The committee met at 9:02 a.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): Welcome to our guests. Good morning. My name is Doug Routley, and I’m the MLA for Nanaimo–North Cowichan. I’m 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’m joining today’s meeting from the traditional territories of the Malahat First Nation.

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

Our committee is undertaking a broad review with respect to policing and related systemic issues in B.C. We are taking a phased approach to this work and have been meeting with a number of organizations and individuals over the fall and winter to follow up on input we’d already received. For today’s meeting, we’ll be following up with survey respondents as well as those who made written submissions to the committee.

Our presenters each have ten minutes to speak, and that will be followed with time for questions from committee members.

As a reminder to our presenters, all audio from the meetings is broadcast live on our website. A complete transcript will also be posted there.

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

K. Kirkpatrick: Hi there. Thank you very much for being here today. I’m Karin Kirkpatrick, and I’m the MLA for West Vancouver–Capilano.

I am coming to you from the beautiful traditional terri­tories of the Coast Salish peoples.

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

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

G. Lore: Good morning. Grace Lore. I’m the MLA for Victoria–Beacon Hill.

I’m calling in today from the territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ people of the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations.

Thank you for being here.

[9:05 a.m.]

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Hi. Good morning, everyone. Dan Davies, Peace River North MLA.

I’m coming to you today from Fort St. John on the Dene territory.

Welcome.

H. Sandhu: Good morning, Chair. Good morning, Dave. Good morning, Sherman. I am Harwinder Sandhu, MLA for Vernon-Monashee.

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

Thank you for being here today.

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

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

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

I’m coming to you from the traditional territories of Semiahmoo.

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

Assisting the committee today are Karan Riarh from the Parliamentary Committees Office and Billy Young from Hansard Services. Our committee has great service from the legislative staff.

I’d like now to introduce to the committee our first two guests. We are joined by Dave Deines and Sherman Hillier from the Ambulance Paramedics and Emergency Dispatchers of B.C. There couldn’t be a more immediately relevant topic for us to hear about.

Presentations on Police Act

AMBULANCE PARAMEDICS
AND EMERGENCY DISPATCHERS OF B.C.

D. Deines: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and distinguished committee members. I’d like to take the opportunity to say thank you very much for this opportunity to present to your special standing committee.

Again, my name is Dave Deines. I’m the provincial vice-president of the Ambulance Paramedics and Emergency Dispatchers of British Columbia, and I’m also the national president of the Paramedic Association of Canada. I’m joined today by my colleague Sherman Hillier, who is also a member of the Ambulance Paramedics and the Emergency Dispatchers of British Columbia.

I’d like to start today by acknowledging that I’m on the traditional and unceded territory of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations people. I’m grateful to be here on their land.

I’d also like to start today by acknowledging that 29 years ago today we lost paramedic Carol Schlamp just outside of Hope in a motor vehicle accident that tragically took her life, one of ten B.C. ambulance paramedics that have lost their lives in the line of duty.

Again, I’m very honoured and privileged to be able to present today. I know it has been kind of an ongoing process to get to this point. We have taken the opportunity, also, to fill out the survey questions and look forward to any more engagement. I will be as brief as possible, because I’d like to yield any of our remaining time to questions from the committee.

I’ll just give you a brief overview. The Ambulance Paramedics and Emergency Dispatchers of British Columbia is the provincial CUPE union that represents all professional paramedics and emergency dispatchers that are employed by the single provider of paramedic service in British Columbia, the British Columbia emergency health services. We’ve been a proud partner with them since the inception of the Ambulance Service in 1974.

We also play a unique role in that we are also, as a founding chapter member, the voice of paramedicine in British Columbia. We are the British Columbia chapter of the Paramedic Association of Canada, which is the national voice of paramedicine.

I would like to also start by just giving you an overview. Last year, in 2021, the British Columbia emergency health services recorded over 840,000 events, or what people refer to as dispatch calls. Because of the way that the numbers are recorded, we believe that number is over the one million mark now. Regardless, either way, however you count that number, we are the largest paramedic service in Canada and one of the largest paramedic services in North America.

Of those 840,000 — or one million, depending on how you’re counting the number — in 2021, over 100 of those calls per day were dispatches for opiate overdose calls. There’s an equal number — I don’t have the metric with me — for mental health or emotionally disturbed people as well. That kind of, as I’ve read the terms of reference, fits squarely within the committee’s mandate in reviewing the Police Act.

We know that because of the pandemic and other socioeconomic factors…. I was just on a call yesterday with the Public Health Agency of Canada, where we have empiri­cal evidence that shows an 89 percent opioid toxicity death increase nationwide since before the pandemic started. That’s a shocking number.

[9:10 a.m.]

That, of course, plays right into front-line service requests for help, as well as our very unique and close partnership with law enforcement and peace officer agencies across this great province.

As well as that dramatic increase in responses to overdose deaths and overdose calls, we also respond on a daily basis, like I said, to emotionally disturbed persons and very complex, socioeconomic crises that come in all different forms, as you can imagine and as I’m sure you’ve heard from other presenters to your committee. At the same time, we’re also aware of the recent public movement to review how law enforcement and peace officers are involved in those socially complex calls and policing generally in British Columbia.

I’d like to start by saying that it’s our position that there is always and will always be the need for law enforcement and peace officers involved, to some degree, in those types of calls, whether that’s for the protection of the responding appropriate aid, whether that’s paramedics or mental health, whether that’s for the protection and safety of the individual that’s in crisis or, additionally, for members of the public who may be in attendance. Also, as you’re well aware, law enforcement peace officers play a unique role in that they have the jurisdiction to take those patients into custody if it’s deemed to be in the best interest of those patients for their protection and safety in treatment.

What do we believe is important here when you look at reforming, if any, parts of the Police Act and the mandate of the minister to provide adequate and appropriate police services through the act to British Columbia? Certainly, we’ve got some lessons learned for some very innovative and good programs in British Columbia.

Members from the Lower Mainland may be familiar with Car 87 out of the Vancouver police department, as well as members from Surrey for Car 67, which is a collaboration through Surrey Police, as well as the local health authority, both in Vancouver Coastal Health and, of course, in Surrey, through Fraser Health. Some very good lessons learned and very good programs that address both substance use disorder and mental health crises calls in a more appropriate way — of course, the issue being that they’re very limited in scope and in staffing. That impacts their ability to respond to the ever-increasing amount of calls, for sure.

We also believe that there might be an opportunity to look at adding specialized paramedic services into joint programs that involve law enforcement. Through my work nationally, with the Paramedic Association of Canada, we know that there are other jurisdictions in the country that utilize paramedic, law enforcement and/or mental health clinician collaboration teams that respond to targeted calls that can provide more appropriate assessment and patient navigation to a more appropriate and, often, a mitigated call from our overworked emergency departments. They’re very successful, and we would recommend a review of those programs and looking into something similar in British Columbia.

Also, maybe I’ll finish by saying British Columbia is one of the only provincial jurisdictions left in Canada that doesn’t have specialized paramedic resources attached to law enforcement for those very serious, emotionally disturbed, substance use disorder crisis calls, more commonly known as TEMS, or tactical emergency medical services, where you have specially trained paramedics that are embedded with specially trained law enforcement teams around the country that can perform appropriate screening assessment and patient care in an environment that would not normally be appropriate for what we refer to as regular duty ambulance or even those specialized teams that have mental health specialists involved.

Those specifically are calls that are just deemed too high risk to send in general duty members and/or specialized mental health workers. We would also recommend perhaps looking at some lessons learned and successes from the rest of the country about adding that capability to the British Columbia emergency health services.

With that, I’ll just ask if my colleague Sherman has anything to add. Then we’d like to yield whatever time we have left to the committee for additional questions.

[9:15 a.m.]

S. Hillier: No. Just on the point of the integrated teams, I think we’ve seen some success early on, where we had an integrated team with the Vancouver police department and oftentimes were able to intervene early because we have a bit of a different view of the call. We’re approaching it from a different angle. But together as a team, we’re able to address these dynamic situations much safer and much easier for everybody involved.

With that — thank you, Dave — I’d like to pass it over and hear from the committee for whatever we can answer. Thank you very much for your time.

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

We’ve also been joined by MLA Adam Olsen.

Hello, Adam. Welcome to the meeting.

Adam has brought a really special view to our committee that we appreciate a lot.

Members, I’ll open the floor to questions.

G. Begg: Thank you both for your presentation and your appearance here today.

I’m particularly interested in the TEMS, the tactical emergency medical service response. I was unaware — perhaps I’ve not been paying attention — that there is or was a program like that with VPD, perhaps not as fulsome as it is elsewhere. But in any event, could you identify for the committee the areas in Canada who have this TEMS response model so that we can — and we will — communicate with them so that we can perhaps receive from them some idea of how it works? Or do you feel confident enough in how it works to explain the high points of how that actually works on the ground?

D. Deines: Great question. I’ll start by saying that I actually am a board-certified tactical paramedic, so I have a background in tactical emergency medical service, and I’ve worked around the country with some of those TEMS teams.

You are correct. The Vancouver police department has what they refer to as a TEMS component. When I was saying we’re the last jurisdiction in Canada, I’m referring to an integrated team. Vancouver police, because of the lack of paramedic availability, has taken law enforcement or ERT members and trained them in some additional medical skills.

That is common in North America in some team compositions, but it doesn’t really represent best practice. There’s an argument on both sides. The prevailing best practice argument right now is things around role confusion task saturation. When you take a police officer out of their primary role in that specialized team of being a police officer and make them focus on medical skills, that removes one of the law enforcement members from that team.

In Canada, I can rattle off almost every major metropolitan police force in Canada, as well as some provincial and national assets, that have paramedics integrated into those law enforcement teams. Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa. The east coast has a form of it in their high-acuity response team. Certainly there are some national programs within the RCMP. That’s a blend of utilizing those teams. Our Commonwealth partners also utilize specially trained paramedic services integrated into law enforcement teams in one form or another. London is a good example.

There are jurisdictions across Canada that work very well. Sherman referred to an earlier program called the ITSU, which was the integrated tactical support unit. That saw British Columbia emergency health services paramedics, which both Sherman and I were, integrated into the Vancouver police public safety unit. That allowed paramedics to gain access to patients in large or unstable environments. In fact, we were embedded with law enforcement during the Stanley Cup riot and were able to respond to those unique circumstances in a much quicker way than what would happen now. That team, unfortunately, was stood down around 2015 or 2016.

I don’t know if that answers your question, sir, but I’m certainly, later on, able to provide you context of all the colleagues across the country, for sure.

G. Begg: I’m aware of the attachment of paramedics to ERT teams and that kind of thing. I’m particularly interested, though, in a first response model that combines the police and emergency medical services. Are you aware of that?

[9:20 a.m.]

D. Deines: Yeah, I know of some programs in Ontario, for example.

Again, health is a provincial responsibility. In Ontario, it’s downloaded to the upper-tier municipality or county level, so it varies dramatically by service provider. But there are some providers…. The county of Renfrew, for example, has a very aggressive paramedic service that embeds paramedics and, more specifically, what we refer to as community paramedics. These are specially trained paramedics that address primary health in a non-traditional role, that can respond to public health emergencies of patients that are in emotional crisis, substance use disorders.

The city of Winnipeg also has a very extensive program called the Main Street Project, which deals with vulnerable patients in their downtown core.

G. Begg: Just a quick follow-up. My entire background is in policing. I’m interested in sort of a joint response unit, like a two-person vehicle. Oftentimes when police respond to, for example, domestic assaults, there are injured people there. When they respond to a complaint on the street, there is a victim there who has been beat up or knifed or whatever.

From your professional experience and background, could you foresee a situation where it would be possible to pair up a B.C. paramedic with a police officer, who could respond in a single vehicle to a scene — which, in my view, might mitigate the manpower shortage for both the provincial ambulance service who are attending the same scene and the police who are then attending the same scene or later attending the hospital, for example.

In short — and I’m blue-skying this idea — do you see that as a potential solution in high-volume calls for police service which are also high-volume calls for emergency medical services?

D. Deines: Absolutely, sir. I think that’s a fantastic point. Blue-skying it, absolutely. I think you hit the nail on the head. It addresses multiple areas of concern, some of them within your terms of reference as the committee but also what we’ve heard lately about call demand mitigation for all emergency services. Clearly, there’d have to be a robust policy and the will in place, particularly for the protection of both law enforcement and the paramedic.

There are some jurisdictions…. In fact, Tasmania, down south, has just implemented a program where it’s tri-party. It’s a police officer, a paramedic and a mental health professional that respond to those types of calls. Certainly, you could target that directly at those mental health, emotionally disturbed people or, as you had mentioned, call mitigation, where those calls are secondary triage. They could be utilized to call-mitigate demand on law enforcement and paramedic services as well as municipal fire, who are our partners as well, that also, as you know, get dispatched to these calls quite often.

Absolutely, I think, there are some good experiences from around North America and the Commonwealth that could be leveraged to blue-sky a system like that, for sure.

I think Sherman might have something to add too.

S. Hillier: Just quickly to add…. I’ll go back to the ITSU, just drawing on my personal experience. As part of that role, although we weren’t in a vehicle, we did do a role where we were embedded in the Granville mall, given that it was Vancouver police. We were on foot there, in the Granville mall, where it’s hard to access with ambulances. We have the early intervention that we can do, call mitigation from that perspective. Now, there we were on foot.

We’ve discussed, in years gone by — it never got off the ground — programs where we may put another person in a wagon. Vancouver police uses a wagon style to transport, so they have a truck that goes around. Oftentimes the call for services are waiting for an ambulance to respond to that place to be able to determine what to do with a patient. When we were embedded and walking, starting from the symphony of lights, we were there as things would happen, as opposed to responding.

That’s a major difference, you know, when it happens in front of you or right near you. As soon as it’s safe to move in, we’re there. There’s no delay and no time for anything to escalate beyond that point, and we’re there with a different view on the issue.

[9:25 a.m.]

I’m not taking away…. We have a job, and the police have a job. But our view might be a little different. We can coordinate that discussion, and we can respond to a call in a safe and effective manner. It was a program…. Don’t get me wrong; it had some problems. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the start to the right process we have.

The second thing I would talk about is our community paramedic program — just building on that with Dave. We had talked about the community paramedic program, as many of you will know. Again, I’m going to refer to Vancouver, because we have the Downtown Eastside, and we have bike squads deployed in the Downtown Eastside now. But there is a police patrol in the Downtown Eastside that’s on foot, and there is no reason why a paramedic couldn’t be integrated into that model, as well, to try and go out and do those early assessments of patients.

That might be outreach work. That might not be responding to a call. Maybe we’re going to get ahead of it, and maybe we’re going to be able to determine: are people taking their medication? Or where can we fit into that health care model to take the burden off? As you all know, right now what we do is send everybody to the emergency room, and that model doesn’t work.

D. Deines: Just as a real-world example, one of the 420 protests at the art gallery…. When we did have that integrated team, we were able to mitigate 28 calls to 911 in that one day of being down there — 28 calls that would take up the time of an E-Comm dispatcher, Vancouver police, B.C. Ambulance Service, Vancouver fire, all those types of resources.

D. Routley (Chair): I saw you guys, on foot at the Granville mall, responding once to a fight. The police were there, and there were not serious injuries. But I was really surprised that there were paramedics walking.

Go ahead, Grace.

G. Lore: I think my question has been answered. I’ll pose it in case there’s something else that Dave or Sherman want to add.

My question was about the kind of integrated model you’re articulating here or that combination — how that differs from a Car 87 or a Car 67. I think, in your answers to my colleague, you gave me a full sense that it might be similar in some instances, or complementary. I think you covered the scope of how it differs and how it might be necessary in addition.

D. Deines: I’ll just add that we’re not advocating, obviously, to replace that with a paramedic-led system. It would just be building on the success on those integrated teams, whether we put a paramedic with Car 87 and 67. Clearly, whatever happens, we’re recommending that we expand that type of service. That’s unique and distinct to these calls that we’re talking about, integrating specific police and paramedics into these call mitigation–type calls as well as these specialty teams like TEMS.

G. Begg: Chair, can I just add a point that I think is pertinent here?

If, for example, a policeman responds to an armed robbery where the victim has been pistol-whipped and is suffering significant injury and, simultaneous with his arrival, he sees someone fleeing the scene, his first responsibility, despite the fact that he’s a law officer, is to the victim. His responsibility is to preserve life. Everything crescendos down after that.

The advantage, in my view, of the vehicle that contained both first responders satisfies the need to apprehend an offender, plus the need to deal with a victim of traumatic violence. The symmetry there, I think, hopefully doesn’t escape us. I know it’s a blue-sky thing, but there have been lots of studies on this. People see anyone in uniform as a person in authority, whether it’s a firefighter or a postman. The symbolism of a uniform, which distinguishes police or B.C. Ambulance from anyone else, is important.

Both Dave and Sherman, I guarantee, can tell you of instances where they have been doing their job, and they have been approached by a citizen who says, “Hey, I just saw” whatever. There is definitely a symmetry there that I think is important for us to discuss.

[9:30 a.m.]

A. Olsen: I’m wary of this, taking a very urban feel to the conversation here, in that there are communities across the province that have a much different experience than downtown Vancouver or even Victoria, the metropolitan experience.

I’m just wondering. I’ve had this in the back of my mind that volunteer fire departments across the province, which are mostly municipal services, also could be brought into the first-response teams where maybe a police officer is further away. When you get more rural, you get fewer resources spread out over wider geography.

Can you please just give us your insights as to the role that volunteer fire, provided they’re resourced and trained, could also provide in terms of maybe a stopgap measure — an initial response before a paramedic may be able to arrive or maybe in teams, paramedics and volunteer fire? We talked about paramedics and police.

D. Deines: Excellent point. Thank you, sir. I’ll start by saying British Columbia is unique in the country — there are some other models like it — in that we have pretty much a paramedic station in every community in the province. Whether they’re staffed or not is another argument, and that’s a complex issue.

I’m starting with this. I’ll go back to the community paramedic model. Outside of metropolitan and large urban areas is where BCEHS and government have currently targeted those resources right now, which could be a tremendous benefit in addressing these types of calls. Certainly, from a volunteer first-responder model — and this is applicable to not only fire departments but the model that you used to see within BCEHS around the on-call model — we’re getting to a point now where those services are overtaxed and just not able to cope with the increase in demand.

If we were going to invest in resources that are going to be utilized to respond to these types of calls, certainly we think that an appropriate way to do that would be to target law enforcement and the medical professionals first. Having said that, there’s always a role for our other public safety partners to play.

In Vancouver, for example… And I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make us go back to Vancouver. I’m just saying that one of the models that’s already been developed had the tri-party service in that ITSU group where it was, I believe, the first in Canada to have police, fire and paramedics all integrated at once. So there’s definitely a role.

I think the problem that you’ll see with integrating community volunteers around B.C. targeting these types of calls is that that puts a tremendous demand on a volunteer service that, in some cases, has already indicated they no longer want to respond to what we would characterize as routine emergencies. They have different tiers of response. You’ll see that particularly the smaller the community you get, the less and less that the volunteer fire department will want to respond for resource and finance but also because you’re putting a burden onto those citizens that are doing that as a secondary duty to their primary employment.

Certainly, there’s an opportunity there to involve them, whether that’s targeted training in a tripartite kind of way; whether we utilize them in a first-responder role, which is basically the role that they’re fulfilling now; or how we move forward with that. I think we would say that if we’re going to invest in a system that targets all of British Columbia, law enforcement and paramedics and mental health professionals would be the top three in our view, for sure.

I think Sherman might have something to add.

D. Routley (Chair): To members, we do not have our next guest in the waiting room yet, so we’re just going to continue as long as you have. I noticed Karin had her hand up earlier, so if you do want time, okay.

Go ahead, Sherman.

S. Hillier: Thank you. I just wanted to talk a little bit from the rural and remote stance. I think there is opportunity.

Our community paramedic program is there now doing a lot of the outreach. That’s not a 911 response; that’s an outreach type of program. From a 911 response, it is quite common when you work — and I’ve worked a lot over my career in rural and remote areas — to meet with the police and go into a call together. That’s quite common. We may not be sitting in the same vehicle, but the idea of integrating teams in rural and remote isn’t new. In fact, we had a…. We’re much more sophisticated now than we used to be.

[9:35 a.m.]

Back in the late ’90s, I believe — Dave is going to have to help me out here — we had what was called a medical response team, which was the then B.C. Ambulance Service embedded with the RCMP, for a standoff issue. I don’t recall the issue now. But we have had those teams in the past. Now, they’re sort of stood up. Back then, they were more ad hoc.

This conversation has always been prevalent as to how to make these services mesh in terms of going into high-risk calls. It might not be that we’re in the same car, but if we’ve identified something through our dispatch processes — that’s where our calls start, through the dispatch centre, when they start determining what is going on, what’s happening in the call, what the safety risks are — then it may be that those two folks come together and do a response.

There are a lot of different ways to look at it. In rural and remote areas, in my opinion, we have to think well outside the box to determine how we’re going to respond. In my view, the metro areas are a lot easier. You know, it’s a volume issue, but we’ve got lots of staff.

My other comment on volunteer firefighters: I would say that while I have the utmost respect for all the work that they do, there is an education gap between a volunteer firefighter and a primary care paramedic. That’s something that gets lost, oftentimes, in the response model.

There is a difference in the amount of education — I won’t just call it education — training, experience and what have you with the professional primary care paramedic that comes in and does their work — you know, the school. They get more education and more time on, surrounding all different types of responses, whereas volunteer firefighters essentially do critical interventions — which are key, if somebody is choking, childbirth, CPR, those kinds of things. But what we’re talking about here, in this case, can be pretty complex calls in terms of dealing with people who are mentally ill.

D. Deines: I’ll just add that that talks about the regulated health profession that paramedics are. Just to give you an example, I started my career with BCEHS in Port Renfrew, on the Island, which is an isolated, remote community where there is no fire service, volunteer or otherwise. So paramedics are the only game in town. In fact, there’s no police either. There are many communities in rural and remote British Columbia that have that tyranny of geography, distance and lack of service already that puts paramedics into those positions currently.

D. Routley (Chair): Thanks very much.

I’d like to welcome my colleague, MLA Rachna Singh.

Then next in line we have Garry.

G. Begg: I wonder if you could tell us what the criterion or protocol is for the simultaneous attendance of the police and the ambulance, EHS, at a call. Who decides who should attend?

D. Deines: Sure. I’ll start by saying that, obviously, I can’t speak for BCEHS. They’d be the authority to answer that question. I can tell you from our experience that the Ambulance Service uses a program called AMPDS, which is the advanced medical priority dispatching system. It’s a system based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. We’ve been using this system for decades now.

What that system does is, based on a list of questions, it determines the type of call, which is given a number — 1 to 36, I believe — and then how serious that call is, or the acuity of that. That’s given a letter, from Omega being the least serious to Echo being the most critical call. For example, a 9-Echo-1 is a cardiac arrest.

Through questioning in an automated process through computer, a call generates the type of call and how serious it is. Then the employer determines, through a resource allocation plan, who goes to that call. For example, I’ll pick an easy one, like that 9-Echo-1. That’s the highest-acuity cardiac arrest. It’s already predetermined that a primary care paramedic ambulance, a first responder — whether that’s fire, police, ski patrol, whoever happens to be providing that service — and an advanced life support paramedic will also attend if available. Those determinations are made obviously beforehand through a resource allocation plan.

[9:40 a.m.]

That also encompasses when paramedics do not automatically go into the scene. We call those a wait. There are criteria of calls that a dispatcher will get that automatically place paramedic response into a staging. We’ll wait until law enforcement can attend. It’s no secret. You can guess what those types of calls are: any potential violence or unknown call or something that the dispatcher feels may be a safety issue to the responding crew. That is there, obviously, for safety.

The problem we see with that — and, I think, sir, that you hit the nail on the head earlier when you were talking about the scenario about not being able to chase down the bad guy — is it may take time for law enforcement to go in and secure the scene. So if you have a critical patient inside the scene that no longer poses a threat but is critically ill, every minute that the paramedic is staged — usually a block or two away — is time that they are not getting care, or a police officer now has to shift their focus into providing that immediate life-saving intervention before they can move on to their policing role.

Definitely that’s where you see an advantage of these TEMS-type teams that can be targeted to these high-acuity, high-risk, very volatile scenes. Then, on the back hand, we talked about those lower-acuity calls, where you’re going into maybe not a stable scene but definitely not a high-acuity, ERT type of call. We’re talking about an emotionally disturbed person in an SRO, for example. Traditionally, that would be a wait for the police to go in and secure the scene.

With ever-increasing call volume around law enforcement, both paramedics and first responders end up waiting blocks away for law enforcement to clear that scene. It takes time for them, as you know, to do that, communi­cate that back through their dispatch centre, which comes through our dispatch centre where we can move in. There’s that criteria that determines who goes and when and also a BCHS policy about when paramedics wait.

D. Routley (Chair): Sherman, you have something to add?

S. Hillier: I would just add to that that there are situations where, when we’re staging a block away, depending on what the acuity of that call is and while we are waiting, if another call comes in around the block…. So if it were a TEMS…. We’re calling it TEMS because that’s sort of the easiest analogy or group to identify with. If another call….

For instance, if that call maybe isn’t a…. Maybe it isn’t a 9-Echo or cardiac arrest, and a cardiac arrest comes in around the corner where that ambulance can be pulled off of that standby. So now you’ve left a group working without an ambulance, and then they’re waiting in the queue for another one to come. That doesn’t happen as often as you think, but it can certainly happen, particular now with the way that resources are challenged here in British Columbia.

The only other thing I would add just on this entire topic is that these kinds of programs require pretty robust education. It needs policies. It needs procedures. It needs education and training, but it also needs public education. One thing that I’ve — anecdotal — felt over the years is that when we respond to calls….

You hit the nail on the head in terms of when you’re in a uniform, you have to really identify your role, but oftentimes a scene can change when you have a police officer and a mental health worker or a nurse or a paramedic. Sometimes that scene….

If our truck is there, or if we’re wearing our uniform and people identify that, the scene comes down a little bit. It can be an overall…. Not always, of course. Some calls just go the way they go, and there’s nothing anyone’s going to do about that. But oftentimes, the dynamic changes because there is a paramedic in place or there’s a nurse in place. It tends to bring the level down a little bit and start a dialogue with a person who is emotionally distraught, etc.

Police officers are great at doing that work as well, but sometimes it’s just that different uniform there, and it’s a different view: “That’s ambulance here to help me.” That can be really powerful.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you. I think that brings us to the end of our questions.

I’d like to, on behalf of the committee, thank you both very much. It’s been very, very interesting and of very high value to our considerations. I really appreciate your contribution today.

D. Deines: Thank you, Mr. Chair. If there’s any further information or clarification we can provide, or that information from other examples around the country, we’re more than happy to be at your disposal.

D. Routley (Chair): You very well may hear from us. Thank you very much.

D. Deines: Thank you, everybody, for your time.

D. Routley (Chair): Members, with that, we don’t have our next guest. So we will recess until ten o’clock.

The committee recessed from 9:45 a.m. to 10:03 a.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): Hello, Hilary. Welcome to our meeting. This is the special committee to review the Police Act. We’re attempting to make recommendations, as you know, to make things better for outcomes for British Columbians in terms of policing.

We’ve heard from a lot of different organizations and individuals. We also did the survey that you responded to, and from that survey, we’ve invited certain people. We’re very pleased that you responded and were willing to meet with us. With that, you’ve got about ten minutes, and then we’re going to hand it over to the committee members for questions, and they’ll introduce themselves when they ask questions.

You can go ahead, Hilary. Welcome to the meeting.

HILARY MARKS

H. Marks: Well, thank you very much. I’m really honoured to be here. It’s a pleasure.

I just want to say that I acknowledge the work that I’m doing takes place on the traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people of the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

I wish I had the survey in front of me, because I don’t remember anything, but I’m honoured to give you some of my experiences. I came to B.C. in 1986, and I was living a life of prostitution and had a pimp and was very associated with police because of those actions that I was living. In Vancouver, the police that I was always having associations with were….

[10:05 a.m.]

A lot of times it wasn’t pleasant. I remember times of being thrown in the back of a huge paddy wagon that is steel, incorporated from top to bottom. They were hoping that I would be thrown around as they drove all over the city of Vancouver and wherever they were. Of course, I can’t see where they’re going. But I learnt how to place myself in the back of a paddy wagon so that I wouldn’t be thrown around. Unremarkably, when they’d open the door at the end of their little tour, they were astonished to find that I hadn’t been thrown around, I’m not bruised and battered, and I’m sitting in a way that I’ve protected myself.

On the other hand, I’ve had a lot of police officers that were very compassionate, doing the “serve and protect” and being something other than a police officer, I guess, in kind of trying to figure out how to help me. The police officers that I have dealt with and been in contact with in Victoria…. Honestly, it’s a job. It’s a profession. It’s a career. I actually wanted to be a police officer in my life. I respect the police, but I know that it’s a difficult job to do, and I know that, with PTSD and trauma and a lot of other things that get thrown into the loop — stigma and things like this — it’s not all cut and dried, black and white and easy to do.

A lot of people have comments about how they do things. I think the police should be…. I know that they’re not mental health workers and social workers. Some of them may have a degree in something else other than the policing, but to be a police officer, it’s a job. They have things to do. I think that policing could be a good advocate for reforming some of the criminal code things, like prostitution, because of the…. I believe that prostitution is a no-victim crime. I believe that two people are doing it in their own consent. I think that the police could be an asset in helping to reform some of the things that they have to deal with.

In my experience of being on the streets for approximately 15 years, there were also officers, again, like I said, that really, sincerely wanted to help me get out of that life. In the late ’90s, I did find two police officers in Victoria who I call my angels, who really helped me get off the street and change my life and lead me to a path where I am today, where I’m an outstanding person in the community. I do whatever I can to help reform anything that I can help to give my experiences about.

The defunding the police thing drives me crazy. As a person who has lived a life of crime, you cannot have a system without police. Personally, I wouldn’t want to see that happen. We don’t need groups of gangs controlling our cities and our urban areas, rural areas. We need reformed policing that assists and envelops the community, a lot of diversity. I think maybe policing could have more training in different things, not that they would be the only thing that they would know. I think that, as a police officer, it’s stressful. I see how it is here in the city.

I now have experiences with the police because I work in a homeless shelter, and I have had to call 911 because of violence. The things that I’ve seen the police do in these situations gives me hope that there is reform. I’ve commented to them personally and said that I’m so grateful that they were able to handle the situation the way that they did. I commend, a lot, Chief Del Manak for the reform that’s going through his police force. I think that it’s a difficult job to do. I believe that if you’re going to be a criminal, you’re going to have police in your life.

[10:10 a.m.]

It can’t be either-or. It has to be all-inclusive, and it has to be diverse.

We have to do more regarding stigma. We have to do more in regards to checking people. I know that my persona and the way I look…. It was never a problem for the police to identify me. They would always know where I was or how to find me in my life of crime.

I guess, in some situations…. People look alike, so you don’t know if that person is actually the criminal or if it’s someone who just looks like them. I’ve wrapped my head around this, trying to figure out how to help the police, besides carding people and stopping people that aren’t who they think they are. It would be a very interesting conversation around how to get over that issue so as to not — I don’t know — get the public all worked up over policing, acting out as to who they can stop and who they can’t.

I totally believe in having experiential people somewhere lined up in the police force or the police board. I’ve applied to be on the police board. Almost made it the first time. The second time I didn’t hear from anyone. But I believe, in this point in my life, that it is very important to have all-inclusive and have people with experience, who aren’t angry and can communicate and have conversations that are worthy of change and reform, to sit at all of these levels of policing.

Again, it’s a difficult job. I don’t envy it. I always wanted to do it but didn’t get there. I know a few women recently who have gone into the police force, and I’m really proud of them. I think that we need more policing of a different way. I’m not sure how that looks — but to have more women, to have more diverse cultures. The eradication of the police in the schools, I think, is ridiculous.

Constantly talking about budget and begging for money to cover the police…. I don’t think it should happen. I think that the police should have the money that they need in dealing with who they deal with. I don’t know if a lot of people who sleep at three o’clock in the morning have ever gone out at three o’clock in the morning to see what’s going on in the streets. It’s a whole different world out there. People are surviving in ways that they know how.

Again, police to be advocates for the change in the Ministry of Social Development…. We’re creating crime because we’re not giving people enough money to live on. We’re not doing it properly, so we have people committing crimes because they need to survive. That’s not a victimless crime. There is a victim. There is a criminal. It’s a lot of money going after people that are breaking into people’s houses because they need money.

It’s a big topic — policing and reforming the act. I think that if we take it one step at a time and we take it from one experience…. Again, I’m sure that, yes, there are a whole lot of people out there that have experiences, and they’re all going to be different, and they’re all at a different time. Like, my life of crime and experience on the streets was from 1982 to 1994. Those years have come and gone, and I’ve become a better person and become more aware of how I can help to change things and to show my experiences.

I’ve had lots of good and bad experiences with the police, as I’ve given you a few examples. You know, I’ve been handcuffed. I’ve been thrown into the jails. I’ve been through the court systems and came through it to the other side because of these two police officers that took it on, more than they should have, to help and assist me — get the pimp out of the city, get him gone, get myself back into proper housing, support from other agencies for women. They went above and beyond.

[10:15 a.m.]

It’s Jamie Pierce and John Ayers, who are now retired. I love those two police officers with all my heart, because they just did it because they saw that my life wasn’t okay. No one asked them to go above and beyond with me. I never asked them to. But because of them and because of their listening to my words and really believing that I did want to get out of the situation, they stuck with me for quite some time. I really appreciate that, and I thank them all the time. We’re still in touch with each other, and we still talk. The relationship is great.

That’s another thing I believe in policing — that relationships are very important. The street people already have issues with police, but if you can create a better relationship, as I know happens — I’ve seen it happen — I think that makes all the difference in the world. We’re all people. We all come to the table with different ideas, different experiences, different cultures, different beliefs.

If we’re going to end stigma and we’re going to end discrimination, we have to start with ourselves. I think the police are a good place to start. They’re role models in our community. You can’t live with them, and you can’t live without them. I don’t believe that we can defund them, and I don’t believe that they should have such a battle for the funding and for help and for getting social workers online with them or getting people who have experience of drug addictions and mental health and PTSD and things like that. I don’t believe that any of us do not have PTSD or trauma. I believe that we all come into this world with it in some shape or form.

I’m just really grateful that I was asked to be here and to speak with all of you wonderful government MLA people. I do recognize some of you and your names. Yeah, I’m just really appreciative. So I don’t know where else to go with this, but I think I’ve said mostly what I need to say. So yeah — anything. Go ahead.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much. I very much appreciate that.

You know, I’ve been an MLA for a long time, and it’s always people who have experience who then turn to use their experience to improve the same path for people. It’s the most moving way that change happens, in my opinion. Thank you.

With that, I would hand over to my colleagues, first with Karin.

K. Kirkpatrick: Thank you so much, Hilary. I’m Karin Kirkpatrick. I’m the MLA for West Vancouver–Capilano. I’m so appreciative that you shared your journey with us, and I think it was important for all of us to hear that.

I have one question. You answered it a little bit, but I’m very curious about the experience that you had that was life-changing with these two police officers. I believe you said they were in Victoria. What is the difference between those two men and the officers that you had previously come across? Is there something that you can recognize that was different about them? Was it training? Was it just an empathy? What was it that made that relationship so different for you?

H. Marks: I think, for that relationship, I used to call 911 frequently, because my pimp was beating me up all the time. I just was really fed up. I really wanted out, and I wasn’t sure how to do it. So 911 was my go-to. It was kind of funny, because they would answer the phone and say: “Hi, Hilary. What can we do for you?” That’s how long and many times I was calling 911.

It just seemed to be that Jamie and John were the two officers that they kind of put on and would come to me with those 911 calls. So I think the familiarity and the relationship-building and getting to know them and getting to know me and to understand what I’m going through — that this isn’t how I want to live…. Just being comfortable with them and not being afraid to talk to them about what I’m going through and not be embarrassed or ashamed, which I kind of was, of course, because it was not a pretty scene.

[10:20 a.m.]

Then the one day I was pregnant, and my pimp kicked me in the stomach, as Jamie and John…. We were taking him out of the building. The response from the two officers was so compassionate and with anger that…. “How dare this man kick a woman who’s pregnant in the stomach.” It was just so disrespectful, in their eyes, this action, that I just was in awe. They handled it so well. It wasn’t a violent…. They didn’t treat him any more harshly than taking him out in handcuffs. But I think just the constant familiarity of them constantly coming to my aid and building the relationship of trust.

K. Kirkpatrick: Thank you, Hilary. You’re extraordinary. I appreciate that.

H. Marks: No problem.

T. Halford: Hi, Hilary. Trevor Halford, MLA for Surrey–White Rock. I just want to say thank you for taking the time. That was one of the most touching presentations I’ve seen on this committee. You should be proud. Thank you for sharing your journey, as Karin said.

In terms of sharing that journey, I’m just wondering how important it would be for somebody coming into law enforcement, before they take that responsibility of having a badge, to hear about your interaction with police and to hear about the importance that police played in terms of you getting to where you are now and the impact that you’re having and whether or not that’s something — whether that’s the Justice Institute or wherever — that you’d be able to share, that journey. Or maybe you have in the past. But how important would that be to people before they embark on a career in law enforcement?

H. Marks: Oh my god, I think that’s a fabulous idea. I’m in. That’s absolutely, yeah, like I was saying — that we need people with all diverse experiences. I mean, I’ve had the mental health, I’ve had addictions with drugs, I’ve had addiction with alcohol. I fit in a lot of boxes, and I’ve learned how to speak. I’ve had training in speaking so that I kind of get where I’m supposed to be going with the information.

I think, absolutely, everyone needs to hear these kinds of stories, because they are going into policing with a set mind frame.

G. Lore: Thank you so much, Hilary. I’m Grace Lore. I’m the MLA for Victoria–Beacon Hill.

I am also calling from the territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ peoples.

My colleague Trevor asked a bit of my question here, but I’ll maybe just frame it to you, as well, in case there are other pieces you want to add. You might not remember your survey responses, but I have them here. There’s a piece that we threw in a few places regarding exactly what Trevor just mentioned, but you’ve said a few times too: the importance of the expertise of yourself, of folks with living and lived experience. Part of where you include that in your survey is in relation to police boards.

It also sounds like you have ongoing interactions with police or relationships with police leadership through your work. I know for us here, as my colleagues have said, you presented a couple of different streams of interaction with police in your own experience — being put in the paddy wagon, for example, or the two that really helped you. It really highlights the difference police interaction can make.

I just wonder if you have other thoughts on where the expertise that you have, that others have with lived experience, can be woven through the system. And then also just to thank you for your ongoing work in our community and for the people who live here. So thank you so much.

H. Marks: You’re welcome. Can you just tell me what the question is again?

G. Lore: Sorry. I got there the long way around. Where else do you see opportunities for the expertise that folks like yourself, with lived and living experience, to inform police work? You mentioned, in the survey, police boards. I’m just wondering if there are other opportunities.

[10:25 a.m.]

H. Marks: Well, yeah. I think that, as an example, the Coalition to End Homelessness here in Victoria has a large bank, if you’d like to use that word, of experiential people that are in different sections of groups in the coalition. That is where I learned how to speak and do the speakers bureau, so that I do a lot of speaking for a lot of different things.

I wouldn’t go to Rock Bay and just pull someone out of Rock Bay and say, “We need you and your experience to come and tell us,” because that would be traumatizing. I believe I’m at a certain point in my life where I can talk to you about these things. I don’t have any shame to it. I don’t have any attachment to anything anymore, and I can speak freely about it in order to have change happen.

I think that we need to have the experiences, but the experiences need to be a little further away from the now so that the traumatizing part isn’t there and the anger isn’t there. There are a lot of people, of course, that are on the streets that are angry, frustrated, and a lot of times they will see the police as enemies. You could say they’re a pain in the butt because, “I don’t want to see the police all the time, and I don’t want to be there,” yet they’re building relationships. So the opportunities….

Well, they did have an opportunity. The Coalition to End Homelessness actually did do a face-to-face stigma workshop with the police, which I heard was fabulous. Any kinds of things like that where you’re having two groups of people — one the police, obviously, and another group…. It has to be a compassionate thing — that you’re both trying to learn and you’re both trying to give information and pass information. It could be stigma groups. It could be the LGBTQ community. It could be just doing get-togethers with different people, different organizations, different groups.

Great for the ICA, Inter-Cultural Association, where you’re having immigrants and people that may or may not have had good relationships with the police, or they’re coming from trauma and really don’t have connection. The police are who they see every day out there. The police are the contacts.

Making contacts with organizations like PEERS, for example, for sex trade workers…. Anything. You can plug a group in anywhere and have conversations. I think having conversations is the first place to go, really, and talk about what your issues are and see how you can, one by one, figure something out.

R. Singh: Thank you so much, Hilary. I think your presentation was very helpful. It takes a lot of courage to come and talk about your experiences, your lived experiences.

I’m very glad to hear that you had some very positive experiences with the police, especially in the time of crisis, when you needed them. We’ve had a number of presentations from people in the Downtown Eastside, some of them in the profession that you were in. Their experience, somehow, was not as positive and could be a very traumatizing, very condescending relationship with the police. Most of the, I would say, victims are the people in the Downtown Eastside — Indigenous women, their experience.

When you look around yourself, and in your experience in the Victoria area, have you felt that for the racialized Indigenous women, their experience with the police has not been as cordial as it has been with you?

H. Marks: Oh, definitely. Thanks for bringing up the Downtown Eastside. I used to work there, and I had a lot of police interactions in that city, regarding the Downtown Eastside. It’s deplorable. It’s awful.

[10:30 a.m.]

Just in an offshoot, I go down to Vancouver every once in a while and walk around the Downtown Eastside and say my gratitudes that I’m not there anymore and say prayers for people. The last time that I was there, I started to have an anxiety attack. I started to feel really awful about how…. Yeah, 90 percent of the people are Indigenous, and they’re laying all over the streets. Like, I could not believe this.

I used to always be there, working on the streets, for the Indigenous women and for other women, because of the stigma and the treatment that they would get from police or others. They do get the crappy end of the stick. That is so for sure, which, again, is why we really need to do something regarding stigma and discrimination. We need to start with the people that are being mistreated the most.

The Downtown Eastside is just…. If those people were animals, I can guarantee you we wouldn’t be letting them live that way. It was so deplorable. I’ve never seen so much destitute and so much sadness, sadness. People look like zombies. They’re people’s mothers, brothers, sisters, fathers. They’re somebody.

I know it’s a losing battle for the police. What do you do with that? They can’t…. Where do you take them? What do you do? We don’t have…. Thankfully, we’re getting complex cares built — so excited about that — but we need more Indigenous voices at the board tables, at community things. It’s really up to the police to create the relationships, because it’s not…. You can’t make Indigenous people, after they’ve been traumatized so bad, make the first step. It has to be the person that….

It’s not authority. I’m not trying to…. It’s just that I think the police are the bigger people. I’m trying to say here….

R. Singh: More power.

H. Marks: Yeah, I think that the police should be the ones to approach and to start the relationship. We got a long way to go, a long way to go.

R. Singh: Thank you so much, Hilary. I really, really appreciate this.

H. Marks: You’re welcome.

H. Sandhu: I want to say thank you, Hilary, so much for sharing your story and experiences and some thoughts. This work, the huge work we’ve undertaken, is a complex work, but presentations from amazing people like yourself just make it that much easier for us to make some recommendations.

My question was asked by my colleague Karin Kirkpatrick, but I want to make a comment. Thank you for highlighting the importance of investing in people and services to support our marginalized population in order to provide the services they need. I always say to people that it is that one helping hand. Our compassion and one action can be life-changing for many people. You are a perfect and inspiring example for that.

What I encounter oftentimes…. People are like: “Why should my tax dollars go to support these people?” That’s when I think there is no more perfect example than yours and the thoughts and experiences you share and many people share. So I just want to applaud you, your courage, and you doing the work you are doing right now. Thank you. I appreciate it.

H. Marks: Thank you. I just believe it’s my passion for people. We all have our fate. We all are here for a reason.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much, Hilary. We have a diverse set of people from all over the province here who are listening to your experience — and diverse politics. But we’re brought together on this committee with our shared purpose to make change when it comes to the Police Act and outcomes. We share that with you, and we really do appreciate your…. I think you heard, from all those different perspectives, how much they appreciated your contribution.

[10:35 a.m.]

With that, committee members, we will go straight on to our next presenter.

Welcome.

S. Fehlauer: Good morning.

D. Routley (Chair): Thanks. Welcome, Suzie, to the Special Committee to Review the Police Act.

We’ve heard from people and organizations all over the province. We’ve sought responses from people. We did our survey that you responded to, and from that survey, we’ve invited certain people to come and speak to us. We really appreciate you responding favorably to our request.

We look forward to your presentation. I’m going to ask the members to introduce themselves as they ask their questions in the interest of your time. With that, I’ll hand the floor directly to you.

SUZANNE FEHLAUER

S. Fehlauer: I was told I have ten minutes to basically just speak about what I spoke to within the survey. I guess I’ll start by saying that all of my service with the RCMP has been in the Lower Mainland. I have done 11 years in what is considered front-line policing. That would be response to call, as in patrol. I did community policing, which is more projects with people in the community — or it was at the time. I did traffic for almost two years after the birth of my children. And I did plainclothes within detachments.

After that, I went into major crimes. I worked on two projects within major crime, which were Evenhanded and E-PANA. One was the Pickton investigation. The other one was the Highway of Tears. After that, I worked in IHIT, which is integrated homicide. After that, I worked in federal policing, which is federal mandates. Lastly, I worked in member services, which was a huge change but dealt with representing members of the RCMP when they faced either internal conflict, had grievances or were facing investigations or wanted to have investigations launched — so both sides of the fence.

I’m glad that I have this opportunity. I have to let you know it’s incredibly scary to speak publicly, because I am outside the box. I have been outside the box for a long time as a police officer. I believe that throughout my service, the more time I have been within the RCMP, the less opportunity there has been to be outside the box.

That is an issue with policing. The higher up you get or the more experience you have, the more you understand that there are politics and policies at play that restrict you from doing what may be the best for people who you deal with on a daily basis or for communities, because there are other issues in the background that you may not have been aware of at the beginning of your service. Whether those issues are political in nature or whether they are organizational in nature, there are issues across the board.

I can only speak to the issues within the RCMP. Uniquely, the RCMP has as its head Brenda Lucki, who is the commissioner. She’s also a political appointee, which affects the RCMP in a way that I believe it should not.

[10:40 a.m.]

Issues that are hot potatoes become issues that we cannot address on lower levels. I’m not talking about maybe the front line, person-to-person being kind. I’m talking about in terms of team leads, managers, commanders — all the way up. Her position is political, and her position does not allow her to go against whatever government is in charge.

Another piece that I mentioned within my replies to the survey and which I think is important is that policing is, and remains, mainly a bastion of white males. This is an issue simply because white males at this point in time don’t even make up 50 percent of the population in British Columbia. They don’t. There are women; there are people of colour; there are Indigenous people. Yet white males continue to account for approximately 80 to 85 percent of policing personnel. The further up you go, the higher that percentage becomes. That is an issue.

I also believe that policing needs to have more oversight that is not within the respective police forces. I understand that we have the IIO. I’ve dealt with the IIO. Having said that, the IIO deals with very specific issues. The RCMP in B.C. is not overseen by police boards that have any power to do anything. Those police boards are, again, political in nature.

I’m just going to review some of my stuff so that I stay on topic. I have my notes, but I see myself drifting, so please bear with me.

I guess I’ll go with the things that I think need to happen. We need to change the police so that it actually is representative of the people we police. If we can’t achieve that because there are issues with the way we hire…. Most testing, most everything is geared towards the perspective of the white man, so the people who will make it through the hoops to become police officers are generally people who have the upbringing, the culture, the Canadian history as Canadian white settlers.

Without an ability to do that right away, I think what needs to be done initially is that we need to change the management. We need to decrease the amount of management within policing. There are lots of layers, and that affects the ability of police to be outside the box. If you wish to promote, you need to promote within certain hierarchies, certain tunnels, and you will stay within that tunnel if you want to promote. Unfortunately, the more you promote, the more restricted you actually are in thinking outside the box.

I think we need to definitely remove police from the criminalization of any societal or medical issues. That’s a huge thing, especially in Vancouver and Surrey, with homelessness. I think the police need to do more mediation, more conversation, more discussions over actions and arrests. That needs to occur across the lines.

[10:45 a.m.]

That’s pretty much my presentation. Pretty much everything that I have ideas on was in the body of the survey. I do strongly believe in Sir Robert Peel’s nine principles of policing. I think, in British Columbia, we are at a point where we don’t uphold those principles and can no longer uphold those principles. There is such a separation between police and the public. It’s huge.

People are astounded when they find out I’m a police officer. People have always been astounded when they find out I’m a police officer, because I am not a typical police officer. That is an issue. There should not be…. “Should not” — that’s a very strong thing.

The fact that police are seen, by regular people, as not regular people is an issue. The fact is that police do not see themselves as regular people on the other side, as well. So they treat people like they are less than or different than. That is probably the biggest challenge to policing in British Columbia and Canada, probably in the world. That needs to be addressed.

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

Now I’ll open the floor to questions from the members.

G. Lore: Hi, Suzie. I’m Grace Lore. I’m the MLA for Victoria–Beacon Hill. Thank you very much for submitting the survey and for agreeing to appear. Just an incredible wealth of experience that you outlined in your career and that I think is extremely important for us to hear from.

I had a couple of thoughts reading your survey response. One thing I’m hoping you can just say a little bit more on is the importance of representation. I appreciate the thoughts you have around the nature of the testing that filters in some folks rather than others. I’m wondering if you can say a bit more about what the impact is. Is that about people not seeing themselves in policing, so there there’s a message about who policing is for? Is that about actually how people are treated?

If you can maybe speak to what you think might be different if policing itself were more reflective of the population that it polices. Thank you so much.

S. Fehlauer: I think it affects both. I think if you don’t see yourself represented, you see yourself as other from what is there, and that is an issue. Having said that, if there is not representation within your organization, you also view the people that you serve as other. As much as there are policing stereotypes that people have about police, there are policing stereotypes that police have about people they serve. So it runs both ways.

I definitely believe that recruiting and the way that police recruit has to change, definitely. I think there has to be a larger emphasis on recruiting diversity, whether that be people of colour, women, LGBTQ+ — I have those letters right? — or Indigenous. We need to, as a society, say: who do we want to represent us? Who do we want to police us? I think as diversity increases, we will make that line more blurry. We will make it more that we are the police and the police are us — that we are all part of the same. That just isn’t happening. It’s just not there.

[10:50 a.m.]

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for joining us today, Suzie. Appreciate your front-line experience that you’ve had.

One of the things that we’ve heard quite a bit over the number of months, speaking with different groups and different people, is the training that police officers get, whether it’s within a municipal police force or the RCMP. We hear diversity training, or trauma-informed practices…. They put a video tape in, you watch that, you get a check box, and away you go.

What’s your take on that? I’m just looking at you nodding your head. I think you agree, but what is your take on that, and what should be done?

S. Fehlauer: I don’t think any type of…. In the RCMP, what we have are called Agora courses. So basically, yeah, you plug in a video, you check some boxes, and you get it done. You get it done because you have to get it done, because if you don’t get it done, you’re in trouble. You can’t get the promotion, or you can’t get the transfer.

You’re not really…. For a lot of people — I won’t speak for myself on that, and sometimes I will — you’re not really getting the training that you need. Again, the training is being created, very often, in the sense that this one video will affect how you deal with people when you’re in that situation, which doesn’t always happen. We are taught to de-escalate. We’ve always been taught to de-escalate. I was taught to de-escalate in 1995. Really, that hasn’t changed at all in the 25 years. We’ve just used different words for it, and we’ve made it harder to do.

We’ve made it so that de-escalation isn’t the first step. It’s not. Even though we talk about it — what can be done — that’s not our first step, because we’re understaffed. We’re overworked. That’s not how you’re thinking when you are on the street, facing a situation where you have 25 calls backed up, needing your attention and your team’s attention. Does that mean it’s not impossible? No. But I think it comes back down to who we recruit. Are we recruiting the right people? Are we getting the diversity we need within the police force?

I’ve been in situations where my life was in danger as a front-line police officer. I was in a situation where I almost died as a police officer. I can tell you that once I got to the suspect or accused, my adrenaline was so high that I was this close to striking them, just because my adrenaline was so high. It took every ounce of my humanity to not strike out, to back out and to breathe, and then to go back. I can say that every other member who was with me at that scene did not have the ability to do that, and that is an issue.

No. Another video and a machine are not going to change it. Who we recruit, how we recruit and how we train will have a huge impact.

[10:55 a.m.]

The amount of police officers available will have an impact, because if you’re not stressed and overworked, you have a better ability to think and step back. You’re not just filling in the boxes, but you’re actually stopping and being a human, dealing with another human.

Does that make sense? I’m not sure if I answered your question.

D. Davies (Deputy Chair): You definitely covered it off there.

I think, at the end of the day, lived experience, diversity…. The lived experience, that experience of being able to understand from a different angle, always beats a videotape or whatever we do see. So no, definitely. Thank you very much.

R. Singh: Thank you, Suzie. I’m Rachna Singh. I’m MLA for Surrey–Green Timbers.

Thank you for what you have shared with us. I think that is very important, and that has resonated with a number of presentations that we had, talking about the systemic issues, and you touched upon them.

One thing that the committee is closely looking into is the systemic racism within the police services. You have talked about it a little bit, talking about diversity and inclusion and representation. How do you think…? We have had a number of presentations, people talking about their experiences and how to develop that. We’ve had some recommendations on that.

How do you see moving forward for the police force? Now, it is not a question of whether there is systemic racism. That is very clear. But it is a question of what we do, moving forward. What would you recommend, Suzie, for that?

S. Fehlauer: Well, I think I touched on it a little bit in the oversight portion. I think policing needs to have more oversight. I think the oversight cannot be a bunch of white male politicians — no offence — but must be people within the community. It really has to be a community oversight of the police. That’s the only way you’re going to have that we are the police, and the police are the community, are the people.

You need to have someone who represents homeless people on an oversight committee. You need to have someone, or more than someone, who represents people of colour. You really need to have very few white men if you’re going to change the way policing is. Policing needs to answer to the community that it represents. So I think that’s one aspect that needs to address it.

I think the recruiting piece should address another portion, not only by recruiting more diversity, but also by who you hire, in terms of: are you hiring people who have biases? Everyone has biases, but are you having people who have very well-hidden prejudices that they’re not aware of because they haven’t had an opportunity?

If you have grown up in a community that is white, or predominantly white, and you have very little experience with other cultures and other people, you don’t know you have those biases till you are plopped into — let’s say you’re from Surrey — Newton. You won’t know you have those biases, but now you have those biases. Those aren’t caught along the way, because we’re not hiring, looking for those biases.

I think we need to do a better job in who we hire, how we hire. We need to have better oversight in terms of community members who actually are the oversight who we actually have to answer to. So somewhere there has to be not just oversight, but a responsibility to that oversight.

[11:00 a.m.]

We need to increase our transparency. If police are not hiring members of Indigenous communities or BIPOC people or LGBTQ or females, why?

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

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you. We have one more comment or question from Rick.

R. Glumac: Thank you for your presentation today.

I wanted to bring up…. We had a presentation from a police chief from a city outside of Montreal. I don’t know if you’ve heard about this program, but they essentially are identifying some key principles within the police force there that they want to promote within leadership. Some of the principles are trust, upstream prevention, care, intercultural. They worked with, I think, university researchers to come up with these principles.

I’m curious about the idea, when you’re talking about training, of having more of a focus on a lot of these what they called soft skills — skills in terms of understanding trauma-informed practices, understanding a lot of different…. More focus on de-escalation and things that you describe — very difficult in the moment to keep your wits about you. But these things, tying them back to performance within the police force.

They said that they go twice a year, and they have an evaluation on all of these principles. They also have, I think, a five-week immersion program where they embedded themselves with community organizations — to be able to interact with homelessness organizations, food assistance, immigrants, refugees, and things like that.

The big question I’m curious to hear your input on is: do you see that there could be a way to transform the culture and the key principles that are valued within the police force, from training through the promotion process and all the way through? Do you see something like that being viable? Do you have any comment on that kind of thing?

S. Fehlauer: It’s a difficult one to say. I think all police forces have values, have mission statements. I know that for the RCMP, we have HIPCAR, which is honesty, integrity, professionalism, compassion, accountability and respect. There’s nothing wrong with those values. There’s nothing wrong with standing up for those things. However, how are they interpreted, and how are they measured?

The RCMP, as well, has a midyear and a year-end evaluation of its members. These values are part of what is being assessed by the supervisors and managers and their managers and their managers, all the way up the line.

I think it’s a noble effort. Again, I think that as long as police are assessing other police on those values, there may be something lost in translation. I think it’s great, as well, that they are embedding themselves, the leaders, in different community organizations.

[11:05 a.m.]

Having said that, very often within those community organizations there is a separateness in that they are serving those less fortunate. They are serving those in need. They are serving them. You have that separateness within the organizations, that level. It’s not like this; it’s like this still. So I guess I hesitate in seeing that as being a viable solution to the issues. I think it’s something that should still happen. I don’t think the effect will be this.

There needs to be equality between police and citizens, all citizens. Because there is so much…. There are so many issues just amongst people that it will be reflected and amplified within policing. I’m not too sure that’s the solution, but I do think it should continue. Does that make sense?

R. Glumac: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I guess when I heard this presentation, it seemed like they were tackling something that kind of can be expressed in principle but doesn’t necessarily work. It felt to me like they were tackling this in a different way.

I hear your point. How do you determine success in these values, in the interpretation of those values? There could be an issue in, perhaps, the interpretation. I appreciate your feedback on that.

D. Routley (Chair): Okay, Suzie, thank you very much. Really unique experience and history and great contribution to our consideration. We deeply appreciate your willingness to participate. Thank you.

S. Fehlauer: You’re welcome. I appreciate the opportunity. I hope something really wonderful and viable and sustainable comes from this exercise and that change happens — if not in my lifetime, at least in my children’s lifetime.

D. Routley (Chair): We share that hope. Some of us, because of age, are even more impatient than you, maybe. We really take seriously this effort, and I know the members have a lot of consideration to make now. We’ve heard so much, and we really appreciate your contribution. This is very valuable.

Next, Members, we have a recess scheduled until 11:15. So the committee will be in recess until 11:15.

The committee recessed from 11:08 a.m. to 11:16 a.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

L. Stuart: Hello.

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

We’ve heard from a lot of different people and organizations over the last year as well as reached out through different means, including the survey you responded to. We invited certain people from those respondents to speak to the committee. We’re very grateful that you’ve accepted our invitation. We’re looking forward to your presentation.

When you’re finished your ten minutes or so of time, there will be time for questions from committee members.

I’ll ask the members to introduce themselves when they’re asking a question.

With that, in the interests of time, I’ll hand the floor over to you.

LYNNE STUART

L. Stuart: Thank you for inviting me.

As you know, my name is Lynne Stuart, and I am the executive director of the Omineca Safe Home in Vanderhoof. I’ve lived in this community for about 20 years. We have a population of about 8,000 people, and that’s officially the largest town I’ve ever lived in. Rural life is kind of my jam. I hold a social work degree and a masters of education in counselling psychology, and I have been a social justice advocate for, I think, as long as I can remember.

I don’t have a formal presentation to provide you folks, but what I did want to take a few minutes to share with you are some of the concerns I see from a rural perspective. I hope it was kind of…. I’m not sure if all of you folks had a chance to read the survey that I completed, but my intention was not to lay blame. I have a great deal of empathy for the RCMP, because they have many hats that they are expected to wear, and I see that every day.

My biggest suggestion, my biggest push, my biggest goal for this would be to increase collaboration with the RCMP, especially in our rural communities, because they are overwhelmed and often under-resourced. I think that because we have lived here for so long, we have an idea of the inner workings of our little communities, and we also like to share that information.

[11:20 a.m.]

Usually that information is shared in a formal capacity. I’m thinking of our VAWIR committees, our ICAT committees. We had the beginnings of the hub model started, but those things seemed to kind of fall apart because of really high staff turnover.

Vanderhoof isn’t exactly where people want to retire, it seems like. It seems like it’s a little bit of a training ground for a couple of years and then officers move on. We’ve gone through, I think, five staff sergeants in as many years. When we take on big collaborative projects, like the hub model…. That involved a lot of grant-writing to receive funding. That involved a lot of education for the community because it was kind of a new, big thing, a different way of thinking about intervention and risk prevention. We got that on the go, and then the staff sergeant ended up having to leave, moving to a different community. So now it’s stalled, because not one person has the room off the side of their desk to take on a project of that magnitude on their own.

That’s probably, from where I sit in a rural community, the biggest struggle we have — the high turnover. We get building blocks set up in terms of VAWIR and ICAT, but then that key RCMP officer ends up having to leave. Then we get somebody who is brand new and unfamiliar with VAWIR, or another VAWIR training isn’t going to be happening in another couple of years, so that officer misses out on that part.

Right now, due to COVID, which of course everybody is dealing with, VAWIR and ICAT have completely come to a standstill.

The turnover is probably a big one. It fractures the relationships that we do build with the RCMP. It impacts trust in a very big way, because being a feminist, women-serving organization, we tend to be very careful with people in positions of great authority over women, people in positions of great authority over all of us, especially our vulnerable women who have mental health concerns. So it takes a while to get to know our officers and to understand where they’re coming from and how they view Indigenous vulnerability when it comes to our women here in town. By the time we get that relationship built, they’re on to their next posting. Then we find ourselves in a position of education fatigue almost, relationship-building fatigue, because we have to start the process all over again.

Consistency takes a back seat because we end up becoming comfortable with a couple of officers, and we know what to predict, and we are more, I guess I would say, open with them. We’re sharing a lot more information. We encourage women to connect more with these officers that we’ve established a relationship with. They have a good relationship with this officer. They’re sharing things about their violence that they’ve experienced, their histories, and reaching out to these officers. Then again, they move on to the next posting, so we have to start that process of trust all over again with the women as well.

From a rural perspective, one thing that we have often found is that city people do things a little differently. There are very good reasons for that. But there also seems to be some reluctance to put a bit of a rural hat on when it comes to working in these small communities, because the rules are different here. We have found that we cannot be as stringent with our confidentiality because safety, in our world, trumps policy. Safety trumps everything. We are doing this work to keep women alive.

We are sitting across the table from a staff sergeant who is just like: “No, we cannot share. We cannot talk about this information. This has to go to court” or “We can’t do this outside of the confines of an ICAT.” Well, we can’t get people to come to the ICAT. We need to have a real conversation in real time about what’s happening with these women. Some officers are very ambivalent to that idea. That’s kind of a big-city mindset that doesn’t always work in our little communities.

How am I doing for time? I could talk forever.

[11:25 a.m.]

D. Routley (Chair): You’re fine. However you’d like to use it. I think we had you scheduled in until about now, but it’s up to you.

L. Stuart: Okay, if you would grant me two more minutes, I would just like to touch on the really heavy reality of mental health and what the RCMP have to deal with here when it comes to that. We all know that mental health and addictions, substance misuse, trauma, intergenerational trauma is all compounding their work.

I did a quick bit of research about the amount of training that RCMP officers receive in terms of mental health, and it’s a little lean. Again, that’s why I feel collaboration is really important, because we have worked with these women for years. We have insights and intervention techniques that work. We are kind of finding that if the people with mental health aren’t doing anything wrong, they don’t get any attention.

For example, we had a women who had significant trauma, significant mental health, auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations. We called the RCMP to do a wellness check, and because her demeanor was so catatonic, he mistakenly assumed that everything was okay, nothing was wrong. She just walked right away from him. He said, “I can’t really do anything. She’s not breaking the law,” and left it at that.

Our concern was not that she was going to break the law; our concern was that she was going to kill herself. But because the assessments are so open to interpretation and training is, like I said, a little bit lean and we didn’t know this officer…. This officer didn’t call back to say: “All right. I’m not seeing what you’re seeing. What’s happening here? Is this kind of consistent for this woman?” It just got dropped, and we never saw this woman again. I have no idea where she is right now. I think about this woman all the time. I look for her all over the place, and I haven’t seen her. It’s been over a year.

I feel like I keep coming back to collaboration, because that’s the only way we’re going to make maximum use of our limited resources in this community. There are officers who are really strong in that and then other folks who I’d say have maybe a little bit of a different idea. That’s when we really see the ineffectiveness of that way of doing the work.

I think I can pause there.

D. Routley (Chair): Thanks very much.

I’ll move the floor now to members for questions.

G. Lore: Hi, Lynne. My name is Grace Lore. I’m the MLA for Victoria–Beacon Hill. I want to thank you for answering the survey and for presenting to us today and for the work you’re doing in your community. I’m troubled to hear about the impact of COVID on VAWIR in your community at the same time as gender-based violence increases.

I had a specific question, though, coming out of your survey. You mentioned a project that involves a review of redacted RCMP files. I’m just really curious as to how that came about, what the feedback into the process was for that. I haven’t heard of something like this and can imagine the insight folks like yourselves and organizations like that could offer. But I’m curious about how it came about and then the output.

L. Stuart: Right. Okay, so this project was…. The first stab at it took place in the States, where police files were being reviewed by victim service providers, by feminist agencies, women-serving agencies, to look for those stereotypes, the myths, the biases that led to many cases being deemed unfounded, especially in terms of sexual assault.

There was a pilot project that I think happened in Toronto. That was what got me thinking: “Well, if that can happen in Canada, maybe we should be implementing a bit more of that in other provinces.” What we have found is…. I’m looking at my crime statistics here. In Vanderhoof in 2019, we had 18 level 1 sexual assaults.

[11:30 a.m.]

On one hand, I’m holding onto the fact that I know of at least 20. So I know that 18 is completely under-reported. It makes me wonder how many unfounded reports are just kind of being closed because of things like rape myths, biases, stereotypes.

In B.C., I am not aware of any project like that happening. My goal would be to raise awareness for this project and to have it come to B.C., because when it shone a light on those old ideas of sexual assault, it really changed the way RCMP viewed sexual assaults. It can’t hurt to do that here. That’s why I made mention of that project, because I feel very strongly that a lot of sexual assault cases in my community are deemed unfounded because of old ideas.

D. Routley (Chair): Thank you very much. I don’t see questions.

Thank you so much, Lynne, for agreeing to participate with a rural perspective. We’ve heard echo of the turnover issues.

Oh, I see my friend Adam has his hand up.

Go ahead, Adam. Sorry, I didn’t see you.

A. Olsen: No, no problem. In fact, you were going exactly…. I just wanted to acknowledge that the turnover issues had been raised by a number of different presenters to our committee over the time, which have largely impacted Indigenous communities. It was, I think, good to hear — is it good to hear? — that it’s also impacting other non-Indigenous communities or the broader public.

I just wanted to acknowledge that we’ve heard this, and we’ve heard the impact that it has — the inconsistency. Being able to deliver the community-based policing is really restricted when people are moving around and bouncing from one community to the next. I just wanted to acknowledge that.

Thanks, Doug.

D. Routley (Chair): Yeah, thank you. Maybe I’ll actually add to that a bit. You know, even if we aren’t able, perhaps, to affect the deployment of RCMP officers, there have been so many examples given to us where the relationship between some officers is so good because of a certain episode in people’s lives, or there’s an empathetic gesture, or there’s some kind of connection made, or there’s a real involvement in the culture of the community.

Do you see any way…? Have you seen examples where that process is accelerated? So many times that just builds up to the point where it’s bearing fruit and then is changed. It’d be nice if it could at least happen quicker.

L. Stuart: Yeah. I think it’s a mix of things. It’s personality. It’s whether or not there’s a bit of a social justice fire in this particular person.

We had one person, an officer, who really worked hard to spearhead a kind of informal hub model, because he was like: “I don’t understand why, when I’m dealing with somebody with mental health, I can’t just call somebody to get them to come and help me, because I am not skilled in that. If I’m dealing with somebody who’s struggling with substance misuse, why can’t I just call somebody to come and help me with that?” We were all like: “Yes. Yes, you can. Let’s get a framework together.”

It really took off, and then he had to leave. But he came in with this plan, after a very short time of seeing the social determinants in this town. He knew right away what he wanted this to look like.

The other part that’s interesting to me is that Omineca Safe Home is kind of like a soft, little cloud. Everybody thinks: “Yup. They do really great work.” We kind of get acknowledged. But when an RCMP officer comes in and says, “This has to look different,” people listen. It’s always Safe Home that is saying the same thing over and over. But when an officer comes in who has that social justice spark and has the audience and the clout to make real change in the community, things happen a little bit faster.

I’m not kidding; we almost adopted him formally. But then he had to leave, right? So then that whole initiative just kind of fell down, and everybody went back to working in their silos.

[11:35 a.m.]

One initiative that has really borne fruit is our Indigenous liaison officer. He is just the best thing ever. I also know that he commutes, and it’s an ugly commute. I’m not sure how much longer he’s going to be able to do that, either. It takes the right person who has that motivation. When they do, it really looks different.

D. Routley (Chair): Thanks very much. I guess consistency matters. Like, if there’s a program or a process in place that a new officer can just, as much as possible, inherit the work that’s been done. Maybe a transition program could help, and an officer who’s developed that brings someone into it.

We really appreciate your contribution, and it means a lot to us.

L. Stuart: Thank you for hearing me. Enjoy the rest of your day.

D. Routley (Chair): You too. Enjoy the rural….

Okay, Members, we have, I think, one of our next two guests in the waiting room. We could take a brief recess until 11:45 a.m.

The committee recessed from 11:36 a.m. to 11:49 a.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): Marney, my name is Doug Routley. I’m the MLA for Nanaimo–North Cowichan and Chair of the committee to review the Police Act.

We’re an all-party committee, as you know, and we’ve been receiving submissions from organizations and people, and we’ve reached out. We did the survey that you responded to, and we’re very grateful that you’ve accepted our invitation to speak to the committee. We’ve invited a few groups of people from the survey respondents.

We really appreciate your contribution, and we’re looking forward to hearing from you. I know you’re on your own here, but I’m sure, as you say, you know what they were going to speak about, so we’ll rely on you fully here.

[11:50 a.m.]

With that pressure, I hand the floor over to you. Afterwards, there will be time for questions. Members will introduce themselves when they ask questions.

MARNEY MUTCH

M. Mutch: Well, here we go. I’ve waited for this moment, and thank you, thank you, thank you so much for this opportunity. I’ve waited for it or one similar for seven years, and it just seemed like when I saw the call for input, I thought: “There’s the opening.”

I can’t say I’m upset that I’m by myself today, because I’ve been writing like a dervish. I do have a lot to say, and I didn’t know if I could get it into ten minutes. It’s good practice for my TED Talk. No, I’m kidding. I’m going to have to refer to my notes a lot, because otherwise I’ll go off track and probably down a rabbit hole. If I do, feel free to pull me back.

As I see it, reform happens when deficiencies are identified. I have to read this. I’m sorry. The recognition of deficiencies. “Deficiencies are only recognized through experience,” is what I wanted to say. Margie and I have the regrettable benefit of experience that few other people have had.

I, in particular, and, I think, her as well…. I feel, honestly, that it’s a responsibility of mine, too, and even more so I’ve come to think it’s my purpose to share my experience in service of others — and to hope to hell nobody else has to go through what we have, or at least, if we can do something to reduce the likelihood of it happening.

I’m not here to criticize either. I just want you to know that. I really, really want to be a part of the solution. I’m hoping that this might be the beginning that we can start from.

You’ve seen my great, big, long manifesto — my nine-pager and a cover, despite everything I could think of. I don’t want to repeat that today in particular, but what I do want to focus on are a couple of things. One is….

My big thing is the police mental health crisis and the use of force. What I want to do today is connect the two, in the sense that most of what we hear today is how police are forced to be social workers to a society now teeming with people with mental health issues. It’s a big strain.

We also hear about the countless numbers of police members who lose their lives to suicide because of the pressures and trauma of the job. We don’t hear about that as often, and we don’t always hear how many, but we know it’s a bad scene. What we have not heard discussed, really, is the connection of that PTSD to excessive use of force, and how it is actually playing out in the line of duty.

Before I get into what I would like to talk about as possible solutions, I would like to give you an inside look at what it does look like on the job. More than through research, I’ve learned what I have learned through personal experience, by reading the statements of the police that were submitted, and also, from the coroner’s inquest where they testified.

[11:55 a.m.]

Though it took me a couple of years to get my hands on the audio, I was finally granted permission and have been over the audio many times. When you’re in there — and I was self-representing…. I mean, there were three lawyers in front of me. I had never done this. I had two days’ notice. All I could do was think: “How do I do this? How do I formulate questions?” So I missed a lot of what really went on until I got to re-read it.

In doing so, what I want to say is that what I heard shocked and angered me. Yet at the same time, the hatred, I daresay, that I was filled with became compassion for those men. The anger that came was toward a system that had failed them miserably.

I want to tell you what I heard, a number of samples of what I heard. I’m sorry, guys. It’s not going to be pretty, but I want you to see what police PTSD looks like on the job. I heard them reliving past traumatic experiences and basing their actions on a call in no way related to theirs. I heard about the call. The only thing similar was a mother and a son.

I wasn’t that mother, and my son wasn’t that son. He did not have a schizophrenic diagnosis or anything else similar. They assumed wrong and held tight to it, despite appearances to the contrary. Yes, it was a crisis call. Yes, I’d called them. But by the time they got to the door, I was perfectly calm, and so was my son. I had it under control.

Unfortunately, they had heard wrong information. If that information was correct and my son had a knife to his neck or mine, it would not have looked like a calm mother coming to the door and a now calm son sitting on the sofa. Unfortunately, I didn’t have an opportunity to explain. They were amped up and wanted me out the door.

Backflashing and superimposing is PTSD. It is a symptom of it. It is one of them. I heard one express mounting fear because of my son’s silence. Only his eyes were roving from one side to the other. There are only two ways into the living room, and he was blockaded. So he didn’t say. He was sitting on the sofa. They will all acknowledge he was laying back, slouched back with tears on his cheeks, legs outstretched under a table. Yes, he did have a little kitchen knife — 30 ounces’ worth — on an open hand on the sofa beside him. They all acknowledged he was calm, non-threatening, non-aggressive. Just quiet.

This officer was terrified. The more that he stayed quiet and didn’t respond, the more he said his anxiety increased and increased and increased. I asked him: “Why? Does it not occur to you that he’s traumatized? That he’s terrified?” He said: “No. Not at all. He was trying to figure out how to kill us all.” That is an example of PTSD’s magnified sense of risk. That officer had admitted as much, that he did have PTSD already. He believed he was managing it. I would say that it had the better of him.

I heard the negotiator at the front door say that that Rhett was asked to drop the knife right where it was found and stood up. The negotiator backtracked and said, “Well, I don’t…. You know, he did drop it,” and that while Rhett stood there staring at him, he felt alone. He felt unprotected.

[12:00 p.m.]

There was nothing between him and the front door where he stood. There were four other officers in that house, and one of them was right behind his back. He mentioned turning and having words with him. He was there. He was covered. For him to feel like he was alone and not protected…. Well, there was a door right behind him.

He also said that he did not use…. I asked him: “Why didn’t you use your Taser?” “Well, I couldn’t because the door was in front of me.” Well, was it? One minute the door was in front of him, the next it was behind him. Well, I can tell you, because I was standing right outside, that the door was always closed. So I don’t understand how he couldn’t have used that one.

I heard the two shooters say that they couldn’t retreat now because of the tight space they were in. This house is basically not much more…. It’s square. It’s a rectangle, pretty close to square. There’s a square hallway right in the middle of it, the hub of the house. That’s where they were standing, and they said they were in a confined space. It has six doorways, and right behind them was the kitchen, through which they had entered, and the back door there and the front door right here. That didn’t make sense either. To me, that disorientation and confusion was PTSD.

I heard the subject officer claim that the first beanbag did not work, and he waited for another round before he shot but that it didn’t work and that my son was still running at them, and he was afraid for the beanbagger’s life, so he shot.

Well, there was only one perceptible blast, number one. Was he upright? Well, you tell me. The bullet went from his neck to his liver. The pathologist was very clear that his body was parallel to the ground, and the bullet was headed to his feet. The beanbag did work. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. It hit him in the thigh and knocked him off balance.

That disconnect is PTSD. I heard him say he bent over, put his hand on Rhett’s shoulder and kicked the knife out of my son’s hand but couldn’t remember whether his hand was on his left side of his body, at a wall, or on the right side, at a desk. Either way there was blood shooting from his neck and furniture in the way, but none of that was discussed. That memory lapse is PTSD and…. I don’t know what. Maybe fear.

I heard the beanbag shooter say he saw the knife sort of tumble a little way on the carpet. In fact, evidence showed the knife well beyond, right at the foot of the sofa in the exact sort of position it would have been in if he had bent over and put it down — the direction, everything. It didn’t have…. It had two little smidges of blood on it, and had it hit the carpet, it wouldn’t have rolled that far. There was nothing on the carpet.

I don’t know if that was PTSD or not. I’ll tell you why. I’m sure it was some of it. I have a sense of something else.

According to what was described of his footstep, my son did not bolt at them. He was not upright when he shot, and he did not have a knife in his hand. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say to you what I truly believe, and that is that he was shot by accident, by PTSD.

[12:05 p.m.]

The shooter was left-handed, and the beanbagger, who he was right beside…. So he’s left-handed. The beanbagger is here, and he’s right-handed. I believe that when he deployed the beanbag, the motion of it or the startling of it caused the gun to deploy.

This is what PTSD does, and there are no steps taken, it seems, to prevent it.

I had a Vic PD officer, an HR officer, subpoenaed at the inquest because I was the only one interested to find out what was going on with PTSD care at the police station. The person came, and I asked if there were any mental health checks and balances. The type of work these guys do on an ERT — they see stuff every single day. The call that they were backflashing about — the schizophrenic killed his mother in front of their eyes. They were seriously traumatized by that. That’s one call.

Look at the type of work that we, the government, we all ask them to do. Who is taking responsibility for the mental health consequences of this work? Nobody.

I was told, to my…. I was gobsmacked. There are no checks and balances there. They don’t go to a psychologist after they’ve been through umpteen traumatic calls to make sure that they are mentally suited to be carrying lethal weapons with the authority to deploy them at their discretion.

In fact, this woman told me that PTSD can’t be cured. That, I can tell you, is absolutely incorrect. It can be cured. I’m a walking example. I mean, who knows if some is still there, but a lot of it is done. What she did say is that there are only two states: one is suffering, and the other state is managing it. And they leave it to the discretion of the individual to decide which they have.

That subject officer, who I feel so much compassion for…. He was a relatively young guy with a kid in elementary school, the same one that my son went to, and he will never be the same. He’s going to be haunted by that for the rest of his life as much as I am. God knows what it’s going to do to him, because if I’m correct that that was an accident — even if it wasn’t but more so if it was…. To see him on the stand, he was a mess 2½ years later, an absolute mess. He sobbed. He stumbled on his words. You know, somebody who kills righteously? I don’t think I would see that kind of reaction.

I think the system basically threw him under the bus and many others like him. He was back on the job in six weeks. I heard that from the chief himself, who was kind enough to take me out for coffee. I asked him how he was doing. He said: “Oh, okay. Yup. He’s back on duty.”

Well, at that inquest, I learned after that that officer had put in a request for the jury to recommend mandatory counselling for police in his position who had experienced trauma and the time off to benefit from it. He shouldn’t have to beg an inquest to do that. Worse, the inquest ignored it. They ignored mine too. What they put in there was, anyway….

[12:10 p.m.]

Does anybody here not see, definitively, how badly we need this problem addressed?

D. Routley (Chair): It certainly resonates with what we’ve heard so much — the effects of trauma. You bring a really unique, obviously tragic perspective, but you show so much empathy towards the officer in seeing the effect of trauma from the other lens, the other direction. I personally really appreciate that view.

M. Mutch: Thank you. It took a lot of time to get there.

D. Routley (Chair): I bet.

M. Mutch: I couldn’t have done this…. You know, sometimes….

I have to say to you that a lot of things I’ve wanted to do earlier, actions that I wanted to take, got delayed, delayed, delayed. Life has a funny way of unfolding. I look backwards and say that I can see the benefit of all those delays, because I wasn’t that person back then. I would have torpedoed; I would have scorched the earth they walked on. I feel that if you want to make change, if you want to contribute to it, that’s not the point of view you need.

When I heard that, I sincerely do feel that way. I feel a lot of compassion.

D. Routley (Chair): I think it’s remarkable, myself. Thank you.

M. Mutch: That’s only half of it. What I now want to do, if I can take a little more time…. Oh god, I don’t know how much I’m taking. I could talk faster if you’d like. Till one, okay.

All of this inspired something in me, okay? I couldn’t stop thinking: “How can we fix this? It’s not happening. How can we fix this? What can we do?” I have a pretty wild imagination — part creative, part sort of engineering-ish, analytical — and I did come up with an idea. It might be a little audacious for me to share it with you, but I’m going to. Why not? All you can do is say: “Hmm, nice try.”

I’ve been doing a lot of research, and what I’ve really come to think — and I’m not the only one that says this — is that we need an entirely new model of policing, one that is transformative and cultivates a culture and practices that are healthier and safer for everyone.

What I offer forth is, as I say, based on experience, research — a lot of it — and what I should think is some common sense. I’ve borrowed from other authors. That line came from the official in Minnesota. That was his line after the George Floyd incident and how they approached it in their city. I won’t refer to them all, but if you want to know later, I’ll tell you.

When civilians are terrified of the police, and the police are terrified of the civilians, there’s a massive and critical disconnect. That’s where we are. At the crux of it, I believe, is police culture, their lack of mandatory mental health monitoring and treatment, and the relationship of both to the use of force — I may go back and forth — lethal force, in particular. The net result is that police have lost the trust and respect of the people they’ve pledged to protect. We need to help them recover it, because there are so many lives at stake — ours and theirs.

It’s a recipe for disaster all around to have police with mental illness, such as PTSD, in the field with lethal weapons and the authority to deploy them at their discretion. Lethal force is too often precipitated by fear; inadequate, outdated and misinformed training — which is, I think, overdue; lack of protective equipment such as shields and stab vests; and untreated trauma.

[12:15 p.m.]

It is not always trauma-based, though. It is not always the result of trauma-based fear, as lethal force is commonly the result of downright unrepentant brutality. That was the case for Margie’s son. Have any of you read the case about Myles Gray? No. Nobody? He was killed by Vancouver police.

Very quickly, he was a businessman who had a business in Sechelt, providing floral greens to florists across the country. He was on a call to Vancouver. He had just dropped off the flowers, decided he wanted to go for a walk near Boundary and to the border, what you call the border, of you-know-where.

He went for a walk through this park. He only had a little…. He didn’t have anything, no weapons, no nothing. He had his earphones on and not even his phone. He came across a lady who was watering her garden on a restricted day. I guess he scolded her. Something happened. Her son called the police. Next thing you know, there were 11 of them chasing him. I think he got scared and ran.

He got cornered in somebody’s backyard, and they pepper-sprayed him. They hogtied him. They bludgeoned him from his head to his testicles. There were five of them actively involved. There were two more watching. There was a total of 11. When Margie and her husband arrived where they’d called them to, they were kind of making jokes about it.

Absolutely nothing came of it. They obstructed the IIO. When it finally did go to Crown, Crown said: “Well, we don’t have a cause of death.” He had cardiac arrest. That’s not a heart attack. That means he died, and any one of those injuries could’ve killed him. They were told not to look at him.

It wasn’t until two years later…. Those guys — they never missed a day of work. That police chief knows what the hell they did. He was unarmed. There’s no excuse, absolutely no excuse. She’s had to live with that.

Two years later they finally tell her the range, after she’s starting to heal…. The IIO will not tell us anything because they think the families are just members of the public. Same with the coroner’s office. “We’re not entitled to give information to you because we don’t give it to the general public.” Excuse me. I’m the parent.

They wouldn’t tell her what had happened. She starts to heal. Two years later, she finds out about every single…. All those things I told you, and more, she didn’t know before. That is retraumatization. That’s how we’re treated, by the way.

Then, after that, after they’ve released that, she gets a phone call from them, saying: “What would you like us to do with the brain?” A funeral home laughed at her, thinking she was joking when she asked if they could handle it.

That’s brutality, anyway.

Police are never held accountable. Let’s face it. We know it; we don’t expect it. The regulations on use of force are so vague. The worst part about it is perception of a risk. When you’ve got a load of cops with massive PTSD, whose perception of risk is so magnified and skewed, there’s a problem. To me, all this debate about defining use of force comes down to this. To me, there is only one question to be answered: was there one viable alternative? In every case, I can assure you, there were several.

It is being…. We basically have legislated murder right now, and that has got to change. Crown can not be afraid or unwilling to charge people. I’m going off track here a little bit.

[12:20 p.m.]

The IIO is powerless. They’re toothless. That’s not the way it was meant to be. They were supposed to be like Ontario and have the authority to lay charges. These guys work their butts off on an investigation and finally, finally, finally decide that there’s something to refer to Crown, and Crown neuters them, to be blunt.

I heard that after what happened to Myles, we might have lost the CCD. It’s criminal. I heard the same thing from Rosenthal, and he was a great guy. It’s got to change.

Okay. Give me a breath. As I said, I started, and I was determined to figure something out, and I came up with a concept that I call ASHLE, the acronym for academy for safe and healthy law enforcement and ASHLEV for virtual, the virtual delivery platform that it is. It’s an idea that can work in tandem with bricks-and-mortar facilities. It’s geographically extensible and uniform, easily accessible and readily available.

It’s not just B.C. that needs this. This needs to roll out across the country, if we did a good job. I envision it providing, in order of priority….

You’ve first got to mandate mental health — mandated mental health monitoring and treatment, on-demand treatment. Mandating is essential to eradicating the associated fear of stigmatization and bullying. If you take the choice out of their hands, it’s: “Ah, man, they made me go.” On-demand treatment is critical.

We need a system similar to Telus Health. As people know, it used to be Babylon. It’s similar to Telus Health’s quick-response virtual model, only this one would be uniquely focused on first responders’ trauma and its derivative effects, such as substance abuse, domestic violence, and so on.

I have heard, even reading ex-RCMP Jennifer Pound, the spokesperson who had to retire because of PTSD…. She has a blog. In reading that, she had to wait on a wait-list for over a year to get help.

I’m closing. I’m near the end.

It would include a wide array of treatment options. There are many lesser-known modalities that have proven to heal trauma more quickly and painlessly than conventional talk therapy. I myself have had the benefit of such. Mental health care needs to be woven into the fabric of policing the way fitness is built into a healthy life.

There are three categories. Revisionary training is focusing on preservation of life by way of safer, confidence-building CID techniques, not presently used in Canada but proven effective in other countries — such as the U.K., Norway, Ireland, Iceland, New Zealand and, also, Japan — in reducing the use of force in trauma. All countries have mentally ill and not mentally ill people on the streets with knives. So do psych wards, by the way, and they don’t kill them.

Mastering gun-free interventions using shields and stab vests, as shown on Hold Your Fire. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that documentary CBC produced after the death of Sammy Yatim on the subway in Toronto. There was a police commissioner from the U.K. who weighed in on it. He was pretty darn stunned and said, basically: “We wouldn’t have done it that way.”

There are videos that were shown then — they’re also on YouTube — about very successful edged-blade interventions by U.K. cops without any guns. They weren’t training exercises. They were real life, and one of them had a machete.

[12:25 p.m.]

The other one would be Japanese martial arts for police. I’m going to read a quote from them. “Instead of lethal force, officers train intensively in self-defence skills for restraining offenders called taiho-jutsu, the art of arrest. Officer Suzuki said: ‘It is a set of techniques for keeping ourselves and others safe. I think of it as martial arts for police. Our job is to protect not just crime victims but the crime suspects as well.’”

I was thinking, when I thought about this and having the other people, instead…. When I first thought of this idea, I thought of a bricks-and-mortar thing. I thought, “How are we going to get all these guys here?” — you know, getting somebody from each country to come until we learned to do it. Virtual — no problem.

We also need to undo misguided thinking. I’m sure you’ve all heard of the 21-foot rule, which has apparently been increased to 24 or 25. It was not handed down from officer to officer. It was created in a 1983 magazine article to describe the distance an officer must keep from the subject with a knife to give enough time to draw and fire their gun if he suddenly charges at them. However, it has been taken as a green light to use deadly force. It’s also called a kill zone, and that’s wrong. Just because you can kill doesn’t mean you should. The other one is to never back down. Move in and take charge. Some of those misguided contacts.

In addition to that, there are things like emotional intelligence. How do you handle foul, insulting, goading language directed at you or if they’re glaring at you? How to deal with stuff like that without taking it personally, humanizing the subjects. I always wanted to ask those officers, except I was cut off: what would you have done…? In this case, how would you have handled it differently if it had been a member of your family or your kid’s buddy that you were seeing? I think it would be different. How would that have impacted the use-of-force decision? Humanizing them — and realizing that more officers are attacked because of the expectation that they will be killed if they don’t stop them first.

Last thing: education. This is a huge one — diverse cultural, social and personal development topics. A big one: the philosophy of policing by consent. I’ll leave that. I don’t know if you know the philosophy. I won’t go into it here, because I’m not an expert, but I did read all about it. The Minnesota was talking about it being the philosophy of that.

Mental health care. The psychology of trauma — that PTSD is no more a choice than breaking a bone, and no more a sign of weakness of character than grief is.

Self-healing. Personal and corporate development, like Thinking Into Results, a program changing the psychology of businesses in every country in the world.

The list is endless. It’s as endless as the imagination.

D. Routley (Chair): Great. I’d have to ask you to wrap up now, but it appears you did.

Thank you very much for that. It’s an extensive list of things that have come out of really awful experience, and you brought new light to the role of trauma. Your view, your lens of their experience, is really fascinating to me.

Do members have questions?

Thank you very much for coming.

G. Lore: Hi, Marney. Grace Lore. I’m the MLA for Victoria–Beacon Hill.

I just wanted to thank you so much for taking the time to share your story and the expertise that has come out of the work you’ve done and also the experience itself.

[12:30 p.m.]

I just want to say that trauma-informed policing is something that has come up a lot. I think where you make an important connection here for us to think through is what that means for trauma-informed care of police and the way that that can impact how they are in community. I don’t know that every time we talk about trauma-informed policing, we’re also thinking about the other side of that and the trauma that exists for officers. So I just wanted to thank you. I think that’s a really important thread to pull across all aspects of this work.

I’m so sorry for your loss, from one mom to another. Thank you for transforming that into the expertise that you have shared with us today.

A. Olsen: I echo the comments of Grace. I wanted just to add, from my perspective of the powerful presentation, it took me a few minutes here to organize myself to be able to respond. Really, I think, as I’ve been sitting in these meetings and listening, the mental health and well-being of police officers — I will also extend that to all front-line first responders — is something that has largely been guarded. There have been big walls built around this through culture in these organizations.

I couldn’t help but think how unfair it was to your family to lose your son. And the way you brought to us the story of how unfair it was to the police officer to now be in a situation where…. Not only could there be the event that activated him to make the decision that he made in your home, but now, in the next instance, there’s going to be the event that happened in your home also layered on top of that. It could be someone else’s life. It could be his life. It could be an innocent bystander’s life.

It was a very poignant presentation. Thank you so much for bringing it to us.

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

If members have no more questions, on behalf of the committee, thank you very much for responding to our survey and answering our invitation to attend today. I know it’s really difficult to do, but you did a great job.

M. Mutch: Thank you, Doug. You know, the worst thing is when you feel like a victim and powerless. Doing this, to be really honest, has lifted me up — being able to feel like there’s something that I can do to, hopefully, help. I’d love to be a part of the solution any way I could, but this has been a gift to me, being able to do this.

Thank you very much to every one of you. I thank you for letting me do it.

D. Routley (Chair): You already have been a part of the solution by appearing here. We are committed to this project. So thank you very much.

All right, Members, that brings us to the other business, the last item in our agenda. Does anybody have anything they want to contribute?

A. Olsen: It’s sad that that presentation wasn’t recorded and live, because I think it would benefit a lot of people. Is it?

D. Routley (Chair): Yes, it is.

Deliberations

K. Riarh (Committee Clerk): Would members like to go in camera for deliberations?

D. Routley (Chair): Okay. I’ll ask for a motion to take the meeting in camera.

Trevor, thank you. Seconded by Dan.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 12:34 p.m. to 1:04 p.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

D. Routley (Chair): With that, thanks, Members.

Motion to adjourn?

Garry, seconded by Adam.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 1:04 p.m.