The committee met at 3:05 p.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

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

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

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

Our committee is undertaking a broad consultation with respect of policing and related systemic issues in B.C. We are taking a phased approach to this work and are 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 hearing from those working on the front line of several fields, including policing, public safety, health care and social services.

Interested individuals can fill out a survey to share their views with the committee. Further details are available on our website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/rpa. The deadline to complete the survey is 5 p.m. on Friday, September 3.

In terms of the format for today’s meeting, we have a mix of thematic panels and individual presentations. Each presenter will have five minutes to speak, followed by a time for questions from the committee members. We kindly ask that the presenters be respectful of the time limit. There is a timer available to assist, which presenters can see when they are in the gallery view.

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

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

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

I am joining you from the traditional territories of the Semiahmoo Nation.

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

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

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

I’m joining you from the traditional territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam First Nations.

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

I am joining you from the unceded and traditional territory of the Okanagan Indian Nations. Thank you so much for joining us today.

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

Assisting us today are Karan Riarh, from the Parliamentary Committees Office, and Billy Young, from Hansard Services. We thank them for their support and help.

We’re very glad that you could join us.

I’d like to now introduce our first panel presenter, Angela Marie MacDougall. She is the co-chair from Feminists Deliver.

Take it away, Angela.

Presentations on Police Act

FEMINISTS DELIVER

A. MacDougall: Good afternoon, and thank you so much for this privilege and honour to speak with you today on behalf of Feminists Deliver in my capacity as co-chair.

I respectfully acknowledge the members of the committee and also my fellow presenters, who we have some relationship with through Feminists Deliver, the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective and Justice for Girls.

I am deeply and forever grateful for the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish Nations for the opportunity to live in their unceded and ancestral territories. We are forever grateful to the many First Nations all across these lands where Feminists Deliver has the privilege to work in their unceded and unsurrendered ancestral territories.

Feminists Deliver is a grassroots collaboration of 25 B.C.-based gender justice and human rights organizations. We work to shed light on urgent issues facing marginalized communities in B.C. and the grassroots struggles that are leading the way for transformative change.

[3:10 p.m.]

We work to build transnational connections between grassroots intersectional feminist movements, with the goal of re-envisioning the global women’s agenda as one that centres grassroots intersectional feminist voices.

Our interest in policing is focused [audio interrupted] security of women, trans [audio interrupted] and other people who are marginalized on the basis of their gender. We highlight that Black [audio interrupted] and women of colour are overwhelmingly negatively impacted by the police.

Feminists Deliver members point to the many ways in which trans and cis members are vulnerable to violence in many forms, specifically the many cross-cutting factors, including disability, poverty, occupation, geographical location, health and race. It is not lost on us that the rates of violence against Black and Indigenous women, girls, trans and two-spirit people remain high and are at the centre of the ongoing human rights violations in B.C., where these communities are overpoliced and underprotected.

Our members and the people that they serve…. We recognize the rampant gender and racial profiling where Black and Indigenous women and girls experience a very unique version of racism — for sex, with misogyny — for the profound effect of experiencing the least amount of protection from the state and the public safety mechanisms, and are indeed targeted for police and state violence, especially when faced with calling 911.

We categorically object to the police killing anyone, especially women and children. It is not lost on us that we are here today to remember Chantel Moore, who was killed after calling 911 during a police wellness check. It is our belief that every legislative tool and policy must be used to ensure that the state-sanctioned murder or abuse of women and children is not permitted.

We also want to affirm that this process should centre the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent, where both explicitly require designing, implementing and enforcing effective measures to eliminate what is properly known as racial profiling, including police checks. We want the elimination of these institutionalized stereotypes — people of African descent, Indigenous People and people of colour — that continue to be applied by law enforcement officials up to this very day.

It matters to us very much that this stop. We want to ensure that it’s…. As we know, it’s well established that Indigenous and Black women are on the front line of the overcriminalization during these interactions with police.

We affirm the recommendation [audio interrupted] from the recommendation that…. There are a number of reports. On all the recommendations, we want the committee to take time, please, and to read and see the recommendations of the reports. I’m going to put the reports in the chat, because I don’t have time to read the names out today. There are several that are very important. One, actually, was done through Justice for Girls, which, maybe, Sue will speak to later.

We want to ensure that there are administrative, disciplinary and [audio interrupted] available to hold officials accountable when police are determined to have failed to act on reports of missing women or to carry out biased and inadequate investigations of violence against Indigenous women.

We affirm the critique noted by our members on the ongoing violation of spaces that have been established for safety for victim survivors of sexualized and domestic violence — such as women’s centres, transition houses — where police services refuse to either abide by entrance or access policies or have stepped away from the table during community and/or police policy development. We recommend centring [audio interrupted] spaces for women and people who are marginalized by their gender.

We affirm the necessity for all police forces to be mandated to implement the Sex Work Enforcement Guidelines similar to those in Vancouver. We support the safety of sex workers in all police interactions.

We want to ensure that all people have access to police complaint processes and the establishment of a civilian watchdog that conducts investigations of reporting incidences of serious police misconduct.

We would like to see that there is a legislative review of police [audio interrupted] and an audit of police funding on a regular [audio interrupted] to upstream options so that we’re seeing funding reduced in order to address issues that could be better addressed by professionals trained in the areas such as mental health or harm reduction.

[3:15 p.m.]

We certainly want to see community-based victim services for survivors — support services — enhanced all across…. We’re talking about domestic violence, intimate partner violence, male violence against women, transition houses and sexual assault centres to have core funding. This would be an important piece in looking at the funding matrix for police.

Just to close, we call for an independent, gender-based, Black and Indigenous [audio interrupted] of the Police Act and any proposed changes. We believe strongly that Indigenous and Black women from community-based and grassroots organizations must be involved in this analysis.

Then finally, First Nations are the proper title and rights holders and must have the opportunity to review and consult on the draft bill prior to introduction. They must be given the powers to recommend any changes, fully in line with the Declaration Act — must be done in partnership with First Nations.

I will conclude by acknowledging the vision, the agency, the strength, the brilliance of all our constituents and thank Feminists Deliver members for the opportunity to share these recommendations with you today. Thank you.

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

Next up is Sue Brown. She’s the director of legal advo­cacy and policy from Justice for Girls.

Go ahead, Sue.

JUSTICE FOR GIRLS

S. Brown: Hi. Thank you very much.

I’m joining everyone today from the unceded, ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish people. I live in Squamish.

I want to thank everybody today for your time and for listening to our submissions.

Justice for Girls is a non-profit organization. We’ve been active for approximately 20 years, and we’re active in Vancouver, as well as the province of British Columbia. We engage in advocacy on behalf of teenaged girls, mainly in response to violence and human rights violations.

In our experience, generally speaking, responses to violence against teen girls are inadequate. Police do not respond in a timely manner or take violence against them seriously, particularly girls in poverty with whom we work primarily, as well as Indigenous and Black teen girls and girls of colour.

We engage in advocacy in order to not only encourage state actors to take violence against them seriously and respond adequately with adequate responses, but, as well, to ensure that when they do escape violence and they’re leaving violence that they’re safe — that they have access to adequate housing, access to education, access to means to provide for themselves and don’t end up further entrenched in poverty, addictions or crisis of any sort.

We also engage in a significant amount of advocacy on behalf of girls who have been criminalized in response to their efforts to escape violence when they haven’t been protected adequately by the police or by the Crown or by the Ministry of Children and Family Development and where, in those circumstances, they frequently end up on the streets. Many of the girls that we work with come from rural, Indigenous and remote communities up north where they didn’t have access to the services that they needed and didn’t have access to safe, gender-specific places for them to go to escape violence in their homes or their communities.

The result is that they end up displaced into more urban centres like Prince George and Vancouver, where the human rights violations, poverty and the violence are only exacerbated. In that journey, they often face a significant amount of profiling and criminalization by police for their efforts to survive. They’re much more vulnerable to viol­ence in those circumstances, as well as to exploitation.

A big piece of our submission to you was bringing all of our advocacy together, which sometimes lives at the nexus of a number of contradictory policy areas, where on one hand, we’re calling for the police to do their jobs, to respond strongly. But on the other hand, we’re calling for the police to decriminalize and to step back from criminalizing populations who have historically been profiled at the nexus of their age and gender. They fall through the cracks, because they’re not youth, and they’re not adult women. They’re teen girls, and they have unique needs. They have a unique location in law and a unique location in our societies, and we need to be responding to them and their needs appropriately.

One of the biggest issues that we have drawn attention to since the beginning of calls for police accountability in British Columbia has been to ensure that police violence against teen girls, particularly sexual violence and exploitation, is taken seriously — that it’s named, that it’s addressed and that there’s meaningful and well-resourced accountability when violence against teen girls is perpetrated.

[3:20 p.m.]

We’ve seen police as pimps. We’ve seen police as traffickers. We’ve seen police as violators — sexually exploiting and using teen girls — in positions of power throughout the province, and for years, yet nobody has taken any steps to meaningfully address that head-on. When we called upon the province to include sexual violence in the mandate of the independent investigations office, that call went unheeded.

What we saw as the fallout from this and what we know to be the reality of the failure to take these kinds of issues seriously is that that lack of accountability translates into impunity. We saw that in the monstrosity of a failure in the Jim Fisher scandal and the Moazami scandal, where we are now currently watching the fallout of a failure in the administration of justice to one of the worst degrees, I think, that we’ve seen in British Columbia to date, where a trafficker is likely to go free as a result of corruption and sexual violence on behalf of officers and a failure of the Vancouver police department to take that seriously and a failure of the province to take it seriously enough.

That was the main recommendation that I wanted to focus on today, and I welcome your questions on that when that time comes. Thank you very much for your time.

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

Our next presenter is Laurel McBride from Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter.

Go ahead, Laurel.

VANCOUVER RAPE RELIEF
AND WOMEN’S SHELTER

L. McBride: Good afternoon. I’m Laurel McBride, a collective member with Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter.

It is located on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territory.

Thank you for the invitation to speak about our work.

Before I get into an overview of our submission, I wanted to reinforce the urgent necessity of this committee’s work to overhaul policing in this province. Just two weeks ago, Jared Lowndes, a Wet’suwet’en man, was shot to death by RCMP in Campbell River. We gathered in Stanley Park and Campbell River at events to memorialize him on Tuesday, and we join his relatives in calling for justice for Jared.

Vancouver Rape Relief is an anti-violence organization that formed 48 years ago. Each year, 1,200 women call us for the first time. What we know from those women who’ve been attacked by their husbands, lovers, fathers, uncles, male bosses, acquaintances, pimps or sex buyers is that there is no guarantee that she will receive an adequate response from the police when reporting the attack, particularly if she is Indigenous, racialized, poor, struggles with her mental health, uses substances or is living with a disability.

We hear from women on our crisis line that she knows he’s attacked other women or that she fears he will and that she wants to report to police in order to protect other women. When men are not held accountable for the violence, it’s more likely they will continue their behaviour of raping and assaulting. Men’s violence, along with and often intertwined with racism and poverty, interferes with women’s participation and ability to thrive in our communities. I want to use my brief time to share experiences from this year of the women who are being failed by police.

When women decide to report, we encourage them to do so in the language they are most comfortable with, given the importance of this evidence. Although police have written commitments to use interpreters, they will pressure women to use a language they have limited comfort and ability with, so we are put in the position of arranging our own volunteer interpreters to compensate for the police’s refusal to use their vast resources. This was the case earlier this month with the VPD.

We routinely see police pre-emptively conclude an investigation before they’ve taken all available steps. We observe a reliance on sexist myths about male violence against women and personal subjective reasoning that is not borne out of the evidence. This is a pattern that exists across RCMP and municipal forces regardless of jurisdiction. It is baked into the culture of policing.

Last weekend a 17-year-old girl told us that the RCMP constable that responded to her report of a man’s indecent act said that he “can just tell when someone is lying” and determined there was nothing further to do in response to her report. We’re assisting her with filing a complaint.

[3:25 p.m.]

Kelowna RCMP told a woman who reported a sexual assault that what had occurred was not a crime and closed the file. She later found out that the officer recorded that she did not want charges laid. This was entirely false, and we are supporting her through a complaint.

With battered women, we often observe that police fail to act after the initial call to ensure that breaches of no-contact orders are responded to seriously and that supporting evidence, like medical records, are included in the package to Crown. Our advocacy with the VPD and Langley RCMP was crucial to two of our residents having appropriate charges laid against their violent husbands.

Men are increasingly using the Internet as a tool of harassment and with near impunity. One woman whose husband continues to post revenge pornography of her told us that a lot of cops will give up before even helping. They said it’s too hard to prove, and it could be anyone posting the images, since it’s been on the Internet already. They did not bother checking the IP address or do any further investigation.

Straightforward accommodations to make women more comfortable and more confident in reporting to police, such as having a female officer take their statement or for an advocate to be present, are treated as exorbitant requests, recently referred to as a wish list by North Vancouver RCMP. Even with a feminist advocate on her side, the vast majority of women will be failed by the police.

I must stress that transforming the criminal justice system must be done in tandem with a commitment to ending poverty and racism. Many women in this province are unable to meet their basic needs through our social welfare system. The abandonment of the state forces women to enter and endure violent relationships, whether it’s at the hands of a battering husband or a pimp.

I will conclude by saying that this refusal on the part of the police to take substantial actions on violence against women is one of political will set by those in leadership of police departments and boards. This is a problem that cannot be remedied through the distribution of more funds. Rather, it requires a complete reorganization of priorities, which I outline in my written submission.

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

Our final presenter from this panel is Bina Salimath, chair of Vancouver Women’s Health Collective.

Go ahead, Bina.

VANCOUVER WOMEN’S HEALTH COLLECTIVE

B. Salimath: Thank you. Namaskar. My name is Bina Salimath. I’m the board chair of the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective that I will refer to as the collective in this presentation. Originally from India, I identify as a Hindu woman.

I’m on the unceded, ancient and traditional lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh. I acknowledge I’m a settler here, and my presence on this land is because of the intersection of colonization of India and Canada.

The collective is a non-profit organization helping those who identify as women and gender-non-conforming foster health, wellness and equity through feminist approaches to advocacy, shared knowledge and low-barrier programs and services. We value shared information and experience over authoritative knowledge, especially when it comes to our own bodies. We support women’s right to make informed choices about their health and health care, and we strive to provide gender-affirming health and wellness support.

We were compelled to submit to the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act as one of the community organizations that has to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of retraumatizing — I emphasize the word “retraumatizing” — encounters between community members and the Vancouver police department.

Amongst the examples we outlined in our written submission, I would like to emphasize and link the following situations as some that highlight how the VPD lacks an intersectional — including racial — lens and a lack of understanding that diversifying VPD with Indigenous and BIPOC representation, without actively deconstructing that colonial policing causes greater harm. The VPD is shaping white supremacy inherent in policing to be multicultural.

The examples. A male officer attending a disclosure of sexual assault, who stood in a military position — an attitude that is not conducive to building a trusting and safe environment for disclosures.

A mother in possession of an updated court order allowing her to see her child at school was apprehended on school premises because neither the principal nor the police took the time to look at the updated court order she had in her hand.

A grandmother carrying food we had donated to her was apprehended nearby and accused of stealing the food she was carrying.

Calls to ACT teams, Car 87, and police intervention, including handcuffing of women in crisis and attempts to intimidate our staff who advocated against use of symbols of police power in mental health support.

All of the above have in common how the current policing model disproportionately disadvantages and victimizes Indigenous People, Black people, Brown people and people of colour, people living in straitened circumstances and with varying physical or mental abilities. Amongst them, women are at a greater disadvantage.

[3:30 p.m.]

Back in 2012, in Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, Commissioner Oppal conceded that the police had “the mistaken belief that the missing and murdered Indigenous women were transient, had high-risk lifestyles.” He also stated: “Faulty stereotyping of street-involved women in the DTES” by the police and “discrimination in the form of systemic institutional bias and political/public indifference.”

In 2019, seven years later, other reports continued to highlight systemic and widespread police bias against Indigenous women — Red Women Rising, a report in 2019; the UN convention on the elimination of discrimination against women, CEDAW. This begs the question: what has changed? According to the national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls from 2019, there has been very limited movement to implement recommendations from previous reports. What little efforts have been made have focused more on reactive rather than preventative measures. This is a significant barrier to addressing the root cause of violence.

We are past the time for raising awareness and implementing energy-efficient training. We’ve come to the sad conclusion that the police institution has not learned, because it is resisting change and is still in a place of general failure to pursue preventative strategies and of inadequate accountability structures, as the Forsaken report outlined. Having diversity within the institution will not change the oppressive system, as the folks who are recruited, and their members of the marginalized communities, have to apply laws that are created to benefit the wealthy, the able-bodied, the gender-conforming white folks.

The rift within the Indigenous and the police communities is significant, for their own members have to intervene as police officers, not to mention the vicarious trauma carried by police officers who witness the colonial impacts of systemic racism and discrimination in their daily work. Any white, privileged person would refuse to become part of an institution that negates the basic human rights of their community members. Exerting measures on the folks it is supposed to protect, it is expected that any other person would gladly do so in order to join the police force. The recruitment efforts of police, fire and military institutions are bound to fail for as long as they focus on representation.

When Indigenous women or people of colour go into policing to make a change, opportunities for advancement are fewer, and the risk is much greater, so that by the time they get into leadership roles, they will have been ‘formatted’ to comply with the mainstream model. We support divesting in the police and moving forward to more small, community-led approaches to safety and wellness in our community — with the emphasis on community-led.

Commissioner Oppal was a supporter of this new approach. He placed emphasis on proactive rather than reactive policing, further stating: “Perhaps more importantly, community policing cannot work in a situation where there is deep distrust and a sense of alienation between the community and the police.” The commissioner’s report cites this to watch as an example of how community-based policing means real community involvement by the police in partnership with the community.

The 2019 Red Women Rising report paints a more nuanced approach for us to watch, as unsuccessful in building trust between the VPD and the women residents in DTES…. Furthermore, in the DTES women’s safety audit, only 15 percent of women in the DTES said that they would go to the police if they felt unsafe, although it acknowledged that it is significant that several DTES agencies now have greater organizational support and trust with the VPD as a result of this project, according to an independent evaluation.

Community-based policing is different than community-led policing alternatives. The issue is that when the police are involved, things have to be done as the police want, not how the community would do it. The voices of Indigenous and Black women, brown women, women of colour, women living with disabilities, as well as transgender, gender-nonconforming and non-binary people, need to be prioritized and are fundamental in eliminating violence in law enforcement.

We cannot stress enough the importance of recognizing that the sole existence of the police institution is based on colonial, patriarchal, heteronormative, oppressive views and the importance of applying a decolonizing, intersectional and racial lens to the review process. We urge the B.C. government to act on its commitment to reconciliation, justice and redress by implementing the recommendations from the previously published reports and boldly transforming an archaic institution, rather than tweaking it to continue to serve the privileged few that it was founded by.

I don’t have time to go through the reports, but as Angela did, I will try to in the chat as well. On behalf of the collective, I thank you for this space and time.

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

Before we go to questions from members, I’ll invite my friend Adam to introduce himself.

A. Olsen: Thank you. I apologize for being late. I almost made it here on time. I think I came in halfway through Angela’s presentation. My apologies for being late.

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

I’m happy to be working from my home office here in the W̱SÁNEĆ territory, in the W̱JOȽEȽP village.

D. Routley (Chair): Thanks, Adam.

Thanks to the presenters.

I’ll open the floor to members for questions.

[3:35 p.m.]

H. Sandhu: Thank you so much, Bina, Sue, Angela and Laurel. Kudos to you for the work you’re doing. Myself being a woman of colour, I’ve been watching women deliver in conferences, and all these feminists…. Whenever I see sisters like all of you, it encourages me even further. I just want to say thank you for your presentations and sharing some of the concerns and the work that you’re doing with the challenges that many women are facing.

I know, Laurel, you also touched upon…. There was some Kelowna incident, and no resolution was offered — and the cases are dismissed. I wonder if these women you’re working with, or any of your organizations, have had the opportunity to contact the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner. If so, what was your experience like with that, with OPCC? Anybody can answer, if there is any experience that you can share. I’m just curious.

A. MacDougall: I have experience.

D. Routley (Chair): Go ahead, Angela.

A. MacDougall: Thank you. It is a practice through…. In addition to Feminists Deliver, I’m also executive director of Battered Women’s Support Services, which is a member of Feminists Deliver. What I know in terms of all of the anti-violence organizations….

What we’ve done is really encouraged following through with complaints and working with the independent office. As a matter of fact, we are writing complaints monthly, and it takes a lot of time to write a complaint and to do it in a way that is going to be effective. It’s a lot of work, and there are a lot of complaints to do. I’m actually thinking that I need to have a dedicated staff person that is just responsible for writing complaints because of the number of complaints that we do.

So the answer is: yes, we use that process. Is it effective? It depends, but it draws down on a lot of resources. We have to spend time following up on police problems instead of doing the front-line work with survivors.

H. Sandhu: Thank you so much, Angela. The reason for my question was, being in the government in an elected role, just trying to find ways. What was the outcome, and what are the ways that you think these women can be fully supported? I really appreciate your answer.

K. Kirkpatrick: As Harwinder said, thank you so much for the work that you do in the community. I was at Family Services of Greater Vancouver prior to being here. I think, Angela Marie, I may have met you through Cheryl Melder, and I really appreciate the work that your group does.

I’m curious about…. Bina said something about the Car 87 model and some of the challenges with that. With the work that I’ve done previously, we did a lot of victim support workers embedded with police, and that would be for domestic violence calls, sex-trafficking calls. They were a slightly different model than Car 87.

Do you find that those models are effective, or is the connecting the police and the uniform and that whole kind of colonial approach to things…? Even though you’re providing a victim support person there, are there better ways to do that than the way we’re doing it? That’s a bit of a general question, but maybe I can ask Angela Marie, direct it to you.

A. MacDougall: Bina, do you have…?

B. Salimath: You can go ahead, Angela Marie, and if there’s something to add, I’ll add in. Thanks.

A. MacDougall: Well, a couple of things. Firstly, just with respect to the police…. Of course, I’m very familiar with the model that you refer to, with counsellors that work with the Vancouver police department as well as the New West police department. I’m aware of that model. Now, I know that that one only works with the highest-risk cases, so there are a number of cases that aren’t captured under that model and that are referred to community-based organizations.

I think the piece that is…. I have to speak very specifically to what I heard from our colleagues that are working with the crisis centre in British Columbia, the crisis line in British Columbia.

[3:40 p.m.]

There are mixed results with respect to Car 86, Car 87 — mixed results. In general, there is a desire to continue to find ways to not have law enforcement involved, not have police services involved, except under very specific cases. Not to assume…. I think that’s something that there should be…. This process should really look hard at that and, also, look at other jurisdictions that are piloting this idea right now, where police aren’t involved in wellness checks, for example — that it is community-based organizations that are doing that work. I think this is an opportunity to do something different than Car 86, Car 87.

B. Salimath: If I can add to what Angela was saying. I completely agree with what Angela said about mixed results. One of the things I want to bring forward is that where we have seen it not working is where there’s marginalization involved. When there is racial marginalization involved or mental health marginalization involved or some other kind of minoritization involved, often there is a subtle bias that goes in there. We haven’t seen it work in what it is meant to do.

D. Routley (Chair): Did you have a follow-up, Karin?

K. Kirkpatrick: No, thank you very much. I was just going to ask Bina about that. I will say, and I’m not sure who mentioned it, but the Jim Fisher incident — bigger than an incident…. That was some of our victim support workers that were working with the young people who had been sex-trafficked. The inability to move that forward to get a conviction because of that is, I think, just a huge demonstration of the challenges that we’re talking about in this very process.

A. Olsen: Thank you all for your presentations. They are all very consistent with much of the presentations that we’ve heard to this committee, unfortunately. The state of our society right now has…. There’s a lot of repair that needs to be done and a lot of work that we have to do. I’m thankful to be on this committee and have the opportunity to be doing it.

Also, with that context, I think it’s important for me to acknowledge — because I don’t think that the public are going to see — the long list of reports and commissions and inquiries and work that’s been done, year in and year out, that’s been posted in the comments section.

Those Who Take Us Away: Abusive Policing and Failures in Protection of Indigenous Women and Girls in Northern British Columbia, Canada by the Human Rights Watch.

The Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission.

Justice Reform for B.C. by the Community Legal Assistance Society, Pivot Legal, West Coast LEAF and B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

Getting to the Roots, a Downtown Eastside safety audit by the Downtown Eastside Women’s Coalition.

Missing Women Commission of Inquiry report from the Oppal Commission.

Red Women Rising: Indigenous Women Survivors in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside by the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre.

“Calls for Justice” from the final report of the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action.

I just wanted to read those into the record because they’re in the comments section, but it, I think, adds further emphasis to the points that are being made. We can continue to do these reports and inquiries and commissions and committees like we’re on right now, but it’s incumbent upon us to follow through — the experiences that you’ve shared in the four presentations that we’ve heard this afternoon — so that another committee in the near future isn’t sitting and listening to the lack of action that this committee has. I just wanted to put an emphasis on that and thank you for your advocacy of our mothers and sisters and grandmothers and nieces and aunties. I raise my hands to you.

D. Routley (Chair): I don’t see any more hands up. Unless members would like to…. Not seeing that, I will thank our presenters very, very much. Obviously, it’s really deeply important work. We’re hearing some really powerful presentations like yours. It’s also really helpful, informative and helps us feel as though we will have the material to make significant recommendations. We very much appreciate your help.

With that, I think the committee will recess.

The committee recessed from 3:45 p.m. to 4:06 p.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): Welcome back to this meeting for the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act. I won’t ask the members to reintroduce themselves, but when you ask a question, you might like to do that.

Just a reminder to our panel that each presenter will have five minutes to speak followed by 15 minutes for questions and discussion with the entire panel. There is a timer available to assist.

Now I’d like to welcome Halena Seiferling, executive director of Living in Community Society, for their presentation.

Welcome.

LIVING IN COMMUNITY SOCIETY

H. Seiferling: Hello. Thank you. Yes, I’ll get right into it.

Thank you, committee members. Good afternoon. My name is Halena Seiferling, and I’m the executive director of Living in Community.

I’m calling in today from the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and the Tsleil-Waututh peoples.

Living in Community is a provincial non-profit society that brings together diverse stakeholders to collaboratively improve community health and safety and that centres the needs and voices of sex workers.

Today I will share four recommendations, which we provided in writing to committee members in writing this past April, that speak to the ways in which sex workers in B.C. have experienced harms from policing and that point to alternate solutions that prioritize dignity, safety and harm reduction.

First, I’ll provide some background on both federal and provincial law and policy that gives some context to our recommendations. As you may know, in 2013 the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously determined that Canada’s sex work–related laws were unconstitutional and infringed upon sex workers’ Charter rights. Unfortunately, the federal government’s response the following year — Bill C-36, known as the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act — only reinforced the same unconstitutional laws and practices which the Supreme Court had struck down.

Our current sex work laws are known as “end demand” laws. In this model, all aspects of the sex industry other than selling sexual services are illegal. The impacts of this type of law system include forcing sex workers to work in clandestine and unsafe environments to obey law enforcement, preventing sex workers from working in groups together or working indoors — which would increase their safety — preventing sex workers from communicating openly about their rates and their boundaries and making sex workers vulnerable to eviction if their landlord finds out they do sex work. Overall, stigma and judgement often prevent sex workers from accessing health, social and criminal justice services and supports.

A comprehensive review was to be undertaken of Bill C-36 within five years of the law’s passage. It has now been over six years, and no review has yet occurred. In March of this past year, the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform, which is an alliance of 25 sex workers rights groups from across the country, launched a constitutional challenge against the laws included in Bill C-36.

While these are the current federal laws that we have in place, there is much that can be done at the provincial level to impact sex workers’ safety, particularly regarding how the laws are enforced. That’s what I’ll focus on now.

In 2012, commissioner Wally T. Oppal wrote a report called Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry. There, he recommended that police [audio interrupted] take an approach of non-intervention for consenting adults in the sex trade.

In 2013, the Vancouver police department developed Sex Work Enforcement Guidelines, which largely followed suit. These guidelines stated that: “Alternative measures and assistance must be considered, with enforcement a last resort.”

[4:10 p.m.]

In 2017, the British Columbia Association of Chiefs of Police, or BCACP for short, also developed sex work enforcement guidelines that supported a non-intervention approach. Once these guidelines were developed, they superseded and effectively replaced the Vancouver police department guidelines.

Unfortunately, in the past few years, little to no progress has been made on disseminating harm reduction–based sex-work enforcement guidelines throughout police forces in the province. Moreover, the overarching BCACP guidelines are not always enforced. Sex workers continue to report being routinely surveilled and harassed by law enforcement, and this has been exacerbated through the COVID-19 pandemic, as many street-based sex workers in B.C. have reported an increase in police harassment.

These effects can often be more dangerous, as well, for Indigenous, immigrant and migrant sex workers, as police may make racialized assumptions that these women are being trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation and may conduct raids or sting operations that put these sex workers in danger.

So that’s a bit of the context. Based on that, I’ll summarize our four recommendations quickly here for you. One, given that our laws governing sex work have been found to be unconstitutional and now facing another constitutional challenge, we join with many of our stakeholders and allies in recommending that police forces in B.C. cease enforcement of sex work–related offences.

Two, as recommended in Commissioner Oppal’s Forsaken report, we recommend mandated, community-developed, community-led training for all police officers about sex-work stigma, harm reduction in sex-work response and the differences between sex work and trafficking.

Three, we recommend that police must stop targeting sex workers under the guise of wellness checks, including street stops, or anti-trafficking rescue missions, including sting operations. These tactics are incredibly harmful, and I believe that Alison Clancey with SWAN Vancouver will speak a bit more to this in a moment.

Four, we recommend issuing an immediate moratorium on the use of street stops or street checks. Prohibiting street stops is the only constitutional response to an otherwise illegal policing practice that continues to target Black, Indigenous and poor people.

I thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today, and I’ll welcome any questions.

D. Routley (Chair): Well, thanks very much.

Next up is Alison Clancey. She is the executive director of SWAN Vancouver.

Go ahead, Alison.

SWAN VANCOUVER

A. Clancey: Thanks. I’m calling in today from the traditional territories of the Ktunaxa, Syilx and Sinixt First Nations.

SWAN provides front-line supports and advocacy to migrant and immigrant women working in massage parlours and other indoor spaces, such as private residences or micro-brothels, where several women may work together. For nearly two decades, supporting both documented and non-status racialized women who do sex work, SWAN has been in close contact with both municipal police departments and RCMP detachments.

First, to provide some legal and policy background to our work, immigrant and migrant sex workers are policed through two different legal mechanisms in Canada: criminal laws that govern sex work and human trafficking and an immigration prohibition on sex work for any temporary resident. SWAN’s clients include temporary residents such as international students, those on temporary work permits, visitors, among others.

These legal mechanisms inform how police understand immigrant or migrant sex workers — i.e., a misrepresentation that these women are trafficked and therefore need to be rescued by the state, which impacts all police interactions with them. A lot of what has driven the multi-layered criminalization is the widespread narrative around human trafficking. Human trafficking is an area of inquiry that receives an immense amount of attention from law enforcement. It is conflated with sex work, exploitation and migration for work.

The women who access SWAN’s services do experience violence, often horrific violence, but human trafficking is rare. In our experience, police are unwilling to learn from the community the difference between sex work and human trafficking. This consequently means that any interaction with police has potentially life-changing impacts on these women.

SWAN has witnessed, time and time again, that if a migrant or immigrant sex worker reports violence to police, or perhaps a well-meaning neighbour, for example, calls 911, there are only ever two outcomes for that woman: either she becomes the target of a sex-work or trafficking investigation herself or she is arrested, detained and deported. Not only do these policing practices result in trauma and victimization; it makes it extremely dangerous for immigrant or migrant sex workers to seek help from authorities.

[4:15 p.m.]

Now I will speak to SWAN’s experience with policing in B.C. Years ago SWAN would support women who expressed a desire to report violence to police. However, we always provided this option with many caveats — namely, that in our experience, reporting violence can often lead to the women being criminalized themselves.

For many years, SWAN attempted to engage with police to educate them on the harms of misguided anti–sex work and anti–human trafficking enforcement actions in an attempt to improve conditions for immigrant or migrant sex workers and hold police accountable for any harms they inflicted on the women. We engaged in training. We sought to build relationships with countless specialized officers across detachments. We distributed educational materials and showed up at many policy tables as advocates.

Over time, engagement with police became the most difficult aspect of our work, and we rarely interact with police now. Many times, we felt we had made a breakthrough with a single officer, but shortly thereafter, we would get calls about workplace anti-trafficking rescue raids carried out by the same detachment.

Over time, every minute spent trying to educate and train officers to be more responsible to the needs of immigrant or migrant sex workers started to feel wasted, because after almost two decades of advocacy, nothing had changed. It is for this reason we do not recommend sex-work training for police. In our view, training is not enough to shift the culture of policing.

For immigrant or migrant sex workers, the victim-criminal dichotomy is fuelled by racist ideas that these women do not have agency. Further, in our experience, police are not open to learning from community partners, despite claims to the contrary, and any desire to build relationships with community comes from an ulterior motive of gathering intelligence, which can often be used against the very communities police purport to serve.

Until federal laws change, and as long as police rely on uneducated discretion to enforce the laws, it is extremely difficult for SWAN to have any interactions with police on behalf of the women who access our services. Currently it is very rare that any immigrant or migrant sex worker would choose to report violence to police, which means that predators target them, knowing this. Instead, women who exist virtually outside any labour or legal protections rely on themselves and/or community-based solutions, such as bad date reporting.

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

Our final presenter in this panel is Andrea Krüsi from University of British Columbia’s Centre for Gender and Sexual Health Equity.

Go ahead, Andrea.

UBC CENTRE FOR
GENDER AND SEXUAL HEALTH EQUITY

A. Krüsi: Hello. Thank you so much to the two presenters who went ahead of me.

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to speak today in front of this special committee.

Thank you, Halena, for kind of outlining the laws. That really allows me to speak specifically to our recommendations as well.

My name is Andrea Krüsi. I’m an assistant professor in the department of medicine at UBC and a research scientist at the Centre for Gender and Sexual Health Equity. I’m here today to present on behalf of the AESHA project team.

I also want to acknowledge that our research and our work takes place on the unceded, traditional territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish Nations.

Much of the empirical research that we draw on in our submission, which I hope you had a chance to review, was generated in the context of an evaluation of sex workers health access project, which is a project housed at the Centre for Gender and Sexual Health Equity at UBC. The AESHA project is a ten-year, longitudinal, community-based research project focused on the health and safety of sex workers.

The AESHA project includes a cohort of over 900 sex workers who work in diverse sex-work environments in Metro Vancouver. It also includes a qualitative and ethnographic arm that is really focused on exploring the lived experiences of sex workers in Metro Vancouver.

The findings based on this project have been published in many peer-reviewed journals as well, including The Lancet, the British medical journal, etc. I hope you had a chance to review the report and the cited peer-reviewed evidence.

Our first recommendation is to stop enforcement of all sex work–related offences, as outlined under the current federal sex-work laws, also termed Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act.

[4:20 p.m.]

Collectively, AESHA research adds to a growing body of empirical evidence globally that demonstrates how the criminalization and policing of various aspects of sex work constrains sex workers’ occupational health and safety.

Our first-up recommendation for this, No. 1, is to end enforcement of offences related to the purchase of sexual services. As highlighted in more detail in our submission, AESHA evidence from Metro Vancouver shows that the criminalization and policing of purchasing sexual services severely limits the safety strategies of sex workers, including their ability to screen clients, to negotiate the type of service provided, the location where the service will take place, as well as sexual health, including condom use.

Additionally, the second sub-recommendation really focuses also on stopping the enforcement of provisions around communicating in public for the purpose of selling sex, which is still criminalized under the PCEPA. Our research really indicates that prohibitions on communicating in public spaces really pushes the most marginalized, street-based sex workers to dark alleys and industrial areas, where they have limited protection from violence or ability to really screen their clients and negotiate the terms of the services.

We also ask to stop the enforcement of sex work–related third party offences, including advertising sexual services and other supports. Sex workers frequently rely on third parties for a number of supportive services, including receptionists, managers and security guards. Contrary to common stereotypes, our research indicates that the overwhelming majority of third parties are current or former sex workers — and many are women — really undermining the commonly held stereotypes that third parties are all exploitative male pimps.

Our second full recommendation is to implement a Good Samaritan policy that allows sex workers to overcome the current barriers to accessing police protections. Our research shows that sex workers, and specifically racialized and Indigenous sex workers, face significant barriers to accessing police protection in case of violence.

Our third recommendation is to eradicate systemic racism and xenophobia within police agencies. Policing has a long history of disproportionately impacting and further marginalizing racialized communities, including Indigenous sex workers, who spoke to us at length about their barriers of reporting violence to police.

Finally, we ask for divesting from policing of sex work to reinvest into sex worker–led community services. These are really evidence-based interventions that support the occupational health and safety of sex workers.

Thank you so much. I look forward to your questions.

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

With that, I guess I’d hand it over to the members. If you have questions, put your names up.

K. Kirkpatrick: Thank you very much for that presentation.

I know that for years we’ve been talking about the decriminalization of sex work. The recommendations that you’ve made…. You look at other jurisdictions, and you can see that where this is the case it results in a much safer place for women. It’s been difficult that we seem to be a bit behind in our ability to recognize this and be more progressive about considering these things. Thank you very much for the work you do.

With Alison, I had a question. First, to Alison, I actually didn’t know about SWAN before I read this. It was very, very interesting, and it was a piece of this area that I was unfamiliar with. The concern about sex trafficking and the raids — that police are going in on the basis that there is the potential for these women to be trafficked…. How often is that a reality? Is sex trafficking…? It’s the balance of the concern of if there is sex trafficking, how do we police that and help the victims of that? Or is that really something that, indoors, is not something that happens?

I’m not articulating it very well; I think you know the question I’m asking.

[4:25 p.m.]

A. Clancey: Thank you for the question. There is a lot of misinformation out there disseminated by those outside the sex industry who have no idea what’s going on, particularly in massage parlours. SWAN has been doing outreach in massage parlours for nearly 20 years. As I said in my presentation, there are lots of different kinds of violence that happen, but it’s rarely human trafficking.

Even if sex trafficking was happening, these rescue raids are not the way to approach this situation. As you can imagine, women are working. The next thing, the door flies open. You have armed police officers in flak jackets coming in. The women are terrified and traumatized. So when they do experience violence, they are not going to call the same police officers that carry out these rescue raids.

The answer to this is decriminalization. If these women had access to other labour protections such as occupational health and safety or other employment standards that other workers avail of in B.C., they could have other avenues — other than the police — to address their employment issues.

I think…. No, I’ll just stop there.

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

D. Routley (Chair): Any other questions, Members?

A. Olsen: I had a similar question to the one that Karin asked. Other than that, thank you for your presentations.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much. We appreciate it very much. We’ve got a big task in front of us. We’re determined to do right by British Columbians by making good, reasonable recommendations. You’re helping us with a unique view from some of the most vulnerable people in our province. On the committee’s behalf, we thank you for your presentations and your caring.

A. Clancey: Thank you so much.

A. Krüsi: Thank you.

D. Routley (Chair): Okay. The committee is in recess.

The committee recessed from 4:27 p.m. to 4:43 p.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): Welcome, everybody, back to this meeting of the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act. Our next presentation will be from Ron, Kelly and Audrey Rauch. After their presentation, we’ll have questions from members.

We’d like to thank you very much for attending, and we look forward to your presentation. Thank you, and go ahead.

KELLY, RON AND AUDREY RAUCH

K. Rauch: We based the following on our family’s experience. On December 25, 2019, a Victoria police officer shot my sister, Lisa Rauch, three times in the back of the head with an ARWEN weapon as she sat on a couch with her back to them.

They were responding to a call of disturbance at a housing complex in which it is alleged that she threatened someone with a knife. It is also alleged that she started a fire in the suite. No one has been required to substantiate these allegations. However, after inquiring if there had actually been a knife involved, we were told by the IIO that a knife was found on the floor near the door, but it was never fingerprinted, so it was not known if Lisa had ever touched the knife. They said they were investigating the police, not Lisa.

[4:45 p.m.]

Much has been made about the fire in the suite. How­ever, Lisa, having been held in the room for a considerable length of time by police tying the door shut so she couldn’t escape, was not found to have been suffering from smoke inhalation when the transplant team considered her lungs for transplantation. Just a lingering bacterial infection prevented using her lungs for transplant purposes.

No mental health team was summoned, and negotiators were not dispatched from the police station mere blocks away.

When my parents were contacted in Arizona, where they were spending the winter, they were told by a member of the IIO that Lisa had run at police with a knife and she had been shot in the chest. They told me and Lisa’s daughter the same thing when we met with them at the hospital in Victoria. The doctor who attended the meeting left the meeting to check Lisa’s body for injuries and reported back that the only injuries were to the back of her head, injuries that required stitches to close the wounds.

We were lied to about Lisa’s injuries and the situation that led to her death. The police officer who did the shooting was not required to be interviewed by the IIO because the Police Act allows him to refuse to cooperate with the investigation.

After the police entered the suite, a police officer claims that he thought he saw Lisa standing on the other side of the couch, with her arms at her sides, facing them. He said, “Contact,” to signal that he saw her, and the shooter began firing the ARWEN. The IIO report said the ARWEN operator would have had a very similar perspective.

It turns out that what the interviewed officer thought he saw wasn’t, in fact, accurate. So did they both have it wrong? Did they both see her standing, facing them with her arms at her sides, or was that just the hallucination of one of them?

She was actually sitting on the couch, with her back to the police officers as they were sneaking into the suite. The IIO testified for the shooter by claiming that the shooter would have had the same perspective. Again, the Police Act allows this officer to refuse to be interviewed. Since when does anyone shoot based on what someone else sees?

The same officer claims Lisa didn’t react until the third round was fired, when she slumped forward. This defies the laws of physics. According to an article in the Calgary Sun from June 18, 2018: “If we look at known objects out in the world, we can equate the AR-1 baton to about 1½ times the energy of someone being struck by a 100-mile-per-hour fastball or roughly the same energy as somebody being struck by the fastest slapshot ever recorded.”

A head sitting atop a neck could not remain still after being shot with that force. He fired three times. She was hit three times, according to the autopsy. Again, we were lied to.

In addition, the Calgary Sun article said: “The less lethal program was developed as a result of officers having a limited ability in using such tools as Tasers in extended ranges before escalating to the use of lethal firearms.”

This was not an extended range situation. The shooting took place in a tiny apartment at close range. Two of the ARWEN rounds struck the back of Lisa’s head in exactly the same place.

These weapons were not developed for use at short range. However, the IIO report describes the ARWEN as “designed for short-range control of a threatening individual.” According to our research, the IIO is the only group who has ever described this weapon as one developed for use at short range. Is it unfortunate or was it deliberate that the IIO report did not include this in the report — the dimensions of the room in which the shooting took place?

The IIO report cleared the officer of wrongdoing, referred to Lisa’s death as a tragic accident and said that the use of force was necessary and reasonably proportional, with an outcome that was unintended. The matter was not referred to Crown counsel for consideration of charges.

The Police Act allowed the police officer responsible for Lisa’s death to refuse to cooperate with the IIO investigation. Additionally, seven firefighters and six police officers were interviewed, but only one civilian witness was interviewed. Were the officers involved separated immediately following the shooting and prevented from any contact with each other prior to being interviewed by the IIO? This should have been the standard police practice.

The Police Act protects anyone cleared by the IIO from ever being charged criminally for the death or injury being investigated. The IIO is given incredible power in being able to clear an officer without that officer participating in the investigation — they could actually make it up, and no one would be the wiser — and the prosecution service can refuse to bring charges based on the IIO report.

The Police Act needs to be strengthened to at least have the appearance of accountability by the police, the IIO and the prosecution service. Body cameras should be required. It’s 2021.

As stated in the beginning of this statement, the shooting took place on December 25, 2019. The IIO report was presented to our family on October 14, 2020, and made public on the 16th of October, 2020. That took nearly ten months.

[4:50 p.m.]

We, along with numerous others, had registered complaints to the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner, and they began their investigation. Each month we receive a progress report from them. The May 11, 2021, report confirms that they have now received the IIO disclosure package. It took nearly seven months for the IIO to provide this package. Why?

The past two months, we have not received the progress reports until we called to request them. Why? We were told the coroner’s inquest will take from two to five years to take place. This absolute torture our family has endured in this drawn-out process is excruciating for us.

That’s all I’ve got.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you.

Members, I’ll open it for questions.

K. Kirkpatrick: Hi there. I’m Karin Kirkpatrick. I’m the MLA for West Vancouver–Capilano. I’m not going to ask you a question. I’m just going to say I’m so sorry for what you’ve gone through. The bravery that you’ve got in sharing this with us, the letter that you sent us…. This shouldn’t happen.

It’s important that we hear about these things. So I just want to thank you so much, and I’m so sorry for what you’ve had to go through. But your bravery here, hopefully, can help someone else in the future not have to have the experience that you’ve had.

K. Rauch: Thank you.

T. Halford: I’m just going to echo what Karin said. I don’t have any questions for you guys. I think what you’ve detailed is pretty straightforward, yet so heartbreaking. The courage that you guys are all showing as a family, and have shown since your tragic loss, is heartbreaking. But I am hopeful it will lead to changes that will honour this person’s legacy. This person deserves to have a legacy, and I’m sure she’s very proud of the work that you guys are doing on her behalf.

That puts a lot of pressure on us, but that’s good pressure. When we’re done this we’re accountable to all British Columbians, but we are, really, accountable to the people like you that have put yourselves forward in such a gut-wrenching way. I look at it, when we do this work, that: when we’re done, will it meet your satisfaction? Will you feel that it was worthwhile? That’s really what we’re targeting — trying to do.

So thank you.

R. Rauch: Who are you, Trevor? What’s your position, or what are you?

T. Halford: Sorry, I should have introduced myself. MLA for Surrey–White Rock.

R. Rauch: Thank you.

H. Sandhu: My name is Harwinder Sandhu. I’m MLA for Vernon-Monashee. Again, I don’t have any questions. I just want to say I am so sorry, and sincere apologies that the system has failed. There are so many untold stories. There are so many stories that are being shared. Kudos to your courage. My heart goes out to your entire family.

What you’re doing…. I know we can’t change what happened to your sister, and it’s absolutely heartbreaking listening to how she was…. Where the shots were and the entire…. I can’t imagine how hard it is for all of you to relive that devastating event while you’re trying to explain and share your story with us, but that definitely is going to help many, many more families, and we can save many precious lives.

I’m sure your sister is so proud. My heart breaks for the loved ones she left behind. I just cannot thank you enough. I want to reassure, as a member of this committee, that we do take this work very, very seriously, and any input, any story that you share, is very important for us to know. You’re not just helping the situation you’re in or seeking justice, you’re helping many, many families who’ve gone through similar…. You can help many, so we can work to prevent these unfair, devastating, absolutely avoidable tragedies.

[4:55 p.m.]

Kudos to you, and thank you so much. My heartfelt condolences to your family.

R. Rauch: Thank you.

A. Olsen: Thank you for presenting your story to us and for giving us the opportunity to…. I share my colleagues….

My name is Adam Olsen. I’m the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands. I should introduce myself. Sorry.

I share the sentiments of my colleagues. I just want to thank you for your presentation, which clearly outlines the recommendations that you’re making around accountability and transparency. I think that it needs to be named and acknowledged here that the power that society gives to police forces and security forces and services in our communities…. The trust and the confidence in those organizations are only maintained as long as the public feels confident that there is transparency and accountability.

You presenting the situation that your family is still going through today, years after this tragic situation, really, I think, helps. It’s another of many, but it’s an important indication of these situations that erode the public confidence in policing. Our work here is to ensure that we can maintain the confidence in the security services that we have in our community. Your story and your experience are important to informing us, as you’ve heard from my colleagues.

I want to thank you for your clarity in demanding accountability and transparency in the mechanisms that we’ve developed for that. I raise my hands to you. Thank you.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation and your contribution. I’m sure that you feel proud of your sister, and you should feel, I believe, proud of yourselves. All the members have expressed this and great gratitude to you. Thank you very much.

K. Rauch: Am I able to ask a quick question?

D. Routley (Chair): Absolutely.

K. Rauch: Will we get an advance report on any of the outcomes or recommendations from this work? Will we be kept in the loop on anything that comes of this?

D. Routley (Chair): The process is pretty limited legislatively. The committee’s deliberations are all done in camera, and then the report gets first introduced in the Legislature so that all the members of the House can consider it and then vote on accepting it. At that point, it will be public.

The answer, I guess, is no. We’ll certainly keep you informed of when that happens.

K. Rauch: Thank you.

D. Routley (Chair): Thanks very much.

A. Rauch: Thank you.

R. Rauch: Are we done here?

D. Routley (Chair): Yes. I think we’re done. Thank you.

Okay. I think the committee is in recess.

The committee recessed from 4:59 p.m. to 5 p.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): With that, I’d like a motion from the committee to move the meeting in camera. From MLA Halford, seconded by MLA Kirkpatrick.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 5 p.m. to 5:18 p.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): Now I would ask for a motion to adjourn. Harwinder, seconded by Karin.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 5:18 p.m.