee.

I am joining you today from the unceded territory of the Okanagan Indian nation.

Thank you for joining us.

D. Routley (Chair): I would say that a couple of our members had a little difficulty logging on. We may be joined by MLA Rick Glumac and MLA Trevor Halford shortly.

Assisting the committee today are Karan Riarh from the Parliamentary Committees Office and Amanda Heffelfinger from Hansard Services.

For our first presentation, we have Wayne Plamondon and Oliver Grüter-Andrew from PRIMECorp.

Thank you for joining us today. I’d hand it over to you.

Presentations on Police Act

PRIMECORP

O. Grüter-Andrew: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are happy to be here this morning and able to speak to you on behalf of PRIMECorp.

My name is Oliver Grüter-Andrew. You met me a few weeks ago in my role as president and CEO of E-Comm 9-1-1. I have the privilege of also serving as CEO of PRIME­Corp, because it is technically a subsidiary of E-Comm. This is an arrangement I will speak to in a moment.

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.

W. Plamondon: Good morning, everyone. I’m Wayne Plamondon. I’m the chief operating officer for PRIMECorp.

I’m speaking to you today from our offices in Burnaby, which I want to acknowledge are on the ancestral and the unceded homelands of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓- and the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh-speaking peoples. I’m honoured to be giving this presentation to you today from their territory.

O. Grüter-Andrew: If you would follow us to the first content slide, please. I will be speaking to this and then handing it back to my colleague Wayne.

PRIMECorp, as a legal entity, comes under the Business Corporations Act. Its sole purpose is to be the designated provider of information management services under the Police Act, by being the custodian of the PRIME-BC system.

The PRIME-BC system is actually comprised of a number of computer applications, including a computer-aided dispatch system for police; a police records management system; a system for booking in accused persons and taking fingerprints for identification; an interface to B.C. prosecution services and the JUSTIN system; and a data warehouse, which provides a source to police agencies for data analytics.

As such, PRIME-BC is one of the largest multi-jurisdictional police information management environments in North America, allowing police agencies the ability to access information provincewide. B.C. is considered a leader in police information-sharing, in this manner, internationally.

It’s important, for the purposes of our discussion, to understand the governance of PRIMECorp. We are a business corporation in B.C. and technically a subsidiary of E-Comm 9-1-1 that owns and votes the sole share of PRIMECorp. But the share voting agreement between E-Comm and the provincial government means that E-Comm must exercise any of its rights as a shareholder in accordance with the direction of the province. So we are, in fact, entirely under the control of the provincial government and the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, in particular.

We have a stakeholder-based ten-seat board of directors which includes police representation and several seats for UBCM and the province. This allows for a very collaborative approach to the governance of police information management in the province. We believe that given the shareholder control is effectively held by the province, and given the collaborative nature of our board as a stakeholder forum, PRIMECorp is in a very unique situation to facilitate our recommendations with respect to data sharing in the province.

Before speaking to our observations and recommendations about improving data collection and expanding data sharing, it is important to emphasize this is not just about the collection of more data for police use. Instead, our focus is on the appropriate collection of user data and the required safeguards and privacy protection for their use.

W. Plamondon: There have been many presentations to the committee that have called for increased information-sharing between law enforcement and government bodies or other agencies that may be recommended by the special committee. This has even been outlined in the current mandate letter for the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, identifying the need for improved data collection and sharing.

[9:15 a.m.]

Specifically, there was the express goal to make our streets safer from gangs and guns by introducing legislation to improve information-sharing for law enforcement agencies, regulate imitation firearms, strengthen the regulation of shooting ranges and close regulatory gaps.

Police have found themselves on the front line of mental health and substance abuse issues. However, it should be recognized that there may be a benefit in even broader information-sharing to address issues such as ongoing concerns over firearms, missing and murdered women and issues related to Indigenous communities. The lack of information-sharing contributes to the current challenges. A good example is police responding to a call involving a person with underlying mental health or substance abuse issues.

Although the committee may make recommendations to alternative call responses, there will likely often be a need to have police involvement. Two-way sharing of information in these circumstances could play a critical role in how a response is conducted. A good example of this would be responding to a call and knowing beforehand that a person may turn adversarial if they are not taking their medication. Ultimately, this could provide for a better and safer outcome for everybody involved.

The committee has also heard a number of recommendations which call for increased data collection and the need to collect more data on a variety of issues. As the custodian of the information system, PRIMECorp is well positioned to facilitate in this area. However, it will be critical to consider and address any significant impacts on police officer time in terms of collecting and entering additional information into PRIME-BC Officers already spend a considerable amount of time entering data. Therefore, any increased information collection and data entry would have consequences on policing resources.

There are a number of policing standards which prescribe how information is collected and stored within PRIME-BC However, these are primarily in relation to specific matters such as missing persons, use-of-force incidents and the management of major cases. Other policies are governed by best practice recommendations by PRIMECorp and by individual policing agencies. PRIMECorp develops policies in consultation with the police agencies. However, PRIMECorp lacks the authority and the resources to undertake quality assurance processes or to enforce those standards.

At present, each agency is responsible for the data that originates in PRIME-BC, along with the oversight of the quality assurance work. PRIMECorp plays a very specific and somewhat narrow role in this area. Although quality data is being collected, this is being done by multiple agencies that follow different sets of business practices, which could cause inconsistencies when data is analyzed at the aggregate level. If there is to be more information-sharing at the aggregate level — with government and policy-makers, for example — then an investment should be made to ensure the data is collected in a consistent manner.

One way to ensure data standards are applied in a consistent fashion across the various police agencies is to have a more centralized approach to the quality assurance work. We believe PRIMECorp would be well positioned to take on that role, especially given our unique governance model and the fact that we are ultimately under the control of the province. We recognize that a comprehensive framework and funding would be required before this could occur.

As the committee looks to broaden data sharing with law enforcement, there may also be a need to amend or change privacy legislation. This could present a much larger challenge, given the RCMP falls under federal privacy legislation, while the independent agencies fall under the B.C. Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Given that the RCMP is responsible for policing the majority of the province, this should be carefully evaluated during any future drafting of legislation.

There are several areas where additional data sharing would be useful and may be necessary to ensure the police response is properly informed, particularly in relation to incidents which are driven by complex societal issues. For example, expanding information-sharing between health care and police, which I touched on earlier. With better information-sharing, there are opportunities to provide a better level of response. This could include diverting calls for service that may be better served by communities with mental health support groups.

There have also been a number of presentations before the committee that have expressed a view that more data covering additional areas of interest or concern needs to be collected by the police. As an example, collecting data on ethnicity has been identified as a specific area of interest, which could help better enable tracking and analysis of police interactions with minority populations. Although some of this information is currently being collected to some degree, the focus is typically driven by the need to correctly identify an individual and does not take into consideration broader social issues.

[9:20 a.m.]

We have a number of recommendations, which are further detailed in our written submission, that we feel the committee should consider.

First, voluntary registry systems could be implemented provincewide. An example of this would be an autism registry, which has had success in other jurisdictions within Canada. Using that as an example, individuals on the autism spectrum can respond in unanticipated ways during an interaction with the police or other individuals. One or more voluntary registries could be created in B.C. as part of a broader effort to better manage mental health and other complex issues. This would allow law enforcement to have important information prior to attending a call.

Mandatory or prescribed data sharing would be needed, along with a broader provincial framework to facilitate consistent data collection. A comprehensive regulatory framework for data sharing, like service delivery itself to vulnerable and marginalized populations, needs to be treated as a collaborative effort across various ministries and stakeholder groups, including the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, the Ministry of Attorney General, B.C. Housing and the Privacy Commissioner.

The need to be able to share information, both to and from police, is evident. However, the province will need to develop the necessary framework to ensure this can happen and be managed and implemented with appropriate regard to safety, effectiveness and privacy.

We also believe there is a need for improved data standardization and an enhanced quality assurance process. We believe there is an opportunity for PRIMECorp to play a new and important role in improving data standardization and enhancing the QA process for existing data collection practices in any broadened or mandated categories of data. Guidance can and should be provided by the province through a regulatory framework approach, as well as through revisions to policing standards.

PRIMECorp already works collaboratively with police agencies to develop data collection policies and standards. This work would need to be enhanced, and PRIMECorp’s quality assurance teams would need to be materially expanded if a larger role is taken in this area.

Additionally, prior to implementing any recommendations, an assessment should be done on the impact of police officer time in terms of data collection and the need to enter that data into PRIME-BC. It is already recognized that a large portion of police officers’ time is spend documenting what has occurred, and increasing that amount of data to be collected could have a negative impact on resourcing. This is something that I touched on earlier.

Some of this could be alleviated by modernizing the information systems that PRIMECorp uses to support policing in B.C. However, that will also come with a large cost. Careful consideration should be given to how PRIMECorp is funded going into the future, particularly given how our organization is currently funded, which is that it largely falls on local government.

Lastly, we recommend reviewing PRIMECorp’s mandate as established by the province and broadening the organization’s role. This could include a more direct role in quality assurance, in addition to granting PRIMECorp the authority to create and enforce binding policies on the use of our information systems. As we have stated earlier, given our unique role designated within the Police Act, the nature of our corporate structure and the governance model, we believe we can play a vital role in helping the police community achieve any desired outcomes as recommended by this committee.

This concludes our formal part of the presentation. Oliver and myself would be happy to take any questions from the committee.

D. Routley (Chair): Questions from members. Do I have any?

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation.

Just around the contracts. Wayne, you just mentioned municipalities paying a big share of this. Can you explain how this works? Do you have contracts with the individual municipalities and then with the…? I’m just curious. Do you have a contract with each municipality? Is it by regional district? Does the province pay a chunk? That’s my first question.

My second question is: being that it’s a contract, are the service deliverables different in each of those contracts? Or is there a standardized: “This is what you get — period”?

W. Plamondon: We are designated under 68.1 of the Police Act, and then there’s further definition around that as prescribed in a ministerial order, which I believe is No. M70. That basically says that if you police in B.C., you have to use the information systems that are provided through PRIMECorp. So it’s legislated use.

[9:25 a.m.]

Our funding model is driven through, essentially, a levy. We are funded through a per-sworn-officer levy in the province of B.C. That amounts to approximately, I think, $1,266 for the upcoming year, per officer per year. So it’s not an individual contract with each municipality but forms part of the core policing budget.

My comment with respect to following the local government…. The vast majority of policing costs in the province are borne by local government. Does that answer your question?

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Yeah. Just to clarify, then, it’s the same service provided to each and every single police officer across the province, then.

W. Plamondon: Correct. It is.

G. Begg: Thank you, presenters. Two questions. The first is perhaps complicated, but I don’t want a complicated answer to it. I mean, I don’t want it to be a lengthy discussion.

PRIMECorp is a for-profit company. Am I right so far? No.

W. Plamondon: No. It’s not-for-profit.

G. Begg: So it is a private corporation, for all intents and purposes, directed by the province of B.C. through the Ministry of the Solicitor General.

W. Plamondon: Correct.

O. Grüter-Andrew: Let me maybe just jump in on this private corporation part. We’re a private corporation only to the extent that we are created under the B.C. corporations act and not, say, the Crown corporation act or a designated act. Really, the private part ends right there, both through the vote-share agreement and then the control through the board. If you looked into any of the detail of our governance, which we’d be happy to share in another forum, we’re really entirely controlled by the province. We’re essentially a creature of the province and of the Police Act.

G. Begg: But your policing partners don’t have a choice. In other words, you’re the only provider of the services to the policing community in British Columbia.

O. Grüter-Andrew: By virtue of law, that’s correct, yes.

G. Begg: The other question, not quite as complicated…. You say that quality data is being collected, but there are inconsistencies as this is done by multiple agencies following different policies. I understand that. Then you say that PRIMECorp lacks the authority and resources to enforce common standards. My question arising from that, of course, is: who does? Who has the authority to standardize information or to ask that it be standardized or to audit it?

W. Plamondon: Our governance structure is such that we do perform annual audits on very narrow and specific items that are driven by our stakeholders. So we’ll do four audits a year, but they’re sort of at the broad level. We lack the statutory authority to create binding policies, which we believe is the primary issue.

We do have policies and standards, and they are developed in consultation with our policing partners. However, they’re really considered best-practices documents. Because of the differences in the different police agencies and their own work flows, they develop their own internal policies which are meant to adapt or address those best practices. However, there will always likely be some inconsistencies when you have multiple agencies doing things their own way.

G. Begg: I think this committee is seeking ways to standardize the service and the level of policing across the province. That, you think, is an achievable objective?

W. Plamondon: I think it’s definitely achievable through the use of legislation of policing standards. What we speak to in our submission is the fact that we believe we can play a role in that. I think, in terms of data quality and data standardization, taking a more centralized approach to quality assurance could help achieve those goals.

G. Begg: One quick final question.

I know, because I was involved in the initial process whereby mental health workers were teamed with police officers, that there was a conflict between the health information available to the psychiatric nurses and the police information that was available to the police and, obviously, a desire not to mix the two, because it’s private personal information, of course, about a mental health client and criminal information, perhaps, about the same client. So it’s difficult if you’re in the same car not being, by law, able to share that information with each other.

[9:30 a.m.]

Although I respect the idea that there should be greater gathering of information, I sense a possibility that there will be cross-contamination. That’s not the word. But there will be sharing of information that otherwise would not be available. How would we protect or how could legislation protect deeply personal information, perhaps psychiatric history, from unauthorized persons?

W. Plamondon: I think the best way I can answer that question is that we operate the information systems which help facilitate that. There are all sorts of technical controls that could be put in place. But I think the larger issue that needs to be addressed is really one of privacy. That would be for government to decide how that can be addressed through privacy legislation, as an example, which is one of the things we wanted to point out.

The fact, because of the two different natures of policing in the province, one RCMP, who have to follow federal privacy legislation, and local independent municipal police agencies, which follow provincial legislation…. I think that will be a very difficult road to navigate. I don’t know how that would be done or achieved, but I would hope that involving the Privacy Commissioner’s office would help us get there.

G. Begg: I’m asking this as a question poorly, I suppose. There is a way to segregate that information electronically so that this cross-contamination that I fear would not be a danger?

W. Plamondon: Yeah, from a technical perspective, there are all sorts of controls you could put in place where it’s not necessarily stored in each other’s systems, but information could be accessed on sort of a query-only basis.

G. Begg: Awesome. Thank you.

K. Kirkpatrick: Thank you very much. Garry actually asked a number of my questions, but I’m just going to try and get a little bit more detail.

I worry about things like birth notices when Indigenous women go in to have babies. I worry, again, about this information and how this information is shared.

Did you say that you have a desire to extend the groups that have access to this information, or did I misunderstand that? You’re asking for an expansion of people who have access to the data.

W. Plamondon: I believe what we’re saying is we’re acknowledging there have been many presentations before the committee which have asked for such things. Given my experience within law enforcement over the last 30 years, certainly there is a desire for increased information-sharing, both at the aggregate level with government, which would help govern policy and create laws, and at the working level with health care workers.

Certainly, the mental health and substance abuse issues that our communities are facing are near crisis mode. I think anything that can be done to help facilitate that and make that a safer environment is…. There are things that should be looked at, and I believe increased information-sharing is one of those things that should be done.

O. Grüter-Andrew: Allow me to just add, if I may, MLA Kirkpatrick, just to emphasize what my colleague said there. It’s not about making more information available to more people on a general basis and certainly not more information available to more police on a general basis. It’s about recognizing that — both at the sort of high, metadata level of provincial public health and population development analysis and at the very specific case level, when an individual is in trouble for some reason and needs help — there is a need for certain types of information to be shared.

My personal opinion, going beyond this current role I have with PRIMECorp and connecting it to prior roles I had in health care and in post-secondary education in British Columbia, suggests that we’ve established barriers that are very absolute — barriers that are very firm. They lead people to seek workarounds, which are then very difficult to manage and to secure. A better approach, in the context of this committee’s inquiry, may be a more controlled, deliberate, purposeful sharing of data between specific entities at specific times.

[9:35 a.m.]

What we’re saying is that that can be done technologically. It needs to be supported very strongly with policy and with process. PRIMECorp, given its current position as a police information management provider — the provincial police information management provider — may be an appropriate vehicle to achieve that.

K. Kirkpatrick: Okay. Just a couple more questions. With respect to the actual data that is being collected, is it all fact-based data, or is there commentary in there? Can an officer put a judgment or commentary in that data, or is it just fact-based data?

W. Plamondon: That’s probably a question that’s better served by asking the police departments themselves. Obviously, the goal of policing in general is to collect facts and evidence. That’s their primary driver in how things are documented within our systems.

K. Kirkpatrick: Okay. I just worry about the bias, maybe, coming through that way.

Final question. Does an officer or someone else accessing this information have to have a bona fide reason for accessing the information? They can’t just kind of indiscriminately look something up.

W. Plamondon: Correct. It has to be for a law enforcement purpose and specifically related to a task that they are doing in the performance of their duties.

The systems that we administer — just for the committee’s awareness — is fully audited and capable of determining if someone has accessed information at any point in a given time. We have those audit controls in place, if required, to go back and look to see who has accessed information.

K. Kirkpatrick: Great. Thank you very much. I appre­ciate it.

A. Olsen: I’m just wondering. The RCMP has said every sworn officer in the province has to use PRIME. The RCMP uses PRIME as well?

W. Plamondon: Correct. In B.C, they do.

A. Olsen: So how does that…? What system do they use nationally?

W. Plamondon: Nationally, the RCMP are on a different records management system and a different computer-aided dispatch system — essentially, east of B.C. However, there is sharing of information systems through a public safety portal, which is a way law enforcement can communicate certain types of information and share information out across Canada.

A. Olsen: Thanks.

R. Singh: Thank you for all this information. You mentioned something about the autism registry. I just want to understand it a little better. Once you have it, and if that person comes in interaction with the police, that data will come up? It will show, like, what their background is — about their diagnosis? That comes up?

W. Plamondon: What we’re suggesting is a voluntary registry. This has been implemented quite successfully elsewhere in Canada, where parents of children who have autism, as an example, or people who have autism themselves, would have the ability to register that information with the police, in the event that they had an interaction — that the police had that awareness before entering that situation.

R. Singh: But we don’t have it here in B.C.

W. Plamondon: We do not.

R. Singh: Okay. But what you are suggesting is it has worked well in other parts of Canada. Are there examples of other registries also, because we are hearing lots about mental health issues? Do we have such examples as well? Like a person with mental health issues — when they interact with the police, and the police have that information, and they know how to deal with that person?

W. Plamondon: We don’t have any voluntary registries currently in the province, either for autism or other mental health issues.

R. Singh: But some examples elsewhere in Canada?

W. Plamondon: The example that I’m aware of is an autism registry that’s been quite successful in some jurisdictions in Ontario. I believe in other parts of Canada as well, but specifically, I’m aware of one in Ontario, where they’ve had a fair amount of success.

We use the autism registry as an example, but this could, of course, be applied across the board to other mental health issues such as schizophrenia or other issues where it might be very helpful — or people would want the police to know that they have that condition or that their child has that condition, if there’s interaction.

R. Singh: Thank you so much.

O. Grüter-Andrew: If I may just add to that. I can tell you that from the E-Comm perspective — where, as you know, we dispatch police for a significant number of police departments and RCMP detachments — we’ve had conversations with representatives, societies, such as the Pacific Autism Family Network, about the potential benefits. We’ve been approached by a number of other specialist societies for members of the public with mental health challenges to see if there is something that can be done in this respect.

[9:40 a.m.]

I would say the interest from advocate groups in the province is to have that kind of a voluntary declaration ability that can tie into our processes, so that when an incident occurs in a location, our systems can flag the fact that a resident in that location is afflicted with a particular challenge. We can communicate that to the attending officer, perhaps, or it comes up on their system in their car. There is definitely an interest in that discussion.

R. Singh: Thank you so much.

G. Begg: Just a question arising from a question that Adam had asked. I know at the beginning there were some problems related to sharing information with detachments along the Alberta-B.C. border — Alberta not being part of the system and B.C. working on the system. Have all of those wrinkles been ironed out?

W. Plamondon: There is a national repository for sharing of police files across Canada, which PRIME is a contributor to. It’s up to individual agency policies as to which files that they share on that national portal, but the vast majority of files are shared and are accessible in other jurisdictions. Not all police agencies across Canada use it, but the vast majority do, and Alberta is a participant in that public safety portal.

G. Begg: As far as you’re aware, there are no wrinkles anymore, cross-jurisdictionally?

W. Plamondon: Correct — including in B.C., where they can access that information from queries, right in the police vehicle, themselves.

D. Routley (Chair): Do I see any more questions? I do not. At this point, we’ll thank our presenters very much for this information-rich presentation and for their help in addressing our very onerous task of the terms of reference of this committee. They’re very broad, and it’s helped us gain more insight. Thank you very much.

I’d also ask, as I did previously to Mr. Grüter-Andrew: if the committee has further inquiry, can we contact you? Reciprocally, if you have other input you’d like to send to us, please feel free to do that.

O. Grüter-Andrew: Absolutely, we’ll be happy to continue supporting your work.

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

With that, I think, the committee will take a brief recess and reconvene in 17 minutes.

The committee recessed from 9:42 a.m. to 10:02 a.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): Welcome back to this meeting of the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act. I’m going to ask members to introduce themselves to our presenters. I will begin with MLA Singh.

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

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

K. Kirkpatrick: Hi there. Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m Karin Kirkpatrick. I’m MLA for West Vancouver–​Capilano.

I am on the traditional territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam First Nations.

H. Sandhu: Good morning, everyone. I’m Harwinder Sandhu. I’m the MLA for Vernon-Monashee.

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

Thank you for joining us.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I look forward to the presentation. My name is Dan Davies. I’m the MLA for Peace River North.

I’m coming to you from the territory of the Dane-zaa. Welcome.

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

I’m proud to be joining you today from the traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Kwantlen, the Katzie and the Semiahmoo First Nations.

A. Olsen: Hi. Adam Olsen here. I’m the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands.

I am working today from my home in the W̱JOȽEȽP village, one of four in the W̱SÁNEĆ territory.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you. I’m MLA Doug Routley. I’m the Chair of the committee.

I’m joining from the traditional territories of the Malahat First Nation.

I’ll now let the presenters know — I think they do know — there is 15 minutes per presentation. We kindly ask the presenters to be respectful of the time limit. Following the presentations from the panel, there will be time for questions from committee members. We are a little bit flexible with our time today. We anticipate a lot of questions, so we hope the presenters can be a little bit flexible with their time as well.

[10:05 a.m.]

I’ll also remind everyone that audio from our meetings is broadcast live on our website, and a complete transcript will also be posted.

For our next panel, we’ll be hearing from the B.C. Association of Chiefs of Police, the B.C. Association of Municipal Chiefs of Police and the Vancouver police department diversity and Indigenous relations unit.

First to present are Fiona Wilson and Will Ng from the B.C. Association of Chiefs of Police.

Interjection.

D. Routley (Chair): We’ve had a lot of connectivity issues on the committee. Let’s move on to our next presenters, if they’re ready. That would be Del Manak and Dave Jones from the B.C. Association of Municipal Chiefs of Police.

D. Manak: Let’s just see if we can give it a couple of minutes.

D. Routley (Chair): Apparently, Fiona Wilson is letting us know that they’re trying to fix their audio.

D. Manak: Mr. Chair, I’m in Victoria. I can hear you loud and clear. If it’s okay, I wouldn’t mind if we’d just give it a minute or two to see if they can just get up to speed, if that’s okay with you.

D. Routley (Chair): Absolutely. Let’s recess the committee for five minutes while we try to work these problems out.

The committee recessed from 10:07 a.m. to 10:13 a.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): As I had previously indicated, our next panel will be from the B.C. Association of Chiefs of Police, the B.C. Association of Municipal Chiefs of Police and the Vancouver Police Department Diversity and Indigenous Relations Unit.

The first to present are Fiona Wilson and Will Ng from the B.C. Association of Chiefs of Police, and I’ll hand it over to you.

B.C. ASSOCIATION
OF CHIEFS OF POLICE

W. Ng: Good morning, everyone. I’m Chief Superintendent Will Ng. I’m the officer in charge of Richmond detachment of the RCMP and also the vice-president of the British Columbia Association of Chiefs of Police, better known as the BCACP.

With me today is Superintendent Fiona Wilson. Fiona is from the Vancouver police department investigations division, and she’s also a member of our BCACP executive.

I’d like to acknowledge that we are joining you from Vancouver, and would first like to acknowledge that the city of Vancouver is located on the traditional and ancestral and unceded territories of Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

[10:15 a.m.]

We want to thank you for the opportunity to present to the Committee today, and thank you also for the important work that you’re doing. In particular, we acknowledge and respect the comprehensive approach that you’ve taken to listen to the broad range of presenters. Policing is so fundamental to the safety and health of all Canadians, and we feel any review of policing needs to engage and involve feedback from all corners of our community. Police leaders in B.C. have been asked for changes and improvements in so many of the areas that you are currently covering, and we share your vision for improving public safety across the province.

Today, in the next 15 minutes, we will be discussing the following areas. For the interest of time, we will not touch on police oversight, budget or governance. Those areas will be covered by the presenters of the B.C. Association of Municipal Chiefs of Police, and we are aligned and concur with their comments.

The BCACP is made up of senior police members from the RCMP and also from the independent municipal police agencies in British Columbia. We represent police leadership for more than 10,000 police officers in B.C. We also represent the only First Nations police in B.C., the Stl’atl’imx First Nations police. BCACP acts as a voice on provincial and national policing issues. We provide a unified perspective on public safety issues, and we have varied histories, experiences and differences in the communities that we serve. However, we share a common objective on public safety and policing issues.

On this slide, you’ll see the mission of the BCACP. Underlying all this, we share many of the same goals of this committee, which is to ensure that we police our communities ethically, with integrity, honour and a high standard of conduct; foster uniformity of practices; encourage efficient and effective crime-prevention practices; that our agencies communicate effectively; and most importantly, ensure that all our officers are making our communities safer for everyone.

We felt that it was important to provide some context to the narrative over the past years surrounding police and the use of force. Although the use of force is necessary at times to protect our community from violence, de-escalation and defusing situations is fundamental to what we do. Our officers are well trained. They are compliant to provincial police standards, which mandate crisis intervention and de-escalation training. As well, every three years, our officers have to requalify to our provincial standards. Most B.C. police agencies go beyond the provincial police standards and provide additional role-playing exercises and scenario training for all our officers. It is also foundational to our work.

Police mental health strategies are structured around de-escalation. We also utilize police negotiators; psychologists; less-lethal tools such as non-lethal rounds, Taser and pepper spray; and we are guided by the national police use-of-force model that is built upon the de-escalation of situations. Recent research has shown that our officers use force in less than 1 percent of our calls for service.

Over the past year, the national spotlight has been cast upon the tragic death of George Floyd and the police use of force. There are fundamental differences between the police agencies in Canada and those of our American counterparts, such as that we are guided by our national use-of-force model. There is a high degree of oversight, such as our independent investigations, coroners’ inquests, to name a few. We also have different hiring practices and training models. The likelihood of there being a use-of-force misconduct is one in every 33,000 calls for service, which is an extremely rare occurrence. There is greater oversight in Canada, and this oversight is not based on a criminal burden of proof but based on a civil standard, which is the balance of probabilities.

Our Indigenous communities. We recognize and ac­knowledge our historical role and the negative impact it has had on our Indigenous peoples of Canada. We support the alignment and compliance of all of our policies and procedures with the United Nations declaration of the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the 94 calls for action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the 231 calls for justice of the national review on the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. We share the position that Indigenous peoples represent unique populations and neither their cultural, legal or political institutions are protected by international and domestic laws.

[10:20 a.m.]

The RCMP is the main agency responsible for providing policing services to over 200 Indigenous communities in British Columbia, and the RCMP will be providing their perspective on Indigenous policing when they later present to the committee.

As a representative of the B.C. chiefs of police, we wish to highlight some of the successes that bring policing into alignment with the calls to action, which include having more Indigenous representation in police. RCMP’s Indigenous policing services is managed by over 100 percent Indigenous police officers. Out of the 117 First Nations police officers in the province, over 50 percent are Indigenous. They receive cultural sensitivity training from Elders in the community that they serve in. Recruitment of Indigenous officers is full-time, and Indigenous recruits are supported from application to graduation from police training.

We have Indigenous officers that serve as full-time missing-persons coordinators, gang coordinators and recruiting officers. Our officers receive training in Aboriginal and First Nations awareness, bias awareness, cultural awareness and humility, and trauma-informed policing. We endeavour to build respectful relationships and ensure consultation and open communication with our Indigenous communities.

The process for establishing policing priorities is consultative. Reconciliation efforts are ongoing, not superficial, and they have depth and meaning, from the small gestures towards reconciliation such as hosting school talks and social events to formal ceremonies. Restorative justice is recognized, and efforts are being made to implement restorative justice and alternative measures where possible.

We have made significant strides in strengthening our relationship with our Indigenous communities, and we recognize that there is still much more work ahead of us. But we are hopeful that recommendations coming out of this committee will help us find better ways to get there.

Fiona, over to you.

F. Wilson: Good morning. Thank you, everyone.

On to the slide that’s titled “Growing Challenges for Police in B.C.,” Police in British Columbia have been facing growing challenges, particularly over the last two years. Throughout the COVID pandemic, while most sectors shut down, our work, of course, did not stop. Our members continued to work on the front lines, responding to unpredictable situations, often at the risk of exposure, with a significant rise in the most serious forms of crime, including homicides, serious assault, hate crimes and business break and enters.

We found ourselves in the midst of a serious gang conflict that has required an urgent response to address the impact on public safety in British Columbia. Anti-Asian hate crime has risen in some areas over 700 percent. I know you’ve heard about this. It’s an issue that’s been pervasive throughout North America.

The opioid crisis continues to ravage our communities. One hundred and fifty-five people died of an overdose in B.C. alone in February. That’s almost five people a day in this province. We all have a role to play in this. From a policing perspective, we continue to focus on organized crime and those who are trafficking in illicit drugs. As you know, the BCACP supports decriminalization.

We’ve also seen unprecedented numbers of homeless people in our communities. Many of our cities have faced challenges of encampments. This is yet another example of a social issue that police have to play a role in that’s also a massive resource challenge for our respective agencies.

In B.C., police have been dealing with multiple protests every single day. We’re always working to find that balance between people’s rights to peacefully have their voices heard with the often conflicting rights of community members to live, move about and work safely in their neighbourhoods. This is always a delicate balance, and protests are also hugely resource-intensive.

Officer wellness is a growing concern for police agencies. We’ve seen a dramatic increase in assaults on police officers in the Lower Mainland. In fact, these crimes have risen by almost 50 percent over the last five years. Research using the critical incident history questionnaire revealed that police officers from larger departments encounter about 178 critical incidents throughout their career. This is compared to eight over the career of those who are not in a policing profession. Given some of the recent challenges that I just spoke about, we suspect that this is an underrepresentation. Studies on exhaustion among police officers found that fatigued officers were more prone to on-duty accidents and injuries, and this has led to greater sick time use and officer burnout.

[10:25 a.m.]

Aside from the obvious concerns about the health and safety of our employees, the reality is that if we continue to run our officers in the existing manner, it will result in a higher cost to public safety and service delivery down the road. People join our career in policing typically because they want to help others. They end up dealing with situations that often leave them hurt and damaged.

We’ve all listened and participated in discussions about detasking and defunding police across North America. We’re open to those conversations. However, before police are detasked and possible funding is removed, there must be additional resources in place to fill the gap that will certainly be left in our communities. We’ve been asking for this for many years and really want to be at the table when these discussions are occurring.

There seems to be considerable misinformation or lack of knowledge about what police actually do. We strongly encourage empirical facts to be considered when deciding what changes, if any, should be made. We believe that other sectors need to be funded better because of the critical work that they do to address some of the social issues that are foundational to the defund, detask arguments.

Specifically, more needs to be done in the areas of mental health, addiction treatment and housing, because when these areas aren’t funded appropriately, police fill in. By the time a person is in crisis and a police response is required, there have typically been multiple failures on the part of various agencies in our communities, often over the course of the individual’s lifetime. At two o’clock in the morning, when someone is throwing furniture out the window because they’re in a drug-induced psychosis, for example, it’s too late for anything but a police response.

Over the past decade, you’ve seen the impact of the increased expectations on police through languishing response times. You know, people often have to wait hours or days for police attendance because our call boards are full of calls in relation to social issues. Proactive policing initiatives have dramatically decreased. Our workload hasn’t decreased over the past decade, but the type of work has changed. The volume of calls and the complexity of incidents have increased, and the demands on our members have never been more complex.

They’re expected to be social workers, addictions counsellors, mental health professionals and are constantly push­ing up against a lack of capacity to effectively address these issues in our communities. Additionally, when it comes to enforcing laws, our members have never experienced more complex and exhaustive expectations from Crown. Throw in court requirements, such as the time limitations set by the R. v. Jordan decision, for example, and our members are under more intense pressure than ever before. In many agencies, they’re doing it all with the same staffing levels that were in place ten years ago.

As far as recommendations go, we would like to see additional resources put into programs that seek to address some of the upstream drivers that I’ve spoken about. An example of this are programs such as Car 87, where there’s a mental health worker paired with a police officer. We can measure success of programs like assertive outreach teams and assertive community teams. We know that they work. We want to work with various stakeholders to address some of those upstream causes that ultimately lead people into crisis and require a police response, to reduce the need for that in the first place. We’d really like to move away from a crisis-based system.

Just to give you an example, Health Canada only spends 7 percent of their budget on mental health. Until there’s a percentage of spending spent on mental health that is similar to what’s spent on physical health, we likely won’t see great improvements in this area. The reality is that there are large gaps in social welfare and health service resources involving various other ministries across the B.C. government and a dependency on police to fill these gaps, which are more pronounced in rural and remote areas.

We recognize the important work of the men and women that wear this uniform. We are not perfect. Policing is a difficult job, but our members are exceptionally well trained, carefully selected and have vigorous oversight.

On behalf of the BCACP, we’re excited to work with this committee. We look forward to seeing some lasting, positive changes that result in increased public safety, wellness for our police officers and improvements in many of the social challenges we’ve discussed today.

D. Routley (Chair): Next are Del Manak and Dave Jones from the B.C. Association of Municipal Chiefs of Police.

You can take it away.

[10:30 a.m.]

B.C. ASSOCIATION
OF MUNICIPAL CHIEFS OF POLICE

D. Manak: Mr. Chair and members of the special committee, thank you for giving us an opportunity to present on behalf of the Municipal Chiefs of Police. My name is Del Manak, and I am chief constable of the Victoria police department and a representative of the B.C. Association of Municipal Chiefs of Police. With me today will be chief officer Dave Jones, chief of the Metro Vancouver Transit Police and also vice-president of the B.C. Municipal Chiefs of Police.

Before I start, I wanted to acknowledge, with respect, that I stand on the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋ­in̓əŋ-speaking people, the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations, whose historic relationships with the land continue to this day.

Chief Jones and I represent the B.C. municipal and First Nations policing organizations, as well as designated law enforcement agencies in B.C. We thank you for your time this morning.

As you know, we shared our presentation and other detailed information with you prior to today. There are a number of thoughts and recommendations that we hope will be useful for you as you go about your important work. Our 15-minute presentation will start with a preamble to set the stage for our presentation, and I’ll focus on four specific areas before turning it over to Chief Jones, who will talk about police oversight.

I want to start by talking about policing in general. With all the conversation around police reform over the last number of months, it’s easy to get consumed by the many challenges that lie ahead of us. I want to just take a moment to recognize the work that police officers throughout the province do every day under challenging circumstances, serving our communities with integrity, care, compassion and a high degree of professionalism. Fiona touched on this a little bit in her presentation, but I think it’s important to highlight.

It is easy to forget that our system of Canadian policing is on par with the best in the world, if not better. Our model and approach to policing serves as a model for others to follow. We should really be proud of that. Now, it’s not to say that we don’t have work to do. In fact, there’s much work to do, and policing must evolve and constantly work to be better. Public trust and public confidence in policing are critical for us to be successful in our community engagement and our public safety mandate.

The past few months, in particular, have been difficult for many. Important conversations are taking place, and I want to let you know that we welcome these discussions. We know that progress is being made, and I hear it from our diverse communities every day. We recognize the importance of addressing racism and bias, which exist to different extents, with different impacts, throughout Canadian history, in all of Canadian society and within our institutions. We must remain ever-vigilant to the presence of bias within the human condition and within institutions that we, as human beings, create. We must draw upon the collective efforts of all of Canadian society and work every day towards the elimination of harm that can result from bias and racism.

I want to be crystal clear here that racism in any form is inexcusable. It is unacceptable. Police organizations in B.C. have worked hard on relationships with community, including with our diverse communities that we serve every day. However, as I’ve acknowledged, much work is still needed in this area. The voices of those impacted, directly and indirectly, are being heard and are at the forefront of our minds as we focus on transformational change and collective action with the community. Changes are needed, but as I’ve stated, I’m extremely pleased to see that our starting point is strong.

Now, our vision for the future of policing in B.C. is to represent the best model of policing anywhere in the world. This is attainable if we work together. Our vision builds off the successes and the lessons learned from the past. It respects all voices from the present, and it looks down the road to the possibilities for tomorrow. To accomplish this, we ask you for your help. We invite you to consider enhancements in the areas that I’m going to talk about, which are training, oversight, governance and community response to mental health and addictions.

[10:35 a.m.]

We believe that quality training for police officers serves everyone’s best interest. While there has been a great deal of work on updates to the recruit training curriculum of late, we believe that more work needs to be done to ensure high quality and sustainably funded police training for all police officers. That goes from new recruits right into in-service training for experienced police officers, all designated and designed to ensure adherence to best practices, compliance with constantly developing law and alignment with modern policing standards.

In our view, being proactive in training builds and maintains public trust much better than having to regain it after the fact through an oversight process of some sort. Investing upstream is critical. Our submission in the area of oversight focuses on having a transparent, civilian-led, efficient, effective and fair system that, where appropriate, is focused on conflict resolution, mutual understanding and relationship-building. Chief Jones is going to touch on that in more detail in a few minutes.

With regard to governance, we believe that police boards hold a critical role in British Columbia, providing leadership for police organizations in their statutory role and ensuring public safety. Similarly, local governments hold responsibility for so many important community issues and do so in a fiscally responsible manner.

We believe it’s important that police boards and local government each understand and respect the role of the other, to fulfil their respective mandates in a mutually supportive way and to have mechanisms in place — this is so critical — to quickly and effectively resolve any disagreements should they arise. We believe that improvements in guidance would be well received by both police boards and by local government.

Finally, I want to touch on what every community is struggling with: complex social issues related to individuals with problematic substance use, individuals with severe and persistent mental illness and individuals experiencing homelessness — or a combination of two or more of these factors. As police leaders, we welcome the potential for implementation and/or expansion, in some cases, of al­ternative, civilian-led responses to these complex commu­nity challenges. We get it. We are looking at this through a health lens and not a criminal lens, as we all should.

At the same time, police are and will remain an important part of the response to mental health crisis where there is a potential threat to public safety, whether that be criminality, the presence of weapons or risk of violence. For these reasons, appropriate funding, training and re­sources for police must continue to be a part of the available mental health response continuum dedicated to communities throughout B.C.

Thank you for your time. I’d like to now turn it over to Chief Dave Jones to provide a municipal police oversight.

D. Jones: Thank you very much, Chief Manak. I’m Dave Jones with the Metro Vancouver Transit Police and vice-chair of the B.C. Association of Municipal Chiefs of Police. Good morning and thank you to the committee members.

I’d also like to acknowledge that I’m attending from unceded traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

I’d like to take a few minutes to address the area of police oversight. Confidence in policing is grounded by the underlying premise that the public are the police and the police are the public. Police officers are entrusted by the communities they serve with significant legal authority — including, in some circumstances, the power to use deadly force against their fellow citizens. The indispensable foundation of such authority is the community’s steadfast trust in the police.

We are unique in Canada and, particularly, B.C., in that we already have established independent, civilian-led police oversight in place. This is very different from American police agencies, that, as the result of media coverage, provide a significant influence on public opinions and views of policing in Canada. That is, at times, unfortunate, as while we are alike in some ways, we are also significantly different in others. Those differences include the existence of robust and effective oversight systems established here in Canada.

[10:40 a.m.]

Police oversight has always had a presence, whether through legislation such as the B.C. Police Act or police boards and, even prior, police commissions. We know that public confidence will be maintained when the public is assured that their concerns will be resolved fairly and without prejudice.

In British Columbia, legislation governing police conduct and its oversight processes are found within the Police Act. Similarly, other provinces and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police find themselves governed by legislation that provides for oversight, including codified disciplinary processes.

Slowly and over time, the issue of public confidence in the police has been subject to scrutiny, causing a slow erosion of confidence. While no one single incident has caused this erosion in confidence, there have been a series of controversial events wherein police misconduct has shaken, if not broken, the trust between the public and the police.

With today’s current use and access to technology, incidents involving dramatic actions such as the use of force are transmitted instantaneously and can create a shocking image beyond which the police have any form of control. Whether the actions viewed are justified or not, the damage to the public’s confidence has generally already occurred. This leads to further concerns, as it is important for effective policing to occur. The maintenance of the rule of law must occur. In order to do this, the police are in a unique position, as they themselves are not above the law.

Where it was once commonplace for police agencies to be responsible to investigate and resolve complaints against their own members through an internal process, the growth of civilian oversight systems demonstrates the shift in practices as a measure to ensure that public confidence is maintained or restored. Oversight of policing plays an integral role in the police complaint system, serving as a system of checks and balances to hold police officers accountable for any potential abuse of power or misconduct.

Police are, in fact, one of the most regulated occupations, as oversight bodies currently include the independent investigations office, the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, police boards, human rights tribunals, coroner’s inquests, public inquiries, criminal and civilian courts, WorkSafeBC, the Information and Privacy Commissioner and, yes, even the media.

As advances in oversight develop and grow, there is a need to examine the aspects of effective oversight so that both the public and the police themselves have confidence in the process. As there is no right answer to what an oversight body must look like, it is important to examine the key aspects that will add to or enhance the process for both the public and the police.

Some of the common key factors included are: independence. This is viewed as a necessary factor to ensure that inappropriate influence or control from any source is removed. In B.C., we have already seen the transition to independent civilian oversight through the creation of both the OPCC and the IIO.

Transparency. This ensures that proper reporting and accountability is available to the public through the use of complaint analysis, observations and open reporting. Having oversight assists with building public confidence, but openness and transparency in the process, and the results that are generated, are key to educating and informing the public.

Fairness. Oversight often leads to formalized processes that can become time-consuming, confusing and complex. Fairness affects not only the police members involved but, more importantly, the public, who could become discouraged by the formality and complexity of processes that are difficult to understand.

These are but three factors that need to be considered, as effective oversight requires that each and every individual who will be impacted by the process involved can, at the very least, understand how appropriate decisions will be reached. While there are many aspects to ensuring a process is fair, it is very important that the public understands that police leaders and the members themselves support independent civilian-led oversight of the police.

[10:45 a.m.]

We have provided, in our submission, several documents, with one addressing submissions made in camera before the last special committee that was reviewing the Police Act. Our comments and response to those submissions are intended to ensure that our systems are fair, transparent, understandable and accessible, especially for those impacted by police actions. We understand the unique position that we hold in our communities and are confident that oversight, along with procedural fairness, will enhance public confidence in our members’ ability to fulfil their sworn commitment to protect every individual within the communities that they serve.

Thank you very much for your time.

D. Routley (Chair): We next have a presentation from Howard Chow and Howard Tran from the Vancouver police department diversity and Indigenous relations unit. I’ll hand it over to you.

VANCOUVER POLICE DEPARTMENT
DIVERSITY AND INDIGENOUS
RELATIONS UNIT

H. Chow: Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. I’m Deputy Chief Howard Chow, and I’m speaking on behalf of the Vancouver police department. With me is Superintendent Howard Tran, who is also from the Vancouver police department.

I want to respectfully acknowledge the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, on whose traditional and unceded territories I’m speaking from today.

Before we begin, we’d like to also say thank you. We appreciate the opportunity to address this committee. Thank you for the important work you are doing.

I’m going to start things off by turning it over to Superintendent Tran.

H. Tran: Thank you, Deputy Chow.

Good morning, everyone. I am Howard Tran, superintendent of the VPD. In the interests of time, we will not duplicate on topics addressed in the two previous presentations. We are, however, in concurrence with our colleagues who have presented.

Today in our presentation, we will speak to our diver­sity, inclusion and Indigenous relations section. For brevity, I will simply call it DIIRS. I’ll highlight some of our community engagements, and then Deputy Chow will speak to the intersect between social issues and public safety. Then I’ll wrap with a flag about our members.

Before I go into DIIRS, I just want to give you some background about the VPD. We are 135 years old. We have 2,200 sworn officers and civilian professionals serving a resident population of 700,000 people. However, as a core city that is the business, entertainment and tourist hub of B.C., we do provide service to upwards of one million people a day. In an average week, we go to 650 to 700 calls for service a day.

DIIRS is a very specialized section that was created in 1995. It is mandated to develop and implement treaty-based initiatives and programs that build relationships with Vancouver’s diverse community. The primary goal is to improve outcomes for populations that feel they have been underserved by the police in the past or currently. Some of our community initiatives include our partnership with the Immigrant Services Society through our diversity liaison officers, who conduct weekly sessions to engage newcomers to Canada — such as themselves, at one time.

We have strong Indigenous outreach and have made it a priority to proactively recruit Indigenous officers. One such program is our Indigenous cadet program, which recruits Indigenous youth ages 19 to 30 who have a strong interest in policing, with paid work throughout the summer. Since 2007, we’ve had 42 such candidates go through our program. And of these, 11, or 26 percent, have gone on to careers with the VPD, RCMP and Corrections.

DIIRS is also relied upon to examine our systems, processes and policies through an equity, diversity and inclusion lens. For example, our DIIRS members participate in the city of Vancouver’s 2SLGBTQ+ Advisory Committee, which, in turn, guides how we provide service to this community, including ensuring that we use the right terminology.

DIIRS is also responsible to investigate hate-based incidents and to provide support to the affected person or community. This falls on the hate crimes investigators. You’ve heard already, mentioned by Superintendent Wilson, that there’s a 700-fold increase in anti-Asian hate crimes this year since COVID. That’s just not acceptable.

Now, aside from every officer who has role in connecting and engaging with our communities, we acknowledge the importance of a specialized section with members fully invested, trained and dedicated to work with these communities. This section focuses on equity-deserving groups that have experienced barriers to justice in the past and currently. The DIIRS members listed in this slide act as resources for officers and support them to navigate with each community and on culturally sensitive situations. They are vital to our VPD strategic plan.

[10:50 a.m.]

I’ve already mentioned the hate crimes investigators, as well as the diversity officers. We also have a 2SLGBTQ+ officer plus four full-time officers working directly with Indigenous communities, including a Musqueam liaison officer who works directly on site with the administration, leadership and security teams. He is available during the workweek and after hours by cell phone and supports any investigations or calls for service to Musqueam.

We have a sex industry and a homeless outreach officer, and both of these positions are primarily advocacy roles. Deputy Chow will touch on these in his slides.

Although we outreach with all communities in Vancouver, we do provide additional focus on Indigenous and racialized groups. We have an Indigenous advisory committee, which provides input and guidance to the VPD on training, treaty relations and safety. In 2010, we collaborated with the community to create SisterWatch, which has the guiding principle to provide a safe place for Indigenous women from the Downtown Eastside to voice their concerns and to keep them informed of police progress on investigations and any concerns they bring to the table. We’re in the process of creating the Black and African diaspora committee as well as an EDI committee.

The VPD has 11 community policing centres with strong partnerships in the community as well as three that are focused on specific groups. These are the Chinatown CPC, the Vancouver Aboriginal CPC as well as one in the Khalsa Diwan Sikh Temple in South Vancouver. This is the only one we’re aware of that’s embedded in a Sikh temple in North America.

We go to many events each year. A sampling includes the Vaisakhi Parade, Chinese New Year and the Downtown Eastside Women’s Memorial March. This is an annual event that we walk in and have done so since 2011 to demonstrate solidarity and commitment to ending violence against women in the Downtown Eastside. It’s something I’m very proud of.

I want to take this opportunity to highlight what I see as a beautiful canoe behind Chair Routley’s wall there. That’s amazing.

A Pulling Together Canoe Journey is a ten-day journey involving 300 to 400 paddlers travelling through our traditional waters. Participants come from all Indigenous communities in B.C. as well as public service agencies including Fisheries, police of course, Corrections. I’ve been a participant and a board member since 2011 and currently serve as president of the society.

This is just a sampling. I would encourage you to look into the VPD Community Matters report that will be made available to the committee.

Over to you, Deputy Chow.

H. Chow: Now I’d like to shift our focus to some ex­amples of these complex social issues that Chief Manak alluded to and how we have a direct nexus with public safety. So if we can switch to the next slide titled “Check Well-Being.”

Check well-being calls or wellness check calls have received considerable attention over this last six months to a year. There has been some misunderstanding on what constitutes a well-being check, and I’m hoping I can add some clarity with examples.

A well-being check can be when somebody calls us in and says there’s a man wandering around in traffic, or someone calls in, a co-worker, and says: “A woman came into work today with bruising on her face, and she’s claiming she fell.” It could be somebody who says: “There’s a strong odour coming from my neighbouring apartment, and the occupant hasn’t been seen for days.”

I think everybody can understand this. In the midst of an opioid crisis, oftentimes our members, our officers, when they’re out patrolling, will see somebody late in the evening on a rainy night in an alcove and will suspect that they’re in distress. They may stop and check.

These are examples of well-being checks. Our experience in policing is that we’re required to attend because of a number of reasons. One, it’s a call for service. So a citizen is calling us because they’ve got concerns.

A second reason is that it could be because our experience tells us that these types of calls can turn violent on a dime. No other agency right now is equipped or available 24-7, 365 days a year to be able to attend these calls.

A fourth consideration is our statutory authorities. Those are the ones that allow us the lawfulness to be able to breach doors, to go check on the smell that’s coming down the hallway. It also gives us the statutory authority to apprehend someone if they’re undergoing a mental health crisis. Or if somebody is deceased, going in to breach the door, secure the valuables. All these things require the statutory authorities.

Just giving you a bit of context. In Vancouver alone, we get about 10,000 well-being checks a year. Almost half of them, 46 percent, occur in the evening.

[10:55 a.m.]

If I can get you to go to the next slide, please, it’s: “Mental Health Realities.” Lots has been said about police getting out of the mental health space. Perhaps we can give the committee some context for you to consider. Eighty-four percent of mental health calls require police attendance because they involve danger, violence or criminality. Of those calls, 26 percent of the mental health calls are coming from health care professionals or other service providers, and 12 percent of these types of calls, mental health calls, involve weapons.

We know that individuals with mental health issues are often targeted by criminals. Individuals with mental health issues are 23 times more likely to be a victim of a violent offence. This alone is reason why police need to be part of this discussion.

After each of these slides, I’m going to provide you with what we feel the gaps are and some recommendations. For this one, I’d suggest that to address the safety of individuals living with mental health conditions, we recommend better collaboration with health authorities, better information-sharing. I’m going to give you a quick example on that.

Vancouver police and Coastal Health have an excellent working relationship. We have an agreement where we can share information that’s going to advance the care that’s provided to those suffering from mental illness. However, some of the other areas in the province don’t have this. I think this is where we need government or this committee’s support to help that, because in some cases, an individual could be decompensating in your neighbourhood, in another jurisdiction, and have five, six, seven incidents. Then they come into Vancouver, and from the health side, we don’t know about those incidents. We’re not able, as a team, to be able to offer the best health care that we can.

Another example of a recommendation is our hospital and EHS wait times. Right now, whenever we’re having to deal with those that are suffering from mental illness and we have to apprehend them, and we take them to the hospital. A two-person police unit sits in the hospital, on average, about one hour, waiting to be able to hand the person over to a medical practitioner so we can go about other calls that are stacked and waiting. This goes without saying, also, for ambulance wait times.

Going on to the next slide, please, on mental health — three initiatives that bring police and mental health professionals together and have been successful. There’s Car 87. I know this has been talked about a lot. It was started here in Vancouver about 43 years ago, back in 1978. This is where a psychiatric nurse as well as a plainclothes police officer conducts medical health assessments and emergency interventions on the road. It’s a very reactive approach.

A more proactive approach is our ACT teams. Our ACT team is a full-service mental health team which provides wraparound service and care. This was started back in 2012. There are five ACT teams that we’re part of in Vancouver. Each team has about ten to 12 professionals. It serves the highest-need clients living in our community.

Another team that we’re very proud of is our assertive outreach team. This is the support for clients with substance use, mental health issues, and it was started back in 2014. Their goal is to prevent those suffering with their involvement in the criminal justice system or criminalization. In brevity, in the interest of time, you’ll see on the slide some of the program outcomes and the successes that we were talking about.

Early warning system. This is something, as well, that’s very successful. The VPD developed a predictive model or an early warning system. It helps in determining who is at high risk before they go into crisis, so proactively, we can get out there and provide the aid and care that they need.

The recommendation coming off of this is increased funding for mental health professionals so programs like these can be scaled. It’s vastly underfunded, and it was brought up by Superintendent Wilson that it needs to be funded at the level, or at least the same veracity, as physical health.

When we get to sex work, our position on sex work enforcement is primarily to ensure the safety of sex workers. This is illustrated, I think, best in this fact: no sex worker has been charged in relation to a specific act of prostitution since 2009, over 12 years ago. We have a sex industry liaison officer, and her role isn’t to do enforcement but to help and assist sex workers. Our focus is on human trafficking, child abuse, child exploitation, violence against sex workers and organized crime.

As it relates to addiction, the VPD’s focus is on enhancing safety, preventing harm and protecting the vulnerable. We’ve acknowledged, like most police leaders across this province, that it is a health issue. Our focus is, rather, on the organized crime — on drug traffickers and preda­tory offenders.

[11:00 a.m.]

Our position on addiction issues has always been progressive. In fact, in 2003, when the first safe consumption site, Insite, started, we supported it. It was the first one in North America. Now I believe there are over 30 of them across Canada.

In 2016, the first police agency to deploy naloxone. In 2017, we publicly called for expanded opioid assisted therapy programs and increased addiction treatment. On the slide, you’ll see a couple of white papers that we’ve published on the addiction crisis and some of the needs that this community urgently requires.

The recommendation is that we continue to advocate for treatment on demand. We know that when a person is addicted to drugs and is ready for treatment, that window is very small. If you have to wait three weeks to get treatment, I can tell you that’s not going to work. We have to make it more accessible.

Let’s go to the next slide. So a closer look at the drug data. I think this puts an exclamation mark on the fact that we’re not criminalizing this. In 2020, only four charges of simple possession. Those are typically because of a larger investigation.

Homelessness issues. Our priority with homelessness is to prevent victimization, because we know that they are 19 times more likely to be a victim of crime. Something even more alarming is that although they represent 2 percent of the general population in Vancouver, in Vancouver, 20 percent of the homeless population are Indigenous. Even more staggering is that in Metro Vancouver, homeless Indigenous people represent 33 percent.

I’ve got one more recommendation that I can talk about, but just in the interest of time, I’ll bring it up in the question and answer, if I could, so I don’t tie up…. I think I’m going to flip it back to Superintendent Howard Tran to close it off for us.

H. Tran: Our people are the key to our success. We all focus on recruiting the best and most diverse workforce.

At the VPD, our average age is 27 years old. They come with experience. Two-thirds have a university degree or higher, and the rest have a minimum of one year. They go through a very onerous and comprehensive recruiting process with multiple phases, including physical, psychological and medical tests, a polygraph exam and a background check. They’re continually screened for personal bias and prejudice.

What’s important to point out is that 51 percent of our staff are actually not white men. In fact, 26 percent are women. As you move up the ranks into the senior management team, this rises to 37 percent. Twenty-six percent come from ethnically diverse backgrounds, and we collectively speak 52 languages. As you can see, we are very diverse. We recognize that it is vital to represent the communities we police.

Our members are trained to be guardians, protectors, social workers, mental health workers, conduct homeless outreach and know the law, sometimes better than lawyers. It is one of the hardest imaginable professions, requiring a wide spectrum of skills. Imagine going to work daily where you may encounter people who are having the worst day of their lives, people who throw obscenities and objects at you, spit at you, try to hurt you and even, in rare circumstances, try to kill you. Our officers do this daily.

Yes, unfortunately, there are rare instances where we don’t get it right. However, when we fail, there are robust oversight mechanisms and bodies in B.C. and Canada. No other profession operates under more public scrutiny. Despite the challenges our members face daily, they continue to provide excellent service to the community.

We thank you for this opportunity to present, and we welcome your questions.

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

Mr. Chow, if you’d like to go ahead and add that final recommendation, we do have some time flexibility.

H. Chow: Thank you. The final recommendation is something that we’ve long advocated for. It’s for a multidisciplinary, multigovernment, integrated service delivery model — for instance, where there might be a single directorate or a czar responsible for the Downtown Eastside.

You may wonder why, if this committee is dealing with the whole province, we are focusing on the Downtown Eastside. Well, I can tell you that the Downtown Eastside, although vibrant…. It has lots of vitality. It’s a very tight, close-knit community. I also know…. We’re all aware — it’s been very broadly spoken about — that it’s the poorest postal code in Canada.

Researchers have suggested there’s about $1 million a day that goes into social services down there. There are all sorts of disconnected approaches on how to help people down there, with NGOs…. There are five ministries that have skin in the game down there in terms of the Ministries of Health, Housing, Sol Gen’s office, AG’s office, Addictions. There are all these disparate courses of action that are taking place.

[11:05 a.m.]

Also down there, we know that it’s a disproportionate number of those suffering from mental health, a disproportionate number of those that are addicted to drugs, disproportionate homelessness. Even though the Downtown Eastside represents 2 percent of Vancouver’s population, about 25 percent of police calls for service come from the Downtown Eastside. About 23 percent of all mental health calls come from the Downtown Eastside. About 10 percent of our Indigenous population is in the Downtown Eastside.

We feel that right now the approach is piecemeal. It needs stronger coordination, alignment. It needs somebody with appropriate decision-making authority, perhaps at an ADM or DM level. We’ve provided some documentation on this in the past. I think that all roads in the province lead to the Downtown Eastside. It’s not just Vancouver.

Thank you for the extra time.

D. Routley (Chair): With that, I’m open to questions. The first one that I see is MLA Begg.

G. Begg: Thanks, everyone, for your presentations.

My first question, I think, would be to the two Howards from the Vancouver police department. This committee has heard several presenters who are particularly critical of policing in general but the Vancouver police department specifically. I’m sure that you’ve probably heard the criticisms before. You’re well aware of the complaints that the public has about your department.

It’s a twofold question, really. How do you respond to the complaints when you become aware of them? And what is the impact that that kind of constant criticism has on the men and women who are on the street every day?

H. Chow: I think I will answer that question, if I can, Mr. Begg.

In answer to your question, I can tell you…. Maybe I’ll start [audio interrupted] is that it is a hit on the morale of our front-line officers. Day in and day out, they’re going out and dealing with very serious, very difficult calls, knowing that they’re hugely under the microscope, hugely criticized, in particular over the past year. But they’re professionals. We know that it’s necessary to [audio interrupted].

Also, if I can give some context on it. I very much respect the comments that were made by some of your past presenters and some of the criticism that comes on. I’ll tell you that we deal with this on a regular basis, but we deal with it with an approach that we’re open for discussion. Some of the things we just can’t move because it’s enshrouded in our duties. It’s in our laws.

I’ll tell you one thing that’s really important to put into perspective is that we can’t just police and direct all our focus on that, perhaps, demographic or that community. We have to ensure public trust broadly across the city, in all communities. I know that we retain this public trust.

I know there were some stats that were put out. I’ll tell you one that was just released by Stats Canada in November of 2020. It said that nine out of ten members of the public have confidence in police. In fact, four out of ten have a great deal of confidence, and about half have some confidence. This is, broadly, across Canada.

I also know…. This is widely, I could say, said across the police in B.C. For the last 20 years, we’ve done independent surveys. We’ve brought in people to examine, give us our public approval rating about what we’re doing right or wrong. We typically score consistently, for the last 20 years, about the mid-85 percentile range. Much like other police officers in your community, when they have contact with you as a victim or a witness or a member of the public, that generally jumps up 2 or 3 percent.

It tells us the support is there, but we don’t always get it right. Sometimes we wish we could redo it. I’d say that by and large, we do an exceptional job out there serving our communities.

G. Begg: Just to follow up, do you proactively reach out to those communities who feel marginalized by the police? Do you hear their complaints? Do you take actions as a result of your contact with these groups?

[11:10 a.m.]

H. Chow: Absolutely, we do. I would put on the record that I doubt there are many other sectors that spend as much time invested in our communities as policing. We get out there. We have daily, weekly meetings where we’re talking with communities, even those that criticize the work we do.

That’s an important facet of it. We’ve got to listen to our community because there are often better ways of doing things. That happens on a regular basis. Perhaps later on, I can get into some of the community work that we do, that we outreach. Even throughout COVID, we’ve been the ones at the front step, talking to people and engaging, finding what the issues and concerns are.

G. Begg: Maybe, Chair, I can ask a couple more questions directly in line with what the deputy has just said.

Perhaps now is a good time to talk about those proactive measures, those upstream measures that police take in anticipation of emerging problems. Give us an example of something that the Vancouver police department has done in anticipation of greater problems down the stream.

H. Tran: I can speak to our mental health stuff. I mean, it’s well documented that we’ve been quite innovative and progressive with our mental health response.

We are one of only two we’re aware of in B.C. that has a mental health strategy, even going back to 1987, when we started Car 87. That was quite groundbreaking at the time, but we’ve been doing that for 43 years. We’ve always recognized that it’s more important to work upstream than it is to respond in a crisis-based system.

In follow-up to that, we obviously wrote the report in 2007 calling for additional support, Lost in Transition. Then we followed up with another report and then additional reports in 2013. We created Project LINK, which is a collaboration between us and our health authorities to really deal with this issue. We proactively created the assertive outreach team, assertive community team.

We have youth programs in our schools. We developed and funded Here4Peers, which is a program that is peer-based and that targets youth in grades 6 and 7 who are transitioning into high school in Vancouver. They’re educated and given awareness about youth mental health issues. This comes from their peers in grades 11 and 12, who are also provided training and education.

That’s just one area where we’ve become very progressive and innovative with mental health. There are others, like addiction, our Indigenous cadet program. I welcome you to look at our Community Matters report. It has all of our community engagement programs in there, and it’s quite comprehensive. It’s on our website. If you like, we can forward it to you.

I’ll open it up to anybody on the panel here who would like to….

G. Begg: In line with that, I…. It’s sort of “the plane that didn’t crash” scenario. If a plane leaves Vancouver Airport and arrives safely, it’s not news. If it crashes, then it becomes news. If a Vancouver city policeman or any policeman in the province steps out of line or falls out of line and does something, then it becomes news. In this province, it usually becomes the first story in the newscast.

I wonder if you have stats about the rarity of that event happening, rather than the frequency with which it happens. Is it a relatively unusual occurrence? Does it occupy an inordinate amount of time, even from either a statutory or a code of conduct investigation that would result from that?

D. Jones: I think, perhaps, Mr. Begg, just to give a little bit of insight into that…. I know you mentioned Vancouver. When we look at the stats from the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, they always rank up that…. Over 90 percent of all complaints and allegations that come in and are dealt with are either unfounded or resolved without a formal process that comes into play.

In fact, despite the multitude of what we think are concerns…. In 2019, there were only a total of 106 investigations that were conducted throughout the entire province, basing it on all police officers or all those covered by the Police Act, which is your independent municipal designated law enforcement or First Nations.

[11:15 a.m.]

It is with a high level of irregularity, but you did touch on a point there, which is that they are generally far more dramatic. They are reported on quite extensively. They carry a lot more coverage. But the stats from the Police Complaint Commissioner, and even the IIO investigations that are being conducted, show that it is a very small number that actually result in what we would call a substantiated allegation.

G. Begg: Chair, a final question, I promise. I know I’m monopolizing the time here.

There have been suggestions that school liaison officers, for example, should be carte blanche removed from schools. Any direction or feedback you could give the committee on the wisdom or lack of wisdom of that?

F. Wilson: Sure. I can speak to that. That’s a great question. I feel like I should speak on behalf of all BCACP member agencies, because I believe we all have police officers in schools.

You’re correct. There has been considerable debate about whether or not police officers should be in schools. I can tell you that over the last several months, I’ve had the opportunity to read and listen to dozens and dozens of accounts from students and former students about the impact that their SLOs have had on them, and I’ve just been blown away. We’ve actually had kids come forward and say they would not be here today in the absence of the intervention by their school liaison officer.

In my current job, I have the opportunity to read weekly about what some of our school liaison officers are doing and how they’re engaging with students. I read about students wandering into their office and disclosing sexual assaults, bullying and harassment in the school, abuse in the home, for example.

One of the things that the public doesn’t actually get to see is the countless situations that our SLOs intervene in that could otherwise result in tragic consequences. I’m talking about school shootings, active shooter scenarios, a youth who is suicidal, for example. That’s stuff that the public doesn’t typically get to see, or it doesn’t get reported on.

Our school liaison officers know their communities. They’re part of the school. They know the kids. Quite frankly, the job attracts some of our best members. They even do running clubs and fundraisers and food drives. One of our SLOs in Vancouver, a few years ago, actually took a bunch of kids to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. They just do exceptional work.

The reality is that it’s one of the few examples in policing where we have those opportunities to build relationships before the need to call police ever arises. We’ve been talking a lot about that today, about programs that work to address those upstream drivers. A difficult thing — you sort of touched on it — is that any program that’s wrapped around intervention or education or prevention is really hard to measure. It’s hard to measure the success of those programs because they are things that ultimately didn’t occur as a result of the intervention.

I know that some of the narrative around this has been about police in schools criminalizing kids. We actually did a study, over five years, of 7,000 documented incidents between SLOs and kids in schools. These are not the casual conversations in the hallways. These are things that actually resulted in a police report being written. Less than two dozen youth out of those 7,000 reports ended up actually being charged and proceeding through the court system.

I know that in the United States, there’s a narrative that having police in schools criminalizes kids, but it’s simply not true here in British Columbia. The principles of diversion and doing whatever it takes to help kids avoid the criminal justice system work when you have those police officers in schools who are familiar with those principles and the kids.

I think, very briefly…. I know I’m going over time. The alternative…. If you take officers out of schools, I could redeploy them here at the VPD overnight, because we have staffing resource issues in many, many areas in our department. It’s not like there would be a surplus of funds left in those schools to hire counsellors if, indeed, that what’s people thought was necessary.

Also, when there’s an issue in the school, the administrators, staff and students would have to call 911 or the non-emerg line, and then they sit in that queue. Depending on the seriousness of the incident, they could be waiting for a police response for hours or days.

[11:20 a.m.]

When they do get a police response, it’s typically going to be one or two police officers in uniform who aren’t familiar with the school or the students or the dynamics in that particular school or with that group of kids. I would argue that that is more likely to result in kids being introduced to the criminal justice system.

It’s ironic to me that this is one of the programs that’s being reviewed for revocation, because it is one of the few things that I think we still do these days that actually does address some of those upstream drivers.

G. Begg: Thank you very much for a very comprehensive and good answer, and thank you, Chair.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Thank you, MLA Begg, for asking half of my questions. I appreciate saving some of the time.

Thank you all for your time today and for your service to our communities. I appreciate it. Just a couple of little follow-up questions. I was very impressed with a lot of the statistics that were presented in your slides, and I think it paints a very different picture than what the at-large public sees or what is often presented, I think, in traditional media or social media.

I’m not sure who the question goes to — all of you, maybe, and I think MLA Begg kind of alluded to this question. To work with organizations around the province or within the communities, to work with the public, to get the realities of policing — or some of the realities — out there…. Is there work on that moving forward? Or is it happening, and maybe it’s just not hitting? I don’t know who to direct that to.

H. Chow: I can talk to it first, anyway, and perhaps some of the other panel members may want to jump in on this as well. I can tell you that it happens, from the policing end, all the time. We try to put the information out on social media, the mainstream media. We try to engage the community as best we can, albeit I think we’ve done an exceptional job of it in policing in general, but I think there’s obviously more work to be done. Sometimes we get lost in the other conversations, the other narratives that are taking place right now, I think, which we can all accept.

I think, really, the challenge that we’re having is much to what you yourself and Mr. Begg alluded to: that these very rare occurrences that take place…. I think it really has to come into the context and the perspective that for Vancouver alone, we get about 700 calls. Last year was an anomaly because of COVID, but let’s say 700 to 730 calls every single day, brand-new calls every single day. That means every single two minutes we got a new call. We’re getting one call after another.

Quite frankly, we’re not going to get it right all the time. There are going to be times when we simply messed up or we wish we could redo it. That’s why we have such rigorous oversight. That’s why we agree that transparency and oversight are important. It’s that context that gets lost in the mix. When we bring up isolated incidents, oftentimes I will look at the six o’clock news, and I will agree. I’ll go: “Why did we do that? I wish we would have done a better job.” All that sort of stuff that other public and community members are….

By and large, our officers are exceptionally well trained. They’re well informed. They’re out there doing their best in a really difficult, challenging atmosphere and a difficult, challenging job. Hopefully, that answers your question.

D. Manak: I just wanted to add on to Deputy Chief Chow’s comments. I think that this is why community collaboration is so important. We talk about community engagement. We talk about community dialogue. Being in these spaces, having these real, honest conversations and putting things into perspective I think is important. You had Superintendent Wilson talk about the school program, talk about kids with worrisome behaviours that aren’t criminal, but they’re above the pay grade of a counsellor or a school administrator, where they need an ally, a friend, a role model to step in, break some of those stereotypes that you were talking about.

It allows police officers to show the human side, about how we are a part of the community. We’re not traditional law enforcement. We’re community leaders. When we’re in community and we have these dialogues and discussions, not just on social media but face to face, people really see the true colours of what strength and diversity our officers bring. That, I think, gets lost many times. We all know the reality, and the elephant in the room is that there is a false narrative, and there is some misleading information that is not based in fact that’s out there.

[11:25 a.m.]

Having said that, we want to be better, and we’re committed to being better and more transparent. We just need to make sure that we’re having these honest conversations and our community truly understands the role of modern-day policing and the professionalism that our officers bring to their job every single day.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Thank you both for that. Deputy Chief Chow, I do follow your Twitter. Every now and again you put up the stats on the phone calls that come up, and it’s overwhelming. That’s from me looking at it, so I can’t imagine on the receiving end of that.

A number of presenters that we’ve had, of course, have been critical in many ways. Obviously, it’s important that you recognize that there are these criticisms out there. I appreciate you’ve addressed a number of them. One thing that I don’t think I heard was around carding, random carding of people. It’s been brought up by numerous groups. What is the policy, the standard, and moving forward, how to deal with that?

H. Chow: If I could talk to it as well, we don’t practise carding here in B.C. Carding is where it’s random; it’s arbi­trary. It’s the stop-and-frisk. This is something that…. When I get into this, I just want to give a bit of perspective so it makes sense.

We know that the data is disproportionate, when we look at the individuals that we street check. For us in Vancouver, our population is 2 percent Indigenous, yet we street check 16 percent Indigenous people. Our population for Black people is 1 percent, yet we street check 5 percent. When we look…. On the flip side, we’ve got Asians that make up 39 percent, yet we street check 6 percent. Caucasians are 46 percent, yet we street check 57 percent. We know that the stats are in fact disproportionate.

Our street check data doesn’t align with our demographics. Well, neither does any data relative to the criminal justice system — and other areas, like mental health rates, like addiction rates, like homelessness rates, like high school graduation rates, like readership for the Vancouver Sun. It will not align with the demographics. I think what’s really important to talk about is also that street checks are an important, proactive tool for policing. It impacts public safety.

Despite what some of the presenters have come across and said, and some have said publicly, that it’s an illegal activity, it’s not. It’s a lawful activity. Despite what some critics might suggest, it’s been examined every which way you can throughout this country by your legal teams and every AG and Sol. Gen office across this country. It’s not banned anywhere in Canada. What is banned is the arbitrary, random street checks. We’re saying ban those all day long, because those are prohibited here as well.

We do have a provincial street check standard that regulates police stops and the requirements that are necessary for it. I think to understand street checks, because I know there’s a lot of confusion around what a street check is…. I think the best way to explain it is by an example again. It could be a suspicious man that’s following a woman around, and then we catch up with that man. That effectively could be a street check. It could be a person who’s looking into car windows, and this suspicious activity has a nexus to public safety, obviously.

It could also be somebody who’s been in the park, playground, for the last three hours and doesn’t have any kids around him, and he’s taking pictures of a kid. That could be a street check. It could be somebody — I’ve gotten calls from elected officials on this — who will say: “Hey, look, there’s obviously a chop shop. This guy’s got a number of bikes around him or her. We want you guys to deal with this.” Well, that’s a street check. It’s suspicious activity that doesn’t get us to the threshold of a lawful detention.

So those are all street checks, and it has to have a nexus to public safety. It’s not random; it’s not arbitrary. I think probably some of the questions that will stem from this are disproportionalities. If I could unpack street checks a little bit more for you, and hopefully…. I’m happy to take questions after this. We’ve examined our data extensively over the last three, four years. We’ve pulled out all our data, and we’ve looked at it every which way we can. We’ve had external consultants. We’ve published a number of reports that are very publicly available, accessible on our website.

[11:30 a.m.]

I’ll give you one example. Let’s say we do a map on all the calls for service in Vancouver. Every time somebody calls about “somebody is snooping in my yard” — on all the calls for service. If we do another map on violent crimes, the most violent crimes in Vancouver, and we do a third map on street checks, we could overlay those maps, and they will almost be identical. Everybody would say: “Well, of course. It’s all down on Main and Hastings. It’s all down on the Downtown Eastside.” That’s not true. It’s speckled throughout southeast Vancouver and northeast Vancouver as well.

Second, let’s dig down another layer. This is what we examine our data on. Let’s say a homeowner calls in at three o’clock in the morning and says: “Hey, I think somebody is trying to break into my garage.” We get called to that call. Let’s say the police never are able to stop that individual, that we never found him. Then we go and take the report from the homeowner, and she says: “The male was Asian” — was this, was that — and we get all the data. When we examined all that data, that, too, was hugely disproportionate. Even when the police weren’t involved in it and we just talked to the homeowner or the complainant, that data was disproportionate.

Let’s go down another layer. Those suspects that have been caught in the act — just broke into your home and ran out with a TV, just kicked in the store window, or just assaulted someone — let’s just look at those calls. We did, and we examined all that data. I’ll tell you that those two were hugely disproportionate.

Despite its efficacy, despite its lawfulness, if we felt that it was a racist activity, it was an activity that specifically had no value relative to the public safety aspect, then we’d advocate to ban it itself. But it is an extremely important element and tool for proactive policing.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Thank you for that.

Chair, I do have other questions, but I see there’s a list of people, so I’ll chime in after, if there is time.

D. Routley (Chair): We’re going to be flexible with our time, because we had the deliberation time that, I think, we’ve agreed that we’ll eat into, should we need to ask more questions.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Okay. I’ll jump in with one more. I think the 30 minutes will probably fill up quite easily with questions.

We’ve heard from a lot of other agencies around race-based data — or the lack of this data that has been collected — from police agencies, from you name it. Is there a move toward collecting more of this information, whether it’s in Richmond or in Vancouver, around getting real data that we can look at and make improvements? Is there a move toward that?

H. Chow: I can start off with this, if you’d like, as well. I would say that policing in B.C. supports the question of race-based data. The challenges that we have — I think this is something that perhaps this committee can lend some assistance to — are the encumbrances that exist on the collection of race-based data.

Right now, as you’re probably well aware — I believe your previous speaker was PRIME — you’ll know that we’ve got the blue-ribbon standard in terms of our report management system that we’ve got here, which legislated, right now, that all police agencies have to use the same consistent database in our records.

The challenges that we’ve got right now are that the data, to a degree, is unreliable. The only requirement is that we get the name, the date of birth and the sex of the individual. Otherwise, sometimes it’s subjective on the officer at three o’clock in the morning: “I’ve got a person who’s not talking to me, so I’ve got to take a stab at what ethnicity or racial group he or she may belong to.” So the reliability of the data.

The second aspect is just simply the privacy legislation and being able to require or demand that an individual provide the information — in particular, when we’re looking at, perhaps, the witnesses or a complainant. I think this is something that, really, government — if I, respectfully, can say: this is where it needs to get some direction from there in terms of what data you would like us to collect. Then we can be involved in those discussions to perhaps offer our opinions on the challenges.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you.

[11:35 a.m.]

D. Jones: If I could just add to that, really briefly. Howard has touched on that whole challenge of collecting. If I’m correct, there is another special committee of the Legislature actually looking into information and privacy and what is collected. From a perspective, as the police are good…. Most of the stuff that the public becomes aware of is because we’ve collected the data. When you’re looking at the street checks and looking at the ratios, it’s because we’ve collected the data that we’re able to disclose it and show it to you.

It’s just needing help to find that balance, because we’re now getting into points where some groups advocate that there is no reason to ask or gather information. This includes, even, gender identity, where people now are going to be able to put a gender “X” or whatever on a driver’s licence. There are a variety of nuances that go to this. What I would say is that we’re willing to do what’s right. We’re willing to do what is the best practice for what is needing to occur, but certainly could use the help on getting it so that we’re not criticized for arbitrarily collecting data.

R. Singh: Thank you to all the presenters for the presentation — really good information. I’ll start with Superintendent Wilson. You talked about the challenges — all of you have mentioned the challenges that the police are facing — but you specifically mentioned “defund the police” and the misconceptions about it. We also know that the police are also challenged, especially with the increase of the mental health calls.

We have heard from a number of presenters that the police are the only resource: “Middle of the night, nowhere to go.” I heard you talking about enhancing those services before the work is taken off from police. What do you suggest, Superintendent? What needs to be done? What kind of enhancements or what kind of recommendations would you make?

F. Wilson: Thanks very much for the question, MLA Singh. I think that, first of all, we are open to discussions about how we can improve service, how we can improve public safety, how we can do a better job of addressing people who are suffering from mental health and addictions issues, for example.

One of the things that we are very concerned about, though, in terms of the defund or detask conversation, is that police see many examples in society where there has been a reduction in services and resources for people, for example, who are mentally ill, and it has resulted in a dramatic increase in the calls for services that police end up going to, involving people who are mentally ill.

I’m thinking back to when Riverview substantively shut down. When you talk to members who were working in the Downtown Eastside during that time, for example, they will tell you that they saw a change, overnight, in the population and that suddenly the Downtown Eastside was full of individuals who were incredibly vulnerable, who were attracted into the area because of low housing and access to resources, and who then themselves became victims of crimes.

The thing about the defund or detask argument or discussion is that we are all for that. We are all for putting more resources into mental health and addictions, for example. Hopefully, the results of that would be a reduction in the need for police attendance, because we would be reducing those times that people would find themselves in crisis and a police response was required. What we’re very concerned about is the detask or defund conversation in the absence of those extra resources in our communities, because we’ve been through that. Our policing agencies have been through that.

What we would really like to see is more resources directed to programs like ACT teams and our outreach teams; Car 87; and partnerships between police and community, because there will always be calls that require police attendance. We’ve done some analysis on that in Vancouver as well. I think what we would really like to see is the discussion about increasing funding in our communities and to see what the results of that are on police resourcing and police calls to service before we talk about defunding and detasking police.

I think Will wanted to jump in on this one as well.

[11:40 a.m.]

W. Ng: Yes. Thanks, Fiona, and thank you, Ms. Singh, for your question.

I just wanted to add, from a different perspective, as well…. We’ve recently utilized the Car 87 or, as we call it, the Fox 80 program, which is a pairing up of a police officer with a mental health nurse. In our first year — we’ve just come up to the first anniversary — we realized a 26 percent reduction in calls for service for mental health. We’ve also realized a significant number, a reduction with respect to people in crises.

As Howard mentioned earlier, the typical wait time in hospital is at least an hour. We’re experiencing over an hour and a half of tying up the police officers’ time, at least two officers at the hospital for over an hour and a half of wait time for mental health clients. I think that we’ve seen a significant reduction in that with respect to new initiatives and working with our health authorities.

I just wanted to put that out there for thought and consideration.

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

My next question, then, can be to anyone. I know it has been already discussed. It is about the systemic racism. We know the chief of the RCMP…. She has acknowledged that there is systemic racism in policing. We have heard the stories. Especially here in the committee, we have heard about a number of lived experiences.

Constable Manak, you have talked about it. You have talked about it being the elephant in the room.

I know it is a very, very uncomfortable topic, but it is an issue. When people are talking about their lived experiences…. I won’t say those are perceptions. These are experiences that people have lived.

You have talked about the police taking steps. I would really like to know the challenges that the police are facing and what needs to be done within the police service to not just the perception but to create an environment that is promoting more diversity, more inclusivity.

D. Manak: Maybe I’ll start with that. I’ll ask my panellists to fill in any information that I may miss.

MLA Singh, I just wanted to…. I had a comment to make after Will’s comment, just on mental health. The bigger issue is…. We’re talking about investment in police. We talk about investing upstream, which is very difficult to measure sometimes. As Garry Begg mentioned earlier, it’s like…. You don’t talk about the planes that travel. You only talk about the ones that crash.

On that note, we just need to recognize and have real conversations. The conversation that we need to be having and recognizing is that there are people that are chronically ill that are on our streets. They are not served, and they are wandering through with not having wraparound services and the proper care. When they fall through the cracks, that’s when the calls to the police come.

We need to really look at our whole health care system and make sure those investments are made. We need more forensic psychiatric hospitals. We need more critical care centres. This is outside of police, before we even get to the discussion about police response.

Your question about systemic racism. I’ll say this: we’re human beings. Every single person has implicit and explicit biases. We are the sum of our experiences. Have police organizations — a part of those institutions in Canada, along with all of them — had systemic racism? Of course we have. There’s no doubt about it. I’ve been the subject of that growing up and even now, as somebody who is a visible minority.

I think the question really is: what are we doing about it, and what are we learning about it? I think that what we’re seeing is…. We’re having uncomfortable conversations, and we’re making them comfortable. We’re trying to have conversations over confrontation. That’s the only way that we’re going to be able to move through this space.

I always say this: how do you get informed, and how do you get better in an area? Well, let’s talk to the people who are facing these challenges. Let’s talk to our Black, our Indigenous and our persons of colour. Those are the conversations that our police organizations have been having for the last number of years.

There is work to be done, and these are hard conversations. I always like to be guided by the people who are impacted, to ask them and to really get into these deep conversations, which is this: what do you want to see, and what do you expect from your police service?

Then we need to listen. We don’t need to tell people. We need to actively listen, and then we need to make sure that we’re building that trust because those relationships of trust…. We can only move at the speed of trust. We cannot move any faster than that. We need to make sure that those relationships are authentic and those conversations are occurring.

[11:45 a.m.]

I will tell you one thing. As the first person of colour in my police organization in over 160 years, I’m able to have some of these discussions, and hard discussions, about what I want to portray in my police organization. I’m really, really thankful that I have this opportunity and that we’re able to have these conversations which are difficult to have.

I’ll just ask my panellists to weigh in with a couple of comments. Thank you.

H. Chow: If I can jump in, Ms. Singh. I think Chief Manak brings up some good points. I also want to impress upon the committee that policing has evolved. When we look at the fact…. When you’re talking about challenges…. I know your question was asking about challenges. I’m going to tell you some of the challenges.

Aside from engaging the community and the importance of trust, we continue to review our systems, our processes, our procedures, with that EDI lens, to ensure that this is being done. I know that for us and for all the organizations that we speak for in B.C…. There is one for Vancouver that’s going through stem to stern, looking at all their processes and examining it.

It also means the extensive work that you need with communities. We refer to it with our Community Matters report. I strongly urge that you look at that. This was commented on by a number of researchers that had indicated, just in terms of the lengths and strides that VPD and policing have done to try to engage and connect with the community.

I think, also, an important context that needs to happen is that the criminal justice system, in particular police…. Police is public-facing, where all our activities and actions are seen in the public, and we have very little to do. I’m not trying to minimize or be indifferent, but we have little to do with why people commit crimes, and why there’s homelessness, and why there’s drug addiction, and why this consumes a lot of our work. This is where we refer back to those upstream drivers that Superintendent Tran referred to us about.

What’s most compelling for me is that aside from the leadership that has to also be reflective, aside from the fact that your workforce has to be community-minded, has to be reflective of the organization…. We talked about some of the data and the facts and the types of recruits that we’re hiring. Most compelling for me is….

This is my 32nd year of proudly wearing this uniform. When I was first hired, I was the eighth Chinese officer ever hired. Now I think there are about 150 Chinese officers and over 200 Asian officers in the Vancouver police department alone. I would not work for an organization where I felt that there was pervasive racism or systemic racism that was occurring throughout our system.

This is something that we always have to be on top of, societally, and always looking under every rock to make sure that we’re doing things right and that we are continuing to evolve.

R. Singh: Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. My last question is to you again, Constable Chow.

We have heard really good things about the VPD. We know how they’re working above and beyond, especially working with the very, very vulnerable populations. But we have also heard about the gaps and the barriers. I know — and in the video presentation also — the different liaison officers that you have and your inclusivity training. Really appreciate that.

When in the news, an Indigenous grandfather and his 12-year-old granddaughter are handcuffed…. That’s what makes the news. The trust, which is already shaken, the intergenerational trauma that the communities are facing…. How do you respond to that?

H. Chow: Absolutely. I think that’s a very good question. I think that Chief Jones talked about that briefly, about the trust and how that is so important throughout all our organizations.

I can’t speak specifically about that particular incident because it still is under investigation, but I can speak in general terms. I think when we look at things like trust and legitimacy and the context…. I know this committee understands it, just simply because of all the work you’ve done in the past.

There’s a conversation out there that we can’t be pulling individual incidents, even though…. As horrible and impactful as that specific incident was to the grandfather and the granddaughter, and they were completely innocent in all that, I would say that it’s speaking about one incident. We’re saying we get a brand-new incident every two minutes, but that does mean we can’t just ignore it.

[11:50 a.m.]

We’ve got to continue to strengthen our relationships with the Indigenous community. We’ve got to continue to work at fixing problems and building up the trust that eroded because of that incident. I know those moments matter, and that’s why all this work, all these credits that we are doing, also matter.

If I could just give a bit of context, without again getting into the incident. On that particular…. We get about 271 frauds to financial institutions every year, and in that particular year, 270 of them — it was a founded incident that took place. So there is some…. Whenever you’re getting calls about things like that, you have to understand that those are just two financial institutions. We get thousands of fraud calls every year. There are going to be times…. A lot of times, it’s going to happen with different demographics, and it’s hugely unfortunate, but I just wanted to give a little bit of that perspective on that specific incident.

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

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you. I’ve got two more questioners on the list here, and the first is MLA Olsen.

A. Olsen: I’m having a difficult time with that final response, Mr. Chow. I have to just be open with you on that. I think it’s important to acknowledge here that you can, I think, paper across these incidences with the number of calls that you get. However, one incident that we were talking about specifically brings back so many memories of trauma. To say it’s one of 250 or one of 300 incidences…. The fact that brings up, when I talk to my family members, all of the incidences that they’ve been traumatized by in their lives…. They have to go back through that when that incident becomes public.

I think we can take great comfort in the fact that so many planes land. However, I think that we have to acknowledge that many planes don’t land in exactly the same way as they took off. It’s one way to say: “Oh, that’s great.” You know, the plane takes off and it lands. A police gets called to an incident and nobody dies.

However, a police gets called to an incident and there is an instance of bias or discrimination that plays out in that — those accumulate. Those are the stories that are told in our communities here in First Nations. This is when regional Chief Terry Teegee says that Indigenous people are overpoliced and underprotected. Those are the stories that get told in this.

I think that some of the challenges that I’m having with some of the responses are that the words are right, but the language is incorrect. We’re still referring to Indigenous People, Black people as “our” people. That’s an indication to an Indigenous person, when they hear that language, that the systemic view of them…. Maybe the policies have changed, but the systemic view hasn’t.

There’s a lot of really negative response when an Indigenous person hears “our Indigenous People.” It’s an indication of the distance that we have yet to travel. I think that the challenges that I have in some of the responses, or I guess the framing of these presentations today, is that we’ve talked about, and I have heard a lot about, the distance that we have travelled. I’ve heard very little about the distance that we have yet to travel, which is an indication to me of a lack of introspection — an introspection.

I’ve heard systemic racism be talked about in the past tense when it exists in every institution, because this is how our country and how our province was established.

[11:55 a.m.]

Can you identify the difference between individual acts of racism and institutional racism, the way that these systems were set up? I have a lot of personal experiences and anecdotes in this. I have to say, I have, as you can see, a very emotive response to some of the responses to the questions. It brings up, for me…. What you are seeing, what I am emoting right now, is actually the feeling that Indigenous people across British Columbia felt when a grandfather and a granddaughter tried to open a bank account, and the response coming back is: “Well, we look after a lot of fraud cases.” Do you know how many instances of bank accounts are opened in this province?

I’m sorry. I’m just…. I need to just stop there and pass it along to my colleague MLA Sandhu.

H. Chow: Would you like me to comment on that?

D. Routley (Chair): If you wish.

H. Chow: I very much respect your comments, Mr. Olsen. I’ll tell you that the challenge that we have…. There are a number of issues you raised. Being a racialized person, I understand racism, and I have experienced it. I’m not trying to minimize the extreme suffering that the Indigenous community had to endure and still is.

But I would say that the challenge that policing has, oftentimes, on incidents — and it goes to trust and legitimacy and everything else — is our inability to talk. Whenever something serious happens, usually it’s followed by investigations, which means that we can’t get up and speak on issues and give more detail and give more frank, candid conversations on it. This is specifically one of them.

I know, when we talk about oversight…. Quite honestly, I would say, when you look at the police officers…. Speaking in a general sense, our police officers, in terms of selection, are unlike any others. You don’t get it from your doctors, nurses, lawyers, dentists — anyone else — in terms of the rigour that goes into the selection of our officers. If they’re expressing any sort of attitude that’s inappropriate or that’s racist, they’re not getting hired.

And the training…. I know there’s lots of conversation about the training that we’re getting. Well, I’ll tell you, I would put our training up against…. I’m not, for a second, thinking that there could not be more. But it comes at a cost, because it means we pull officers off the street to do training. I think this is something that government, perhaps, can help us with. But we got fair and impartial training — it’s a required course — Indigenous cultural safety training, crisis intervention training, de-escalation training. We’ve got other workshops and groups that we put all our officers through. I would suggest that other organizations or professions don’t do that.

Then our accountability. If our officers mess up, if we mess up, then we should be held to account. We should be held at a higher standard. I believe that that’s happening on any of these incidents.

I don’t want to, for a second, think that the magnitude of what the grandfather and what the granddaughter went through and the Indigenous community…. I am not, for a second, trying to minimize what took place there. It’s just that oftentimes, we can’t speak on bigger issues like that.

A lot of fingers are being pointed about things that are done, and we should take hits if we screw up and when we screw up. But oftentimes this whole narrative is looking at: “Hey, why did you arrest the individual at 3 in the morning?” When all these upstream drivers aren’t being looked at, in terms of why is the person homeless, why did he or she not have the opportunities, why isn’t the mental health of this individual better tended to…. All those aspects, I think, need to be part of that discussion.

[12:00 p.m.]

A. Olsen: I think what was so challenging for me, Mr. Chow, was when you decided to frame the instance that really triggered a lot of just horrific memories for Indigenous people in this province in the context of the number of frauds that occur. I think just the contextualization, the framing, of that really, for me at least, sent the message that these people were trying to open a bank account, but you really deal with a lot of fraud cases.

I think that, for me, what it has provided is just an indication of some of the spaces that we have to explore a little deeper. When the response is, “Well, you know, of the 271 fraud cases, we got one wrong,” you didn’t just get one wrong; it was a disaster. It was a grandfather and a granddaughter trying to open a bank account with money that they legitimately have.

I think that what it does is it paints the picture so that when we hear Regional Chief Terry Teegee say to us that Indigenous people are overpoliced and underprotected…. We have dozens and dozens and dozens of Indigenous women that have gone missing from right underneath the noses. The Indigenous communities have said, “We need to find our women and girls. We need to find our women and children,” and the effort isn’t commensurate with the volume. These are the stories.

This isn’t a plane crashing, necessarily, although for those families it definitely is. This is a situation in which we say: “Because it landed, it’s perfect.” But when you look at it, it’s got a flat tire, or some of the seatbelts aren’t working. It’s all of those little pieces that are painting the really tragic and traumatic picture that Indigenous people have, and people of colour have, in their interactions.

I really think that what played out here is an indication of just how far we have to go. The framing of it…. It might have just been an unfortunate thing, but I think that it is all of these unfortunate incidences. It’s the time in which…. I know of the Indigenous woman that was pulled over by the police to see if the kids in her car were hers. “Just checking.” It’s these stories that actually start to permeate in the communities — that this is how we as Indigenous people or this is how people of colour are to be treated.

These may not be individual acts of racism, but these are the stories of institutionalized racism, where it’s: “We just see certain people through certain lenses.” Sometimes we don’t even recognize that we have those lenses in.

Sorry. I had lot of other questions. I’m just going to leave it at that for now, because I have been taken off what my questions were, and I don’t want to make this anymore about this. I just need to breathe. I’m sorry.

D. Routley (Chair): MLA Sandhu, we can all go a little bit over time here.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, everyone, for a great deal of information that you’ve shared today. Some of my questions were answered. I had particular questions about systemic racism, which we had a discussion on, and about collection of race-based data. My question was: what are the ways you think we can strengthen to have that collection?

When we talked about a plane landing and a plane crashing, from the beginning of our discussion, I’ve been thinking about…. Perhaps we all know the reason a plane crash gets reported is because there are many deaths. There are casualties. That’s what came to my mind. When such incidents happen, the seriousness and the impact on the entire community or that group is big.

The other thing. When I heard about 271 cases of fraud, the thing that came to my mind, that grandfather and granddaughter…. The person who reported it had their own biases in their head. I know investigation is undergoing, but I don’t think there’s any doubt that the bias is that if you belong to the Indigenous community, or perhaps the other, maybe they’re going to commit fraud or something.

[12:05 p.m.]

I think that’s where it’s disturbing for the entire Indigenous community and for many of us. Those are the things I’ve been thinking all along this presentation. Thank you for highlighting…. I believe it was Chief Howard Chow who highlighted that 84 percent of mental health–related calls need police. We had a great presentation from one of the psych nurses. She has been working with Car 87 or other cars for 16 years, and she shared that in order to do her job, she definitely needs the presence of police. Coming from a health care background, I know the safety and some unforeseen situations we walk into.

Thank you for highlighting and giving us the exact number of how many times the police presence is important, because we are hearing lots about defunding the police and totally eliminating the police. When I think about the safety of health care workers as well, it’s very important for us to hear that point of view.

Again, I just want to know about the ACT teams. In my understanding, the ACT teams you highlighted are very crucial — a team of ten to 12 members to respond, and they’ve been effective. But I understand their hours are only 8 a.m. till 8 p.m. Have you seen the increased need for expanding those hours to 24 hours, because most cases, I believe, are midnight crises? Do you know the numbers? If those cases are higher in number than during-the-day incidents? That was my question and a couple of comments that I made earlier.

H. Tran: I can answer that question, if I could. The ACT teams have been around for a long time — since 1978. It’s well documented how effective they are. I would like to point out that what’s different with how we do ACT and how Victoria does ACT is that we actually embed a police officer into the ACT model. That’s unique to us. I’m not aware of any other agency in North America or the world that does that.

In relation to your question about whether ACT should be expanded to 24 hours, the ACT model actually is an outreach-based model, so we actually engage with the client in this in-place phase. We engage with them in a place that they feel comfortable. It could be in our office, or it could be at their home or on the street. It’s really difficult to do that in a 24-hour model. You can’t do that at three in the morning or even at ten at night, necessarily. What we do is we rely on our outreach teams to provide that support. We have our Car 87 team that works a little later, and then we also have AOT that works till 2300 hours, which is 11 p.m.

Of course, anything that happens after midnight is…. We have to rely on officers on the road to really provide that level of support and then report back up the next morning so that our teams can follow up. An expansion of the teams would be greatly appreciated, but I don’t think an expansion of the hours is really compliant with the ACT fidelity model that is out there right now.

H. Sandhu: Thank you so much. Car 87 — I think there’s been discussion from a lot of presenters that the big need is for expanding it to 24 hours. That was something that was highlighted over and over to the committee. Any thoughts you would like to share? It’s been pretty successful across the regions.

H. Tran: Yeah. Car 87 definitely has a role, but it is reactive, and it is generally crisis-based. We really want to move away from that. You could have a number of…. Car 87 right now goes to about four to five calls a day. The reason is they don’t just jump in and jump out. There’s some work. The nurses want to do the assessment. They want to be really mindful about the support that they provide, so they’re not just going in there for ten minutes and jumping back out.

We could expand it, but it will still continue to be sort of a reactive assessment model. What we really should be doing is investing in upstream, proactive treatment models and partnerships and services to really steer away from just reacting during a crisis.

H. Sandhu: Thank you. I really appreciate your answers.

D. Routley (Chair): That takes us to the end of the list of questioners. I’d like to personally thank all the presenters for bearing with us through the initial tech challenges in the jurisdiction of Zoomland. Thank you for your insightful presentations.

G. Begg: Chair, can I ask one final question before we break up?

D. Routley (Chair): Go ahead.

[12:10 p.m.]

G. Begg: It’s to Deputy Chow. He mentioned a Downtown Eastside plan that he obviously has done some work on. I wonder if you could submit to the board, through the Chair…. I’m not sure if it’s as expansive as I’ve made it out to be, but if you have a plan that you’ve worked on that you think would bring all of the players together to tackle the Downtown Eastside, I think we would like to take a look at it.

H. Chow: We would be happy to. We do have a number of documents that we’d be happy to share. That, alongside with others, which may help the committee in terms of making some considerations for the tough decisions they have. I think I speak for everybody on this panel in that we’d be happy, also, to come back and address or help clarify any issues that you may have at a later point. Thank you for the hard work that you’re doing in helping to make public safety better in B.C.

G. Begg: Thank you for that, Deputy, and one more thing, Chair. It has arisen several times now: a need for some exposure, for lack of a better word, for the members of the committee to some of the front-line issues. It’s sometimes so much better to be there and to see the issues that inundate police on occasion.

I wonder if we — that is, the presenters — will consider some form of…. Ride-along is not the word I’m looking for, but some kind of first-hand exposure for those members of the committee who would be interested in getting a more behind-the-scenes look at, actually, what is going on.

H. Chow: Any of our agencies would be happy to assist on that matter, even if it’s in the form of a short ride-along or orientation or just a better unpacking of some of the calls that we go to. Each of us goes to hundreds of different calls every single day that are serious, serious in nature and take a tremendous amount of time. So I think that it will give some context, anyways.

D. Routley (Chair): You’ve answered one of my questions, which would be: can we call on you for more information? If there is something else that you proactively want to submit, we are certainly welcoming that ongoing submission.

I would like to thank you all, again. My own personal goal here is that we improve the lives of British Columbians, including police officers, and have better outcomes for everyone. I know it’s a very, very important issue to all of us, and we appreciate your contribution here.

Members, I think we’re past time, and I would ask for a motion to adjourn the meeting. That comes from the Deputy Chair and seconded by MLA Sandhu.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 12:13 p.m.