The committee met at 8:05 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Hello, everybody. We are reconvening the meeting of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We’re in the process of the annual review of the statutory officers of British Columbia — the three-year rolling service plans, annual report and budgetary estimates for fiscal 2022 to 2023.

I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered here in person on the unceded traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations.

We have invited the Police Complaint Commissioner to come back. In our deliberations, some members had some follow-up questions, so we’d like to give him an opportunity to answer those questions.

With that, I will invite members of the committee to ask their follow-up questions.

Review of Statutory Officers

OFFICE OF THE
POLICE COMPLAINT COMMISSIONER

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Clayton, for returning.

Inside of the one report that’s here, request 3, it says that without funding approval of the initiatives, your office will be impacted, causing risk to fulfilling the statutory mandate. Can you just explain to me personally, or to the group, what the statutory mandate actually is?

C. Pecknold: Certainly. Thank you for the question. Thank you for the opportunity to answer some follow-up questions.

Generally, our statutory mandate is laid out in section 177 of the Police Act. It has both mandatory requirements and discretionary requirements. The mandatory requirements, essentially, are that…. Well, they’re laid out in the act, but essentially, it’s to oversee and administer the disciplinary conduct regime for municipal police in the province.

That includes examining complaints and matters that come to our attention for admissibility in compliance with the statute, where required; ordering investigations into that to be conducted by the police organizations; responding to and addressing the rights of complainants; informing, advising and assisting the public; insuring that the investigations done by the municipal police agencies are done to a standard of thoroughness, competency and fairness; and, where necessary, referring matters to independent adjudication. We’re also required to issue statistics. We’re required to report out on certain matters.

Then there’s the second part of that section, which is discretionary, which allows the commissioner to, for example, make recommendations to police boards, make recommendations to government, do studies and other things.

I will say that at the outset, when I was appointed, we did some internal analysis of whether we were meeting all of 177. I can say that, on the discretionary side, given our pretty tight resources, on average about 20 FTEs, our people were so tied up in our main mandate — processing and considering complaints and investigations, providing oversight and monitoring adjudications — that we didn’t have a lot of excess capacity to do some of those discretionary things which I would consider preventative.

I set myself a task to try to do more preventative work, more outreach work. For example, we had one person doing both intake and outreach. As a result, frankly, it had atrophied. We didn’t have relationships with the support agencies that we needed to.

[8:10 a.m.]

Once that person decided to retire, we reoriented that position within the existing budget to increase our outreach, our reach out to support agencies.

At the same time, we had a statutory audit conducted by your colleagues at the Special Committee to Review the Police Complaint Process. That was mandated every six years. Part of that process was quantitative, in the sense of looking at delays and the length of investigations, and another part of it was more qualitative, as you know, and the report released a number of recommendations, mostly around accessibility.

To sum up, our core mandate is in the statute, but obviously, the court mandate has to be interpreted in light of the general requirements and directions, especially coming from the special committee from 2019.

M. Starchuk: Clayton, just to follow up, are there time frames that are inside of 177 that said…? Or is it just that whatever work you’re doing needs to be finished without it?

C. Pecknold: Well, part 11 is replete with timelines. I did a little word count. In the parts that deal with our office, there are 36,000 words in the Police Act — 36,000 words — and of that, 264 times the word “must” appears. There are very specific timelines in the act.

That was the result of Mr. Josiah Wood’s report in I think 2008, when he did a major review. Mr. Josiah Wood was a retired Supreme Court justice. He did a major review of the Police Act and an audit. The amendments to the Police Act that we’re operating under are the result of his recommendations.

His recommendations were to place strict timelines throughout the act — in the act, not in regulation, I’ll point out — that we must adhere to. If we don’t adhere to those timelines, we lose jurisdiction, and we’re often challenged by council for our police members on our jurisdiction. If we miss a date at one point, then they’ll take us to judicial review, and we will lose jurisdiction over a matter. We are very, very orthodox about those timelines because the statute is orthodox.

The other point I would add is…. I had to point this out, actually, to Pivot Legal Society at some point. Other administrative tribunals under the Administrative Tribunals Act are sort of masters of their own policy. There’s a section of that act that allows them to design their own policy.

I have no such discretion. If a matter is admissible, I must admit it. If a person makes a complaint about misconduct about an officer and it meets the requirements of the act, I must admit it, and it must go forward. Investigations must be completed within six months unless, in defined circumstances, I authorize an extension to that.

Now, during the pandemic, with the ministerial orders and what later became, I think, the COVID-19 Related Measures Act, I had some discretion to extend those timelines, but when the state of emergency was ended, I lost that discretion to do that.

G. Kyllo: Clayton, could you just maybe share with the committee…. If a complaint comes in, I would assume that the quicker and the more expedient you are to actually start following up on it, the overall, I guess, reduced amount of time…. If a complaint comes in and you’re going after it to start investigating four or five months after, I would assume that that would take a lot more time in totality.

C. Pecknold: I think that’s a fair statement, with a couple of provisos.

The act requires that the matter being complained about has to have occurred within 12 months, unless I consider it in the public interest to extend that time. There are times when we consider it in the public interest. For example, matters where a survivor has not come forward complaining about a sexual assault investigation that was misconducted. Obviously, there are trauma dynamics associated with that that I will take into account, and I will extend the timeline.

The concern, obviously — and I would suggest was the concern that was demonstrated by putting that section in there — is that evidence will deteriorate over time, especially video evidence, which we seem to be getting more and more of. That video evidence could be lost if the investigation isn’t initiated soon.

[8:15 a.m.]

Memories change, other things, especially when we’re dealing with persons in vulnerable states, in the Downtown Eastside for example. Sometimes they’re difficult to locate for investigators. We have a number of investigations right now involving complainants and affected persons who are living on the streets, and they’re difficult to find — and difficult for the investigators to complete the investigations.

When the audit was done, it found that all investigations — the vast majority, I think, 99 percent — had been completed within statutory requirements. However, that doesn’t mean they were completed in six months. That’s because we authorized extensions. With the pandemic, we actually had to authorize quite a few more extensions because officers couldn’t get out in the field to interview people. They were redeployed to other things.

When there is a backlog at the front end, which is really the only control that we have because things have to go through an admissibility assessment, then there is the risk of evidence deterioration and loss of evidence. Frankly, sometimes people disengage from the process because it takes so long for them. That’s something that’s on my mind frequently — people who are experiencing an interaction with the police that warrants appropriate investigation, and they engage our process. If it goes on and on and on, then I think they disengage.

We’ve seen examples where very legitimate matters ultimately were found to be misconduct. In fact, examples where officers were dismissed have taken years to get to fruition because of all the various processes along the way.

The only other thing I would add to that is under the Court of Appeal decisions in a case called Florkow, I cannot interfere. I have only one opportunity to order something to go to an adjudication. I must wait for the investigation to complete, and I must wait for a discipline proceeding before a senior police officer to complete.

The special committee in 2019 recommended we be given the authority to order a public hearing at any step in the process. That has yet to happen. Matters may go on for a few years before I can actually order a retired judge to review it, at this point.

So time is of the essence, MLA Kyllo.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Commissioner, for coming in and subjecting yourself to our questions.

I think that it’s difficult to appreciate the responsibility that your office has. I know that last year when we met on February 11, we talked about concerns about the projected increased costs, etc. You came back with a memo on February 16 that addressed a revision.

I guess based on this memo that you gave us, the operating budget from your original request, it was brought down in forecast for this particular year to be around $5.8 million with a $1.8 million deferral. I understand the adjudication process. That’s kind of out of your hands. My understanding of what it is…. How have we come from that to 6.9?

You’ve given lots of information, but I guess the point about it is: what happened between nine months ago when you were looking ahead and you were forecasting?

C. Pecknold: Where’s the beef, so to speak?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I’m pretty certain you probably know where it is.

C. Pecknold: I did pull that memo because I anticipated, from the request, that that might be legitimate questions. You’ll note in the memo that I sent, I did refer to it as an interim deferral and that I said that we would be doing further work on projections. There is, obviously, a delta between what we said in that deferral and where we are now.

Now, a couple of things. When we scaled back our request last year, one of the things we did to scale back that request was to stage out hiring throughout the year so that we weren’t annualizing full salary costs immediately. Part of this request before you takes what we hired last year at various points in the year, so only paying partially salaries or pro-rated salaries, and now annualizing it into our organization.

The second part of it is…. You’ll see that we’ve asked for a $200,000 uptick in our threshold for adjudicative matters. This year, for example, I’ve deferred some further hiring and some further expenses to try and bring that amount down on adjudications. We could talk at length about legislative reform that would help me do that, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about today.

[8:20 a.m.]

In addition, we did some analysis, from our perspective, on what was required to build out the core capacity in the organization. I referred to, for example, the training capacity that we didn’t have. We are bringing in our new case-management system, as you’re aware of, which will have more data capacity. So we are hoping to bring in some enhanced capacity to analyze and make better use of our data for preventative purposes, but also in recognizing that there is an increased expectation that we’ll be able to contribute to the discussion around race-based data and desegregated data. We have no ability right now, for example, to dive into our files and analyze them for those purposes, so that’s a position that we’re looking to add.

In addition, from an efficiency perspective, right now we have analysts who are generally legally trained, who are doing oversight of these investigations. But they’re also doing what’s called admissibility assessments. For example, if someone comes forward with a complaint, we have to do a certain amount of analysis to make sure that there’s air of reality to it, that its factual and that it meets the threshold.

These admissibility assessments take quite a bit of time from the band twos. So what we’re looking for with this request is to bring in a lower classification to just do admissibility so that we can take that burden off the day-to-day analysts so that they can focus on their oversight responsibilities. I would submit to you that’s a bit of an efficiency. We’re looking at making sure that the right people in the right classifications at the right amount are doing those jobs. So this ask includes those two admissibility analysts, which I don’t think we had anticipated, necessarily, last year.

In addition, there’s a need, from our perspective, to stage in some further investigative analysts, just projecting on what we think will be the increased workload. The increased workload based on our present catch basin seems to be increasing, and it’s a bit of voodoo science as to what we’re actually going to have to do with respect to Surrey as it ramps up, but we’re making our best estimations.

The final point on that is that because we are marching ahead on a trajectory that makes sure we’re primarily a civilian organization, we recruited broadly for our analyst cadre from a wider array of community and a wider array of representatives of community. Traditionally the organization — before my time — had, primarily, retired police officers doing a lot of this work, with quite a few civilians. But we’re orienting towards a different skill set now. So that means that the ramp-up time to train is required. We can no longer just train people off the corner of our desk. We have to build the systems of a small organization, which is 20 people, a little bit larger, with some systems and organization.

This budget request, from my perspective, represents that further analysis that I’ve done in the past year: the inputs that come our way, the public dialogue that’s going on, the expectations that we see coming from the present special committee and the past special committee that reviewed our act. In addition, even just yesterday I was consulted by the Ministry of Public Safety on revisions to our act around systemic racism, for example.

There are a lot of initiatives that are ramped up right now that we’re having to respond to, and as the steward of the organization, I’m looking ahead and saying: “What capacities do I need in place for my successor in order to meet the mandate that’s given to me?” So that’s the analysis. I mean, I could go into more detail as to how I do the nuts and bolts of it from a metrics perspective or otherwise, but that’s the delta from then to now: the further analysis, the looking at the organization and the constant assessment, MLA Stewart, of the inputs and the expectations and trying to peek over the horizon.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Okay. You mentioned about the adjudicative process, and you had some comments on that. Is it appropriate for us to comment on that in our report, or is it completely out of scope of practice?

Maybe you missed that?

J. Arril (Clerk of Committees): Yeah, my apologies. I might have just missed that piece.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): You know what? I think that because of the fact that the adjudicative process cost, I mean, it’s really unlimited, in the sense that it has to be funded by government, according to the act…. Is that correct?

[8:25 a.m.]

C. Pecknold: Yes, I think it’s a true contingency.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I don’t know if that’s being reviewed in the Police Act review or if you had some…. You talked about efficiencies and some other things. I just didn’t know if there was any commentary that we can supply in terms of our recommendation about that.

C. Pecknold: I can comment, and you can decide whether you wish to put it in your report. I’m happy to comment on that.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Well, I mean, it’s a big number. There’s no kind of scale. You have to hire…. Isn’t it retired judges or something like that? I don’t know what the going rate is. I know we’ve got a bill in front of the House — actually, I think it passed yesterday — to do with the pay scale in terms of the judicial system.

Anyways, I’m sure you’re controlled by that.

C. Pecknold: Yeah, I’m pleased to talk about it. In fact, in our written submission, I included quite a bit of narrative around it, because I know it’s something that the committee wished to understand.

The way it’s structured, essentially, is — I’m channelling the Court of Appeal here; this isn’t my interpretation — the Court of Appeal has said very clearly that our role is an executive function. I, as commissioner, don’t decide who committed misconduct, and I don’t investigate matters. I oversee the investigations by the police, and then there is an adjudicative function that’s arm’s length from us.

That arm’s-length adjudication function is structured to be very arm’s length, in the sense that I actually have to consult with the Associate Chief Justice for the appointment of a retired judge. She decides who I may appoint, or she gives me a list of who I may appoint, and then I appoint from that list.

We are the gatekeeper, the navigator, in the process, but we don’t own it. I am represented at adjudications through commission counsel, so there is one counsel. At a public hearing, for example, the act requires public hearing counsel. So there’s more counsel. Retired judges have the right to have counsel assist them during the matter. Police officers generally have counsel, often funded by their associations. And the retired judges, of course, are paid, and they’re paid a per diem that we set that’s commensurate with what a retired judge would be paid.

We do look across at hourly rates, and we look across…. We’ve done some assessment. We’re definitely within the overall framework that government would pay for counsel, for example. But counsel for members, for police officers, may bring motions. They may decide to take a matter, challenge a matter, and take it to judicial review. We have to respond to that. We’re obligated to respond to that. That’s what sometimes adds up with those costs.

Part of it, in the last couple of years, has been pandemic related. We used to have the courts available to us. They’re not available to us, so we’re actually having to pay for venues, for example. We’ve scrambled to find venues for free. But right now, for example, we have an ongoing public hearing that we’re having to use a private venue, with some flexibility.

In terms of efficiencies, I hope, in the long run, to look at whether it now makes sense to, perhaps, bring some in-house work that might rationalize some of the legal costs. We’re going to do that analysis over the next year.

In terms of legislative amendment, one of the recommendations from the 2019 committee and one of the recommendations I made before the present special committee was to really look at the act for efficiencies. I think there are any number of places where those efficiencies could be seen.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): All right. Maybe one last question, if I might.

I think when we talked earlier this year, you were talking about having to have some sort of Vancouver-based or Lower Mainland–based operation. Based on how things are progressing, the head count that has integrated with the RCMP with Surrey, what’s your timeline on having to do something there? When do you have to make a move?

C. Pecknold: We hired more broadly. Right now we have three, I believe, analysts who are resident in the Lower Mainland operating completely remotely. We’ve just brought in an interim workplan where we have remote workers, what we refer to as hybrid workers — part time in office, sharing an office, and part time out — and then resident workers.

Some workers we’ve designated as resident — for example, the front-end staff who have to talk to complainants and do outreach work. I’m not convinced that working from home gives the level of service that we need. So we’ve made that designation at an interim level.

We brought in a real property division — Ministry of Citizens’ Services — and we used a private firm, at no cost to us, to assess Lower Mainland real estate. About a 5,000-square-foot footprint along the Evergreen Line, I believe, out to Metro so that we had accessibility for people along the transit line.

They did some analysis of locations. They did some analysis of the work. I’ve included some of the high-level figures. It’s about $400,000 annualized costs with some front-end costs. We are not making that request for the obvious reasons that there’s a lot of state of flux around office space.

[8:30 a.m.]

We’re not 100 percent sure whether we need 5,000 square feet or not. We’re not entirely sure where our recruits for positions will come from. There may be opportunities to share space with other officers in the Lower Mainland. We’d like to analyze that.

In addition, this question about facilities for adjudications, I think, warrants some more analysis about whether there might be some opportunities for shared space. Or whether, on a cost-benefit analysis, it makes more sense for us to actually rent commercial space when we need it or not.

I wasn’t prepared to come forward with that. I may come forward next year with that space request. We have somebody working — dedicated — right now on facilities. But they’re also looking to see what the public service is doing and whether there’s space freeing up, so whether there’s other opportunities for us to ameliorate those costs.

If that comes forward, it will come forward in a defined business case to you for space, but we will be working on that.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

M. Starchuk: Thank you for what you’ve presented to us so far, Clayton. I’m going to ask the hot-button topic.

Originally, when you came to us, you had a very large number that was associated with the Surrey Police Service. I’m acutely aware of what’s going on over there with a referendum and the kind of hornet’s nest that’s there.

There was a basis of a number, and I can’t remember what your numbers were based on in the beginning. I’m just curious as to what your numbers are based on now and moving forward, because there are no boots on the ground as we speak today, and I don’t know when that’s actually going to take place.

As far as I understand the ramping up, that’s not debatable in my mind. My thing is: what about caseload work that’s actually going to be there? Because I’m sure there are some complaints that have already made it your way over what’s going on. But mine is more about…. With nobody actually interfacing with the public, it makes it a little bit difficult to think that there’s actually going to be a complaint.

My question is more around: what do you know, as opposed to what we may know, as far as when that workload is going to come?

C. Pecknold: I have mentioned, notwithstanding Surrey, that we’re actually seeing increases in our workload. I think the other offices are seeing that too, and I’m not entirely sure why that is. It could be the raised awareness of police accountability. It could be the work we’ve done around accessibility.

I recall one member of the committee last year mentioned as you build out accessibility…. You build it. People will expect to come. That actually resonated with me, because I thought about, organizationally, are we ready for that? Do we have the capacity? If we do more outreach to communities and create expectations, do we have the capacity?

We have to do internal training. We make trauma-informed practice mandatory. We make San’yas cultural safety training mandatory. We’ve engaged an Indigenous cultural safety advisor and, actually, deployed that advisor on specific files.

A lot of this work is qualitatively getting the organization ready from my perspective. I’ve been accountable to the taxpayers for all my career, and I expect to be accountable to you for this funding. But I had to see the organization as an entity that needed to be prepared for the numbers that would come our way.

When looking at the actual metrics, the actual numbers that are coming out, Surrey, at last count, had something like a 138 sworn officers hired. It’s a bit of a mystery to me exactly how they’re going to be deployed at this point. There’s talk 50 are going out to work with the RCMP, but then I get information that, well, maybe they’re not all going to work at the same time. I’m not sure exactly what they’re going to be doing.

The best information that I’ve been given is that there’s going to be a continued ramp-up through 2023 of those hired, sworn officers, which fall under our jurisdiction of going out and interacting with the public.

The last time I appeared, I talked a little bit about the complexity of doing an investigation where you have RCMP on one side and municipal police officers on the other side. That actually adds time and complexity to the investigations. I’m not going to tell you I have a magic bullet on that. I’m making the best estimations I can based on the information we have.

[8:35 a.m.]

What I can say is that this building up of internal capacity, I expect to happen now and with this budget request, and then in future years, I would see more discrete requests. “Okay, we’re seeing numbers here. We’d like two more analysts.” Or: “We’d like to ask you for funding for facilities, and here’s my business case.”

With this budget and last year’s funded, which you’ve granted us, we’re building out our internal capacity, as I say, for training, our internal capacity for data analytics, our internal capacity for supervision to make sure the span of control is right. We’ve got the B.C. Public Service Agency coming in and doing some work with us to examine, to make sure we’ve got the right classifications, the right span of control from an organization to accept the growth that we’re anticipating. And we’re going to work with other government agencies.

We also, for example, don’t have any ability to procure, and we have to procure contracts for our Indigenous accessibility strategy. That means we have to find somebody to do that. What I’ve been doing is I’ve been hiring permanent staff on the core responsibility but temporary and auxiliary staff in other areas. For example, we hired two what I refer to as AO 24s, two policy analysts, to help us with outreach and accessibility. One is on a temporary secondment from government, and the other one is an auxiliary appointment. That person came to us after being a legislative intern.

Two reasons I did that. Number one, I’d like to give young people an opportunity to come into the organization and learn about it. And the second reason is that that allows for flexibility. Part of my budget request is to solidify one of those core policy positions to assist us in developing programs and developing ADR programs and responding generally to the expectations.

The metrics we’re dealing with are what we were given with Surrey, and I’m incorporating that into our overall strategic analysis of what I think we need to meet the mandate and to meet the expectations that are being placed on us now and in the future.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

M. Dykeman: I was looking through your report. You mentioned there was about a 3 percent increase in files open and that most of those were monitor files. I was reading the report on monitoring files that talks about being serious in nature and may require an investigation. How long do those stay open?

C. Pecknold: Usually the deputy is here with me. She’s in California. She’s the whiz with the stats, but I think our year-over-year was an increase over an increase over last year of our overall complaints. I think it was 10 percent last year and 6 percent this year. It’s in our annual report. In addition, we’re trending right now in Q1 and Q2 to actually exceed last year again. So it’s building up.

In terms of monitor files, those can be anything. For example, an officer may be arrested in another jurisdiction, and the home department will call us and say: “Look, we don’t know what happened here. We’re asking….” And this is a good thing. They’re accountable and transparent about it. “We want you to open a file so we can report this to you, but we don’t know what we have yet.” So then those monitor files will either be closed, or they will turn into an ordered investigation.

In addition, we have files where, for example, the independent investigations office is deployed, and if it meets their mandate, then we have a mandatory requirement to make an order for investigation. But generally, I’ll suspend that until such time as the IIO completes their investigation. But the IIO, when they do their investigation, cannot compel evidence from police officers. We can. So we will reopen that investigation and make sure that the officers account for their actions in our scheme.

Monitor files are really, just, what I would say is an opportunity for the departments to identify a potential issue to us without us necessarily initiating an investigation in the first instance. And the other aspect I would add is that sometimes there are highly sensitive investigations that are ongoing that must be reported to us but cannot be initiated until that investigation is completed.

M. Dykeman: Wonderful. Thank you. And thank you for your time, for coming back and answering all of our questions.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

L. Doerkson: Clayton, I know you just said you didn’t have the answer to this question, so I’m going to ask it again. You see a rise, obviously, in files, in case counts, etc. I know you’ve said it’s difficult to pin that down and why that’s happening. But surely you must have…. I mean, is it just simply unrest right now? What’s causing that? What’s driving that?

[8:40 a.m.]

C. Pecknold: I once said to one of the ministers I worked for that I’m a belts and suspenders kind of guy. I like to make sure that I’ve got my facts appropriate. That’s why I might hesitate. But I have some ideas of what might be driving it.

I think there’s a number of things. First of all, we’ve increased our outreach. We’ve increased our reach out to support agencies and NGOs so, as a result, we’ve created greater awareness of our office and its availability. Often, through support agencies, we’ll get complaints that will come our way that will be identified as things that need to be looked into.

Often I am glad they’ve come our way, because they’re important matters where people. perhaps, were suffering from vulnerabilities or otherwise not in a position to engage our agency, but with the assistance of a support agency, they do. I see that as a positive update. That means we are increasing our accessibility.

I do think, and I alluded to this in my opening remarks last time, that there seems to be a greater emotion behind some of the complaints that come to our office. We’ve had to initiate some protocols to protect our staff from abuse. I’m not suggesting that complainants are abusive, but there seems to be some anger that’s coming our way, and it’s manifesting itself in complaints.

Thirdly, there’s a structural component of the act that allows people to make third-party complaints. So if a matter appears in the media and is of concern to people, a third party can come forward, whether they’re in Alberta or Ontario, and make a complaint about it. We have to process that. If we get a complaint from the actual affected person, we can consolidate that, but that means that’s an input that our staff have to work through.

I was briefed this morning on a matter that came forward through social media, and we had eight complaints on the same matter. Every one of those has to be properly examined and processed. So there’s that. There’s the fact that matters go on social media. There’s the general tenor. There’s, I think, a concern about police accountability more broadly and a discussion on that. There’s an awareness that perhaps has grown in the last little while. All of those things, I think, are contributing to increase in our inputs.

I did notice that our reportable injuries went up, which is something that, in the future, I would like to have the capacity to examine. Why is that? Why are there more reportable injuries between the police and the public? Is it a rise in street crime? Is it a rise in interactions? Are there more assaults occurring, or is it something problematic in police training that should be addressed? Those are good questions. I don’t have the answer.

I hope that illuminates somewhat on that.

L. Doerkson: Sounds like you had more of an idea than you let on.

C. Pecknold: Not all of which I can prove to a standard in court.

J. Routledge (Chair): I’m not seeing any other questions. On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you, Clayton and Dave, for coming back and drilling down deeper into your work, the organizational pressures on your work and giving us a much better understanding of the role that you play. You’ve helped us in our work.

We will take a five-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 8:43 a.m. to 8:49 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): I’ll entertain a motion to move in camera.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 8:50 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): I’ll entertain a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 11:45 a.m.