The committee met at 1:04 p.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

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

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

[1:05 p.m.]

Of course, as members know, this is our first meeting since the very somber incidents and discoveries that have been made, or confirmations that have been made, in Tk’emlúps and in Saskatchewan and elsewhere, and with the attention of people so rightly focused on how terribly that impacts the people around us and how our friends who lived this experience are reliving it at this time.

In that spirit, I’d like to take time to remember the 215 children that were found at the Kamloops residential school, as well as lives lost at residential schools across Canada, including in my own constituency, where, on Penelakut Island, formerly Kuper Island, there was a residential school.

I’d like to invite my friend…. I haven’t given him any notice of this.

Adam, if you’d like to say anything.

A. Olsen: Thank you for opening the meeting in the spirit that we are opening it, Doug. I really appreciate it.

I’m not going to add anything to it. I think it’s enough for this committee and for the Chair to do this. I appreciate it.

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

I would like to welcome all those who are listening to and participating in this meeting. Our committee is undertaking a broad consultation with respect to policing and related systemic issues in B.C. We are taking a phased approach to this work, and we will be meeting with a number of organizations and individuals to discuss the ideas and experiences they put forward in written submissions earlier this year.

We are also hoping to learn more about British Columbians’ perspectives on policing, including from those working on the front line of several fields, including policing, public safety, health care and social services, as well as others.

Starting next week, interested individuals can fill out a survey to share their views with the committee. Further details will be available on our website, which is www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/rpa.

In terms of the format for today’s meeting, presenters have been grouped into panels based on theme. Each presenter has five minutes to speak, followed by time for questions from committee members to the entire panel. We kindly ask that presenters be respectful of this time limit. There is a timer available on the screen to assist.

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

Now I’ll ask my fellow members of the committee to introduce themselves.

R. Singh: MLA Rachna Singh, Surrey–Green Timbers.

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

I’m really looking forward to your presentation.

G. Lore: Good afternoon. I’m Grace Lore. I’m representing Victoria–Beacon Hill.

I’m on the territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking peoples of the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations.

I’m really glad to be here and hear from you today.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for joining. I look forward to today’s presentation. My name is Dan Davies. I represent the riding of Peace River North.

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

H. Sandhu: Hi, everyone. I am Harwinder Sandhu, the MLA for Vernon-Monashee.

I am joining you from the unceded and traditional territory of the Okanagan Indian Nations.

Thank you for joining us. I so look forward to the presentation.

K. Kirkpatrick: Hi there. I’m Karin Kirkpatrick. I am the MLA for West Vancouver–Capilano.

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

A shout-out to Stacy Ashton, who I’ve done some project work with before.

Nice to see you today.

[1:10 p.m.]

A. Olsen: I’m MLA Adam Olsen, from Saanich North and the Islands.

I’m proud to be working from my home in W̱JOȽEȽP territory.

As soon as I cede the floor back to you, Chair…. I’d be remiss not to suggest or to mention that the residential school system that you opened the meeting acknowledging was largely facilitated by the use of police and the national police force. It’s important to acknowledge the role that we have in this committee in ensuring that we create safety going forward.

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

MLA Glumac.

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

I am on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

D. Routley (Chair): Thanks, Rick.

Joining us and helping us…. Assisting the committee today are Karan Riarh, from the Clerk of Committees office, Parliamentary Committees Office, and Billy Young, from Hansard Services. We thank them very much for their continued great support.

With that, I’ll now turn it over to Stacy Ashton from the Crisis Centre of B.C.

Presentations on Police Act

CRISIS CENTRE OF B.C.

S. Ashton: Thank you for inviting me to speak on behalf of the Crisis Centre of B.C.

I’m speaking to you from the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

We answer 1-800-SUICIDE, 310-Mental Health and the Vancouver Coastal crisis and chat lines in the Metro Vancouver and Sea to Sky communities. We have a unique view of the gaps and opportunities for supporting police when their role intersects with individuals in crisis.

Crisis can happen to anyone, anywhere, any time. It’s not scheduled or convenient. It is specific, complex and layered. If a crisis was one thing, it wouldn’t be a crisis. Most folks can handle one thing going wrong. Crisis is when multiple things go wrong — some having been wrong a long time, some fresh and new and overwhelming.

You’re still grieving the death of your mom, and you lose a friend to suicide. Then you can’t get out of bed, and nothing feels good. And what is the point of life? Or you’ve been living with chronic pain for years, and then your partner leaves you. Then your insurance won’t pay for the supplements your partner’s did, and then you have to choose between rent or unmanageable pain. Or online learning is hard, and your parents are using the computer. You did your homework on your phone, and now your parents are yelling at you because the cell phone bill is too high. You failed the assignment, and you can’t talk to your friends because of COVID. You wonder if your parents would be better off without you, and you’re scared.

Even with our highest-risk callers, 98 percent of the time, we resolve the crisis safely, without police intervention, and 98 percent of the time, talking to people works. When we do call 911, we are acutely aware that what the caller actually needs is a person to be with while they stabilize themselves. There’s a very extensive gap between a crisis that can be resolved over the phone and a crisis that requires police presence.

Early in June, we reached out to our supporters to ask them to share experiences with mental health crisis response, and I’ve included a report on our results in your briefing package. A story that came up again and again was the revolving door. Police would respond to a mental health crisis, take the person to hospital, usually in handcuffs, which they would describe as procedure. After a lengthy wait, often requiring the police officer to stay with their charge, ER staff would determine the crisis did not warrant hospitalization. The individual would be released, sometimes without any way to get home, having been taken under duress with no time to get their wallet and without return transport.

In every mental health apprehension that ends without hospitalization, we have stripped someone of their basic rights unnecessarily. Worse, a person reached out for help and did not get the help they needed. We tell people every single day: “If you are overwhelmed, depressed, in trouble, suicidal, reach out. Help is available. You only have to ask.” But we don’t keep that promise. We don’t.

Even if we could engineer a perfect police response, we face systemic racism. Fear of police is not evenly distributed in our society. First Nations people, people with mental health issues, people living in poverty, immigrants from places where police are not trustworthy, BIPOC, LGBTQ and trans folk are more likely to have had negative experiences with police. We’ve all heard of bad apples in policing, but in systemic racism, not one single police officer needs to be racist for racism to exist. If you’re more likely to have a reason to fear the police, you are less likely to reach out for help in a crisis under our current crisis model. That means marginalized and racialized folks have less access to crisis support.

[1:15 p.m.]

Fortunately, there are least restrictive, lowest-cost solutions. In the U.K. and the U.S., the high cost of police-oriented mental health crisis response created a push for crisis diversion systems. In page 5 of our original written submission, you’ll find an infographic of the crisis care continuum. I’ve included a full report detailing the essential components of community-based crisis care continuums in your package.

A crisis care continuum starts with a 24-7, barrier-free, blanket invitation for anyone to call our crisis line if they’re feeling overwhelmed, out of control, heartbroken, afraid or stuck. We provide crisis prevention while problems are manageable and intervention when problems are unmanageable. Suicide prevention is a by-product of good crisis response. The vast majority of contacts are resolved on the lines by people with specific crisis training.

Crisis requiring in-person service goes to mobile crisis teams — mental health professionals with specific crisis training. These teams can access crisis respite centres for assessment and treatment, and police divert mental health crisis to mobile teams and crisis respite, not emergency rooms. This model focuses on the least restrictive, lowest-cost option to resolve crisis, resulting in decreased use of police resources, emergency rooms, psychiatric inpatient care and jails.

A crisis care continuum would enhance our current services, not replace them. Police will be called to scenes that turn out to have a mental health component. Police have a role to play, but we have to stop asking police to use law enforcement powers to address complex crisis.

I’m greatly encouraged to be speaking to a bipartisan committee of MLAs supported by wise and experienced public servants. I look forward to answering your questions.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation.

Next up is Dyan Dunsmoor-Farley from Gabriola Health and Wellness Collaborative. I have to declare my enthusiastic bias for Dyan. She’s a constituent of mine.

Welcome, Dyan.

GABRIOLA HEALTH
AND WELLNESS COLLABORATIVE

D. Dunsmoor-Farley: Thank you very much. I really appreciate the opportunity to present here today. As Doug pointed out, my name is Dyan Dunsmoor-Farley.

I’m joining you from Gabriola Island, which is part of the unceded territory of the Snuneymuxw Nation.

I’m presenting on behalf of the Gabriola Health and Wellness Collaborative, which is a broad voluntary coalition of over 40 social and economic organizations on Gabriola, including the police, first responders, our doctors and local government reps.

The submission co-authors included our chapter coordinator for the Rural and Remote Division of Family Practice, Angela Pounds; Cpl. Jordan Mullen, our RCMP detachment commander; Paul Giffin, a retired RCMP member from Mudge Island; the chair of our transportation network and ferry advisory committee, Steve Earle; and myself, a post-doctoral researcher studying the impact of globalization on the health of rural B.C. communities.

I’d like to make two points. Other presenters have focused — or at least, the previous presenter focused — on some of the challenges around mental health and policing. That is also a critical concern for this community. But what I’d like to focus on in my presentation are two areas that may be distinctive. Those are the significance of policing in the rural context and the need to create opportunities to influence governance and enable accountability.

Rural communities face different challenges than larger urban centres, and no two rural communities are alike, as I’m sure the members from rural communities recognize. We have unique population attributes. Consider towns like Tumbler Ridge, with its reliance on long-distance labour commuting, which brings with it its own problems of mental health and substance use, or Gabriola, with a high homelessness rate — ten times the B.C. rate, four times the rate of Nanaimo — a child poverty rate of 39 percent, and mental health challenges, including five years of high suicide rates and high prevalence and incidence of mood and anxiety disorders and depression.

These communities also face limited accessibility — for instance, transportation corridors that are not available year-round, as found in some northern communities, and, also, that aren’t available for part of every day, for example, in ferry-dependent communities with large service blackout periods each day. Gabriola, for instance, has no ferry service for seven hours every day.

[1:20 p.m.]

They also face limited access to specialized services such as access to hospitals, appropriate mental health services and domestic violence responses. Gabriola, with a year-round population of 4,415, has one social worker and one mental health nurse and no after-hours coverage other than B.C. Ambulance and the RCMP.

On Gabriola, police resources provided through the RCMP are insufficient to the population size. They’ve had no staff increase in 30 years. The population of the community has increased over 100 percent in less time than that, and they’ve had 131 percent increase in calls since 2017. It’s also unstable due to the regular deployment rotations of RCMP officers out of small communities, and they’re expected to respond to situations for which they are not equipped, such as mental health call-outs, after the ferry has stopped for the night.

These circumstances have several impacts. They create an untenable environment for balancing continuity of service and career advancement for RCMP members, with a revolving door of new officers coming into the community as seasoned officers leave. This results in less than optimal responses to people in mental health and domestic violence crises and limits options for local collaborative service planning.

I’d like to focus on governance. Small communities have no avenues to influence policing policies or implementation compared to large urban centres with access to police boards. For instance, if I lived in Victoria, I could go to the mayor, who’s the chair of the police board, and bring my concerns to that person. Each rural community is unique, so policing services and oversight of those services must be designed with the flexibility to recognize unique community needs and attributes.

Our submission makes three recommendations: clearly articulate a rural policing mandate to ensure rural communities have policing that is appropriate and effective in the rural context; establish regional rural police boards to provide a vehicle for channeling input from citizens, detachments and local governments to create accountable, coherent and comprehensive policies that reflect the reality of policing in rural settings; and ensure appropriate resourcing for police, mental health and domestic violence requirements to ensure that those providing policing services have realistic work expectations, can draw on appropriate mental health and domestic violence resources when needed, and are able to work collaboratively with communities to improve public safety and prevent crime.

I’m really happy to have the chance to present this information and happy to take anyone’s questions. Thanks so much.

HEALTH JUSTICE

K. Milne: I’m Kendra Milne. I’m the executive director of Health Justice, and I’m also a practising lawyer. Thank you so much for the invitation to speak to you all today.

Before I get started, I’ll also acknowledge that I’m joining today’s meeting from the traditional, unceded, ancestral territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh people.

I’m also just recognizing, in my submissions as a white settler, that the systems we’re talking about, from the health system to the policing system, have a deep legacy of systemic racism and colonization of Indigenous communities in B.C.

Health Justice is a non-profit organization. We’re relatively new, and we use research, education and advocacy to improve coercive health care in B.C. Our current focus is on modernizing and reforming B.C.’s Mental Health Act. That act authorizes the detention and involuntary psychiatric treatment of people throughout B.C., and it also, as you likely know, grants police powers to detain and transport people in various situations.

Health Justice’s work brings together specialized legal expertise and the expertise of those most impacted by the issues we work on. Our written submissions and my remarks today have been co-developed and informed by our Lived Experience Experts Group, which is a group of diverse individuals who all share the direct, personal experience of involuntary treatment under the Mental Health Act, many of those experiences involving police.

Our submissions are also informed by Indigenous experts in cultural safety and culturally rooted approaches to crisis as well as folks who have expertise in the impacts of both policing and the mental health care system on Indigenous people and communities in B.C. Finally, the submissions are also informed by the views and experiences of family members and personal supporters of those who have experienced involuntary treatment — again, many of those involving police.

[1:25 p.m.]

You will see from our written submission that we’ve made five key recommendations for the committee, and I’ll just summarize them quickly. The first is that you hear directly from people with lived and living experience of police involvement related to their mental health issues.

We’ve made great strides as a society in reducing stigma and talking opening about mental health and substance use, but many of those strides have not reached folks who experience police interaction, apprehension and involuntary treatment. Those experiences still continue to hold significant stigma and lead to significant discrimination. As a result, those folks are often not able to speak out publicly about their experiences, so their voices and experiences are left out.

Our second recommendation is that police should not be part of a first-line mental health crisis response. Stacy Ashton, thank you so much. Much of our submissions mirror what you said in terms of, really, a default that B.C. has landed in, in terms of relying on police as crisis response.

In addition to Stacey’s comments about alienating people from accessing supports, I would also add that relying on and defaulting to police response really reinforces stereotypes about people experiencing mental health crises. It makes an assumption that people are dangerous, that there is something morally wrong with what’s happening. Those things are not factually accurate and are deeply, deeply harmful to folks who experience these things.

Police involvement also often escalates the situation. Police are not experts in crisis de-escalation. It’s not an issue of more training. Police as an institution are about asserting control in situations, and that is not what is often needed in a crisis.

Finally, because of the way the Mental Health Act works and because of our lack of other community services, which Stacy spoke to so well, we really end up in a situation where police response becomes our only crisis response, and the only power police have when they arrive is to charge criminally or to detain someone under the Mental Health Act. It really becomes a pipeline to involuntary treatment, which causes trauma. It’s unnecessary for many folks, and it’s not what’s needed to resolve the crisis and support the person.

Again, we recommend that B.C. create a civilian crisis response service, with no police, no weapons, no handcuffs, no power to detain and apprehend. There are many models to learn from, from other jurisdictions. Now is just our time to learn from those and act.

Our fourth recommendation is to reorient policy conversations to centre on the person in crisis. We often have conversations about systems, things like wait times in ERs. We often talk about that in terms of the cost to police. You need to sit there with the person. We don’t talk about the fact that a person who is in crisis, who has likely been handcuffed and detained and taken to the hospital, having probably one of the worst experiences of their life, is sitting there waiting for supports. We need to reorient our solutions around that person, not around our systems.

Finally, while it’s not a replacement for alternatives to police as crisis responders, there are some things that can potentially mitigate small amounts of harm caused, including standardized approaches to searches on Mental Health Act apprehensions, rights notification on Mental Health Act apprehensions and police oversight.

I’m happy to answer any questions you have, but I will leave you with this. The people who experience apprehension or police involvement related to their mental health are members of our communities. They’re parents, children, siblings, aunties, friends, co-workers. Like Stacy said, it can happen to any of us at any time. They are not simply problems to be solved or dangers to be contained. They are people who deserve and are guaranteed, via human rights, an equal opportunity to be well and to live with dignity.

I ask you to consider that and how we can improve services to make that happen. Thank you for your time.

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

Our final presenter for this panel is Michael Sandler. He is from Nurses and Nurse Practitioners of B.C.

NURSES AND
NURSE PRACTITIONERS OF B.C.

M. Sandler: I appreciate the opportunity to speak. As noted, my name is Michael Sandler. I’m the executive director for the Nurses and Nurse Practitioners association of British Columbia.

I’m calling you today from the unceded territory of the Syilx Nation in the beautiful Okanagan Valley.

I’d like to thank you for this opportunity to present to the select standing committee on police reform.

The association of the Nurses and Nurse Practitioners of B.C. represents more than 40,000 nurses, from all designations, including RNs, LPNs, RPNs, nurse practitioners, nursing students, retired and non-practising nurses from across the province. Nurses are the largest group of health care providers in the province, which means that the nursing expertise is critical and foundational when considering health and social policy development and implementation.

NNPBC recognizes that police officers, in the course of their duties to the public, are asked to place themselves and their colleagues in harmful and potentially hazardous situations daily. Given the breadth of their scope, it is understandable that there are situations in which police officers may not have the necessary skills to manage the issue at hand and would benefit from the collaborative support of nursing. NNPBC supports collaborative partnerships between police officers and nursing to help ensure individuals in distress have access to the right care at the right time, provided by the right professional.

[1:30 p.m.]

NNPBC recommends the following two key areas for Police Act reform, as evidenced by our written submission. The first is to focus on adding nursing supports in mental health crisis and addiction support services.

Related to mental health supports, we recommend the following. Greater collaboration between the police and nursing related to mental health calls. Legislate changes to the Police Act to update the ways in which mental health calls are attended to by the police to include registered psychiatric nurses and/or registered nurses with mental health experience.

Within appropriate legal and ethical frameworks, collect information and provide officers with access to key records about police contacts with people who have mental illness or who have interacted with police in the past. Develop protocols for police and mental health system collaboration, as well as mechanisms for resolving disputes as they arise.

Develop a strategy that showcases a shared approach between police mental health services and mental health advocacy community members. These strategies should be flexible enough to meet the unique needs of remote and rural communities, as well as urban centres.

Related to addiction services support, we also recommend the following. Amend the Police Act to allow law enforcement the latitude to forego searches, seizures, detentions, citations and arrests related to violations for simple possession. Resources should instead be redirected towards evidence-based harm reduction and social support services. Amend the Police Act to support increased cultural awareness, recognizing that Indigenous and racialized people are disproportionately impacted by the overdose crisis and do not always have access to culturally safe and appropriate services and programs.

The second is to focus on the equitable policing services and utilization of nursing services when dealing with issues of social determinants of health. Social determinants of health are influenced by social policies, political policies, economic policies and development agendas, as well as laws and policing policies. The Police Act should be updated to recognize the complex interplay between all of these pieces. The Police Act should also be modified to allow for greater collaboration between nursing and law enforcement when police are asked to attend to matters that are related to social determinants of health — for example, homelessness.

We recommend that we collaborate with consumers, families, mental health practitioners, addictions and social services counsellors, social services systems and individuals who are impacted by the use of these services in the design and implementation of these collaborative support programs.

Lastly, we recommend that we should provide screening and ongoing education support to provide specialty-trained officers and ensure that dispatchers and other officers are trained to support and utilize these specialty officers when required in the field.

Thank you for the opportunity to present our perspectives today. Obviously, with the time remaining, I’m happy to take questions.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much. We appreciate the presentations, all of them.

Now I’d like to turn to members and see if there are questions.

K. Kirkpatrick: Thanks to all the presenters.

A question for Stacy with the Crisis Centre. There are two questions. One is your relationship with the 911 emergency service. What is the connection? Is there a connection? Can they transfer to you?

The other is…. You mentioned in your submission that you were working with the Car 87 model, and that is not a part of what you’re doing anymore. I’m curious about that.

S. Ashton: Yeah. Thanks.

The first question is…. Our relationship with 911 is still fairly one-sided, although we are trying to work out better protocols between ourselves and them. At this point, once we refer a caller to 911 because we’re concerned about their safety or there’s a suicide in progress, we lose all sight of that caller unless the police officer calls us back or involves us in the process in some way, which maybe happens one in 50 times.

We really encourage police officers to contact us, because we often have more information than we can communicate through 911. It’s a literal game of telephone when we tell the 911 operator what’s happening, and they tell the police officer. We are also often still on the phone with that person. We could be giving updates. In half the times that we call 911, we have worked out a collaborative way of…. The person has consented to having 911 called, and if we were able to help bridge that process, it would go a lot smoother.

[1:35 p.m.]

We face the same thing once that person gets to the hospital. We’re not in the loop. We can’t fully let the hospital know what our concerns were. The information is now coming from the police officer to the hospital, and that has led to suicides as a result of that lack of communication.

Your second question was around Car 87. I was a volunteer on the lines back in the ’90s. This is way back; this is the Wayback Machine. At that time, Car 87 was available after hours. So if I was talking to someone who was suicidal or had mental health concerns or a psychotic episode in the middle of the night, I could reach out to Car 87, and I could explain what was happening to them. Then we could collaboratively come up with a solution to get that Car 87 out. That would have been a mental health professional and a psychiatric nurse, I believe, at the time, and a police officer in plain clothes.

When I came back two years ago to take over, to be the executive director of the Crisis Centre, that was when I found out that Car 87, although it’s still there, is now booked exclusively through Vancouver General Hospital’s access and assessment centre. That closes at midnight, I believe. At midnight, their phone calls forward to us, and we’re left with 911 as our only intervention option. Generally, what Car 87 has moved to is doing regular outreach with clients of concern, which is very valuable work, but it does mean that you’re not available for emergent crises.

That’s why you’ll see things like three-day waiting lists: it makes sense from a utilization-rate perspective. In order to do crisis response, you have to have services available and waiting. So it looks like they’re not busy, but that’s not the case, any more than firefighters having really shiny trucks is a problem because they don’t get called out enough. You need to be available for a crisis if you’re going to do crisis service.

Those are my answers.

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

R. Glumac: A question for Stacy. You said that your success rate is 98 percent, which is quite impressive.

I’m curious about a couple of things. We have heard, in previous submissions around other jurisdictions, about where the 911 call goes to mental health nurses and people like that to attempt to get people to the right place, rather than just straight to the police. I’m wondering if you’ve heard about this — of how they do this in New Zealand, for example — and, if you haven’t, whether you think something like that would be effective here in B.C.

S. Ashton: Well, I think the real difference between the 811 nursing line or 911 and a crisis line is that the 911 and nurses’ lines are always looking to assess and then: what are the next steps? So 911 is: do you need police? Do you need ambulance? Do you need firefighters? They’re working to get you to the next place. A crisis line is working to focus on the crisis of the person and help them deal with the emotions of it and get to a place where they’re stable.

Often the resolution at the end of a crisis call is: “Okay. I’m calm enough now. I feel like I can sleep. I can tackle this in the morning.” That’s how we delay crisis response into the daytime, when there are more services available, and let this person regroup and tackle it the next day. They can call us back for support, or we do follow-up calls. We’re just able to de-escalate the situation so that emergency response is no longer needed. That’s what happens in 98 percent of our calls.

We get a real range of calls. Right now we have 286 callers who call us on a regular basis because they have chronic suicidal feelings and a history of past attempts. We are just getting them through the next day so that they can regroup and reconnect with their support workers and their support team afterwards. That is a huge way that we prevent those repeated hospitalizations or repeated going to the hospital and going home.

[1:40 p.m.]

I think the thing to think about, when you’re looking at the mental health–psychiatric nursing lines, is: what is the purpose here? If you want to be able to de-escalate crisis out of the situation and resolve it over the phone, you could do that so much more than we’re doing right now. Then you time-shift things into the day, where things are available, and you reduce that impact on hospital and police. It’s a different way of thinking of crisis, but that’s how you get it to work.

R. Glumac: Just to be clear, you do think that there could be a role in 911 to not only ask for fire, police or ambulance but also a mental health nurse or something like that, maybe, which could connect to you guys or to someone else.

S. Ashton: Yeah. Ideally, those 911 mental health calls would come to a crisis centre. So the first approach could be: “Okay. What’s happening? Let’s assess it. Can we deal with this while they’re still at home?”

When you start to build 911 calls into crisis response, typically, you’re able to do about 80 percent of the calls on the phone, because the 911 calls tend to start at a higher crisis level to begin with. From the community, we’re doing 98 percent resolution over the phone; from the 911, we’d be resolving 60 percent over the phone. When you think of 60 percent of 911 calls being resolved over the phone rather than having dispatch, that’s huge, right?

R. Glumac: That’s 60 percent of all calls?

S. Ashton: If 98 percent of calls from the community are resolved on the line and 60 percent of 911 calls that refer to crisis lines are resolved on the line, you’ll average out at about 80 percent of all of the calls. If you put it all in a big giant pool, and then we sort it out…. For the ones that we can handle at home or time-shift into the next day, we do that. For the ones that require police response or a crisis respite facility, as opposed to hospitals, we can move into that system very cleanly as well.

R. Glumac: Chair, could I ask one more question?

D. Routley (Chair): Can I come back to you, Rick? I’ve got two more people, and we’re just coming up to the end here.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Thanks. I’ll try and keep mine focused here. I’ve got a number of questions.

First of all, Stacy, I’m just wondering. You’ve talked about a number of calls that, of course, had police intervention. They were taken to hospital and then discharged, and obviously, now…. Why did this all happen? Do you have statistics on, roughly, a percentage of how many of these phone calls didn’t require this? I’m just wondering if you have that number — for my first question.

S. Ashton: Well, it’s surprisingly difficult to get that number. We don’t have a pathway to track outcomes after we let the crisis call go to 911, so we don’t get it. It should be available through police records and hospital records, but it’s surprisingly hard to find publicly available numbers on that. I have tried, and I’m not sure where to go.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Maybe another good point about integration of our services — need to kind of tune it a little better.

S. Ashton: Exactly.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): A while back we actually had some folks from the Car 87 program at our meeting here. We had a psychiatric nurse.

It was interesting, and it kind of counters, a little bit, what I’m hearing here. She was stating — I think it was 85 or 90 percent of the calls that she goes on — that she needs the police intervention at times, whether they’re going to someone who has a weapon or other such threats that are like that.

I’m just wondering. I’m hearing different numbers from you and Kendra, as well, that don’t support what we heard from that psychiatric nurse who’s actually working on the ground. I’m just wondering if you can respond to that.

S. Ashton: Yeah, I think you’re going to see different numbers from different perspectives. What we’re doing right now with having police accompany mental health professionals and psychiatric nurses is that we’re erring on the side of: “That person is going to need security.” And when you have it, you do feel safer. I get that.

[1:45 p.m.]

The question is: is that really what we want our police services to be doing? Is there another way to provide security backup for mental health professionals when they’re going out? Are there other methods to do that? There are situations where security is an issue, where a weapon is an issue. It may be that police presence in those kinds of situations is important. But we also have situations where we’ve talked people into throwing the weapon away and we’ve created a safe space, but the police are still going to come and they’re still going to be involved.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): I appreciate that perspective, for sure. My closing comment is not really a question. I need to touch very briefly — it ties into all of this — on Dyan’s work in rural B.C. Of course, I represent many northern rural communities.

When there is a mental health crisis here — I’ll speak here in Fort St. John; we’re a fairly large community in the north — we don’t have the supports. We don’t have a psychiatric nurse. When the call comes in, regardless of what it’s for, the police are the only ones that are working 24-7 and that are able to respond. It’s unfortunate that this is where it’s at. The resources are definitely lacking. I know they’re lacking in our larger urban centres as well, but certainly that is even worse up here in the smaller communities.

Even when someone does need to be taken to the hospital, they have to be taken from Fort St. John or Tumbler Ridge to Dawson Creek, which is where the psychiatric centre is. Not only then is that incredibly hard on the individual, but it’s also taking police resources out of a community where they need to be looking at doing policing. It is a really big challenge. I would love to see a little more of what Dyan is working on, some of her work in the rural areas. Thank you very much.

A. Olsen: I’m just going to thank all of the presenters and my colleagues. Very, very good canvassing. There are aspects of all of these questions that I’m also interested in. It’s a matter of time, so I’m just going to thank the presenters for providing us this in such a brief but very thorough way. You’ve given us a lot to work with.

H. Sandhu: I’d like to thank all the presenters. Wonderful presentations.

I just wanted to echo what MLA Davies mentioned on that presentation we had from the psychiatric nurse, and how she was very clear that she couldn’t imagine doing this role without the police. Not only that, coming from a health care background, I still hear, to this day, from people working in health care, of what they do, given the rise in violence in health care.

I don’t know. From the experience I can share from working in acute care and more so in the community, still, unfortunately, whether it is a male or female nurse responding, it’s just a different response. The same person can have aggression, but when there’s a male working — it’s a sad reality; it happens — they’re a little toned down, much calmer. I would say that we need to explore other options, probably.

Stacy, in your amazing work with the crisis centre, I wonder what other opportunities you see to provide that safety to those nurses and mental health care workers, because there has been violence in health care, and there have been near misses, as many of us and my colleagues have witnessed.

I could see where that nurse was coming from, but then there’s that other side of police not being trained in that. Are we using that resource where we should use it? Then what might that police presence trigger in the person that we’re responding to? I wonder if there are other ways that we can make sure that we ensure the safety of mental health care workers and nurses.

S. Ashton: Thank you for that question. I think what will be helpful is to…. The engagement survey that we did with our supporters to get their lived experience of mental health crises was really eye-opening.

[1:50 p.m.]

Things like Car 87 and models where psychiatric nurses are going our with police officers are really the very tiny minority of how mental health crisis response happens. It’s only one car, right? It’s only one team. It’s not going to be able to respond to everybody.

In most cases that we had described, it was just a police response, and the police response was highly variable. It could range from compassionate and caring to impatient and sometimes yelling and confrontational.

If we had enough mental health professionals who could take the lead with police — or some kind of security that wasn’t necessarily police — backing them up or being available to them, if needed, that allows you to take a look at what’s actually happening in the crisis, instead of going in assuming that it will escalate. What we see in the experiences of people is that when police go in thinking that it might escalate, it often escalates — right? — because they go in with that mindset.

With crisis response, you don’t go in to control the situation. The issue is that the person is feeling out of control. If you take the control away from them more, you’re just making the situation worse. So the crisis work is to keep putting that person back into control in as many ways as you can. Being handcuffed or being told that you have to go to the hospital, whether you want to or not, doesn’t lead to people being in control of their own crisis and being able to stabilize. I think it’s an understandable approach, but it’s a problematic approach.

Kendra probably has more things to say about that.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Stacy. I really appreciate it. Great response.

A quick follow-up. What are your thoughts, Stacy, about the security guards? In hospital, we have extreme conditions, and we never had to call police. We would call code white. But then in that setting, there is more than one person, and in Car 87, we don’t know how many. But I think that could still have some reassurance for the workers. That was just my thought that just came to my mind.

S. Ashton: I really would defer you over to Kendra. I think she probably has way better stats and kind of a systemic view of this question.

Kendra, I will be asking you for a copy later.

D. Routley (Chair): Just before you go ahead, speaking of losing control, as the Chair, I have to remind members that 2 p.m. is our next town. We do need a short recess. I’ll ask presenters and members to keep that in mind.

Go ahead.

K. Milne: Like Stacy said, I could talk about this all day, but I will just say that I think that we really need to look at what is different about B.C. If we’re saying that all of these other jurisdictions…. There’s a CAHOOTS model from Oregon that the U.S. is looking at rolling out nationwide in terms of a front-line, police-free — but collaborating with police in case there’s a safety issue — response.

What is so different about B.C. that we think people are more dangerous here? I mean, I think there are incredible system gaps in our community care that are causing inequities and causing people to be more likely to be in crisis. But I also think we need to think bravely and think about the fact that if other jurisdictions are able to do this without putting staff at risk and are able to get people good outcomes and what they need, then we need to really look at whether or not we can do it here.

D. Routley (Chair): I’ve got MLA Lore, and then I’ll be going back to MLA Glumac to finish.

G. Lore: Lots of my questions were asked and answered, and given the time, I won’t reiterate except maybe to just say thank you to the presenters and particularly in focussing on the people who are in crisis and needing support and reminding us of who they are to our communities and our families. Beyond that, my questions were answered. So thank you so much.

R. Glumac: I appreciate the presenters today. It’s unfortunate that we are short on time. I think there is a lot more opportunity here to ask some questions and get more understanding around this area. It’s a very important area around policing.

[1:55 p.m.]

I have a lot of questions still, but I will just narrow it down to a couple. Currently, just to make sure I understand how it works, in the models that we have where mental health professionals are along with police, are police generally taking the lead? Are they generally the ones that are knocking on the door and initially engaging with the people? And is the CAHOOTS model flipping that around?

K. Milne: Again, Stacy, jump in.

The CAHOOTS model is a diversion from their emergency dispatch system — the comparison of 911. It’s an interdisciplinary model that pairs a behavioral clinician with often a peer expert or sometimes a psych nurse. It could be a variety of interdisciplinary teams. That team is in constant radio communication with police in case there’s a safety risk identified.

They do a safety assessment when it’s diverted through dispatch. But assuming that it’s appropriate for diversion, then we don’t walk into that situation assuming it’s going to escalate. We walk in thinking we need to meet that person and sort of walk with them through what’s going on. But for safety of staff, those folks can always trigger a police response if needed.

For the person experiencing it, they don’t see the police often. The police are not there in bulletproof vests. If you look at some of the Vancouver teams, it’s a pretty scary response to see coming through your door. So it’s a very different expectation of folks who are in crisis, in terms of reaching out and what is going to meet them.

R. Glumac: Thank you. My last question, then, is changed a little bit. It was a question for Michael.

One of your recommendations is to change the Police Act to ensure that there are mental health nurses on site. Do you have any thoughts on whether a model like this — I’d like to learn more about this CAHOOTS model — could be utilized to address that recommendation?

M. Sandler: Thank you for the question. The short answer is yes.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, mental health and wellness experts — in particular, nursing experts, registered psychiatric nurses — are ideally positioned to be able to address the issues that have been brought up here in this group around the need to bring the individual some locus of control over their own issue and to treat them from a patient-centred perspective.

To ensure that the individual that is working with the client at the point of care has access to appropriate security is always appropriate. You won’t encourage people to move into this much-needed area if they think that they are going to be unsafe in providing care. But the thing that you gain by ensuring that a health care professional meets the client where they’re at and shares that point-of-care interaction with them is that you change the focus.

That’s what everybody has been talking about today. We move away from a policing focus to a harm-reduction health care focus, nursing focus. And I think that where our recommendation lies is to work with the police to bring them to our perspective around delivering health care to these clients, where they’re at in the crisis that they’re in, recognizing that currently, one of the issues that we’re facing is that in rural and remote communities, as has been noted here, police are sometimes the only full-time practitioner of any sort around.

Whether we can call them health care or not is a different debate. I think that there are some really good opportunities here to maybe collaborate on a joint solution. The CAHOOTS program I haven’t heard of specifically, but if it is encouraging mental health practitioners to respond in a manner that is health care–focused as opposed to policing-focused, I think it’s a good solution to start looking at.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you, all. We very much appreciate this. We take this work very, very seriously. We believe that this is a huge opportunity to improve the lives of British Columbians and the outcomes that they experience, particularly in the areas that the committee has been tasked, around vulnerable populations and through the lens of reconciliation.

I appreciate Grace’s observation of the focus being on people. That is always our North Star.

We want to take advantage of this opportunity. You have helped us, very much, understand more of our work. We invite any other contribution. We also would ask that if we have other questions — it sounds as though some of the members may have a follow-up — we could contact you. With that, I thank you very much.

Thank you, Members, for your lucid questions.

We will take a short break. The next group is in our waiting room, but we will take a five-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 2 p.m. to 2:07 p.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): Welcome back to this meeting of the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act. For our next panel, we’ll be hearing from the city of Rossland, the town of Creston and the town of Gibsons.

I welcome all the presenters to our committee meeting. I apologize for the committee’s slight tardiness, and in order to avoid any more of that, I’ll get right to it here. Each presenter will have five minutes to speak, followed by questions and discussion from committee members. We kindly ask the presenters to be respectful of the time limit. There is a clock on the screen to help with that.

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

Now, I’ll ask members of the committee to introduce themselves.

K. Kirkpatrick: Thank you very much for being here. I’m Karin Kirkpatrick. I am the MLA for West Vancouver–​Capilano.

I am here in the traditional territories of the Coast Salish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Dan Davies, the MLA for Peace River North.

I am coming to you from the territory of the Dane-zaa people.

G. Lore: Good afternoon. I’m Grace Lore, Victoria–Beacon Hill.

I am on the territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking peoples of the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations.

Thank you. Nice to be here.

H. Sandhu: Harwinder Sandhu, the MLA for Vernon-Monashee.

I am joining you from the unceded and traditional territory of the Okanagan Indian Nations.

Thank you for joining us.

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

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

Glad that you are here.

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

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

[2:10 p.m.]

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

I’m on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

D. Routley (Chair): I’m the Chair. I’m MLA Doug Routley, from Nanaimo–North Cowichan.

I’m coming to you from the territory of the Malahat First Nations.

We are joined today and helped by Karan Riarh, from the Clerk of Committee’s office. We’re also helped by Billy Young, from Hansard.

I’ll now introduce our first presenter, Kathy Moore, the mayor of the city of Rossland, for their presentation.

CITY OF ROSSLAND

K. Moore: I am Mayor Kathy Moore, from the city of Rossland.

We’re from the autonomous Sinixt territory, a surprise for those who think the group is extinct.

I was surprised to be invited to this session, as I believe my concerns are common to all small communities and probably could be outlined more eloquently by others. However, I thank you for this opportunity to share a few thoughts.

We’re located in the southern Interior. We’re known for our ski resort up the hill from Teck, in Trail. In the 2016 census, our population was 3,729 people. We currently estimate that we are a bit over 4,000. We expect a rise with the 2021 census.

In general, the RCMP detachment in our area does an excellent job. I have two rather contradictory concerns. One involves staffing and service levels. The other involves the current funding model. As in many small towns, the police are always underfunded and understaffed. With so many emergent issues, from the pandemic to the opioid crisis, the police are overworked.

I’m pleased to say our biggest issue is generally speeding cars, but that shouldn’t detract from the gravity of my other comments. Given the fact that our detachment is stretched so thin, even our simple traffic needs are almost never met. We hardly ever see a police presence in Rossland.

I’ve had some candid conversations with our local detachment, and it is struggling to meet the 24-7 demands of policing due to low resources and the high number of officers currently on sick leave or on restricted duties. I can provide more specific details in the Q and A on that if you wish. Our detachment needs two more constables. Again, I can provide the specifics in the Q and A if that’s of interest.

Our RCMP would like to work with an outreach psychiatric nurse on a regular basis and have one attend every mental health call if possible. Ideally, I think that should be funded through Interior Health. Even just two days a week would make an immense difference and help the RCMP reduce their workload for mental health issues.

Small towns are not immune to the larger social issues facing our province. On January 26, we had an armed intruder in our city hall. He followed the example of the insurrectionists in the U.S. capital on January 6. His intent was to take over city hall and become the mayor. Our detachment responded quickly and admirably, but a mental health professional on the scene would’ve really helped. Luckily, he was disarmed and no one was hurt, but it easily could’ve gone the other way.

Somewhere in the Kootenays, we also need a long-term mental health facility and supportive housing for the mentally ill. The RCMP should be focusing on police work. However, even here it’s been hijacked by mental health and addiction issues.

Recruitment is another staffing issue that faces us. It’s challenging and often dangerous work, and with cell phone cameras, the public has recorded and shared video footage of police in action, which has been a shock. This has fuelled the public’s demand for the police to change the way they operate, wanting a less authoritarian state, less force used, more fairness and a renewed sense that the RCMP are acting in a moral and ethical manner. The public’s increasing awareness is fuelling the accelerated push for modernization to rebuild public trust and confidence. This is really good. The old way is no longer acceptable.

Today the public do not simply view police work as doing good. They’re engaged in a deeper, more thoughtful examination of why the police have the roles and responsibilities that they do. Why is policing viewed as systematically racist and discriminatory? Why are they on one side of environmental issues versus another? Why are crime stats so tragically skewed against minorities and vulnerable populations? When did the police become social and mental health workers? How did policing and societal issues get so complicated and intertwined? Every social issue, even in our area, now seems to involve the police.

These are questions that I’m sure the board is exploring in more depth, because these are critical. The extraordinary amount of power wielded by the police needs strong, independent oversight. Force is not what the police should be known for. Police can be community-builders and partners. They can be leaders and diplomats. They can help a community grow, thrive and push through issues, all the social issues that we’re seeing. The police have the knowledge from within the community to change it for the better, but only if they are supported, and currently they are not.

[2:15 p.m.]

Many constables do exactly those kinds of things that I’m talking about. The alternative high school in Trail has had strong connections with some of the local constables over the years, and it’s been a huge benefit to those young people struggling to find their way.

The call to defund the police is perhaps the most ignorant tagline I’ve heard in a long time. The police need more resources and different ones, not less. They are not trained as mental health professionals, nor should they be. In addition to constables, the need for mental health staff and other social service professionals to work alongside the RCMP is huge. Detachments should be adequately staffed so as to avoid overwork and burnout and meet the needs of the communities they serve. That’s my first one.

My second one is that our population is creeping towards 5,000, and we’re concerned about the funding model. This issue has been presented at the UBCM several times in the past. It just isn’t equitable that huge increases in funding, any sort of funding responsibility, falls on the local government when they get to 5,001 residents.

This needs to be handled gradually. They hit that threshold and make policing unaffordable in a town like mine. When we do get to over 5,000, we will have our own police station and be eligible for some negligible traffic-revenue-sharing grants, but nothing would offset the huge increase in cost.

In 2020, our share of policing was $220,000. To add an estimated $500,000 or $900,000, as we’ve been told it might, is a huge increase for a service that we don’t really need at this time or in the foreseeable future.

Thank you for your attention. From Rossland’s perspective, here are, we think, four commonsense and reasonable suggestions. Raise the population threshold to 6,000 or even 8,000 before requiring an increased contribution to policing costs, or better yet, make the determination based on actual need. High crime areas require more policing regardless of the size of the population. Less active areas can make do with less coverage.

Transition gradually, over a period of, say, five to ten years. Shift the provincial focus on providing more mental health and social issue professionals, not just police, to back up the police. Through provincial and federal funding, recruit, train and fully staff officers for each detachment.

I’m confident that this reform board will make some thoughtful and well-considered recommendations and that your work will benefit everyone within B.C. I wish you every success. I’m happy to take any questions if you have them. Thank you so much.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you. I have moved my chat box, which uncovers the grim reality that I have forgotten to introduce MLA Olsen, who was hiding behind my chat box, and MLA Singh.

Go ahead, MLA Olsen.

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

I’m really pleased to be working today from my home here in the W̱JOȽEȽP village.

K. Moore: Just so you know, I didn’t see the timer clock on my screen. I saw it initially, before I started talking, and then it disappeared. So I hope I didn’t go too far over.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you.

MLA Singh, go ahead. My apologies.

R. Singh: No, Chair. I did introduce.

D. Routley (Chair): I thought I missed you.

Okay. Now that I’ve embarrassed myself not once but twice, I will go to the next presenter, and that would be Mr. Steffan Klassen from the town of Creston, where he is the director of finance.

TOWN OF CRESTON

S. Klassen: Thank you very much. I’m Steffan Klassen, director of finance and corporate services for the town of Creston.

I’m talking to you from the unceded, traditional territory of the Yaqan Nukiy and Ktunaxa Nations.

The town of Creston’s mayor and council would like to thank the committee members for selecting our submission for today’s presentation.

The town of Creston is a small community that went over 5,000 in population in the 2011 Canada census. This inevitable event caused a large shift in taxation to the municipality. Property tax revenues had to increase by 34 percent to cover the town’s increased share of policing costs. Creston previously paid about 17 percent of the policing costs. Now it pays 70 percent.

The province imposed a cost-sharing agreement that required the town to pay the majority of the costs of the RCMP detachment that serves close to 13,500 people over an expansive territory. This overhanging burden is faced by all small communities nearing the 5,000 population mark.

How police costs are shared is the one issue we are focusing on in this presentation. However, municipal subsidization of provincial keep-of-prisoner costs, major crime investigation costs, as well as mental health are other issues that all municipalities which pay for policing struggle with.

[2:20 p.m.]

The province, which previously subsidized the town’s policing costs, continues to subsidize rural areas served by the detachment. The subsidization is not insignificant, such that some areas pay less than 10 percent of what the town taxpayers pay.

There are systematic issues, which begin within the Police Act, that create the inequity on how police costs are shared in British Columbia. How police costs are imposed is subjective and varies from one municipality to another. If you remember from our submission, we showed a picture of a road that had two houses side by side, one that is in town and one that is out. Both houses receive the exact same police service, yet one pays 542 percent more for it. This begs the question: why does the system support such inequity?

The town of Creston is happy with our RCMP partners. They do a great job for our town and surrounding rural communities. Our issue is not operational. Our issue is with the old systems that need to be reformed.

Change is possible. The town of Creston would like to suggest one potential solution that would be efficient and cost-effective to implement because it uses existing resources such as B.C. Assessment and the police tax system. The solution also requires changes to the Police Act.

If the cost of the detachment were to be shared equitably based on the whole area the detachment serves, wouldn’t that be fair? The potential solution would be to tax all improvements for the area served by the detachment such that the cost of the detachment is shared on an equitable basis. As a municipality grows, its share would automatically balance each year. There would no longer be a need for a 5,000 population hurdle. The sharing would be based on improvement values only, because land does not create crime, and improvement values would be a reliable driver that is updated annually by B.C. Assessment.

The existing level of provincial subsidization of the detachment could be shared with the whole area the detachment serves. For example, in the instance of the two houses side by side, the tax on the two houses would be much the same, somewhere in between both amounts, and it would all depend on how much of a provincial subsidy is shared amongst the different users. The result would be a much fairer system to share police costs for a service that we all need and use that is broadly applicable.

In closing, the current system for the equitable sharing of police costs is not functioning properly. In order to fix this, it must be done at a provincial level. We are encouraged that all political parties are working together towards reforming the Police Act to make change possible. Please use this opportunity to reform the Police Act to help the many communities that share the exact same issues as the town of Creston.

If anyone would like to discuss this proposal any further, I would be happy to address all of your questions. Thank you so much for your time and attention.

D. Routley (Chair): Bill Beamish. He’s the mayor of the town of Gibsons.

TOWN OF GIBSONS

B. Beamish: Good afternoon. Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you this afternoon. I have made a submission, which I believe you will have available to you. I’d like to walk you through that submission.

The town of Gibsons is a municipality located on the Sunshine Coast, the traditional territory of the Squamish Nation. We’re approximately a one-hour commute to or from Vancouver by ferries, and the estimated population is 4,950 people today. It was 4,605 in 2016. It’s very possible that the current census will push us over the 5,000 limit in 2022.

Gibsons has long been viewed as a retirement community, with approximately 50 percent of our residents being seniors. In recent months, however, we have experienced significant interest in people relocating to Gibsons and other parts of the Sunshine Coast due to COVID-19 and the ability of many workers to now work from home. Gibsons benefits from having Telus fibre optic connections throughout the community and, as a result, is a top choice for many new residents. As well, proximity to Vancouver and the relative low cost of housing compared to Vancouver and other Lower Mainland areas and a variety of lifestyle options make Gibsons an attractive community in which to live and raise a family.

We believe that this recent interest in our community has increased the population, with the result that the 2021 census may invoke the requirement to provide policing, pursuant to subsection 3(2) of the Police Act, perhaps five years before we are ready.

[2:25 p.m.]

In 2020, council planned to establish a policing reserve fund in our annual budget in anticipation of this transition. However, because of COVID-19 and the need to manage our tax increases so as not to negatively impact the community, we cut our budgets and the planned policing reserve. At present, COVID-19 continues to impact our residents and businesses, and we are uncertain as to when our community will recover.

There are three significant areas of concern with respect to the Police Act, which I have included in this submission. These are the increased cost and resulting sudden tax increase to communities required to cover a majority of the policing cost as soon as they reach a population threshold of 5,000 people; the impact of the ongoing crisis on the community and the Sunshine Coast, generally; and the need for police to attend and assist on mental health and overdose cases, which draw heavily on their resources and their ability to effectively police the community.

In 2019, the town of Gibsons undertook an analysis of the policing options and policing costs that may be required when our community population exceeds 5,000 persons. This study was based on our belief that the population is growing, and it is possible a net change in population may push us over by 2021 or 2026.

If this occurs, our new cost for policing in the community will be between $700,000 and $1 million annually, depending, first, on how many police members and civilian workers will be required to adequately and effectively police the community and, second, on what we are able to afford. This represents an increase of 22 to 32 percent of our annual budget for 2020. An additional and unknown cost of unionization by the RCMP is another factor that impacts our ability to anticipate and effectively plan for the financial adjustments required.

In this regard, we recommend that the Police Act be amended to provide a specific option to phase in police costs over a five-year period as the community moves from contributing 40 percent of its total policing costs to contributing 70 percent, as required by the act. This option could be implemented in the years prior to a community reaching 5,000 population and extend beyond the year in which the census reports that threshold has been achieved.

In recognition of the changing demographics of many rural communities, and the increased freedom that technological change and employer policies have given to enable workers and consultants to work remotely, the 5,000-person threshold should be increased to 6,000 persons.

The act should be amended to provide the flexibility to recognize emergent circumstances over which a community has no control, such as COVID-19. Gibsons, like many other communities, has been impacted by the current opioid crisis, which has resulted in homelessness, overdoses, increased crime and hardship for many individuals and families. This is occurring over time when police resources are already stressed to provide an adequate and effective level of policing.

Police resources have not kept pace with community growth and the issues that we as a community have lived with in recent years. The approved establishment of a provincial force on the Sunshine Coast fails to take into consideration issues like long-term vacancies and recruiting challenges; training leave, sick leave and stress leave; and the challenge of policing a linear community that includes many islands and the marine services required.

In addition, in order for the RCMP members to respond to the increasing number of complaints and mental health calls, crime prevention activities have been cut, and communities have been dependent on ad hoc programs designed by local authorities and serviced entirely by volunteers. In our view, the province has failed to provide and maintain an adequate and effective level of policing in our community. However, the lack of any definition of what this means makes it very difficult to plan and effectively lobby for resources we require today or to know how many members we require once we reach 5,000 persons.

We recommend that section 2 of the act be amended to include a clear definition of “adequate and effective level of policing and law enforcement,” and the definition should include a reference to crime prevention. Additional police resources and funding be provided to communities to provide and sustain crime prevention activities and to work with residents and businesses impacted by increased crime.

Finally, although the Police Act does not specifically reference the Mental Health Act, it is apparent that the Mental Health Act disproportionately affects the ability of our police to provide an adequate and effective level of police and law enforcement. Additional strategies and resources are required to respond to the increasing incidents of mental health and addiction.

[2:30 p.m.]

We recommend that the Police Act be amended to encourage increased cross-agency cooperation and coor­dination with a view to ensuring that limited police resources are focused on providing an adequate and effective level of policing and law enforcement, including crime prevention, and, when needed, that additional community-based resources be provided by the province to supplement police response to issues of mental health and addictions.

Thank you for the opportunity. I look forward to questions.

R. Singh: Thank you to all the presenters.

My question will be for Kathy. Thank you so much, Kathy, for your presentation. You mention in your presentation about giving police more resources, but also you said that the police are not equipped to deal with mental health issues. We’ve heard from a number of stakeholders before you, Kathy, and this has been echoed in the larger urban settings. I know your community is a really small one.

I would really like to know from you: when you ask for more resources — but at the same time very cognizant of the fact, about the mental health, that the police are not equipped to deal with it — how do you think of balancing that?

K. Moore: Yeah. That’s an excellent question. Balance is what it’s all about.

In our detachment, we’re supposed to have 22 officers that cover the area from Rossland to Fruitvale — Trail and all that area. At this point, we have…. Only half of them are actually working. We don’t have full strength at all, because some of them are on stress leave, illness, surgery.

There are all kinds of problems there. They got there because they were overworked. So the more they get worked, the more they end up going off on these leaves. There has to be, I think, more people in the detachment [audio interrupted]. There also have to be more of the social service supports in there.

It really comes down to…. I mean, I hate to say: “Throw money at things.” Honestly, we need to throw money at these things. We need more officers, and we need more psychiatric nurses and social services in the community that can take some of the burden of those mental health issues off the RCMP. At least if they had somebody with them that could deal with some of these folks when they have those calls, that would really help. As it is now, our constables have to go with them. When they take someone to the hospital, they have to go with them to the hospital. But now they’re off the street. So that reduces our manpower even more.

It’s a balance, but it’s like you have to lift all the boats to get to that balance. We’re underfunded, understaffed in both the RCMP and the mental health and social services sector.

R. Singh: Right. That’s a really good one. This is what we are hearing, especially with the mental health issues.

You brought a little bit, not so much in detail…. You talked a little bit about the systemic racism. That is also emerging as a bigger issue within the communities — how certain communities feel especially oppressed, marginalized when they are dealing with the police.

Do you have any such examples in your community as well, Kathy?

K. Moore: Well, one is my conversation with our detachment, with the sergeant there. His point was that basically we’re a fairly homogenous community here. Basically, all of the officers are…. They’re predominantly white men. There needs to be more training.

In our community, we have people of all different backgrounds, and there’s just this disconnect. And this was really him, not me, because I’m not in the detachment. His feeling — and this is something throughout the RCMP — is that there is a lot of racism. The people who are acting it out aren’t even aware that what they’re doing and saying is racist. So his suggestion is way more training. There has to be way more training for people to understand what they’re looking at.

It’s sort of like the statement where a Black mother says to her child going out: “Make sure you don’t get stopped by the police. You might get shot.” When my son was going out at night, I never once warned him against the police because he was a white kid. So those kinds of things. Some police aren’t even aware that that sort of dichotomy exists, and it does happen here, even in our little area.

[2:35 p.m.]

R. Singh: Right. I really, really appreciate your words, because they do matter, especially with the unconscious bias. A lot of what we are hearing about systemic racism…. A lot of times, the organizations or the police themselves are not even aware of…. It is not something they are doing intentionally, but it is just so prevalent within the system that they are just a part of that.

I really appreciate that. Thank you so much.

K. Moore: I want to add one thing. I feel that members of our detachment are really good people, but when the sergeant starts to say that they’re not even aware, that, to me, is crying for help. These aren’t bad people. These are good people, but they need training.

R. Singh: Good people can be racist too. Thank you so much.

A. Olsen: Thank you for your presentations. I appreciate hearing from each of your communities and knowing that many of our communities in British Columbia face similar issues. We’re all governed by the same legislation but have very different communities in how those are reflected.

I’d just ask a question around the funding formula. As I understand it, communities of less than 5,000, as you articulated, pay 40 percent of their policing costs. Communities that have one person more than 5,000, or even 5,000 — I’m not sure, exactly, which side of it that it has to be on, 5,000 and under or 4,999 and up — nevertheless have to pay 70.

There were also some comments with respect to that number maybe needing to go up to 6,000. Maybe two questions on this. Does that reflect the fact that, at 6,000, the revenue that you’re generating from that number of residents eases the pain of increasing the policing cost by 30 percent? Is there some reason why two communities have both suggested 6,000? Also, I think, there was some mention by maybe all three with respect to having a phased approach. I think, Mayor Beamish, you pointed out that you could pay for the difference over a period of time.

There could also be a model in which it’s a stepped model. So for 4,500, you’d pay this. For 5,000, for 5,500…. You can grow into the increased costs.

Just a question with respect to getting some clarification on it. From your perspective, what would be the best approach for your communities, whether it be a stepped approach or a phased payment plan — I think, Mayor Beamish, you’ve already highlighted that — just with respect to the 6,000 number?

B. Beamish: I think from my perspective in Gibsons, having it within the Police Act, firstly, to identify that there is an option so that communities can consider this as the time comes up. Whether it’s at 4,000 or 4,500, when you start thinking about it…. What happened with Gibsons is that when we came with an election and council in 2018, no thought had been given to the next census and to the impact of the next census on our costs with respect to policing.

In 2019, we initiated a study, which determined that we were going to be paying between $700,000 and $1 million more, a 30 percent increase in taxes — which is, as you can all appreciate, a very significant hit to a small community, especially a community that has a 50 percent seniors population. There are probably 50 percent of the people who are living on pensions in our community. Getting hit with that is very significant. If we phase that in, much as our own pensions and other things are increased over time, it would soften that burden for a lot of people.

It would also allow us, perhaps, to establish a reserve over time. We tried to do that in 2020 after we received the report. COVID hit and pushed out that plan. The 6,000 is not an automatic number; it’s an incremental number. In the Police Act, when it was introduced — in the 1970s, I think — it was 5,000. It’s still 5,000. I think that needs to be looked at, because the economy of rural communities has changed a lot in that time, in terms of the ability of people to move around the province.

[2:40 p.m.]

We used to have economic sectors of our province where you could comfortably move from one to the other and actually gain on your real estate. You can no longer do that. It doesn’t matter where you move to today. You’re paying a premium on real estate. People are moving now because the technology enables it. That’s only going to become more so. I think if it was 6,000…. If it was 7,500, I’d even be happier. That’s where we project our population threshold, given our water supply.

We have a lot of demands on the system. As I say, the Police Act doesn’t recognize…. It’s the Mental Health Act that actually establishes a requirement for a constable to arrest, under the Mental Health Act. The Police Act doesn’t even mention the Mental Health Act. But as was mentioned by Mayor Moore, when somebody is arrested under the Mental Health Act, it takes two officers off duty.

We have 100 kilometres of road stretching up from Langdale to Egmont, and we might only have four officers on duty, and then suddenly, two of them are off duty taking care of a mental health patient potentially for the rest of the night. So that really significantly impacts the ability. Having that being a standby while mental health is dealing with an issue would be much more effective and would also bring other resources to bear, resources that are better prepared to deal with mental health than the police. We all see incidents where mistakes are made, and those mistakes can be tragic. So we’d like to see that happen.

Supplementing the police with additional resources — again, providing for that in the Police Act. The Police Act makes no mention of sharing resources of that nature, of collaborating between agencies. Years ago when the Justice Development Commission in 1974 was set up, it provided for the integration of the integrated intelligence unit, the IIU. That allowed for the movement of members of the RCMP and members of municipal forces to work together in an integrated unit.

Why can’t we do the same thing with mental health and the police as an integrated unit and bring them together? But we need to have the legislative ability to do that and the leadership of the Police Act. This is your opportunity to do that.

G. Begg: Thanks, presenters, for your views.

A question for Mayor Moore. Is there a standalone detachment in your community?

K. Moore: No, there’s not. We share with Trail, Fruitvale, Montrose. We have a corridor along the Columbia River, actually, that stretches for quite a lot of geography and covers quite a few people. So no, we don’t have a detachment in Rossland. That’s why I say we never see the police in Rossland at all, to tell you the truth, except when our city hall was invaded. Then they showed up, which we were very thankful for.

G. Begg: That was my next question. Presumably, the police only respond to your community when there’s a call to your community?

K. Moore: Well, yes, that’s true. I mean, we have put in multiple requests that we just get somebody up to try and deal with some of our traffic issues, because that is our biggest problem.

Yeah. Unless there’s a call…. There have been a few. There might be a domestic violence, or there might be some drunk and disorderly or something, and eventually, they do show up. But unless it’s something really urgent, like an armed guy in city hall, we don’t see them in a timely fashion — not because they don’t care about us. They’re just spread too thin.

G. Begg: I don’t want to get bogged down in details, but I seem to recall that there was a detachment in Rossland.

K. Moore: Years ago. Many years ago. Then there was some consolidation. I’ve been on council since 2008, and that detachment was gone before I got on council. I can’t even tell you what year it was. Early 2000s I think it was there.

G. Begg: That’s an area that I think this committee is interested in exploring. I know that small detachments were closed, and regional policing hubs or models were used. You would say that that’s probably not a great way to do policing because of the reasons you’ve articulated?

K. Moore: Yes and no. All I want is some police presence up here. I don’t know that it needs a detachment. If there were just more constables in the detachment so they could come and serve us, that would be fine. We don’t need real estate, necessarily; we just need bodies to have them be able to respond.

If there was someone in the detachment in Rossland, they would probably sit around a good part of the day because we are, luckily, a very low-crime community. So I’m not sure that would be the best answer. But more resources in the detachment we have in Trail would be, especially the mental health stuff.

[2:45 p.m.]

G. Begg: Thank you for that.

For Mayor Beamish, I assume — I haven’t checked this — that there is no definition under the current B.C. Police Act that isolates this adequate and effective level of policing and law enforcement. It’s there, but there’s no definition of it. Is that correct?

K. Riarh (Clerk to the Committee): I think we’ve lost him.

G. Begg: Those are my questions, Chair.

D. Routley (Chair): Okay. I think we’ve lost Mayor Beamish.

K. Moore: Could I add one point? What was asked earlier was just about that limit of the 5,000, 6,000, 8,000 — whatever it is.

For municipalities, we gain revenue as our communities build out, so we don’t necessarily gain a ton of revenue when we go from 5,000 to 5,001. But over time, as more houses are built…. Like, in Rossland, basically 88 percent of our revenue comes from residential taxpayers. We don’t have industry or very much commercial, so it’s all residential taxpayers. So we need houses. If we get our larger population, it’s because we have more houses, which enables us a greater ability to pay for services.

Honestly, it really needs to be gradual. We don’t go from five to six to eight or whatever overnight.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much. Thank you for your presentations. I have to say, in the early 2000s, as a school trustee….

Oh, MLA Olsen has a hand up.

Sorry. Go ahead, Adam.

A. Olsen: I appreciate that, Mayor Moore. Thank you for the clarification. That certainly was my experience when I was on local government as well.

I just wanted to maybe get Mr. Klassen’s…. As the director of finance — the person who counts the beans in the town of Creston, making sure that he’s got the right number of beans in the right places — I just was wondering, from your perspective….

I think, Mr. Klassen, you also reflected the 5,000, 6,000 number. Do you have anything, maybe, to add to that, just as we’re looking…? I sense we’re going to hear about this funding model, especially from communities that are hovering right around the 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 number.

S. Klassen: Yes. Like I said, we went through this experience in 2011. We did have a reserve built up, but it was a shock to our community. Having a 34 percent increase in taxation took a lot of things away that we could have had in this community, and we’re paying for policing.

The 5,000, 6,000 — I think we’re just pushing the penny down the road if we set another limit. We’d really like to have your serious consideration of what we’re proposing, because it actually gets rid of the 5,000 hurdle and creates an equitable way of sharing the costs. As costs increase or population increases, those hurdles aren’t there. It’s just a gradual increase of the sharing of the cost.

It also allows the province lots of flexibility in terms of what they do with the amount that they’re actually subsidizing policing with right now. It’s quite large for the rural communities. I know you did mention 40 percent for rural communities. That’s not correct. Like I said, the areas around here pay 10 percent of what we pay in town. We pay 70. That one area is paying 7 percent, others are paying 17 percent, and the town was paying 17 percent before we started. So it varies around the province.

I’m not sure exactly how that formula works, but there are lots of opportunities to work solutions to make it more equitable and functional. If we have some more resources by including the rural areas a bit more, there might be room for more resources that we could work into the system as well.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you. I was saying that as a school trustee in the early 2000s, I was on a community safety advisory committee with local government. This was the issue at the table then, and the 5,000 was the number then.

At the same time, for members’ reference, back then there was a CBC radio play where a mayor of a town of that size was discouraging everyone from moving to their town, taking on aliases to run down the town, and he eventually resorted to homicide to keep it below 5,000.

[2:50 p.m.]

That was a comedy radio play. I don’t think that will be a recommendation of this committee, but it’s clearly a theme that we’re hearing.

Thank you very much.

S. Klassen: Could I just add one point, Chair?

D. Routley (Chair): Yes.

S. Klassen: Just in regards to that whole 5,000, what it does is it actually creates a ceiling and a lack of desire to develop for a community that’s nearing that stage. It also creates a large schism between houses outside and inside of town in terms of taxation.

It indirectly creates a need or a will for people to build outside of town, when all the resources and the services for water, sewer, and all those things are already being done and could be serviced more cheaply. But it’s being done outside of town, because the taxation is lower outside of town. Policing is one of those chief reasons. It does create other effects that aren’t just readily apparent.

D. Routley (Chair): Yeah, I noticed that myself, that it imposes a different set of values on how you judge a development proposal, for a long period of time, before that threshold is met.

K. Moore: I just want to add that I think Creston’s proposal is quite creative. I think it would alleviate a lot of the issues that we are seeing.

This artificial 5,000, 6,000 — what everyone will say. But if you have it more equitable, the way Creston’s talking about…. I think that’s really something that the committee should look at. Because we are all seeing huge growth in population, I’m worried about the 5,000 this year. Two years ago I certainly wasn’t, but there’s been a huge increase of people coming into the Kootenays.

We’re all going to be getting there, but we just have different service needs. So that would be an interesting way to look at it. I would support you delving into that a little more.

Thanks for all the work this committee’s doing. It’s great.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you. These presentations have helped us with understanding that relationship, and we appreciate your contribution.

With that, I think we’ll bring this segment to a close, and we’ll take a five-minute recess for the committee members. Thank you very much.

The committee recessed from 2:52 p.m. to 3 p.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): Welcome back to this meeting of the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act. My name is Doug Routley. I’m the MLA for Nanaimo–North Cowichan and Chair of the committee.

I’m coming from the traditional territory of the Malahat First Nation.

For our last panel of the day, we’ll be hearing from the district of Squamish and the from the district municipality of North Cowichan, my territory.

Each presenter will have five minutes to speak, followed by questions and discussion with committee members. We kindly ask that presenters be respectful of this time limit. There will be a timer on the screen to help.

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

Now I’d like to ask my friends on the committee to introduce themselves. I’ll begin with MLA Kirkpatrick.

K. Kirkpatrick: Welcome. Thank you for being here. I’m Karin Kirkpatrick. I’m the MLA for West Vancouver–​Capilano.

I am calling in from the traditional territory of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam First Nations.

G. Lore: Hi. Grace Lore, the MLA for Victoria–Beacon Hill.

I’m on the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-​speaking peoples of the Esquimalt and Songhees nations.

I look forward to hearing from you this afternoon.

R. Singh: Thank you for joining us today. Rachna Singh, the MLA for Surrey–Green Timbers.

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

H. Sandhu: Welcome, everyone. I am Harwinder Sandhu, the MLA for Vernon-Monashee.

I am virtually joining you from the unceded and traditional territory of the Okanagan Indian Nations.

Thank you for joining us today.

A. Olsen: Good afternoon. I’m MLA Adam Olsen from Saanich North and the Islands.

I’m very happy to be working from my home village of W̱JOȽEȽP today. Nice to be here.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Hi. Dan Davies coming to you from the very warm Fort St. John, representing Peace River North and the Dane-zaa territory. Welcome.

R. Glumac: Hi. I’m Rick Glumac, the MLA for Port Moody–Coquitlam.

I am on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish people.

D. Routley (Chair): MLA Begg will be joining us. I think he might be away from the camera for the moment, but I’ll ask him when he comes back. He’s the MLA for Surrey-Guildford.

With that, I’d ask our first presenter, the mayor of the district of Squamish, Karen Elliott, to present.

DISTRICT OF SQUAMISH

K. Elliott: Good afternoon, hon. Members.

I’m presenting to you from the unceded territory of the Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw. I’m privileged to live on this land and grateful to Skwxwú7mesh colleagues, Elders and neighbours who help me understand the deep history of the land and people and my role in connecting the past, present and future to help create a community for all.

The district of Squamish is a community of over 22,000 people. We are the largest municipality within the Squamish-Lillooet regional district. Our policing is provided by the RCMP, so that is the context in which I present my remarks today. I would also like to acknowledge our local RCMP leadership and dedicated officers in Squamish, as we work together to continuously improve.

We put forward four actions for consideration that we felt were interconnected and foundational in making a difference to modernize the Police Act, while also putting in place the supports necessary to better assist citizens and police. These are: (1) improved collection and reporting of data, (2) empowering and holding leadership accountable, (3) reforming and expanding training and education, and (4) funding and supporting integrated case management.

Let me begin with better data collection and reporting as an important improvement to the Police Act. We suggest that the act provide for annual public reporting, by city or detachment, of police interactions — such as wellness checks, arrests, use of force interactions and lethal force interactions — that include the incident details needed to track socioeconomic dimensions of response, including race, ethnicity, gender identity, age, housing status, etc.

[3:05 p.m.]

While some of this data may be available now, there is a lack of trained analysts to help communities, especially small communities like mine, access complete information. When we have good data and analysis, we can see trends and develop responses, whether to address systemic racism, channel resources to prevent crime or mount a community-based response, versus a police response, to improve public safety.

Our second ask focuses on leadership accountability. The RCMP was founded during colonial times and was complicit in the removal of Indigenous children from their families as part of the residential school system. Given that fact, we must deeply consider the leadership required within the RCMP to effect the cultural and organizational change that is required at this time. We are asking you to challenge the status quo by looking for ways to hold police leadership accountable within the act.

Meaningful and robust leadership development programs and modern recruitment systems are required within the RCMP, but data collection and reporting can also be a tool. We believe that there should be a stronger connection between the work of an officer in charge, OIC, or a police chief and the data for their region or detachment. We ask that the act require annual public reporting on the statistics for each OIC and on police interactions such as arrests, use-of-force interactions, and lethal-force interactions in their region that include the incident details needed to track socioeconomic dimensions of response.

These statistics could be published along with a number and type of public complaints and the crime severity index for each detachment or city police department to account for the fact that large urban centres will have a different crime profile than smaller rural communities. Together, these statistics would be used to identify where intervention and additional oversight may be needed to ensure a consistent leadership focus on eliminating systemic racism and bias.

Thirdly, we’d like the committee to require more meaningful training on systemic racism and the impacts of colonialism. We know that officers want this too, and it should be mandatory and go far and beyond the current online course provided by the RCMP. Training should look to successful experiential workshops, such as the one required in our community for all of our staff, elected officials and police. The existing de-escalation training for new recruits to the RCMP, as well as the refresher course required every three years for members, should be updated to ensure that the scenarios used challenge racial profiling and systemic bias.

Finally, we know that not all of the answers can be found in the Police Act, and our submission makes a number of recommendations around investing in police recruitment to improve police diversity and integrated case management to address the fact that more than 70 percent of victims of fatal police encounters had mental health or substance abuse issues. We outline a number of fundamental investments that can be made by other ministries to address housing; clinical space and services within supportive housing; virtual and face-to-face services for youth and adults in small communities; and safe supply in all communities, as well as harm reduction strategies.

Thank you for your work on this committee. We wish you wisdom, care and thoroughness as you bring your recommendations forward.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you for your presentation.

Now I’d like to introduce Mr. Robert Taylor, district municipality of North Cowichan, for his presentation.

PERIVALE AND
TAYLOR CONSULTING ON BEHALF OF
MUNICIPALITY OF NORTH COWICHAN

R. Taylor: Thank you. I’m Robert Taylor from Perivale and Taylor Consulting.

Earlier this year we completed a study of the district of North Cowichan’s community safety plan and completed a gap analysis including recommendations to this committee. Consequently, the district asked the company to provide the recommendations on their behalf.

We had four recommendations. The first one is basically around tiered policing, because the issues we saw in North Cowichan around Duncan really didn’t require the full authority of the officer constable, but they certainly required more than the power of a bylaw officer. What’s interesting is that the act, under section 18.1, does allow for tiered policing — a law enforcement officer whose powers could be focused, as required.

[3:10 p.m.]

The interesting comparison is between, say, England, United Kingdom, where about 7 percent of all police are second-tier, and next door, Alberta, where the Peace Officer Act has really seemed to be very successful in allowing municipalities to employ community peace officers. I understand there are about 500 in the province and probably an unknown number of provincial peace officers.

It’s an interesting concept. I think we would encourage the committee to examine that idea. And 18.1 appears not to have been implemented, in the sense that it was put forward for SkyTrain a number of years ago, but that didn’t come about. There may be some systemic reason why it has not been adopted.

The second recommendation is around the disjoint about people who are apprehended for their own protection under the Mental Health Act. They’re taken to a facility, a safe place, by the police, and then there’s that disjoint between the police sitting around, as they say, for a time — sometimes hours. It seems odd. They’re in a facility which actually takes care of people. The staff are trained and qualified, and they take care of people for days or weeks or years. Moving that start time of care forward by a few hours shouldn’t be too challenging. We’re recommending that facilities have the ability to appoint staff under the Police Act as special constables to enable that to happen.

The third recommendation was around the whole response. Council was interested in the CAHOOTS model from Oregon — crisis assistance helping out on the street — established more than 30 years ago between the local police department and the health authority, providing sort of an integrated response right through 911 so that the right sort of response could be made. That seemed to be a successful model.

Now, linked to that, we have the idea of joint teams and joint services. This is not new. Vancouver PD has had joint teams for child protection, youth probation, mental health and high-risk youth since the 1970s, so it’s not a new model. What we see, of course, is that Vancouver has the opportunity for economies of scale. Health and police have the ability to do these things.

North Cowichan, a small community…. They have a similar model, where they have a partnership between the RCMP and the health authority — interfered by COVID, now, for a while — one police officer and one health worker one day a week, because there wasn’t the volume of work. What that tells us, of course, is that this needs to be a regional or a provincial approach.

All these models I’d describe as successful, but they’re all worn off. I think that to be successful, we need a provincewide — probably regionally based to garner economies of scale — to make this work through the Police Act. As in the U.K., where police are legislated to work with other community partners, it could be a requirement under the Police Act or standards that this sort of initiative, this pursuit, and partnerships are established to bring about a comprehensive and effective joint team response.

D. Routley (Chair): Questions? Do we have any hands up?

K. Kirkpatrick: Thank you to both the presenters.

[3:15 p.m.]

This question is for Robert. In your submission, talking about appointing persons as special provincial constables to allow the continuing apprehension and temporary detention of persons apprehended under the emergency procedures of mental health, I’m not exactly sure what that special constable — that role — is and how that works. Am I understanding that that was part of the recommendation?

R. Taylor: Yes, correct. The process right now is that the police are the only people who have the authority under the Mental Health Act to apprehend a person for their own protection and take them to a health facility. At that point, they’re still apprehended by the police. So until they are examined and admitted officially under the act, they still require a peace officer to continue that detention.

The problem arises when there is a delay in the examination of the person. The police could — and sometimes more than one officer — be sitting there for hours. I guess we’d be seeing it as being a little odd that a facility that actually does this, that cares for people and protects them…. To enable them by simply having…. It could be existing staff appointed as special constables under the act. The special constables — that authority can be customized for the function.

Presumably, a person who’s in the health facility already could be authorized or appointed as a special constable with powers to continue the apprehension of people awaiting examination. We see it as more of an administrative change, to avoid this sort of disconnect in the process.

K. Kirkpatrick: That would be a mental health professional, though, that we’re talking about in that role.

R. Taylor: Yeah, it could be. On the other hand, they could hire or perhaps go to the hospital security to be appointed. There is some flexibility. That would depend on the facility itself.

A. Olsen: Thank you, Karin, for your questions. I have a similar line of questioning.

I first would just like to say thank you, Mayor Elliott, for your presentation. I think your comments are in alignment with a lot of communities that we’ve heard and in fact are quite closely aligned with a lot of the Indigenous nations that have presented to us as well. I think that it’s important to acknowledge where that advice and those recommendations intersect, because it’s important to acknowledge similar approaches, especially around training.

My understanding is that a special constable that’s sworn an oath has the ability and has the powers of the Police Act. I think that what, in North Cowichan’s…. In your presentation, Mr. Taylor, you’re suggesting further segmenting out the powers and creating tiers so that there is a limit and a ceiling on which…. A second-tier or a third-tier, for example, person is able to then deliver only a limited number of the powers under the Police Act.

My second part of the question is to Mayor Elliott, which would be…. In your submission, in the district of Squamish, you talk about reserve constables. From what you’re hearing from North Cowichan, would that be maybe a sufficient alternative to a full reserve constable? Just kind of understanding where these two presentations might land on similar ground.

Maybe first to Mr. Taylor and then to Mayor Elliott.

R. Taylor: Yes, I think that’s exactly right. This two-tier is quite common in other areas, as described.

The idea is that it’s more focused. It’s more under the control of the municipality about where they place their resources. It’s cheaper, and the powers will be limited to exactly whatever it is the issue is. It could well be that the sort of street disturbances, the sort of nuisance crimes…. They’re crimes, but they’re often committed by vulnerable people who are addicted or are challenged in some way.

[3:20 p.m.]

The experience in Alberta seems to be quite successful — that they bring cheaper, more focused service to bear.

K. Elliott: Thank you for your question, MLA Olsen. I think, in a community like Squamish, having a tiered policing structure available would help in many respects. Once you’ve crossed the 15,000-person threshold in a community, for RCMP policing, you pay 95 percent of your policing costs, and it’s a huge bill to swallow in those first few years.

While it can be about cost…. The other thing that we recognize in our community is that we do have offenders who are consistent, and they’re present in our community. Our RCMP officers work really hard to connect them to services, to supports, back to family, and that’s work that could be done by another tiered officer — you know, an auxiliary police officer, whatever we want to call them. But there’s work that can be done that continues to support community members but doesn’t require a police officer with all the powers that they entail.

I also think in a small community like mine, those folks that are deeply addicted or have mental health issues are known. So we can create a case management approach around them, and that doesn’t always require a full police officer.

It’s about providing municipalities with the ability to develop and create a police force and a detachment that reflects the needs of the community rather than always having to fund a fully fledged police officer each and every time. I think that’s the flexibility we’re looking for and that North Cowichan is suggesting. We all know our communities best, but we need a bit more flexibility under the act.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you.

I don’t see any more….

A. Olsen: If I may just make a comment.

Thank you, Mayor Elliott, for that.

I just want to footnote here that we heard from communities that were getting close to 5,000 that the transition from one percentage to a much higher rate was a challenge. I just want to point out that we heard from the communities that are approaching 15,000 that that’s not a much better situation from the resources paying for the policing.

I just also want to make a note that I think, in previous conversations that we had earlier today — and, actually, kind of ongoing with this work — that the balancing between the security that a psychiatric nurse feels by having a police officer present at a meeting, and then, as well, the other voices that we’ve heard saying what having a police officer present at a meeting can potentially do to the tone of that meeting and to the impact that that has on the person who is receiving those services…. I couldn’t help but also connect this to what MLA Glumac was talking about and raising questions about a more comprehensive view of this.

I think there have been some solutions that have been presented here with respect to providing the security for those psychiatric nurses so that they can feel safe delivering the services that are needed without, maybe, a fully geared-up police officer there, a full-fledged police officer taking from the resources of communities that need those police officers doing other things.

I just wanted to note where all of these intersections have happened today in the presentations and really thank you all for providing the clarity that we need. It will certainly help me as we go in this process. So thank you for that.

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

Thank you to our presenters.

That will bring our panel segment of our meeting to a close. I give many thanks on behalf of the committee to the presenters for help in our quest to understand how to modernize the Police Act to best suit communities and provide the best outcomes for the people we all serve. So thank you very, very much.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Thank you.

Deliberations

D. Routley (Chair): Members, we have a brief time for deliberation. I think Karan would like to talk to us.

I’ll ask for a motion to move the meeting in camera. From MLA Olsen, seconded by MLA Sandhu.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 3:25 p.m. to 3:49 p.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): That brings us to the point of a motion to adjourn the meeting. I have that again from deputy Davies, and MLA Begg seconds.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 3:49 p.m.