The committee met at 9:02 a.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is Doug Routley, and I am 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 meeting with Indigenous organizations and communities. Each presenter has 15 minutes to speak followed by time for questions from committee members. All audio from our meetings is broadcast live on our website, and a complete transcript will also be posted.

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

K. Kirkpatrick: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

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

Again, thank you for being here.

D. Routley (Chair): And Deputy Chair of the committee, MLA Davies.

[9:05 a.m.]

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. My name is Dan Davies.

I’m the MLA for Peace River North, living in Fort St. John on the traditional territory of the Dane-zaa people. Thanks for joining us.

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

I’m coming to you from the Semiahmoo territory.

I’m looking forward to today’s conversation.

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

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

A. Olsen: Good morning. Adam Olsen. I’m the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands.

It’s been quite a string of days that I’ve been working from my home office here in the W̱JOȽEȽP village of the W̱SÁNEĆ territory.

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

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

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you, all. Assisting our committee today is Karan Riarh from the Clerk of Committees office. And with Hansard, we are being helped out by Billy Young.

For our first panel, we will be hearing from the Adams Lake Indian Band and the Nisg̱a’a village of Gitwinksihlkw.

I’ll turn it over now to Chief Cliff Arnouse of the Adams Lake Band.

Presentations on Police Act

ADAMS LAKE INDIAN BAND

C. Arnouse: Weyt-kp xwexwéytep. [Secwepemctsin was spoken].

Hello, everyone. My name is Cliff Arnouse from Adams Lake Indian Band. I’m here to try and give some of our perspectives on policing and what we believe needs to be some kind of reform or change in there. First, I’ll begin with a little bit of history.

I’m Sexqeltqin from central Interior, just about half an hour, 40 minutes east of Kamloops. We’ve been here on Shuswap lakes for tens of thousands of years. I’m talking about looking after the land and looking after the waters and all the animals and all the plants. They call it the four-legged, the winged ones and the ones that swim in water and the two-legged — all those.

To try to give a better perspective, we’ve been here surviving for thousands of years under our own laws, under our own cultures, under many of our own ways of living off the land. These things have been passed down from generation to generation to help us get through and live on the land. Those kinds of things are just a little perspective of how we’ve come about and why we’re still here.

Adams Lake is actually not on Adams Lake. We’re on Little Shuswap. We were moved here when all of the police were rounding up all the children and putting them into the residential schools. Adams Lake is actually a number of kilometres over the mountain, over the other side.

Adams Lake is a huge lake where our home base used to be. We were moved here because of some of the laws and because of some of the racism that has been shown years ago, beginning many, many years ago with the residential schools and the churches and the governance and whatnot. That is the sum of the perspectives I’d like people to remember — the past number of years, decades, generations since first contact.

[9:10 a.m.]

Adams Lake has over 800 band members. Within the Interior, we have a number of small reserves. It’s about a little over 7,200 acres. Our main IR 4 is situated across the bridge from a little town called Chase, B.C. We are a part of the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council. There were 33 what they call campfires, or communities, and now there are 16 at this time. So we are a member. Chase has an RCMP station here. We have no Aboriginal police liaison, no tripartite agreement. The Neskonlith Indian Band is our neighbouring band, Secwépemc band. I think they have some kind of agreement with the tripartite.

Another little bit of history. Years and years ago a delegation of chiefs from the Secwépemc, Nlaka’pamux and Syilx met Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier and asserted their title and sovereignty. They spoke to their experience with the white man’s law. Gradually, over many years…. This was in August of 1910. Gradually, as the whites became more and more powerful, we had less and less power. By the little change in their policies towards us, they commenced to put restrictions on us. They treat us like a subject without any agreements to that effect and enforce their laws on us without our consent or respect for whether they’re any good for us or not.

They have broken down our old laws and customs, no matter how good they were, by which we regulated ourselves. Minor affairs amongst ourselves, which do affect them the least and which we usually settle…. You know, we could settle our own internal stuff before. They said they had authority over us. They enforced their own laws. One was for the rich white man, and the other was poor white, yet another for the Indians.

Some of the community experiences and relationships we have are very limited. This contributes to an overall lack of trust in policing, a limited relationship, lack of visible presence, trust issues. So far, we don’t have any tripartite agreement, relationship-building, the needs to initiate relationship-building with community events and continued engagement, increased investment, time spent in the communities. Detachments have priority calls, no proactive interaction, lack of annual meetings.

Annual RCMP meetings with the community would help the relationship. Staffing — the revolving nature of detachments, posts, hastening relationship difficulties. They hire and they leave them for two years, and they’re gone just before any kind of relationship has built up with them. The trust that was built is gone.

There are still opportunities to input in the community for community members. ALIB is working to improve our community safety, improve security and implement a justice management position. We’re looking to try and hire one on shortly. ALIB, along with all Interior Indigenous groups, has very unique and distinct culture, which is not recognized or understood in the policing environment. A new policing act would include direct and meaningful engagement with Indigenous communities through our Elders, youth and political representatives.

[9:15 a.m.]

Improved models of policing…. Historic models have been adversarial. Policing initiatives tend to focus on the relationship between Indigenous people and the justice system. But new models needs to be inclusive of meaningful involvement, conduct. New models must include all sectors of the criminal justice system, including the conduct of police practice towards Indigenous communities; engagement and support; and Indigenous people and communities working in partnership to prevent crime.

Ownership. Indigenous communities must be provided the opportunity to take ownership and be engaged. Police must engage with culturally sensitive perspectives.

Communications. Any change must have solutions that begin with wide-reaching, purposeful and ongoing communications.

The effectiveness of a culturally sensitive model of policing depends on the federal and provincial governments and RCMP all fulfilling their respective roles within this area of jurisdiction, with more meaningful engagement by each band. A focus, a need for continued meaningful engagement at local levels…. Blanket or cookie-cutter approaches will not continue, and they’ll fail.

RCMP initiatives tend to focus on broad-stroke relationship-building that doesn’t address individual, cultural, or communities. Top-down management programs and initiatives are developed, approved and disseminated from Ottawa. New models need to be focused on individualized culture, protocols and laws, approaches. We have to remove the cookie-cutter effect and blanket approach. It’s got to be tailored.

Conduct. Legal systems, programs and policing departments tend to work in silos — different mandates, different policies, different funding streams. New models need to start working together to bring down ongoing and systemic racism found throughout the legal system. This starts with acknowledgement and ownership of existing flaws. New models need mechanisms for communities to resolve conflict and grievances, independent from RCMP internal complaints investigators.

The issues are the societal system, the racism, the colonialism, the conflict resolution and engagement. Historical governments decide if Aboriginal communities are allowed to have or operate specific crime prevention programs. Crime prevention programs must be developed from the grass roots. We’ve got to engage our Elders, engage our youth and our disadvantaged. A clear path is needed for Aboriginal communities to access best practices, funding and resources — a complicated and multi-layered application process. Ownership is….

Communities must be provided opportunities for meaningful engagement and restorative legal, policing and outreach programs. Communities must be given every opportunity to provide individual and culturally sensitive programs. Police must mandate to practice in cultural activities to help them understand the barriers and successes of the communities they police. This needs to include all departments and staff — more than a token annual Agora training course.

Communications: historically, policing is a need-to-know culture. Information is always censored, vetted to the point of being unusable. New models must find ways to purposefully disseminate timely and useful communications to local, key individuals. The examples are a justice manager, band managers, Chief and council. Improved communications mechanisms, protocols and police policies through MOUs. The lack of MOUs and BCRs that we give out, police have a hard time or believe they don’t have any weight.

[9:20 a.m.]

A strategic objective of Adams Lake Band is that our long-term goal is to look to sign tripartite agreements, three communities — Adams Lake Indian Band, Neskonlith and Little Shuswap Lake Bands; establish a justice manager position; research and discuss and implement tribal policing models, culturally inclusive programs and services, formal MOUs with the ALIB and the RCMP; create communities to sign an MOU with the Solicitor General of Canada and Attorney General of the province of B.C., which would establish a peacekeeping program and a tribal policing service.

These are some of the contents and some of the issues that Adams Lake has. You know, I talked about, many, many times, not only here but with some of our other meetings with the RCMP — talking about the policing and watchmen programs on the land, similar to conservation officers, looking after the water, monitoring hunting and fishing and many of the other concerns we have on the land. Those kinds of things are what I have in mind. You can contact me here: Adams Lake Indian Band, 250-679-8841, at 6453 Hillcrest Road, Chase, B.C.

Kukstemc. I want to thank you all for listening to some of the concerns that Adams Lake has, and I’ve talked with many of our other colleagues in the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council that have similar concerns.

So kukstemc. Thank you for listening to my presentation.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you, Chief. My stepmother’s family lived in your territory as a child — the Hampton family in Chase. I love it. The region is beautiful. Thank you.

Next we’ll hear from Linda Morven, chief executive officer, and Councillor Carl Azak from Nisg̱a’a village of Gitwinksihlkw.

Nisg̱a’a VILLAGE OF GITWINKSIHLKW

C. Azak: Amaa hiihlukw, everyone. I’ll be starting with my part, and Linda will be following. I just wanted to start off and say that we’re very fortunate in our area that we have three to six officers at any given time, due to the contracts that were put in place through our treaty that we signed in the past.

We do have CTAs, community tripartite agreements, that we’ve put in place, and a lot of work has been done in those areas. Some of them have been working; some of them haven’t. I just wanted to get into the actual presentation part of what we’re here today for.

I wanted to get into public safety in our area and around B.C. In other sessions, we’ve heard of incidents around police brutality and unnecessary force used by officers. Public safety is a very high priority for us and for other First Nations in B.C. At the same time, we don’t want to jeopardize any of the officers as well. However, the number of incidents of police brutality and unnecessary force in B.C., in our view, speaks to the issues, including racism and stereotyping of First Nations people. We heard a bit of that in the last presentation.

We’ve seen video clips of First Nations individuals who have immediately ceased, kneeled down, put their hands behind their head but still were beaten nonetheless. This is something that shouldn’t be tolerated and needs to be addressed with this reform — and training officers and ongoing briefings with officers in the field.

[9:25 a.m.]

There needs to be a section identified in the police reform act that addresses this, and strategy development to ensure that it’s implemented.

Another area in public safety that I’ve heard of and that we deal with here in our area is drugs and alcohol — particularly bootlegging and drug-dealing. The safety of women and children are also priorities, especially with missing and murdered Indigenous women. First Nations communities and their leadership are more than happy to work with detachments to reduce bootlegging and to build health and balance in communities. For many, especially those struggling with addictions, there are deep-rooted issues, including residential schools. Our grandparents, many of our parents and other siblings, went to residential school, and we’re still feeling the intergenerational impacts of residential schools in our lives.

I am actually one of those as well. I had a family member that went to a residential school, and I’ve felt impacts, growing up and having to see that family member deal with those issues and having to deal with an addiction for the majority of his life afterwards. I see that a lot everywhere, pretty much, in the First Nations. Some work has been done in those areas, but there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done. I’ll move on from that particular area.

I’m going to move on to our cultural awareness. When new officers are situated in our area, we think that they should be briefed on First Nations cultures and what their beliefs are in their area. Not everyone of us in each different area are all the same, but they are all similar. One reason why I’m bringing this up is one of our cultural rules in our area. We’re very strict when it comes to alcohol and drugs in the events.

I’ll just describe some events. We have what’s called a Hobiyee. It’s Indian dancing. We have this once a year. We consist of four villages in our area of the Nisg̱a’a, and we all come together. Other nations around our area, as far as Vancouver and in Alberta come to these events. Like I said, our cultural rules state that there’s no drinking, no drugs there. But when some new officers come in, we have maybe up to 100 vehicles in the village, and they’re leaving to other villages or to wherever they’re staying that night.

It could go as late as maybe two o’clock in the morning, and we have roadblocks. Because they’re unaware of our culture and, like I said, the strictness around alcohol and drugs, they’re stopping each and every vehicle leaving the village. Some of them are Elders. They just want to get to where they’re staying, to get home and rest up for the next day. Also, memorials and feasts are the same way. We have the same cultural rules, and we’ve had incidents where that has happened as well. If we could have something, maybe, that would deal with that — something in the act stating that they have to do cultural awareness before they start in our area.

I’ll move on from that. Actually, I’ve pretty much covered most of that area, so I’ll actually move on to Linda.

[9:30 a.m.]

L. Morven: Thank you, Carl, and thank you all for the opportunity. I can’t recall when I’ve sat in a meeting with so many MLAs at the same time, and it’s an honour. I actually expected MLA Ellis Ross in the meeting today. We did some research online.

Just to add to what Carl indicated with the cultural awareness, you know, shifting thinking of officers and facilitating actual reform in the system that will facilitate understanding of who we are as First Nations people will improve relations and go a long way towards decreasing that racism and stereotyping of not just First Nations people but other people in B.C.

The two areas that I’ll touch on are the subcommittee inclusive of First Nations and effective communication. As you know, with UNDRIP, it’s inclusive of all of these priorities to support the quality of life of First Nations people and facilitate positive change in terms of how we, First Nations people and the rest of British Columbia, move forward together in a good way to make a difference in all of our lives. That’s really, really important to us.

We’re strongly recommending that you implement a subcommittee that’s inclusive of First Nations reps to provide meaningful input into the issues and co-drafting changes to the police reform act. I’m part of a subcommittee with the Emergency Program Act, modernizing the EPA, led by the First Nations Leadership Council, and it’s inclusive of First Nations people and B.C. and Canada. We’re still working through that process, but that’s something that I strongly believe should be considered with the police reform act — that we’re part and parcel of the process to facilitate actual reform and it’s inclusive of First Nations communities.

I appreciate the phased approach that you spoke of, Doug, in your intro, but 15 minutes with us is not sufficient. The last thing that we want to see is you going back and saying that you’ve engaged First Nations communities. That’s not going to work. Fifteen minutes is not going to work. So we are strongly recommending that subcommittee that’s inclusive of First Nations people.

I know with the EPA, they do representation by region. As you know, there are a number of different regions in B.C. for emergency preparedness.

Effective communication. You heard Cliff and Carl touching on it a bit. Improving the relationships of detachments with the communities they serve, especially First Nations communities, is key. We strongly believe that as well — understanding the First Nations within their detachment area in terms of what Carl alluded to earlier. And working with leadership from the First Nations communities will provide for open, effective and respectful communication.

We have a letter of expectations that we update each year with our Lisims detachment. We’re just in the process of updating it for the ’21-22 fiscal. And we work closely with the sergeant in our detachment on making requirements — public safety, alcohol and drugs, cultural awareness, going into our school to meet with youth on bullying, and all of the other issues that I addressed. We’re finding that it’s extremely effective, and that’s something that we would like to see occur in all areas.

Prior to COVID, many of our officers and their families joined our cultural events groups. Carl mentioned our annual Hobiyee that we have. They attend our meetings and our cultural functions. They become part of the community and are highly respected. They still maintain their professionalism and rank as officers, but there’s greater respect for them and their roles. So it goes both ways in terms of that relationship-building with not only leadership but members in the community.

I tend to talk fast, so that’s basically what I have. Thank you for the opportunity to allow us to present. We’re looking forward to the development of the subcommittee — we actually strongly believe that that’s a major step that needs to occur — and seeing actual reform occur.

[9:35 a.m.]

Seeing that we have a couple of minutes, I’ll pass it back to Carl. Carl is a council member for our village, so he’ll close.

C. Azak: Yeah. I kind of went through my presentation. We tried to squeeze it into the 15 minutes, and we managed to do that.

I’d just like to thank everybody here. Like Linda stated, we were hoping that Ellis Ross, our representative in our area, was going to be here today. But I wanted to thank everybody for giving us this time. I, too, would like to see what Linda has stated, with the committee — something that we can keep bringing our ideas to — because we knew we only had 15 minutes. We wanted to know that this is actually going to be put together, be brought to the House and that changes and reform are going to be made.

Again, it’s nice to meet you all, and I’m looking forward to the questions you guys have for us. I’ll end it right there.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you both very much. We appreciate your presentation very much.

Mr. Ross, MLA Ross, is not a member of the committee. He was a member of the original committee. It certainly doesn’t reflect any lack of commitment on his part to local representation or on the committee’s part. It’s simply that the membership is different when a new parliament is struck. I wouldn’t want to go away with the impression that he wasn’t here for any reason other than that.

Also, we are meeting with a great number of Indigenous communities and organizations, from court work organizations through to policing organizations, so we hope to fulfil our obligation as well as we possibly can.

With that, I will ask the committee members if they have questions for our guests.

A. Olsen: I really appreciate the experiences and the perspectives. Thank you, Chief Arnouse and Councillor Azak, and thank you, Morven, for your comments.

Just a couple of questions to you, Linda, if I may, around the subcommittee. We are a committee of the Legislature that has been asked to take a look at this from the legislation’s perspective. We can make recommendations, because the ministry will take the work that we do and take it back and start to develop other processes as they actually look at legislation or the recommendations that we make.

One of those recommendations could certainly be a committee similar to what you’ve highlighted with the emergency preparedness subcommittee. Could you provide just a little bit more information to the committee about how that operates? It is, I think, part of the same ministry as Public Safety and Solicitor General that struck this committee. Presumably, the ministry has a pretty clear understanding of it. But maybe, just for the record here in our process, you could provide a little bit more insight as to how that committee functions.

L. Morven: They put a call out a couple of years ago for individuals, First Nations individuals, who are interested in part of that committee. We actually meet on a regular basis, including reps from B.C. and Canada emergency program man, and other areas of safety in B.C., like fire. Of course, COVID hit, and then it kind of delayed. We’re actually reviewing sections, areas that we would like to include in the Emergency Program Act. We did a complete review, and at one point, we even suggested that these different sections of emergency preparedness in each of the regions include First Nations.

[9:40 a.m.]

We also have a really good relationship with the emergency committee — emergency preparedness — EMBC in Terrace. They keep us in the loop in terms of a lot of things, so we have a very good working relationship with that committee. We’re looking at a number of changes that we can make that are reflective of and inclusive of First Nations people.

A. Olsen: I appreciate you raising it for us. I think that we can also get more information on it internally, but I think that it is…. As Chair Routley has said, we’ve heard from a lot of communities, and certainly it’s a good recommendation for us to consider as we are putting together our list for the minister.

If I may, just quickly, to Chief Arnouse…. It caught me that your community doesn’t have a tripartite agreement, a CTA. I just wanted to explore that a little bit further. It was my understanding that these tripartite agreements are required when the RCMP are policing. We’ve heard different stories about the state of CTAs in various communities: from no CTA all the way through to fairly well functioning ones with good negotiation.

I’m just wondering. Has ALIB ever had a tripartite agreement, and can you maybe provide a little bit of history on how it is that you are without one currently?

C. Arnouse: Yes. There has been some work that comes close to having a CTA, but as elections change, as people change over the years, it kind of gets pushed back to a different priority. At this time, there is none. I’m not sure…. I’ve been trying to meet more often with Constable Kennedy in Chase detachment here, to ask. I think a couple of councillors have talked with one of the liaisons that work on CTAs, and we began exploring it a lot more.

That’s what we’re working towards, but I understand that the CTAs have been stopped awhile ago. Someone mentioned that they’re not making any more or don’t go down that route very often. It’s very difficult and complicated to move in that direction, but we need something, whether it’s that or an MOU. You know, something that I mentioned is that….

We need something. We need to be able to communicate our views and listen to their views in a way that is respectful and meaningful and not just sit here and say a few words and say thanks and then move on and then it’s all forgotten. We need some action. I’m not very much one for big, fancy words or nothing like that. I just want action on something that is very important for the people here, for our Elders, for the youth — something that will get them away from the gangs and the drugs and the alcohol that are prevalent in many of our communities.

When I say “my community” here, I mean all the Secwépemc and all the people — Carl and their community as well. We have all the same familiar problems, and we’re all working towards trying to get our youth and our Elders to come together so that experience can be shared in our culture and our songs and our ceremonies and our respect for the lands and all those other things that we use, survival tactics, and especially our language. We want to bring that back as much as we can. That’s what it’s all about.

The police may not understand all that, and maybe it won’t help them catch the bad guys. When we see some of our people that look like they are being harassed, I don’t see them treat…. I see two people walking down the street. One of them is a white; one of them is a native. They’re both staggering down the road. Which one will they arrest?

They let the white person go, and they’ll throw this other one down on the ground, put his hands behind his back and rough him up and throw him in a car and lock him up. I’ve seen that many times.

[9:45 a.m.]

This is sheer racism. I can’t say it any different than that. It’s got to be rooted out of there. There’s got to be some kind of training that they can put in there. I mentioned the Agora program — that seems like it’s just a little tick on a box where they said: “Yeah, they took some training.” It’s got to be more than that. It’s got to be a little more clear that we’re people. We’re here for a long time. We’re not going anywhere, and we need to share….

We’ve given up a lot over the last 500 years or 150 years. We’ve given our lands. We’ve given our animals. We’ve given everything, to live on small, stamp-sized properties that you can’t grow nothing on.

These kinds of things kind of get me riled a little bit when I start talking about it. We need equality. We need respect. We need all those things that anyone else, like yourself, expects from the RCMP.

G. Begg: Thank you, presenters, for your appearance today. And importantly, thank you for your willingness to join with us in doing the work that will be required to make the change.

I’m particularly impressed with the analogy that you used, Cliff. We’ve been talking about change for many, many years. It’s time to actually put our words into actions. I think it’s important that we do that. We should be judged by our actions, not how we speak. This has been an historic issue that has impacted your and many other communities for far too long. So thank you for speaking to us today and very eloquently bringing to our minds the work that has to be done.

I would say, as well…. I’m sure the Chair will say this later, but don’t think of this as your only opportunity. You don’t get just 15 minutes and that’s it or that’s all. There are all kinds of opportunities for you to continue to contribute to this committee and to other committees as we move forward. You will be welcome to submit written statements or anything else that you want to provide to us so that we can make as good a contribution to the success of the reform to the Police Act as we possibly can.

The only other thing…. Linda, you’ve had some involvement in this. There is a concerted effort on the part of the ministry, I know, to expand the umbrella of public safety. Although we’re concerned with the policing aspect of it, there are other areas that the Solicitor General’s ministry has responsibility for, like emergency planning, fire services, all of those kinds of things. I, like you, see an opportunity, through this committee, to bring more union to all of those emergency services, whether it be police or fire or ambulance or whatever.

We talk about — and I think it’s important we pay more than lip service to — community safety. All of the community should feel safe by whatever means is required. Policing is a small but important part of that, but we are free, of course, to make recommendations about the union of the various emergency services that are provided that may not be police but play an important role in making our communities safer.

L. Morven: If I could just respond to that very quickly, please. You know, I appreciate those comments. I just quickly looked up one of our concept papers. The previous MLA asked…. Some of the areas that we’re looking at include incorporating First Nations interests and rights into the modernized Emergency Program Act: “Recognize First Nations as rights holders on traditional territories through inclusion and cooperation in emergency management planning and activities; recognize First Nations as self-determining in emergency management.” That’s just an idea of what we’re looking at in terms of modernizing the EPA with First Nations inclusion.

I appreciate that, Garry, in terms of your comments.

[9:50 a.m.]

G. Begg: I will add, as well, that during the last fire season, it was very apparent that there was not enough consultation and inclusion. That was something that you’re aware of and that we are aware of. It’s something, again, that we’re seeking, I hope, to change.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Thank you to all the presenters. I really appreciate it.

Just a real quick question to Cliff in regards to Adams Lake. It sounds like there is no relationship, or no tripartite agreement, anyway, with the RCMP in Chase. Have those discussions happened? What has that reception been like? I’m just kind of curious about that relationship.

C. Arnouse: In the beginning, I said there were some beginnings from Councillor Elaine Jules and Brandy Jules to talk about some kind of MOU, or some kind of agreement, tripartite agreement, with…. I forget the lady that has that information to share on how to go about it. It has begun, that process. I’m not sure how far it has gotten at this time, but we have been here for a long time, and our doors are open.

I did go see Barry Kennedy a few times to talk with him about some different things that I have concerns over here. I offered to come and visit once in a while, to have a coffee, just to discuss things, and those are some of the things I will discuss with him: what is the process? Who do we go see? What is all in these kinds of agreements? Are they going to be under the Police Act, or are they going to be taking into consideration some of our Secwépemc laws that we uphold that may be a little bit different than the Police Act.

Those kinds of things that I follow — is it in our language, and in our land laws, and our water laws, and all those kinds of things that we want to ensure that they have something in there, covering some of these things in there? Child apprehension and child welfare, and all those. The big, major crimes as well, with the drugs, and gangs trying to come into our communities. Those kinds of things I wanted to talk to him about.

Everybody’s busy, and they have limited resources. We want to be able to find a way where we can get this tri-party agreement in there and maybe get another dedicated person in there that’ll spend time with us and be able to help us with many of these concerns.

R. Singh: Thank you to the presenters for taking the time and talking to us today. My question is for Chief Cliff. We hear that there’s no relationship, and you talk about the generations of mistrust and generations of systemic racism.

You also talk about training. This has come up a number of times with other presenters. Just two days ago, we had the police chiefs and police representatives come in and talk to us. They talked a little bit about building the relationship and also the training. What they are saying is that there is training; we are trying our best.

What do you think, Chief Cliff, is the path forward? They say that they are trying to make the bridges. And we know there’s a broken relationship, especially with the case of your band. What do you see, especially now when we are trying to renew the act? What do you see as the step forward?

C. Arnouse: Very good question, and I’m glad that I can bring that up and talk about it. It begins with trust, I guess. How do you build trust? It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not going to happen in a week. You can’t put a number on it.

[9:55 a.m.]

You’ve just got to be able to be there and see the reaction and see how the activities pan out. If they’re going to come over here with armoury and guns pointed, you know, like they did a few months ago when five or six of those big army machines came over…. They’ve got army personnel with their gear all on, with their guns all out. It’s very difficult to build trust in that situation. When you go to ask a question, they’re saying: “Don’t ask me. I’m just following orders.”

It’s got to go to the top. Not just a layman on the ground, but somebody who has the authority. Somebody who has the understanding and education to establish real good justice and meaningful dialogue, that’s going to listen — the Justice Minister or someone that can make the change.

I know Barry Kennedy, across the bridge, cannot make that change. He has his superiors. There’s a hierarchical system there. Somebody on top is making all the decisions, and they’re not going to change it here. With myself, with talking with him, he’s just going to follow his orders that he gets. We need to talk to people that can make this change and understand this change and not just somebody over there in Ottawa or somewhere down in Victoria that just signs a piece of paper and doesn’t even have the time to meet and talk about things.

Our families…. Everybody says their family is really important, but it’s better to show something and have some kind of activity. Have a meeting, have a talk. Show them that we’re real people. When you point a gun at somebody, yeah, we’re going to get scared. It tends to make us want to do the same thing to protect ourselves.

You’ve got to come over and sit down and talk. I’m pretty easy to talk to you, you know. I’m just an ordinary guy with the responsibility to try and make sure that our people are treated with the respect, that they are understood, that they have different views at times. They eat and they drink and they sleep, just like anybody else. They want to be heard, and they want to be treated just like anybody else — treated good.

R. Singh: Thank you so much, Chief. We really appreciate that.

T. Halford: Thanks, Cliff. I wouldn’t call you an ordinary guy. I think you’re a little bit above that.

I do want to pick up on a couple of things. One is…. And thank you to all the presenters here today.

You talk about respect and getting that respect and that respect is earned, not given. I do get concerned…. And you can speak to this much better than I ever could. When you look at when you, in your youth and how you saw and perceived the police to be and where some of the youth where you reside and how their relationship is fostering with the police, we probably need to dramatically improve that, and we need to build that trust. We need to build that relationship so both parties can benefit from it. How do we do that? How are we not doing that? That’s one question.

Then the second question I have for you is…. Anybody else can jump in on this as well. In terms of the police in the community…. A lot of times there are police in the community that are only there for a short duration, so you’re forming that relationship and you’re building that trust. It’s not about the badge. It’s actually that you’re investing in the actual person.

You’ve got to be able to trust the person — not the uniform, not the title. So when that person leaves and somebody else comes in, you’ve got to start from scratch again. You’re always there, right? That’s the consistency. I guess my question is: is there consistency on the other side of it? If there’s not, how best do we approach that? Is that something we need to look at?

[10:00 a.m.]

Anybody’s thoughts on those two questions?

C. Arnouse: Thanks. You’re right. Respect is a time investment over a period of time — how to gain that respect. If that’s what it is, and their rotations are placed for two years, or whatever it is, and then they’re gone, then I would say that somehow, within that whole RCMP organization, there would have to be something taught in there on how to get through this and build this trust and to show that and not just mouth the words and check the box off in their training and leave your gun at home.

Which just reminds me — when police are coming in to our boardroom to meet and that, which they have a few times, I ask them to leave their guns at the desk in the front, here, because I don’t want to allow that. I don’t want to allow my band members to do that, and I don’t think…. It doesn’t ask much more to leave their weapons here. Out of sight, out of mind, kind of thing.

It’s not about force. It’s not about that. You’re right. It’s about the person. It’s about the policies, right? The policies that they have to follow that show this kind of thing that we’re asking for. We build trust. We earn it. Our people are…. We talked a lot, in my youth…. Like Surrey, like Vancouver, Downtown Eastside, there are many things going on in many of your communities that worry me. People are dying by the thousands and dying for violence, for drugs. Those kind of things I look at, and there are some of our people there, too, as well.

But when they’re here, on reserve, we ask them to respect some of our Elders — Elders committee — when they speak. We ask them to take part in some of the ceremonies that we have for salmon, for first…. What do you call it? [Secwepemctsin was spoken.] Where the young people go into the mountains for three, four days to vision quest — and many things like that. We want them to respect the land and the animals and the fish and all those things that sustain us. Those are some of the things that we ask for respect for from our youth.

Some of them don’t, you know? They’re stuck just there in their basements playing their games, and the world is passing them by. We’re doing everything we can to get them out of there. We hired a new economic development officer who happens to have a basketball coach’s certification. We have a gym, and we’re going to be looking to start tournaments in basketball.

We have baseball. We have all these sports. We have a canoe journey that we go on annually. We have many of those on-the-land training, with our Elders, when it’s springtime — they’re all preparing to go into the seasonal rounds for picking the roots and picking the medicines and all those kind of things. We try to match them up with our…. Chief Atahm School is great for that.

So we try and do all those kind of things to mitigate some of these. But there are those that slip through the cracks, and those that…. The gangs are also here at our door, knocking on our door. We have to be always aware of that. It is an endless kind of challenge.

But the RCMP, instead of coming in and scaring everybody and showing any kind of force when you try to sit down and speak with them…. It’s kind of wrong. It just makes people want to do the same thing: “You push me, and I’ll push back.” Those kind of things. We have to have a better way of communicating. I talked about that earlier: a better way of communicating, a respectful way, regularly, so that there are no surprises, good expectations. It sets the ground rules, and it sets the ground equally so that it can work into the trust over a long period of time.

[10:05 a.m.]

Those kind of things, I think, will work better than trying to come over and pulling a bunch of guns and having the big machine guns pointing at you, you know? Things can work better with a handshake, I think. Thank you.

D. Routley (Chair): With that, I’d like to thank our presenters. As MLA Begg suggested earlier, we welcome your ongoing contribution to our committee, and there are several ways to do that. We can receive any information from you through our website or through the Clerk’s office. We appreciate this contribution to the very difficult task and broad-ranging task that we all face together. We are committed to the best results for everyone, and we deeply appreciate your contribution to that.

With that, I think I’m going to head for a recess. But just before that, I’d like to have the committee acknowledge the passing of the Duke of Edinburgh and express our condolences to Queen Elizabeth.

With that, I will ask for a recess from the committee for five minutes. Thank you.

The committee recessed from 10:06 a.m. to 10:16 a.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): Good morning, presenters. I’d like to welcome everyone back to this meeting of the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act. I would also like to take the opportunity to quickly introduce our members.

We have MLA Rachna Singh. We have MLA Harwinder Sandhu. We have MLA Rick Glumac, MLA Trevor Hal­ford, MLA Garry Begg, MLA Adam Olsen, Deputy Chair and MLA Dan Davies and myself, MLA Doug Routley. We welcome you to this phase of our meeting.

For our next panel, we’ll be hearing from the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council and the Gitanyow Band. Each will have 15 minutes to speak, followed by questions and discussion from committee members. I should also remind everyone that audio from our meetings is broadcast live on our website, and a complete transcript will be posted.

I’ll now introduce President Judith Sayers and Vice-President Mariah Charleson of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council for their presentation.

Hello, Judith, and welcome.

NUU-CHAH-NULTH TRIBAL COUNCIL

J. Sayers: Thank you, Doug, and thank you to all the committee members for the opportunity to present to you on something that is very critical in our territories.

I come to you today from the Nuu-chah-nulth territories on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

The tribal council represents 14 nations, which is over 10,000 people, on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

There are many, many issues regarding police and law enforcement that we deal with on a daily basis. Mariah and I do this. The shooting of Chantel Moore, on June 4, 2020 by Edmundston city police, was a wake-up call for us with regard to who does wellness checks and the need to have trauma-informed people going in on such issues as wellness checks. Six months later, her brother died in Surrey Pretrial Centre, where he managed to commit suicide. We also want to know: how can these things happen when there are cameras? Where is the level and standard of care?

The recent shooting of Joseph, also known as Julian Jones, on one of our reserves was shocking and still reverberates horror through our communities. It brings to mind the need for culturally sensitive training, better de-escalation training and protocols with First Nations when on the reserve. We are undertaking such an initiative right now with the RCMP and the cooperation of the deputy commissioner, Jennifer Strachan.

Through this shooting, we were able to invoke a trigger on section 38.08 to appoint a civilian monitor into the police shooting of Joseph. We’re going to see how this works. Is this efficient? Is it enough? We didn’t really know about this, and we experienced not being able to have any kind of investigation into Chantel Moore and the investigation that was done by an independent group there.

We’ve had incidents where a Nuu-chah-nulth man was released from custody and died a few hours later. The IIO is involved, and the investigation goes on.

[10:20 a.m.]

We have a young boy that was killed three years ago. No charges have been laid. We’re hopeful that’s soon, but why does it take so long? Part of the problem was a pathology report that took 2½ years. Why is that? We don’t understand. Meanwhile, justice for this young boy is not there, and we need to do better. Of course, we have many murdered and missing Indigenous women that we look after and look into.

This is just a snapshot of some of the issues that we’re dealing with in police and law enforcement. We’ve had to deal with this, and we want to make this better. We believe that racism plays a role in these happenings and must be addressed and resolved. The Police Act talks about how the minister sets the “priorities, goals and objectives for policing and law enforcement” in B.C. This should include First Nations priorities, goals and objectives, as we seem to be those that are most impacted. We would like to see that amended so that such consultations, collaboration, consent are held with First Nations people.

Your terms of reference looks at four things, and Mariah is going to talk about questions 1 and 2.

M. Charleson: Thank you, Judith. Thank you for the opportunity. Regarding point 1 from the terms of reference, I would first like to point out the independent oversight. We need to see, across the board, more involvement with First Nations communities and First Nations leadership. With that involvement, we need to see transparency. We finally saw section 38.08 enacted with the tragic shooting of an Opitsaht youth. We want to see an amendment to the act ensuring that 38.08 is enacted each time an Indigenous person is harmed or a death is caused as a result of police action or inaction.

Regarding training, education and standards, my question is: can these be addressed through subcommittees? These are massive, massive topics. When we talk about training, we talk about three key priorities: de-escalation, trauma-informed practice and cultural safety and humility training. In a subcommittee, you would be able to talk about that cultural safety and humility training and how you can create those relationships with the local First Nations people, ensuring that they have a voice.

Surely there must be some type of prerequisites before people become RCMP officers. We want to ensure that officers know the history of First Nations people prior to becoming officers. We want an amendment to the act to allow for whistle-blower protection, to allow officers to speak up when they see racism or violent acts. We want to see consequences for those officers’ behaviour when it does happen. When we talk about sustainability, we think about the ultimate return to our own laws and our own practices.

I’ll continue on to the second term of reference: the police role. I’ll start this off with two questions. Is the drunk tank the appropriate place for an intoxicated First Nations youth or a person who already has distrust for the police and the RCMP? Another question I pose: are police officers the appropriate people to be involved with a drug- and alcohol-induced person or a person experiencing mental health distress? I know the IIO has supported sobering centres in places like Kamloops.

We talk about trauma-informed teams. We want them to be taking the lead and the RCMP coming in as support. We want the criminal justice system and the Mental Health Act to respond in appropriate ways that can actually assist our people. Right now, with our people who are continuously falling through the cracks, they have drug-induced psychosis, get arrested, get brought to the hospital, and then they get released. This is a common thing that we’re seeing.

We want people to be provided culturally appropriate services. We think of that as an opportunity. Right now we cannot say, “Hold our people,” because we’ve seen, in the In Plain Sight report, that racism exists right now in the health care system, and racism exists all across society.

That’s all I’m going to mention right now for articles 1 and 2 from the terms of reference. I’ll turn it back to Judith. Thank you.

[10:25 a.m.]

J. Sayers: Thanks, Mariah. The third term of reference that you’re dealing with is huge. It’s racism. We believe that racism is at the core of many of the incidences that we have mentioned previously, and more to come.

We need to find ways to ensure…. I don’t know how we put this in an act. But officers have got to value and respect Indigenous people. Dehumanizing us is just totally unacceptable. We saw this in the Frank Paul inquiry, and there were many recommendations made from that inquiry that were never put into practice. We know it’s there. The Prime Minister has said so. Brenda Lucki has said so — and Minister Bill Blair and many others. So how do we deal with that?

Division 2 of your Police Act talks about misconduct. We believe that there needs to be clear provisions to deal with racism of police. It needs to be named so that officers take it seriously. Racism is not acceptable. It’s misconduct. They need to go through disciplinary proceedings and, possibly, termination, depending on the degree of racism that’s displayed, the amount of harm. Some of this takes a really long time to come back from.

We also, in that misconduct area, need to have Indigenous people. We’re the ones that understand the impacts of what the misconduct has done in our communities. There needs to be Indigenous peoples throughout all of the processes and procedures and boards that you put in place so that we can have a say in what we know to happen.

We need to expand and legitimize community-based security models, such as local peacekeepers like the Bear Clan Patrol in Winnipeg. We know the federal government is going to make policing an essential service. Why not do that now? Our concern, of course, is that we have many members, on and off reserve, and we need to address both of those, because the impacts are the same. The way Indigenous people are treated, on and off reserve, has to be addressed. We feel that having our own security forces in place is what is needed.

One of our Nuu-chah-nulth nations, Ahousaht, has their own security in place. It’s based on the authority of their Ha’wiih — their Chiefs — and their own laws. They have two RCMP officers. They sometimes work together. But they are the authority in the community. They haven’t asked permission from anyone. They’re just doing it. I think that’s a great example.

I’d like to echo some of Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond’s report In Plain Sight, where she calls for an antiracism act. That might be the answer to some of these racist issues that we’re dealing with, and it has to have references to the justice system and require antiracism policies, training and reporting in the justice system.

I want to address your fourth issue of DRIPA — I’ll call your Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act “DRIPA” — and, of course, UNDRIP. In November of 2019, we saw the enactment. We were all excited. We thought: “Oh, yay. We’re going to get changes.” Yet here we are, over a year, a year and a half almost, and we haven’t seen any significant changes.

Even coming before this committee doesn’t show you have changed. Where are the Indigenous people sitting in a committee? Why aren’t we working together to develop the Police Act? That’s what I consider needs to be done.

Section 3 says that you’ve got to change your laws to align with UNDRIP. Of course UNDRIP, in section 20, says that you need to “consult and cooperate in good faith with the Indigenous people concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.”

Your legislative system doesn’t work to do that. We can’t participate in drafting. You bring it to committees. You make amendments. It doesn’t come back to First Nations people. We need to be there at every step of the way. We need to be helping you draft that legislation. We need to say: “Yes. Okay. This is going to work for us.” We need to have a say, and we realize that your governmental processes right now don’t address that. We need to change that if you’re going to be living up to DRIPA and UNDRIP.

[10:30 a.m.]

DRIPA offers very few mechanisms. One, of course, is aligning laws. Two is the action plan, where we can address policies, and three is to share decision-making models. Right now, we hear there are a couple of models out there being negotiated with the government, but the mandate has to come from cabinet, and you know how slow of a process that is.

But, you know, there are some solutions there that have a bit too much bureaucracy in them. If we could come to shared decision-making on some of this policing, we would really think that would be important.

Article 10 of UNDRIP talks about how Indigenous peoples are not to be forcibly moved from their lands and territories. We just have to think back to Wet’suwet’en, where the Chiefs and the women and other members were taken off their lands. Well, it was an injunction. How can it be done better? If we’re going to live up to this article, and we’re removing people from their lands, that’s not consistent with UNDRIP. We need to find better ways to ensure that’s done.

Article 7 of UNDRIP says that Indigenous individuals have the right to life, physical and mental integrity and security of the person. Right now, the right to life, the right not to be shot by police, is a huge issue. We need to work to prevent another Nuu-chah-nulth or other First Nation person from being shot and killed. Our people need to know that they don’t have to fear the police and have the security that they will not be targeted.

How do we do this? We need a whole provincial dialogue about overhauling the police. What are its roles? Do we need them in all the situations they go? Are there better, trauma-informed teams that can go in? There are. It needs money. It needs innovation. It needs solutions that we can brainstorm together. Minister Bill Blair told me: “Oh, we don’t have the money to put trauma-informed teams in the RCMP.” Well, excuse me. I’m sorry, but this is a priority. I really would like to see us do that.

You’re tackling the Police Act right now, but there are other things to do. Police are there to protect our people. We should not have to be talking to you about how to protect our people from the police. I want to commit our tribal council into working with you on amending the Police Act to make it better serve Indigenous people until we get our own forces in place and our own laws.

Really, again, do appreciate your time, and the ability to speak frankly with you.

D. Routley (Chair): Next, we’ll be hearing from Chief Councillor Tony Morgan from Gitanyow Band.

Go ahead, Mr. Morgan.

GITANYOW BAND

T. Morgan: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the invite.

I can just add to what has been said already, because of the similarities that we have gone through. I can add to some of the recommendations as well. We have gone through a few — well, not a few, but a lot — of mistreatments from the police force in our area here. We have a lot of people that reach out to me, because I’m a leader in my community.

Just some background. I come from the Gitxsan Nation, which consists of eight communities in our region. The police here, from what I’ve noticed, say that the detachment is needing more recruitment for more policing. We often hear of them saying that they’re understaffed and that they can’t respond to some of the calls that are made. So a lot of times, we get no response to any of the calls until a day later, and the event has all gone past. Somehow, the situation gets swept under the rug, and there are no resolutions to violent crimes that were committed.

[10:35 a.m.]

We also have a couple of occasions…. There was a young man that got run over by a partier that came from a lake where there was there was drinking going on. He came speeding back into the village. I’m not too sure. What was mentioned is….

The police need to come to our communities and take a look at the settings that we have to live in. We’re the ones that are put on reserves. We have no sidewalks, so our streets become our main roads where people are walking down the streets or they’re taking their children for a walk. We don’t get funding to have sidewalks. It’s pretty dangerous in our area. So we do need to work on those items.

The young man that got run over…. There was no resolution. It was a family member. The individual that ran him over was very intoxicated. When the police finally did show up, it was members of the parties that he talked to, and the individuals had sided with the one that committed the offence. The family that was suffering from the incident went away with no resolution to it, and the individual walked away from that crime. No justice was served. So today we’re still trying to deal with the aftermath of families hating each other because of this incident, and there was no proper handling of the situation.

Then there are other incidents. There was a graduation party, and there were major fights happening there.

I have all the documents that I wanted to forward to you for your further viewing when you take a look more at our…. As Judith has mentioned, we need more dialogue than just a Zoom time of 15 minutes to present. I believe that we need to spend more time looking at how we can help to assist the police officers that come to our area.

Our people have gone through so much through the histories of residential school and so much trauma. People that come to our nation are very prejudiced of our people. They come here with an attitude, wanting to regard our people as violent people. When you come to meet our people, our people are not violent. They’re actually very friendly people. They’ll spend more time joking around with you and chumming with you more than trying to hate you or accuse you of anything.

Some of the things we want to talk about are the training of the police officers. Do they understand the legacy of colonization, the impacts of the residential schools and the Sixties Scoop? A lot of things have happened in these times during the Sixties Scoop and the colonization.

Are the officers familiar with the Truth and Reconciliation report, and has their office developed procedures to break barriers and build bridges with the local Indigenous communities? What plans do the detachments have to participate in and support community initiatives? How do they acknowledge and celebrate National Indigenous History Month and National Indigenous Peoples Day? Do they understand and acknowledge the local protocols; land acknowledgment and the roles of Elders; the language; the names of the places; the local art of their offices?

[10:40 a.m.]

We’d like to invite officers, and, like Judith was saying, be a part of their recruitment, get to know the police officers and build a good relationship, work together in trying to find better ways to have a safe community and a better working relationship and better response in dealing with matters. There’s lots of drug selling and bootlegging in our community. We’ve lost a lot of members through alcohol because their livers have gone. Nothing was done with the bootlegging.

On the reserves, there’s not too much economic employment. We don’t have the benefits or the luxuries like in the cities where you have places where you can go and enjoy yourself or better activities. We’re finding a lot of our members are staying on the reserve, and they’re just indulging in drugs and alcohol, and then they’re losing their lives. So we do need a better solution and a better way, if the police can help us with all these matters that we have to deal with.

I do have a few more. But in the interest of time, I just wanted here to acknowledge Judith. That’s how we conduct ourselves. We respect each other. A lot of our traditional and cultural teaching was taken away in residential school. The children got taken away from their elders, and their life teaching was taken away from them.

In our system, we have a lot of teaching in our ancestral ways, and it’s regarding giving lots of respect and acknowledging your fellow person and respect for Chiefs and leaders. So when the colonization happened, a lot of that teaching was taken away. We were not able to teach the children proper ways anymore. They ended up learning, ended going through a system where, such as myself…. I was happy to go to school, only to get strapped the first few days of my school. For the duration of the year, I was always afraid of my teacher. This starts systems….

I was just a little kid, just starting in school, and I went through that. I remember how our teachers were. They were very vicious, mean. They were hitting you with the mail. So that’s the start of our education. That’s the reason why a lot of our people…. They don’t have a high level of graduates. Some of us live in a community where we have to travel two hours to a high school. That’s still the reality here.

So the police need to understand what each community goes through and be there, be more visible, so that our people know that they have to work together and — how do you say it now? — obey the laws of the land and become better citizens. It would be good to see the police come to our schools and talk to the students, come to our feasting system and introduce themselves and be a part of our cultural events.

After this virus has gone away, there are going to be a lot of feasting systems, because that’s how we resolve dealing the passing of our loved ones. Our communities come together, support each other. And through that support, we need to see the police be visible in those events and bring a little bit of support as well — contribute to the pot — so that they’re a part of the First Nations community events and they’re there for the people, for the safety of the people.

In our area, where I’m from, it’s called Highway of Tears. Every community has lost two or three young ladies to vicious death, and no resolution for them. Now some of our community members are just putting crosses beside the road because it’s been a while now, and they’ll never be resolved. They’re taking it as that.

[10:45 a.m.]

So we do need a lot of support and help, working together and teaching our children better ways to be able to report situations and how to assess and know that it could be dangerous and what to keep away from, after all these things that have gone on in our nation. The police should be coming in and talking to us — or our parliament members coming in and talking to us — about how they want to see safety in our community and help us to build our nation, work together and have a better working relationship.

I wish I had more time to prepare. It’s been really busy for me. I wear lots of hats. Working with our justice system yesterday, I was involved with the court yesterday and dealing with people who are going through traumatic experiences. They tell us of that. So I just want to thank you for this time and opportunity. It’s great to see Nuu-chah-nulth members and Members of Parliament. I’ll give you the few minutes I have.

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

Thank you, Mariah and Tony. I haven’t met you before.

Judith, I’ve met you many times and [audio interrupted] over the years and honoured by your presence here. Thank you very much.

I also would like to say, on behalf of the committee, that this is certainly not the only opportunity to have input to our process. We invite you to submit to us, and we will be reviewing all the submission we get on an ongoing basis. We will invite people back. We have met with many communities and many organizations.

Of course, no one can appreciate better than you the broadness of this task, so we can make recommendations in the areas that you’ve spoken about beyond the Police Act. Our committee is deeply committed to doing the best we can to achieve better results for everyone involved. We deeply thank you for your contribution here.

I would now open it to questions from members. The first name I see on my screen is MLA Singh.

R. Singh: Thank you to all — Judith, Mariah, Tony — for you presentations. I really want to raise my hand to talk about those lived experiences. I know how traumatic those are, especially talking about the intergenerational trauma.

Mariah, my question is to you. Especially when you were talking about the training for the police, you were talking about the de-escalation and the cultural sensitivity and the trauma-informed. How do you like to…? I asked a number of presenters, and we have heard from so many about the lack of training. This is something that the committee is also closely looking at.

What do you see, going forward…? You talked about, in detail…. As we train more police officers, what should we be doing? What should the police services be doing? And what should we, in this committee, be recommending for that?

M. Charleson: Thank you for the question. In our committee that we started with NTC and the RCMP, there’s going to be a subcommittee specific to training. We focus on trauma-informed practice, because at the root of trauma-informed practice is safety.

When we talk about training with the RCMP, for example, they have three layers. The first layer is that online course. There’s an online course at the University of Alberta. That’s step 1. That’s kind of a COVID thing where you can’t really get in together. Step 2 is something similar to what we would consider the blanket exercise, showing the deep impacts of colonial history. And then the third piece, what we’re really pushing for and what we think is the vital link, is that relationship with the community.

The example that we brought forward to the RCMP is when you have an officer that’s going to be moved. Let’s just use this as an example — Tofino. Tofino is the traditional unceded territory of the Tla-o-qui-aht people. Within Tofino, there are outlying reserves of Hesquiaht and Ahousaht that rely on Tofino for essential services. If an RCMP officer were to be moved there, then we want that third layer. We want that community integration, collaborative approach — very much so of what Tony had mentioned.

[10:50 a.m.]

Our communities look different. If you were to be an officer going over to Opitsaht, for example, there are no roads. There are no signs. We can’t say: “Oh, he lives at the corner of First Street and Eighth.” Our communities often don’t have street names.

I’m aiming for that third layer of that relationship-building and having the training actually coming directly from that region. That’s where I’m looking at for training RCMP officers.

Also, when I speak about prerequisites, we can’t just be hiring anybody off the street, of course. When we see our Indigenous People far overrepresented and people being injured, harmed or killed by RCMP officers, then absolutely it should be a prerequisite for people to have that basic history and understanding of the many things that Tony had mentioned: the Sixties Scoop, the Indian Act, impacts by the residential school system, etc.

R. Singh: Thank you so much, Mariah, both you and Tony. What you mentioned about the prerequisites, the training, the basic knowledge that the officers should have…. We really appreciate that. I think that is something very important, and I’m glad that you spelled it out.

We’re always talking about training, training. But how much can you train? People need to have certain information before they join this force. So that is a very, very important point.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your input to today’s committee. I deeply appreciate that.

J. Sayers: I wonder if I could just add on to that. You talked about de-escalation training. In the case of Chantel Moore, she was shot five times. Julian Jones was shot three times. I know Rodney Levi was shot after the taser didn’t work. Why do they have to shoot our people so many times? I’m waiting to hear whether it was the first, second, third, fourth or fifth shot that killed these people. We don’t know yet.

That’s what’s wrong with de-escalation training. You’ve got a huge police officer trying to quell a little 5-foot-6 woman or this young man that was just shot in Opitsaht. There’s something wrong with that. They shoot, and they shoot.

This is what we need. We just don’t want to see that happen anymore. So we talk about de-escalation training. That’s what we want. There are other ways. I mean, send in the trauma-informed. If they can’t do it, then the police. But they should know how to quell a victim when they obviously have the advantage.

I just wanted to add that. Thank you.

R. Singh: No, no. Thank you so much, Judith. I think that is a very important point that you make.

When we see and when we hear about these news, especially in the media, of these killings, as laymen also, we wonder: where was the de-escalation? A lot of times the people who were targeted did not have any weapons. Maybe they had a knife or something in their hands. Then you have a gun and shooting them. That is something extremely concerning.

Thanks for bringing that out. Thanks for spelling it out, because these words do matter. Thank you so much.

A. Olsen: Thank you so much for your presentations, Mariah, Judith and Tony. I really appreciate the contribution that you’ve made to this part of the process. I think it’s important to stress that this is part of the process, and what we hear will inform what is to come and the next stages of this.

We have heard, from the Indigenous communities, Indigenous nations from across our province that have presented, an incredible consistency, all wanting a community-based approach rather than what has been an approach that I think could be best described as a colonial approach. We see this in housing, a one-size-fits-all approach — the same houses in Indigenous communities whether you’re on the west coast, whether you’re on the south coast or whether you’re in eastern Canada. All the same houses, all the same communities.

We see this with policing. We’ve heard incredible consistency, because it’s just the approach of the policing in our communities. It’s exactly the same, and it doesn’t matter.

[10:55 a.m.]

Leader after leader has stepped up to this committee and said that what they want is…. They want better policing. They want better relationships with the people providing security in their communities. They want a relationship with the people that are providing it.

We’ve heard now, earlier today…. And now, Mariah, you raised it, and I think Judith talked about it as well. I think breaking the cycle of these approaches, the one-size-fits-all — “This is the policing you get; whether you like it or not, this is what you’re getting” — starts with engagement and collaboration, and I think you were really clear on this.

Maybe highlight a little further, in the time that we have here, a subcommittee, how Indigenous People, Indigenous leaders can be brought into informing the development of new legislation. I think we’ve heard a desire for that to be comprehensive. Do you have any ideas that can help inform the recommendations that this committee will deliberate on and make on how that Indigenous involvement can look, going forward, with respect to the justice system and policing?

J. Sayers: If I could respond, Adam. Thank you very much for that question.

I’m finding it, across the board, with all legislation. That needs to be aligned with UNDRIP. I think there are groups that are experts. We deal with this all the time. If we can bring together the people who have the time to devote to such a subcommittee and to work through the changes that we need in the Police Act to ensure that the most important concerns are addressed…. Then that can be brought forward to the Chiefs and the communities at a larger base before it goes back to government.

I think that oftentimes we are left out of small groups, or there’s only consultation with the leadership council. I have the greatest respect for the leadership council, but it’s the communities where things happen. It’s the communities that are the self-determining nations. We need to find that, and we need to be comfortable with changes to the Police Act — decolonization and getting rid of racism. Systemic racism is just too prevalent in our communities.

I’d like to see us work, as much as possible, on a subcommittee where even First Nations can send their concerns to those at the table, and they can work on that. Sometimes big groups are too much, but it’s important for everybody to be heard in a significant way. We’ve said that fifteen minutes just isn’t enough, and it isn’t. We just hit the surface of some of the concerns that we’re working on. Some of this is national, and some of it, for us, has been New Brunswick.

You just have to know things. We bring our collective wisdom to a table where we can have more comprehensive talks about overhauling the police system.

A. Olsen: Thank you for that.

Earlier in your presentation, you highlighted the development of priorities and objectives that can be set by the minister and the potential for a broader conversation about ensuring that those objectives and the policing policy that gets delivered and implemented across the province be informed. That would be another opportunity to have a working group that included Indigenous leadership so that the things that we were hearing in this committee, as I want to stress, with incredible consistency…. The requests of Indigenous nations are coming to life in the policy rather than just falling on deaf ears. That would be another place.

I also just want to acknowledge, Tony, the story that you told about going to school. That’s a story that, unfortunately, is also very consistent. It’s a story that I’ve heard, and it forms part of all of our families’ stories, whether you’re in W̱SÁNEĆ where I am in the south coast or up in Gitxsan territory. I just want to thank you for sharing that experience. I know that these are traumatic experiences, but it’s really important that we understand the impact that those have on people.

HÍSW̱ḴE SIÁM. Thank you.

[11:00 a.m.]

T. Morgan: Thank you. If I can just continue on that one. In recent days, we’ve been having some activities with our youth. We always have those kinds of sessions happening. That’s a healing session that we’re doing with our people because of all the traumas that are experienced.

I think it’s really important to also think about the…. I mentioned about the Sixties Scoop and our residential school, but now when a young child talks, that’s one of the things they reference right away — that their parents went through this and they went through that. So it’s stemming down to the children there because of their parents. It is a big issue. A lot of people are still suffering that.

In the court yesterday that I was at, a lady was talking about her experience, what she went through, and now a situation her son got himself into because of blaming how the parents were, because of not bringing up the child in the proper way. There are a lot of people in the new generations that are looking at what their parents have gone through or grandparents have gone though. Their parents were practically children that were only around eight to ten years old who got taken away from their parents and had to go through all that traumatic educational system, going away for schooling, so to speak.

Now all they’ve learned is that some of the children got buried at these schools they were at, so there’s anger there. There are deep hurts there, so we do need help with our people to get over this. That’s why it’s good to work with the First Nations leadership now. It’s good to see that Elders are in courts now to talk to the youth offenders or the offenders, because that was a system we had in place from our ancestors where they spoke to us.

When we see a Chief, right away we stand up straight and salute to them, like how you do to your major leaders. We had that in our system, and that’s where a lot of our members got respect. They stayed in line because of the teachings that they had, so it’s good to work with our traditional, like what Judith has mentioned….

Let’s work together on some of these things, have the constable be there to see how we do this and to use the knowledge-keepers to help guide and realign our members that are hurting from the Sixties Scoop and residential era.

J. Sayers: Adam, if I could just add on to that. One of the issues of DRIPA is that there is nothing in there that allows the minister’s discretion to be fettered. So in shared decision-making issues, we can’t do that until there’s a change in legislation to allow for sharing of decision-making.

I don’t know why the act was passed the way it was, because we have this huge problem. In the Police Act, section 2: the minister must be required to work with Indigenous Peoples to set those priorities…. I think that can be done without fettering the minister.

I think it’s an important point that I need to reiterate over and over again — that there’s a huge hole. Minister Rankin tells me there are a couple agreements being negotiated on shared decision-making, and they’ll let us know what that is and how they overcome this problem. But I think, without legislative changes we’re not going to be able to do shared decision-making. I just wanted to mention that.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Judith, Mariah and Tony, for highlighting a few of the many, many concerns. Thank you for some recommendations. I was taking notes.

I have a couple of comments, and one question I will ask at the end. Thank you, Judith, for calling racism what it is and highlighting, because oftentimes what we are noticing as the biggest problem with the system and at every level, even with society, is the lack of acknowledgement that racism exists. It’s well and alive, and in fact it’s increased lately — and the denial.

Pure denial. I don’t know if we just want to paint a picture of how we are a perfect society, but thank you for calling it what it is. Sometimes we have these fancy terms so it looks a little less serious than racism.

[11:05 a.m.]

The other thing you highlighted — to allow RCMP officers to speak up when they witness racism. Thank you for that. I’ve noticed that in health care as well, not just the RCMP. In the health care sector as well — that’s where I’m coming from — oftentimes there are people with good intentions. There are people who want to be an ally with our Indigenous people, and they witness clear racism. They want to report, but their job is their bread and butter. Then there’s licensing. Then there’s the organization they’re working with.

I think that’s something we’ll be discussing as a committee in general, and I will be expanding it to: how do we protect those health care workers, too, who want to come forward and support our Indigenous communities and speak up against racism?

The prescreening, Mariah, that you highlighted. I think knowing more officers, when they will know about the Indigenous history and the reason for that broken trust and the systemic, deeply rooted…. The losses that Indigenous communities had, the intentions of the RCMP when it was first created — that will go a long way.

I think that if we take the proactive approach, versus when the RCMP officers are hired and then given training…. I really like your point of prescreening, and I wonder if that should be one of the prerequisites: to have some sort of course where they read about Indigenous history and the RCMP history. It will go a long way. Just my thought, but any of you can speak to that.

Another question I have. Judith, you mentioned it took 2½ years to receive that pathology report, which doesn’t make sense to me again. It’s just lots of questions of why. Was there any answer provided to us? Why the delay? Are we still wondering why? If you can please answer that.

J. Sayers: I can answer that, and Mariah can answer the prescreening question.

We have no…. The police kept on waiting to make charges because they needed the pathology report, so that’s why we are three years without. We have no reasons, no excuses. We have the same thing in New Brunswick, waiting for the coroner’s report to tell us it’s because of COVID. But that doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense in this young boy’s, because it was way before COVID.

I’m not sure if it’s racism or if it’s just lack of staff, but I really think this is important. In the course of justice, we really need to be able to have these reports sooner. I just don’t know what the holdup is. I really wish I did know, because we just had to sit back and wait.

H. Sandhu: Right. Or we deserve a clear answer — what are the reasons for delay? — and an answer that makes sense. Again, as a person and as a committee, I’m thinking: “Why?” Curiosity is there. When you don’t have those answers, how are we going to build that trust and build that bridge?

J. Sayers: For sure.

D. Routley (Chair): I see my own name next, because I don’t see any other names there.

Vice-President Charleson mentioned local connection and how to train people about the local community. We’ve heard a lot about connection and a lack of connection, but also turnover with officers and at the same time needing to recognize the differences between communities. How do you see a provincial recommendation that will be broad enough to affect all communities, but not one-size-fits-all? How do you see that that could be structured?

M. Charleson: A really important question. I’m only 33, but I’ve spent about eight years doing cultural safety training for various ministries in the province. It’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of question. I think having a table, like as I had mentioned, possibly a sub-committee, with members from various regions across the province. Vancouver Island, for example — even though we’re one region, we have three different big families: Coast Salish, Kwakiutl and Nuu-chah-nulth. And of course we know we have over 200 First Nations all across B.C.

[11:10 a.m.]

I see it being a layered approach. I’ll use an example of when I worked for B.C. Corrections and I trained over 1,500 B.C. Corrections employees, travelling all across the province. Every time it was those day-long sessions, in-person. Those were the ones that had a real impact. Right off the bat, I remember, in one of the ministries I was working with, I mentioned: “You know what? I don’t feel right in going to Prince George and doing this history.” I said: “I want to have somebody from there.”

I ended up meeting an Elder from Lheidli T’enneh. Then I requested that everywhere I went. I requested that we have local knowledge. I said, there’s no way I’m going to go and present at Tigh-Na-Mara on the Snaw-Naw-As reserve without communicating with their leadership. I made it apparent that we needed that local. Having that table, setting out the standards, the guidelines and the competencies that we need to see from all of our officers in the way that they deal with and handle our people — I think that’s the start. We know what information they need to know.

We know that the RCMP and Indigenous Peoples relationship hasn’t always been strong. There’s a huge lack of trust. When we look back at actual facts, the RCMP had a huge impact on actually creating Canada, creating space for settlement. It was RCMP officers who sometimes showed up at the doorstep to make sure that your children were taken to the Indian residential school.

All of those realities that our people live with and face absolutely need to come across in training, right now across the board. The B.C. curriculum just changed about five years ago to include Indigenous curriculum across the board. Prior to that, people my age have no clue. They really don’t. People who’ve been RCMP officers and teachers for 20-plus years are the hardest ones to break sometimes. I’ve seen it in environments where it’s the new person who’s actually the leader, because the new person coming up has already had those competencies.

I like the idea of having the prerequisites to start off. I know that with B.C. Corrections, they have a lovely relationship with the Justice Institute. To this day, I’ll go in and I’ll instruct every once in awhile, and just do a two-hour presentation on the history. The impact that that has is amazing. You can actually see the impact that it’s having. I know the power in reviewing truth. When you go through a simple timeline of history and you bring it right to the forefront — the atrocities that our people have faced throughout time — that has a real serious impact on the way that we deal with our Indigenous People.

Regarding a provincial approach, I think it’s going to be difficult to set those standards and guidelines and to ensure that there’s that regional lens as well.

J. Sayers: I just want to add that it might be time to put that in the Police Act. It varies across British Columbia as to whether or not there is local training, but maybe we could make it the law for a while, until everybody gets into it and addresses that. There must be training created by the local First Nations where the officers are, as well as some more general training. Just a thought.

D. Routley (Chair): Do you think that could be accomplished by a designated position on police boards, or a First Nations person, or some other mechanism adjusting what has been happening, and ensuring that those representatives remain local in that manner?

J. Sayers: There is an Indigenous policing unit within the RCMP. I think they try where they can, but I just don’t think they have enough capacity. If you had a specific person appointed to try and implement these courses, with training in every First Nation across the province, I think it would be much better — under the direction of those people who are already working hard at trying to do that. But 203 First Nations, as you know, is a lot.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much. Do I see anyone else’s name on the list? I don’t. I’d like to, at this moment, thank you for the great presentations. We all very much appreciate this contribution.

As you can see from our terms of reference, it’s very broad — thankfully, on the one hand, because we can make recommendations about training, referring to the Mental Health Act, and a number of other funding and governance issues, but it also broadens the task hugely. You’ve pointed out the need for an ongoing dialogue. I invite you to contribute whatever you think we should be seeing and knowing. There will be more consultation as we move forward to our final report, which we hope you’ll be involved in. We thank you very much for your contribution today.

J. Sayers: Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Tony.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you. Members, I think we’ll take a short recess before the next phase of our meeting. Shall we say ten minutes? Everybody okay with that? Okay, thank you. We’ll recess for ten minutes.

The committee recessed from 11:15 a.m. to 11:33 a.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): Now we will be looking for a motion to go in camera. That is from MLA Halford and seconded by MLA Singh.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 11:33 a.m. to 12:07 p.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): Then a motion, Members, to adjourn the meeting. From MLA Olsen, seconded by MLA Sandhu.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 12:08 p.m.