Senate Committee — SECD — Brief — 2024-10-31_secd_c-20_followup_rcmp_e

SECD / Brief / 2024-10-31_secd_c-20_followup_rcmp_e

Senate Committees

Standing Committee on Security, Defence, and Veteran Affairs (SECD) Monday, September 23, 2024 (4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.) Meeting 59: Bill C-20,

An Act establishing the Public Complaints and Review Commission and amending certain Acts and statutory instruments Question Senator Cotter: Thank you, minister, for being here. I support the bill, and I am pleased to see the expansion, refocus and modernization of the approach. But I have a question that I think it is a big question of philosophy that I want to put to you, and I want to put it in two parts. It is not a trap so much as an explanation for the bigger question.

The bill presently empowers the commission to continue to primarily perform a review function, reviewing RCMP and CBSA investigations of complaints, as opposed to primarily an investigative function by an independent agency. This puts significant demands on the RCMP and will on border services people. My first question is: How many person years has the RCMP had to dedicate to investigating its own members, and how many person years will that be the case for border security people?

The reason I ask that question first is that this review approach in relation to policing and border services is increasingly at odds with the approaches being taken across the country with respect to oversight of police-based agencies. Michael Tulloch did an extensive review in Ontario. He is now the Chief Justice of the Ontario Court of Appeal that endorsed and validated more of a model of independent investigators.

The chiefs of police of Saskatchewan lobbied me, when I was in a different capacity, and the Government of Saskatchewan to establish an independent agency with respect to serious matters because they were being overburdened by the needs of serious investigations. Also, investigators tend to be less expensive than RCMP officers person for person.

So you get lower costs, firstly; secondly, you enable RCMP officers and border security professionals to do what they are trained to do, not investigating other police people but doing the work of policing and keeping the peace; and thirdly, by that model you get away from the concern widely held that the police are investigating the police. Why wouldn’t we have gone with a model that is heavily investigative rather than so heavily a review approach? Mr. LeBlanc: Senator, those are very important questions.

With respect to the number of officers at CBSA or RCMP, person hours or the way one measures that to work, we don’t have that information here, but I will absolutely undertake to get that quickly to the committee in terms of what current amount of RCMP resources — or even CBSA, as they currently internally investigate these matters. I would be happy to have that shared with the committee as soon as possible. Response In response to the question regarding the number of person hours it takes to investigate a public complaint, it depends on the complexity and number of allegations.

It should also be noted that these investigations are undertaken by first responders who must respond to operational demands in addition to the administrative public complaint investigations. The average amount of time it takes to investigate one complaint is approximately 30 hours. Last fiscal year, the National Public Complaints Directorate (NPCD) received public complaints, compared to the previous year. For this fiscal year, NPCD expects to receive about the same number of complaints as during the last fiscal year.

Document details

Collection	Senate Committees
Citation	SECD / Brief / 2024-10-31_secd_c-20_followup_rcmp_e
Type	committee
Volume / chapter	441 / Brief / 2024-10-31_secd_c-20_followup_rcmp_e
Language	en
Format	pdf
Source	COMM_SEN
Identifier	f3796b46011899135efd1901601b5fcb58c83393

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