[English]

I would invite you to make your opening statements. If you would field questions after that, we would be very appreciative.

Our committee wants to thank all of you, and indeed all of the RCMP. It seems every time we've put out the call for you to come, you have complied. We appreciate that.

On our first panel today, we welcome Deputy Commissioner Doug Lang, from the RCMP's contract and aboriginal policing division, and Inspector Tyler Bates, the RCMP's director of national aboriginal policing and crime prevention services.

Good morning, everyone. This is meeting number 83 of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, on Tuesday, April 30, 2013. We are continuing our study on the economics of policing in Canada.

Sitting in the back is Assistant Commissioner Janice Armstrong. Janice came down to watch the proceedings today, and I hope you don't mind. Unfortunately—or fortunately, for me—I'm retiring at the end of May. Janice is coming in behind me as the assistant commissioner of contract and aboriginal policing. This gives her a great opportunity to come and watch committee action in progress.

With me today is Inspector Tyler Bates. He is actually a superintendent now, but promotions take a little while to catch up to us. He's in charge of our national aboriginal policing and crime prevention program.

As noted, my name is Doug Lang. I am the RCMP's deputy commissioner of contract and aboriginal policing. That's the uniform branch, I say, of the RCMP.

Economics of policing is a complex issue that has cost drivers from areas that aren't necessarily immediately evident, thus making it a difficult issue to summarize in just a few minutes.

These programs that I mentioned do not replace RCMP officers. They are an enhancement and a complement to our regular members, permitting those members to focus on core policing functions.

Aboriginal community constables use their unique skills and experience as members of the community to focus more on proactive and preventative policing measures. Aboriginal community constables have the training and capacity to provide tactical enforcement and investigative support to RCMP constables, if required. This option is being explored for enhanced service delivery within other diverse cultural communities as well.

The community constable allows the RCMP to attract, develop, and retain people with specific linguistic, cultural, and community skills, so we can tailor our policing services to the identified need from a specific community. These community constables provide valuable links to the aboriginal community through their knowledge of their home community, local language, and local culture. They are a role model for the youth. They provide the RCMP with an enhanced culturally and linguistically competent police service for aboriginal communities, allowing for a stronger relationship built on trust to be developed between aboriginal communities and the RCMP.

Recognizing that enforcement alone does not address crime victimization, some of the enhanced service delivery options that the RCMP employs are our community program officer and the aboriginal community constable programs. The community program officer is a bridge between the community and the RCMP. They are an unarmed non-peace officer function focused exclusively on community-specific crime prevention, engagement, mobilization, and crime reduction. Our aboriginal community constable is an armed and uniformed peace officer at the rank of special constable.

Aboriginal policing service units lead and bring proactive, culturally competent policing to aboriginal people and the communities in which they serve. They seek to improve relations between aboriginal people, the RCMP, and the criminal justice system through strong and effective aboriginal policing initiatives. These include recruiting, crime reduction and crime prevention strategies, program development and delivery, and community tripartite agreement negotiations.

Each division's commanding officer retains aboriginal advisers to provide advice on cultural perspectives on matters pertaining to the delivery of aboriginal policing services. These advisers also report to the commissioner, in the form of a committee, to provide guidance and recommendations relative to national concerns and enhance the RCMP's ability to contribute to safer and healthier aboriginal communities.

We have aboriginal policing service units in every division across Canada. These units are responsible for overseeing, coordinating, and delivering services under the RCMP's aboriginal police program and first nations policing policy within aboriginal communities.

More recently the RCMP has identified aboriginal communities as a strategic priority since 2003. To meet its objectives of safer and healthier aboriginal communities, the RCMP builds trusting relationships by partnering and consulting with the aboriginal communities we serve, in addition to other government organizations such as Public Safety Canada's aboriginal policing directorate and Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, as well as with non-government organizations such as the Assembly of First Nations, and the Native Women's Association of Canada.

In terms of aboriginal policing, the RCMP has maintained a rich and evolving relationship with Canada's aboriginal people over the course of history, going back to the early days of the North West Mounted Police in the 1870s. The RCMP first established a dedicated aboriginal policing directorate in the 1990s, which has evolved today into our National Aboriginal Policing Services.

In addition to the 29,000 RCMP employees, our service delivery capability is enhanced through the assistance of thousands of volunteers, the largest number of volunteers in the Canadian federal government. The use of volunteers enhances police efficiencies, responsiveness, and service delivery through their cultural awareness and community knowledge. These skills increase community engagement and maximize service delivery. Some of the activities that our volunteers perform include but are not limited to victims services, translations, foot and bike patrols, neighbourhood business and ski watch, home and business security checks, and some block parent programs.

The RCMP employs a number of methods to alleviate the pressures of policing across the country. We have a reservist program that allows us to hire back our members, or members from other police departments, to address vacancies and human resource pressures where gaps exist. These gaps can exist due to retirements, long-term sick leave, maternity and paternity leaves, during special events, seasonally, or in emergencies when we do need extra help. Reservists may be former RCMP officers or peace officers within other provincial or municipal police agencies. They have the powers, duties, and responsibilities of regular members when they're called upon for duty.

Other challenges include the necessity to bring members from the north to the south, where there are training centres to receive the training. This creates both financial and human resource pressures on those divisions. We have additional challenges in online training as there's a very slow bandwidth in the north. Rolling out online training created a significant drain on members' time. We have explored other options to mitigate these challenges. We have recently placed training material on CDs for our members in northern detachments that we had provided online in the south. Where possible, we look for efficiencies by partnering with other law enforcement agencies for similar training.

As I mentioned earlier, an additional challenge facing the north is ensuring our members remain qualified in the various training and intervention options that we are required to employ. Most of our tools and skills require annual recertification. These include our incident management and intervention model, which is our use of force model; annual firearms qualifications; chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear response training; and in the near future, patrol carbine training as we roll out a new weapon in our firearms arsenal.

There are many isolated detachments hours away from additional backup and they're accessible only by air. Without an on-site police presence, they're policed via fly-in patrols.

Members must remain available to respond to emergencies 24 hours a day. When we have members away on mandatory training or annual leave from a particular RCMP unit, the RCMP must maintain a minimum complement of two members in the community to respond to calls for service. A two-person detachment must then draw on relief from within the division, from a neighbouring division, or through the RCMP reservist program, which I will touch on later.

In many rural locations government housing is provided and the cost of housing is astronomical. For example, recent expenditures for government accommodation in Rankin Inlet for a modular home was $600,000. A duplex recently built in Cross Lake, Manitoba was just under $1 million.

The RCMP is unique in that we provide policing services in diverse locations, from municipal detachments with hundreds of officers to small, rural, or isolated detachments with as few as two members.

The RCMP also represents the only formal presence that oversees an ever-expanding international interest in the Arctic, and often has sometimes sole responsibility for Canada's sovereignty in the north. This is particularly evident nowadays where international tourism is expanding into Canada's north, for example, cruise ships and the associated impact this has on policing in the far north.

As you know, the RCMP's contract and policing services has jurisdiction for over 70% of Canada, including eight provinces, three territories, approximately 150 municipalities, and four international airports. In many remote locations the RCMP are often the only government representatives in a particular area and take on the role of social worker, mental health professional, substance abuse counsellor, and a host of other roles, including our traditional role of law enforcement.

Thank you for inviting me today to discuss the RCMP's contributions to contract and aboriginal policing, and policing in the north. I would like to take this opportunity to provide the members of the committee with some context of the challenges of policing rural and northern parts of the country.

We've been talking a lot about the economics of policing, and I want to get to that as far as efficiencies are concerned. I think it's good for us to hear the challenges that members face when they have to leave the comfort of the city or being close to their family, to being posted in a very remote area where, again, they don't have amenities. Let's face it: sometimes there are some pretty tough situations that they're dealing with, and there's not really a reprieve from it.

We hear many times that it is a real struggle for members when they are posted in remote and northern communities. First of all, there aren't many amenities. When I lived there, there wasn't a doctor, or just the general basics we're used to when we live in the southern parts of our provinces.

Twenty-three years ago, I lived in Grand Rapids, Manitoba. I lived on the hydro side, but it was a first nations community and I saw first-hand what you talked about. The RCMP members played such an intricate role in the community. In the case at Grand Rapids, it so happened that one of the individuals lived close by and it was a natural fit after he got his training to come back to live in the community.

I think all of us could take a few minutes to go over it again because there was a lot of information packed into the presentation.

Congratulations on that, and congratulations, Deputy Commissioner Lang, on your soon to be retirement. I'm sure you'll have lots to keep you busy.

In some communities, there are no amenities at all, other than us and a nursing station. We fly members into these communities and fly them out again, when it's time for them to be relieved. The costs associated with getting them there are.... They have northern allowances that are federal government policy, isolated post allowances, and they're entitled to vacation trips out, all these kind of things. The housing and building costs for our infrastructure and detachments in these places are phenomenal. In most of Nunavut, we are barging in members' supplies to everyone. They have no road system there at all, so everything has to be barged up and shipped up to the different communities. You just compound those costs.

You're right on. The issues we have are not so much with staffing the north; it's recruiting and finding members willing to go there. As many of you may or may not know, we have limited duration posts all throughout the north—in northern Manitoba, northern Saskatchewan, and in the far north—because we can only keep members there for a certain amount of time for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

One of the key points I wanted to get out today and to share with you is the awareness of the different cost drivers there are for rural policing and policing in Canada's north. When you have your greater discussion about economics of policing, I don't think it's a cookie-cutter approach that can be taken to find the one-size-fits-all solution to the economics of policing. It's very important to understand those special things that you talked about on the rural side, on the far north side, that if someone says that you can come up with a 20% or a 30% cut, how you apply that there.

I just came back from a week's trip to Yukon. I got out to Dawson City and Faro, and met with a number of the members out there. In some places, we have members who catch the northern fever and they stay there forever, and others who go and do a rotation out. I talked to a number of members up there who just love it. They love the lifestyle. Others go up and do two or three years and then come out. They do it as a stepping stone to work their way back to somewhere else in Canada. Boy, when you talk to the guys who are up there and just love it, the smiles on their faces are amazing. They're loving what they do every day. They're really committed to the community. However, it is expensive.

We don't need just our young and junior members in the north; we need people with the investigational skills and some experience to go up and mentor these people. We are always trying to strike that balance of finding members who can go up there, who perhaps don't have children, because schooling in some of these communities is not what we would expect, or there's no high school. So there are times in a member's service when he can actually go and spend some time in the north.

I'm not sure if you're aware but in Manitoba we have a rotation policy called toques before ties. You have to spend some time in a posting in the north, two or three years, before you can come south and get a detective job. That's why we say it's with a tie, so you can do some major crime work or something else. It's an incentive to get people to go north and do that constant rotation.

I know there are a couple of former police officers at the table who know that when you're on call, you just don't sleep like you normally sleep. You're always listening for something to happen. Members get tired. They can only do that for so long until they want to get out and do something else.

We have quite a bit of interest now for members going north into the far north, into the three territories for rotations. We find that a lot of younger members are going up there, members just starting families, and single members. They are willing to go and spend the time. When they go into these communities, they're on call 24-7, 365 days a year, if they're there that long. There is no rest.

When you average out the cost, it's about $121,000 to keep a member booted in a seat in southern Canada and then almost double, about $220,000, to do it in the north, with all those different things tacked on that you have to add for that member.

Just so I understand that, you mentioned the Manitoba program, toques before ties. Are you saying that even though we were talking about the RCMP, the federal and aboriginal policing directorate, there are actually provinces that are tailoring how they use the RCMP in their provinces? Can you explain how the provinces are having their own programs in terms of, for example, toques before ties?

Some people have asked us, “We used to have special constables and aboriginal community constables years ago, and why are you doing it again?” Because when they got in, they saw the other guys got to move so why don't they get to move? They'll only stay in these communities for so long as well in providing the expertise that we need. It's truly a commanding officer's ability to move all of them around from aboriginal policing to federal policing, to keep members interested and challenged.

The members have volunteered to go into these places, sometimes with a plan, “Okay, I'll go there, but when I come out, I want to go to Dauphin,” or “I'll go there and when I come out, I want to go to Portage,” so they can get into the housing market again, do those kind of things. The commanding officer is doing all that at one time, but he's allowed to move within the various programs.

The commanding officer for Manitoba “D” Division, for example, is required to figure out his resourcing strategy, how he's going to move people around and fill the different vacancies. Everybody has their two- and three-year limited duration postings that they have to move members in and out of, the Shamattawas and the God's Lake Narrows of the world, where we keep members for three years max and we get them out.

Over the years, say the last decade or so, have you kept officers in isolated communities longer to help save money? Is that one of the strategies you've used to not have so much movement?

I have some experience living in communities with RCMP in the far north, in Yellowknife and Rankin Inlet years ago. There certainly was a lineup at that time for people to make that rotation.

Thanks to all three of you for being here today.

We don't have very many two-member detachments left, so at a three-member detachment, if one person goes every year, you manage to keep some continuity, and it's continuity costs, the whole nine yards.

Yes. In a number of areas we are down on our number of two-year limited duration posts. Most of them are up to three years. I can think of only some that have very few amenities in them that we keep members in for two years or less. We've tried to go to three.

In general it's very good. I can't think of an example that jumps to the top of my head. We have the same infrastructure and training issues. If we're putting on our annual qualification shoots for firearms and stuff, we'll invite whoever's around the area to come and do that. In fact, I can't think in the recent past of battles we've had between organizations.

I wasn't thinking of battles in particular. What I was getting at was using precious RCMP resources to help complement the work first nations police services are doing. In other words, I know in northern Ontario, for example, the OPP gets called on a lot to pick up deficiencies, if that's the right word, in the first nations police services.

I think where there is a rub sometimes is when we have a stand-alone aboriginal police service providing service in a certain area, and then it somehow folds or diminishes to a point where they're unable to provide the level of service. We have no flexibility because we've lost our infrastructure, the housing and whatever, to go in and do that backup.

Yes. We do go in and handle the sensitive files. If we get called in to handle a murder investigation, we'll go on the ground for a request to do that.

Are you suggesting that if first nations police services were resourced to the extent they need to be resourced—and we'll be hearing in the second hour from a first nations police service that is very under-resourced—it would, in fact, save you money and the use of your resources and officers?

Yes, it would save us money not having to go in to back them up on short notice. We have to pull people from somewhere else to do that, and that becomes a problem.

I was interested in your increasing cost of infrastructure. How do you decide on the priorities on infrastructure and spending within the RCMP? You're probably always looking for efficiencies somewhere, but that must be a cost that's certainly in the back of managers' minds all the time when it comes to covering the entire country, in effect.

I think our average detachment right now is 30 years old, so we are on the replacement end of a number of these things, and houses.

Our new policing services contract that was signed last year has a whole new section on replacement of the infrastructure. Where the old model was kind of pay as you go, and Canada owns all the buildings except for municipal ones, the new contract has the provinces and territories sitting down and developing a replacement plan right up front, and deciding how much they are going to put into the replacement.

I can speak to that a little bit, but it probably would be better to have someone from contract policing services directorate and public safety speak to the new contract.

No. There's a big investment that has to go into that now. Each province and territory is a little bit different. I think there are three or four different models on the accommodation program, how they're going to do it. Some are paying more up front now; some are stretching it out over the 20 years of the contract, but with an idea of replacing a detachment every five years on average, so we lower that number.

What needs to be done in relation to that kind of technology to make the RCMP's job easier and safer, and to do the crime work and police work you need to do? Would you be saving money if broadband were there, if we're just going to talk about money, for example?

I was curious about your comments about broadband. We've heard that before, certainly in isolated areas. I live 30 minutes from Thunder Bay and I don't have any Internet. It's not just far north isolated areas we're talking about.

I believe so, but it's a much bigger picture than that for us. We have radio systems that need replacing in a number of the provinces and territories across Canada. That's another line on the budget sheet that somebody has to address one day. The Internet and the broadband issues in a detachment affect the way we roll things out. We've come up with the solution that people shouldn't just develop these things thinking everybody has high-speed Internet. Now that we have our training people thinking that way, they're developing a second option, a CD option, for us. Our problem in most of these communities is that we have satellite communication that not only runs the Internet in our office, but also our Internet for the CPIC system, our file management system, and all those kinds of things. If you have a member sitting in the detachment using the computer for an online course, the guy next to him can't do a query to see if somebody has a criminal record.

Is there a line that you won't cross in terms of using that kind of staff allotment in replacing officers? Is there a cut-and-dried point where you won't use them? There might be pressure to use auxiliary or volunteers for something, but in some cases you would say that you need an officer.

My time is limited so I want to move over to volunteers and auxiliary, which you mentioned briefly in your opening remarks.

We will not put a volunteer in the line of danger. We will use auxiliaries and volunteers for some kinds of traffic control and scene control, but we would never put them in a position where they would be brought near some kind of threat.

It's not their role to be involved in policing, but do you have any coordination with the Canadian Rangers in any of your work? They have some training that might be of assistance from time to time.

I have spent a little bit of time in the north in places like Yellowknife, Inuvik, and Iqaluit, and have interacted with some of your folks. It is a challenging environment and I really admire the work that you guys do.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to the deputy commissioner, and almost superintendent Tyler Bates for being here.

Yes, we call on them for backup response, search and rescue activities, and other things of that kind in the north. They like to volunteer their services. As you know, sometimes that's not a good thing. It's supposed to come the other way around. They're a great asset to us.

There are a lot of unique challenges in the north, but the front end is relatively simple. When you get somebody you need to process through the system, what special challenges do you have in the north with respect to the justice system, judges, courts, and so on? How do you deal with those?

If witnesses come down to the south for whatever reason and we have to haul them back north, the cost to Canada is huge, especially if we're hauling witnesses around for trials that never materialize.

I don't know what more can be done to push or facilitate that. The system is in place. We try to use it. We used it successfully in Manitoba when I was there, and it saved a lot on bail hearings and show cause hearings.

The other one is the court requirements. I think you heard about it from Chief Knecht from Edmonton when he was here. We have court requirements for our members to attend. They show up in court only to have the accused not show up. We have video facilities in the north for video appearances, video bail hearings, etc., but when it's not used or when it's used improperly, or not taken advantage of, or there are games played with it, problems are caused for the whole system. We can have no members in court waiting on such and such a hearing, but if the defence counsel says he wants to wait and see the whites of all the witnesses' eyes before he decides to plead guilty or not, it's a problem. But it's part of the system.

One is our ability to keep up with feeding the criminal record system in Ottawa. We've changed from a system of paper-based fingerprint submissions on a criminal record, where if you went to court and were convicted of something we'd have to type out at the bottom of your fingerprints what you're convicted of, put that in the mail, send it to Ottawa, and it would work its way through the system. Now we're going to digital-based Livescan machines, where it's done electronically and fed into the system electronically. Unfortunately these machines cost about $50,000 a piece, and we can't afford to put one in a three-person detachment that's going to have five or six fingerprint submissions over the course of a year to send in. We've coordinated that centrally in Whitehorse, Yellowknife, and Iqaluit. The outlying detachment sends those things into the centre and then they're sent electronically to Ottawa. That causes a little bit of a delay. I've had some discussions with public prosecutions in the last month or so on how we can speed that up. It seems that the regular repeat offenders are getting into the system again before their criminal records catch up with them. We're working on that one and we believe we have a solution.

As was mentioned, they do have the tactical capacity to support our membership. They receive all the same firearms training, and all the same police operations training, as far as motor vehicles are concerned. They're highly trained and highly skilled, but they have a cultural competence that we need in service in our aboriginal communities.

The intent is that they're visible in the community, that they're not sitting at a terminal with a slow line speed trying to get all the data entered into our records management system. They're on the road and they're visible. They're engaging with youth, participating in cadet corps and activities such as those.

That's correct. The portion of the training that they don't complete has to do with the paper aspect of the job, core package completion, search warrant completion, and the like.

Do you have a pure number or percentage of how many of these community constables there are in the north, as a percentage of the total force?

We're looking at a fall troop in October, and we're in the process of recruitment for that. We're anticipating that this troop will be significantly larger than the first. Subsequent to that, we'll hopefully be able to undertake an assessment of its value.

We're in the infancy of this program right now. It's a pilot project, and at this juncture we actually only have six aboriginal community constables. We're now in the process of recruitment for our second phase of this pilot. Being that the pilot group is as small as it is, we still have to undertake an assessment of that program, subsequent to the second troop.

Are they trained as a separate troop in Regina? Is some of the training integrated with other troops, or is it all troop by troop?

They are a separate troop; they're a distinct troop, but certainly a number of their training components have no variance from what a regular member goes through.

It's probably too early to say because of the infancy of the program, but is there any estimate of the cost of one of those community constables versus the cost of a regular force officer?

We're changing the program a little bit in the next little while to change it from an aboriginal community constable focus to just a community constable focus. We have some other communities in Canada, in the Lower Mainland for example, where they want to get their culturally competent person with linguistic capability back in to stay there for a while.

The things we're learning as we move forward is that now they're saying, “Where's my house?” They get all the other benefits that come with being an RCMP member, but they're already starting to ask some of those questions, and they're asking how long they have to do this before they get a chance to become a regular Mountie guy.

It was great for us. We got seven—I think we started with seven—people back into communities where we needed linguistic capability and cultural sensitivity in there, where they already had their own infrastructure.

We don't have extra infrastructure in these communities. That's why it takes us so long to move ahead. We can't build a house on spec.

That's a great question, because in terms of the savings that we saw from this from the start there's about a $12,000 difference in salary between an aboriginal community constable and regular constable, so there was a savings there. We hired directly from the community. We looked to pull Laurie out of community X, and then put him back into community X where he already had a house, where he already some....

Could you just give me an idea, a broad-brush structural view of how all of this works?

Does every community have at least one RCMP officer? Or would every division in the north, which could comprise more than one community, have a regular RCMP officer in place? In some cases do they instead have a first nations police constable or some other type of constable? Is that how it works?

I would like to get an overview, because there are many different concepts that have been discussed, such as the first nations police force, and the volunteer and auxiliary members.

We do have only two places, I think, in northern Manitoba right now, where we do a regular rotational fly-in. We fly two members in and pick the other two up and haul them away. That's because of the level of violence or the problems that exist in those communities. But for most of them we have detachments, and if we don't have a detachment base we have a regular patrol. Sometimes we just have a patrol cabin.

In a number of detachments where I was, an hour to an hour and a half to get to a call at one end of your detachment area or the other was the way it worked.

D/Commr Doug Lang: Yes. You're not going to accept that, but that is a reality for people living in rural Canada.

What that does, though, is that it causes expanded response times. If you were to call the city police in Ottawa to say there's someone at your door trying to break in, and they said they'd be there in an hour—

In the late seventies and early eighties, we went through a reconfiguring of our detachments in both Manitoba and Saskatchewan, in a number of different areas. There's not all these little detachments anymore. They're bigger detachments, hubbed more together, kind of like the OPP. You have more members at one place who provide service farther apart.

When we think about economics of policing and whether we can make any drastic change, we have to look at the model. The model for policing in rural Canada right now is that we have a detachment that services an area. We may have a detachment in a community of 300 people with three members there, but we may not have a detachment in another community of 300 people or 400 people. We may police that on a fly-in basis, as required. It is not always the same.

Where would auxiliary members come in? Where would first nations police forces come in?

We have first nations police forces that have their own jurisdictions on first nations reserves.

Yes, we're out. We're the neighbouring detachment. We help them out.

We have auxiliaries come in to help us when we need help. We have auxiliaries in the far north who are culturally competent. They want to take our members out, show them who the elders are. They're in addition to what we do.

In a community where you would be an hour and a half away, would you have an auxiliary? Basically there would be no coverage, really, for the hour and a half or two hours it would take to get someone there.

In some communities, there's a band constables program. They have band constables who are kind of like a night watchman. They're called peacekeepers in Saskatchewan. They augment the ability of that particular first nation, but it is more to watch what's going on, to guard their facilities.

They have the same powers that you have to make a citizen's arrest, so they do have powers to make an arrest.

How does it work in Quebec? A community like Chisasibi would have its own force, I guess, or would it be QPP? That is probably not a fair question.

Is there an RCMP presence in every community that would have a nursing station? Do the two work together at all?

I couldn't say 100%, but there are some nursing stations in communities that we police and they only go there when we go there.

Is it easy or difficult to recruit members of aboriginal communities to become RCMP officers who would then go back to those communities to serve?

That's why—in fairness to the aboriginal members who are working, as well as the non-aboriginal members—there needs to be that ability to work in specialized units when they've experienced that level of investment and they've been on the ball, so to speak, 24-7. To do that for an extended period of time, beyond the two or three years that is expected, one often needs a break and a different transition.

It is challenging and you are taxed, and that's the other side of it. In some of the smaller detachments, you don't often go for a walk without carrying a radio because the other member in the community may need you for something. There isn't the downtime that you might have in a large detachment.

It's a rich cultural experience working in aboriginal communities. As was alluded to earlier, for the people who love it, they love it. I spent over 10 years doing isolated police posts, from manning a dogsled to going on the land to caribou hunt and going on a trapline. These were wonderful experiences. For most members who have bounced around and done a lot of northern stints, it's the most memorable part of their career. There is a certain segment of the organization for which recruitment isn't difficult to do that. Whether it's aboriginal members or non-aboriginal members, people share the desire to have that experience in a lot of respects.

It sounds to me like there aren't too many efficiencies to be gained because you've thought of everything. You have the video conferencing, and so on.

Do you have any suggestions? We're looking at the costs of policing. How can we make this more cost-effective without sacrificing police coverage? Maybe the answer is to spend more money, get more police coverage, and just say that we'll have to get the money from somewhere else. We need more coverage, and we're just going to have to spend more because of the higher cost of living or what have you.

Is that part of your mandate in the divisions that you deal with, or is yours really more dealing with remote locations and on reserve?

When we look at the title of the divisions, they talk about national aboriginal policing. Your focus this morning seems to be primarily on rural and northern policing, whereas a lot of the contact between the RCMP and aboriginal people would be in urban situations and off-reserve situations.

Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here today.

While our aboriginal policing directorate people would be in Winnipeg managing the program and interacting with elders, chiefs, and councils that exist in Winnipeg, our focus in the service that we do is on where we have jurisdiction. I know we have a lot of work that's being done in Prince George, in Vancouver, and different areas from where people are and where the headquarters of the different first nations are that we have interaction with, but our service delivery is more focused on where we're policing.

No, it's both. Again, if you look at Manitoba, for example, Winnipeg City Police has the city of Winnipeg, and Brandon has the city of Brandon. We end up with all the rest. Our interaction and where we have first nations policing units and aboriginal policing unit program positions are on our reserves and the first nations that we police.

I want to go back to the question that was touched on briefly just a minute ago, on recruitment. In terms of the overall RCMP police force, how successful has the RCMP been in the recruitment and retention of aboriginal regular members?

To open the door to get to an officer level position and to be a commanding officer or a criminal operations officer, you have to get out and get into the admin world. You have to try these different things. For the first time in our organization, we have an aboriginal commanding officer in the province of Saskatchewan, Russ Mirasty. We have an aboriginal criminal operations officer in the province of Saskatchewan, Brenda Butterworth-Carr, who I think has been here before. We have a Métis commanding officer in the province of Manitoba, Kevin Brosseau. We're watching them now rise up through the ranks of the organization and into positions, but it has been from them following a career path to get what they have to get, come into headquarters, get a look at the real world down here in Ottawa.

As Superintendent Bates said, it's very interesting inside of our organization. We recruit aboriginal people for their specific cultural and linguistic capabilities in some cases. Then they get in and see the doors that open to them inside our organization. In my 35 years with the RCMP, I've had 14 different careers now in the different things that I've done, one of them doing aboriginal policing in Kamsack, Saskatchewan and Buffalo Narrows, Saskatchewan. That was a riot. I loved that stuff.

We have right now 1,166 aboriginal men who have self-identified and 313 aboriginal women. That's about 7.9% of our workforce. The labour market availability says that we should be at about 4%, so we're doing very well there. The retention we have for aboriginal members is fantastic. We've increased our target to 10% for aboriginal members.

You anticipated the next question. In terms of senior ranks in the RCMP, what kind of presence is there of aboriginal Canadians? Are there none beyond the commanding officer?

The commanding officer is assistant commissioner. We have one of our deputy commissioners, Deputy Commissioner Dan Dubeau, who is in charge of human relations and is of Métis ancestry from Bonnyville, Alberta. It's hard to tell, nowadays. In fact, if Tyler hadn't said anything, I imagine most people at the table wouldn't have known that Tyler is first nation.

Can you talk a little bit about what the demand drivers are in those communities for RCMP services?

I want to go back to the question of costs and talk about the question of demand for service. You've been talking about the rural and remote locations, the high costs of providing that service, and the very large amount of demand on the officers in place. You mentioned it in about the third paragraph of your introduction. You talked about being the only government representative sometimes.

We've gone through the migration in the prairie provinces. For example, when I was in Manitoba we moved people from the quieter places in the south into the busy places in the north to try to equalize the Criminal Code caseload that a member carries. That's a continual thing. Part of it is getting ahead of getting housing in there for extra members in the communities where the growth is happening and those kinds of things. It takes a while to catch up.

This new reality of having to have a three-person versus a two-person detachment has changed the way we've responded. We have people sitting in places who don't have very much to do. People in the far north get involved in the community doing all kinds of things. You can imagine in the wintertime there's not a heck of a lot of files going on. They're not vaccinating dogs anymore. There's no traffic work for them to do. Their criminal caseload of files to handle is not there.

We have come to a model of a three-person detachment. If we were to open a new detachment, we wouldn't open anything less than a three-person one, because that allows us to always have two people on the ground for backup. We can't have one person anymore. We fought that battle occupationally, of not having that kind of backup. We had members in communities who had been shot up in the past number of years, people pointing rifles at detachments and houses and those kinds of things. We can't go back there anymore.

This answers the other question that I never got to answer about whether there are any savings. Fortunately and unfortunately, the Canada Labour Code and our requirements for officer safety in the past 10 or 12 years have driven us from the model that a lot of us in the room would have seen when we were young: one- or two-man RCMP detachments in certain places and both the guys were six feet five inches tall, weighed 260 pounds, and were capable of looking after themselves. That's not there anymore.

You may want to add some of this to another question later.

I was wondering if you had an opportunity to see that in the works. Maybe you could comment on how you see that working in the Yukon and how you see that potentially being rolled out in the rest of Canada, if it's a positive model.

Communities are now involved in the selection of commanding officers who are coming to the communities. I think four of the communities in the Yukon have undertaken that already. They have community priorities now being established in their annual performance plans because some communities were doing well with that and others weren't, but they are now finding some success in identifying community priorities. They have a communications director to develop communications strategies to enhance citizen engagement, which will ultimately help reduce crime in the communities. They have a commanding officer's first nation advisory committee, which is working well with different groups, women's organizations and first nations organizations.

The Northern Institute of Social Justice is doing a career orientation program to recruit women and first nations into policing. There's the establishment of the Yukon Police Council. The arrest processing unit now is being taken over by the Yukon government, so a different level of care is being provided to offenders. The RCMP aren't having to deal with cell block services in the community of Whitehorse. They've come up with a specialized unit for a coordinated response for domestic violence and sexual assault.

Deputy Commissioner Lang, you mentioned that you were just in the Yukon, which is the riding I represent. I was wondering if you would have had an opportunity to see some of the work that's being done in response to the “Sharing Common Ground” report, the review of Yukon's police force which Mr. Scarpaleggia talked a little about, throwing financial resources toward policing. We are talking about the cost of policing, but one of the costs of policing is intrinsically tied to the cost of crime. I think of the Yukon as a great model right now, albeit the review of the police force wasn't done as an economics of policing exercise. It was done out of some high profile cases that came about. When I look at what they're accomplishing, I can't help but think that some of the things they're doing right now are going to achieve some substantial savings on the cost of crime end.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to both of you.

What do you do up there in a community like Faro, which is kind of shrinking? You have a detachment there but everybody from the government on down who I talked to said, “No, this is community safety, a community pride thing. Don't touch our RCMP detachment.” When we talk about there being room to shrink that perhaps because the caseload is down, people say, “No, not our detachment. We want you there. You're part of our community.” If you take away the three Mounties in the community of Faro, you take away the power-skating teacher, the hockey coach, and so on. There is some fantastic stuff going on up there.

We've pulled some great people out of there, like Brenda Butterworth-Carr from Dawson Creek. I tried to go and see her mom, to say hello and be adopted, but that wasn't going to happen. It's fantastic stuff.

The interaction in the community up there.... If you had told me about the stuff that went on before the changes, I would not have believed it. The community up there is so supportive of their law enforcement. I had to shake hands with half the people in Dawson Creek when I was there. They were telling me about the great work these guys are doing.

I got to meet with all the auxiliaries. They happened to have an auxiliary meeting one night when I was there. I got to meet with a group of five or six auxiliaries and they're all government people, guys who have boring government jobs with the Government of Yukon who want to get out on Friday night and drive around with the boys. They go out and they take charge of the check points during bicycle runs and dogsled races and those kinds of things. They're so happy to be involved with the people.

They have a good group of people up there doing that now and watching that move forward.

We've talked about the salary dollars that are the big cost user of our fees. That little piece you have left to do any of those initiative-type things is pretty small, and it takes the whole division getting together with the aboriginal communities and everybody else to move these issues forward. But you have to be there, you have to be at those tables, and you have to be dedicated to doing that.

My comment on that, though, is that it was really done with not much of an increase in funding. There were a couple of bodies that had to be added to the mix, but it was done with the resource level they had. If you go in there and ask that commanding officer to make all those changes and live with a 20% budget cut, he ain't doing any of them, because there's simply no fat left there to cut any more.

I was quite impressed. The changes they've been able to make and move forward on there, especially on community engagement, are something else and a model for other people to follow.

In fact, my visit to the Yukon was eye-opening. I was supposed to go up there for the northern symposium in the fall and I couldn't make it. I had a ticket I had to use so I got to go up there and see the things I didn't get to see last year.

An officer has to be a social worker, a mental health professional and a substance abuse professional. How do you manage to do all that with the resources you have, especially when it comes to training? We are told that online services are not very adapted and technology is not really an option. How do you ensure that the officers receive the training and updates they need to be able to deal with all the social issues they face in the north?

I am always impressed when I hear stories about officers who work in the north, where they have to be more autonomous and versatile when performing their tasks. My riding, , is on the border and has different divisions. I have spoken with officers from my riding who have served in the north. They told me that the problems up there were like the ones we had here, but there were 10 times as many of them and they were 10 times worse.

I'll ask you to use your earpiece because I'll be asking the question in French.

People can ask me what could be implemented to improve community life, but it's not up to police officers to do that. That responsibility belongs to health care professionals—whether we are talking about psychiatric nurses or people who can care for all the community members struggling with alcohol or drug addiction. That's not our role. If all that could be moved from our plate to someone else's plate, the problem would improve in all northern communities. However, that's expensive.

It's a bit difficult to answer that question. We are actually unable to meet all the needs in the north. That's the problem. Our basic training focuses on the responses police officers must provide as part of their normal duties, such as investigations and basic interactions with people with mental health issues. However, it's not the officers' job to resolve those issues or provide advice on how to get better. Health care professionals have that responsibility. The problem in almost all northern communities is that we are the only government representatives present.

I have an example. My riding is close to lakes Memphremagog and Champlain. I was told that RCMP officers have been unable to use their motorboat for two years because they don't have the money to maintain it. I assume you have similar problems in the north.

There's something else I would like to discuss. You talked about material resources. Some of your outdated equipment and radios used for communications need to be replaced. Is there any equipment that is absolutely necessary in emergency situations that should really be invested in?

You said that an attempt was being made to reduce divisions. However, your officers provide community services at the same time. They may be coaching hockey or participating in the community in other ways. The existence of those divisions is extremely important, since the officers are literally part of the cultural life of the community. So it's key for the divisions to remain as they are.

When police forces see that other police forces already have that equipment for their SWAT team or their officers, they want it too. We have the same problem. In special circumstances—for instance, when shots are fired at their house—officers serving in the north may ask to be provided with an armoured home or other equipment. We know that sad cases like that happen, so we can't be asked to deny our officers their request.

Yes, we have the same problems in the north. Today, in compliance with the Occupational Health and Safety Code, police forces' needs in terms of material resources and equipment have increased. That probably began 10 years ago and has been emphasized in certain circumstances. For instance, since the Mayerthorpe tragedy, in Alberta, when four RCMP officers were killed, all our officers have had to wear hard body armour, which is different from the soft body armour we used before. Another new piece of equipment is the patrol carbine—which I already talked about—a firearm that's somewhere between a .308 calibre rifle and a shotgun. That's a SWAT carbine our officers will be able to use in school raids where students may have been taken hostage.

[English]

We've heard such great things about these preventative programs. Do you see any opportunity or a place for them to happen on a reserve like Shamattawa?

Are we seeing some movement in that area? Is this more an issue of just how tough life is on a reserve and how many times people are.... Let's face it: again, in a small community in southern Manitoba, if you want to move to another community, you just move. If there aren't jobs or opportunities, you move, whereas if you've lived on a reserve your entire life, there are certainly some constraints, not just physically but even emotionally: how do you leave this place and do you want to leave it?

I'm wondering, though, because it has been a while since I lived on a reserve—and Superintendent Bates, I think you mentioned that you were policing up north, and you really enjoyed it and saw great value in it—is there an opportunity? Are there first nations reserves.... I'm thinking especially of northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and even Ontario, because we know there are some very difficult...they're the Shamattawas, and certainly in Quebec.... How do we use a model like START or HUB and COR, some of these programs where we are not just involving government agencies, but where the community comes together and says that it wants to participate in helping to prevent crime, where the community says, “We want to take responsibility for our neighbours' kids and for our kids and do this together”?

I guess here's what I'm asking. I think it's a tough issue and it's not one that's going to be solved very quickly, but there's a huge difference between a first nations reserve in northern Manitoba and a tiny town in southern Manitoba. The population might be the same, but we know a very, very different way of living. I know that when I lived on a reserve getting parents to come to parent-teacher interviews was virtually impossible. There was a disengagement for many, many reasons. We know that there are a lot of reasons for some of the disengagement.

We've had some really good testimony from, for example, Prince Albert, where they run something called the HUB and COR program. We've also heard from Calgary. Again, it's a very large urban centre, but a number of agencies have come together and are working on the preventative side of crime. We've even heard from rural areas, such as Manitoba's Selkirk, Stonewall, and Dauphin, where they run something called START. It's initiated out of the community, but the RCMP plays a role.

In the last few minutes, I want to follow up on a few things that my colleague, Mr. Rousseau, was asking about.

Those tentacles are slowly reaching out. We have a number of those different HUBs going on in Saskatchewan, in Prince Albert, in Yorkton, in Saskatoon. The problem is magnified by the city, but we are involved in a number of those and taking an active part in them.

That was one of the best things about Dale McFee's HUB concept in Prince Albert. Once they got it going, and got all the agencies going in Prince Albert, they involved the RCMP in the rural area. There was no more putting pressure on the little kid from Buffalo Narrows, in Prince Albert, and making him go home. That used to be great crime prevention—isn't that right—send him back home. The whole loop was there. Even if you sent him back to Buffalo Narrows, we have people in Buffalo Narrows ready to monitor his behaviour, to involve the school, so we interacted in those things.

I'll turn this over to Tyler in a second. It's not that we're not involved with those programs. It used to be Chief McFee, when I knew him at SACP, and now he's with the Saskatchewan government. We used to call that, even in Winnipeg, stepping on a sausage. If the Winnipeg Police Service or the Prince Albert Police Service step hard on a crime problem in their area, we know exactly where it goes, right? The meat goes into the sausage and they come back into RCMP jurisdiction, because we police the outside. We're involved in these.

We're going to suspend momentarily and we will prepare the teleconference, and our other guests are here as well.

Unfortunately, we have another panel waiting for us, and one of them is video conferencing, so we can't go over. I know we'd like to expand this. Aboriginal policing is of great interest, and certainly we appreciate the RCMP bringing you here to instruct us a little bit about what happens there, and the challenges. Thank you for doing that.

We're pretty well right out of time. What I would like to do, though, is make an offer to you. If you have questions that you didn't feel you answered to the extent you'd like to, perhaps you would send the comments in to our clerk. He'll circulate them and we'll all be able to hear the rest of the answer.

We'll begin with Chief Herman, who is with us here. The floor is yours for about 10 minutes.

We want to thank both of you for appearing. Perhaps you could each give an opening statement, and then we will go into rounds of questioning that we'll take from the government and the opposition.

Also, appearing from the Government of Yukon by video conference from Whitehorse, we have Robert Riches, assistant deputy minister, community justice and public safety, Department of Justice.

With us here in Ottawa we have Chief Bob Herman, the chief of the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service. Our committee appreciates your joining us today, sir.

This is the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. We're going to continue our study on the economics of policing in Canada.

I can tell you this: the community leadership in the first nations communities that we police want their own police service. They want to be policed by their own people. They want the same services that are afforded to every other citizen in this country. You live in communities where you get proper and quality police service. That's something we should be able to afford all the people in this country, regardless of their race or ancestry.

As I said, first nations policing in Ontario is in a state of crisis. That's not an emotional statement; that's a fact. We're going to run out of money by the end of this year. It will be very interesting to see what happens at that point.

The first nations policing program has been a program for 17 years. It's time to change that. There is no legislative framework for first nations policing. I do know that a number of subcommittees are actually working on this right now, but it's time to move forward.

In summary, I would like people to wrap their minds around the notion that the self-administered first nations policing program in Ontario is not an enhancement; it's a replacement. We are much more efficient. Public Safety Canada has done their own study that shows we've been able to reduce, for example, violent crime in our communities by 30%. Our clearance rates are much higher than most police services throughout Canada, and it's really a community-based policing program.

There is a fix for this problem. It's very minimal when you look at the global budget for the government. It's about $1.5 million. With the provincial and federal share, we could have the same system that the OPP have in their three remote fly-in communities. The system could be monitored by the Ontario Provincial Police.

Quite frankly, that would not meet any health and safety standard, whether it be federal or provincial legislation, yet we do this on continual basis. I've been in communities where two officers on a portable radio couldn't talk to each other when they were a kilometre away. That's quite normal.

The last area is infrastructure. It can best be illustrated by this example. We have no radio system, per se. Our radio system is basically an extension of the phone lines in our remote fly-in communities. Somebody phones in to the detachment and it's forwarded to their radio. But the range for those portable radios is about one kilometre. It's not monitored on a 24-7 basis. There is no lifeline. If the officers are alone and need backup, they actually have to dial in a keypad on their radio to get the OPP communications centre in either Thunder Bay or North Bay.

That was over five years ago. That operational review has yet to happen. Although there is a commitment by the federal government to actually fund it—that goes back a couple of years—we have received no funding in order to do that operational review. That would really go a long way to actually identify what the needs are.

Our incidents of post-traumatic stress disorder are much higher than those of normal police services because of the working conditions our officers have to work under. Five years ago, the Kashechewan coroner's inquest recommended that an operational review be done of first nations or Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service.

My officers respond to gun calls on a continual basis. As a matter of fact, around Christmastime we had a gun call where 114 rounds were fired. During that call we had two officers. The most senior officer there had six months on the job. That's normal.

I was interested in listening to the RCMP say that they have a minimum of three officers in the community. I think I would die to have that luxury.

Our officers work alone for extended periods of time. They are the only person in the community. Many times their backup is a member of the band council.

I can tell you that the crime severity index in first nations communities in Ontario, in the nine communities, is five times the provincial average. As a matter of fact, the top five in terms of the crime severity index in the province of Ontario are all in first nations communities, policed by first nations police officers.

It has been the position of the first nations chiefs of police and the leadership in the first nations communities that those 40 positions should have been rolled into the FNPP to address the full-time complement that we need to address.

Second, I want to touch on staffing. As I said, there's been no full-time equivalent increases to first nations policing since 2007. You've probably heard about the police officer recruitment fund report, which was a one-time funding by the government. Everyone knew that going into it. It ended on March 31 of this year, but the way Ontario actually handled that money was to add 40 new first nations police officers in the province of Ontario. On March 31 of this year, those officers were laid off because the funding was not extended.

I was listening to the statement made by the RCMP. There is a difference in Ontario. A lot of the agreements with the RCMP are community/tri-party agreements, where it's an enhancement. In Ontario it's self-administered police services. There are nine of us in the first nations policing program. The government does come out and say it's an enhancement, but the reality is it's a replacement. We have replaced the traditional policing. The RCMP left in the early 1970s; the OPP left in the 1990s; we've taken it over.

If both levels of government are serious about first nations policing succeeding, then they actually have to step up to the plate and meet their fiduciary obligations and properly fund first nation policing.

Quite frankly, we've been robbing Peter to pay Paul, but Peter is not home anymore. We simply can't continue to do this. We are forecasting a $2 million deficit for the current fiscal year ending in 2014. Essentially, we're going to run out of money probably in December of this year in order to operate our police service.

Anybody who runs a business knows that when you outlay capital dollars to build infrastructure, there are yearly operational costs that are associated with that outlay. We have never received funding to actually cover those operational costs. For example, the cost of operations and maintenance of those detachments is about 72% higher than the rent we were paying in the old buildings we had before. As well, we had to move because our headquarters building wasn't meeting our needs. We had people all over the place in different buildings. In order to consolidate, we had to rent a bigger building at a 115% greater cost than we paid in the old one. Statutory increases to things like employee benefits as well as benefit costs have increased by 31%, almost $400,000. Yet again, we have not received any increase to our budget since 2008 in order to cover those costs.

There are a number of issues when it comes to sustainable funding. As I said, the last negotiated line-by-line agreement was done in 2008, but since then, partly because of the Kashechewan inquiry.... I must say that Canada and the Province of Ontario have been good in funding new capital projects for the Nishnawbe Aski Nation in getting new detachments. We've had 13 new detachments come on line and we have five more nearing completion, but at the end of the day, we still have seven detachments that don't meet the basic standards, such as having a fire suppression system or building codes within our communities.

The first thing I'd like to say is that first nation policing in the province of Ontario is in a crisis state right now for a number of reasons. The last negotiated line-by-line budget for first nations policing was done in 2007-08. This resulted in an agreement for three years. That agreement was extended for one year and currently is in a second extension into 2014. That extension was essentially forced upon the Nishnawbe Aski Nation due to the fact that the government came out with their funding model about three weeks prior to the deadline of the extension expiring. Because of that timeline, there was no opportunity to actually do a negotiation with the Nishnawbe Aski Nation. The Government of Ontario and Canada are stipulated in the tri-party agreement. We had to sign the agreement because as of April 1, if we didn't, there would be no cashflow. We would not be able to pay our bills, pay our officers, and continue policing.

I know my time is limited, so I'd like to touch on three issues that are imperative to first nation policing, especially self-administered first nation policing.

First, I'll give you a little background. The Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service, or NAPS as it is known, is the largest self-administered first nation police service in Canada. We police an area basically above the 51st parallel, from the James Bay, Quebec border to Manitoba, up to Hudson Bay. We police 34 of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation communities. It's quite an extensive area and certainly has a lot of challenges.

We were able to re-establish our connection with Whitehorse. We are very pleased to welcome Mr. Robert Riches, assistant deputy minister, community justice and public safety, Department of Justice.

At the end of that, Robert—or Bob—will also refer to a policing symposium that we had here last September, which had great participation from across the country.

I'm going to have Mr. Riches make the actual presentation, Mr. Chair. He will outline some of the initiatives we've undertaken through cooperation with the Department of Justice, RCMP, and other groups in relation to policing.

: Thank you for the invitation to speak. Thank you for the invitation to speak.

In Yukon communities the continuous services delivered by government and non-government agencies, often in remote and isolated settings, include nursing, emergency services, social services, and front-line services. The environments demand the most from service providers and are in high-visibility, high-consequence environments.

Northern remote communities are also expensive to police. The cost to territorial government—70% of our dollars—is now upwards of $200,000 per member. Given the other funding pressures faced by contract policing jurisdictions, it becomes increasingly challenging to rationalize and justify new funding for policing initiatives at the expense of other government programs.

The themes I will touch on in my presentation, which were reflected in the review of our police force and at the police symposium last September, reflect the initiatives that improve front-line police service delivery and also improve public confidence. In certain cases, they serve to contain downstream policing costs.

In April 2010, Yukon launched a review of their police force. There were very public and negative high-profile incidents at that time that had caused public confidence in the RCMP to erode and their role in the public service to be called into question.

I'll speak briefly about the review. The purpose of the review was to engage the public, the service providers, and the RCMP in dialogue with the goal of rebuilding trust and addressing the concerns and arriving at recommendations in order to improve the quality of policing services in the territory.

The review was co-chaired by the Department of Justice, the RCMP “M” Division, and the Council of Yukon First Nations. The co-chairs received guidance from advisory committee members who represented women's groups, Yukon municipalities, the Government of Yukon, and RCMP “M” Division.

We held over 60 public and targeted meetings and received written submissions. Several service agencies were engaged to assist clients to participate. Submissions were brought forward by first nations leadership, citizens, women's organizations, and other members of the public.

Yukoners and RCMP members spoke about the unique role the RCMP have in the community and highlighted the importance of developing the relationships between police and communities. Citizens said they wanted the RCMP to understand the culture and values of the community and to have the knowledge, skills, and attributes required to police in the north and to work with vulnerable people in response to domestic violence and sexualized assault. Citizens said that communication needed improvement. They were concerned about accountability, the disciplinary process, and improvements that could be made to help the public better understand their rights in the complaints process.

We had eight months of dialogue with citizens and submitted a report to the Minister of Justice. We called the report “Sharing Common Ground”. It outlines the foundation for establishing a new relationship between Yukon citizens and the RCMP. It creates a blueprint for a quality of service that will benefit all Yukon citizens.

The report had 33 recommendations. I'll talk a little about the progress on some of the recommendations. Communication, collaboration, and inclusiveness are pillars of the implementation. Priorities for leadership were established collaboratively by the Council of Yukon First Nations, the Yukon Department of Justice, and the RCMP. We've been working together to ensure that progress is made, and we're working together towards implementation. We have various partners engaged in implementation, with a range of specific agencies and service providers and other methods of implementation related to the individual recommendations.

As a result of the collaboration and commitment to implementation, key changes have been made in our approach to policing. I'll review some of those changes. We now have the Yukon Police Council. The council was established in 2012 to provide an opportunity for citizens to participate and have a role in directing the police service they receive. The Yukon Police Council is a unique approach to the involvement of Yukon citizens in shaping a public service that is important to them when they are most vulnerable. A key piece of the council's work plan for the initial year and on an ongoing basis is to develop a process for engaging with and incorporating community voices into recommendations they make on Yukon's police service.

In the fall of 2012, the council sought public input into their recommendations on policing priorities. The council analyzed the information and recently provided recommendations to the Minister of Justice. These recommendations were carefully considered and form the basis of the minister's policing priorities for Yukon. Over the coming year the council will continue to engage first nations service providers.

A number of initiatives flowing from “Sharing Common Ground” are working towards providing more effective police service delivery and seeking to contain or avoid future costs. These include the arrest processing unit, which is a new model of supervision and facility for short-term detention of persons taken into RCMP custody, a joint initiative cost-shared between the Government of Yukon and the RCMP.

The unfortunate death of Raymond Silverfox in December 2008 highlighted the need for improving how we deal with vulnerable persons taken into RCMP custody. Through the review of the police force and in partnership with the RCMP, we examined ways that we could better provide safe and secure custody, and ensure that we uphold the duty of care for persons arrested by the RCMP.

The arrest processing unit ensures the highest tentative care and protection for persons taken into RCMP custody, including acutely intoxicated persons and other vulnerable clients. The arrest processing unit is an innovative model that provides on-site medical assessment and care for RCMP prisoners, as well as supervision by corrections officers who have specialized training. The arrest processing unit is joined with the existing Whitehorse Correctional Centre, which completed construction in 2011.

We're adding a piece to that correctional centre, and while it's being built we've moved the prisoners from the RCMP into the Whitehorse Correctional Centre. They're currently housed in the admissions discharge area. It's an interim approach, but it's already had positive results in freeing up front-line police members from supervising prisoners. Now they're back out patrolling the community.

The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, ASIRT, is another initiative we've taken. We have an agreement with the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, a civilian investigative agency, to conduct independent investigations of serious incidents involving RCMP members in Yukon. Independent oversight is key to increasing public confidence. ASIRT has been called in to carry out independent investigations of serious incidents, and to review RCMP internal investigations of less serious incidents. It's added a strong element of public accountability and confidence to these investigations overall.

We have a cost-sharing agreement with the RCMP, and we have an intergovernmental agreement between Yukon and Alberta for this service. It's a small jurisdiction. We couldn't afford to set up a regime on our own, but we heard loud and clear from citizens that the RCMP shouldn't be investigating the RCMP. So we moved forward on this. The Alberta government was very cooperative, and we appreciate their help.

We are also working to improve our response to domestic violence and sexual assault. There is a multi-sector community made up of representatives from women's organizations, the Yukon government, the RCMP, the CYFN, and the federal prosecution service. We have a committee and they work together. Their role is to develop a comprehensive framework for coordinating Yukon's response to domestic violence and sexualized assault.

The committee is working together to clarify RCMP policies relating to dual charging and current RCMP policy and practice regarding the use of primary aggressor assessment in cases of domestic violence. The committee has supported the RCMP in updating manuals on division policy and procedure. It's opened up lines of communication and coordinated service provision on specialized teams that are essential to service improvements.

To that end, we've created a specialized response unit. This came from another recommendation in “Sharing Common Ground”. We've established a new RCMP unit, a specialized response unit within “M” Division, to investigate domestic violence and sexualized assault.

The specialized response unit was established and has a mandate to provide guidance, assistance, and oversight to the detachment members who are conducting domestic violence and sexual assault investigations, and to act as lead investigators in instances of domestic violence and sexual assault where specialized service is required.

The specialized response unit also identifies training and divisional needs related to domestic violence and sexual assault. This training has started to take place in small detachments in the territory. In a small jurisdiction like ours it's unrealistic to expect that we could have personnel with specialized skills available at each detachment, but we recognize the importance of these specialized skills and additional resources.

This unit is available to detachments, and it provides mentorship and oversight to improve skills across the division. The unique element of this initiative is the partnership with the RCMP on working with an independent evaluator looking at the performance of the team over time. This is one way we can ensure that this unique policing response is getting the results that we intended.

We also have community participation on the selection of detachment commanders. Budgets are limited, but some of the things that we can do we've done at a minimal cost and demonstrated a significant shift towards meeting community service needs. For example, several communities participated in the selection of new detachment commanders. Working together in this way is helping to improve communication between citizens, leadership, and the RCMP. This process is now written into divisional policy and will occur each time a vacancy for a detachment commander arises. We've had really positive feedback from first nations and others who have been involved in this process.

As was mentioned, we acknowledge that our jurisdiction is not alone in the issues of policing in northern Canada. The dynamics of policing in this unique environment, the demands, the challenges, the success stories and innovations, were all explored at a symposium on policing in northern and remote Canada held in Whitehorse in September 2012.

The symposium brought together 120 presenters and participants with an interest in sharing information and raising questions about policing in northern and remote communities. Our officials attended this symposium and took part in dialogue about the future of policing in the north and remote Canada. Unfortunately, it was a symposium I was not able to attend, but people I work with every day talked about what they felt at the symposium and how well it worked. They talked about what attributes and skills we need to see in our force members, what supports need to be in place for police officers to carry out their work effectively. They spoke about our vision for collaborative policing, and it involving environment, and about innovation in measuring our efforts.

As public agencies, police services rely on evidence-based programs, policies, and procedures to guide their interventions and interactions with the communities they serve. Many of these programs, policies, and procedures have been developed through research focused on policing large urban centres in Canada and around the world. But for police agencies working in northern and remote communities, there's a need to examine policing in this unique environment, looking at what works and what does not, and to regularly look more closely at the effectiveness of various models of service delivery.

Informed decision-making will provide the groundwork for northern and remote police services to develop appropriate policies and procedures to guide police work, and to enhance partnerships with communities.