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Results: 76 - 90 of 349
Jeff Richstone
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Jeff Richstone
2021-05-06 11:32
Yes, there is that. We actively involve elders and the police in those initiatives.
Jeff Richstone
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Jeff Richstone
2021-05-06 11:32
I'm sure you're aware of the Gladue sentencing principles and the framework there. We have a desk book chapter on that, which sets out a framework as to how we carry out those consultations.
I don't want to be too optimistic and say it's always working, but it's something we're working on and developing with the communities. As you can imagine, it's a work-in-progress. It's certainly a positive development and it's something we're committed to.
View Jamie Schmale Profile
CPC (ON)
If it matters, the feedback I'm getting from indigenous communities I'm speaking with is very supportive of this path. I'm glad to hear your comments on that. I appreciate that.
In a 2020 report found on the Public Safety website on the increasing use of restorative justice in criminal matters in Canada, a number of recommendations were made. Specifically, recommendation number 5 is, “Establish a national dialogue on best practices and standardization, where possible, regarding data collection.” It's not clear if that includes indigenous communities as well. I'm guessing it does.
Could the public safety department confirm that? If that is the case regarding indigenous communities, could you perhaps update this committee on the work that's been done to date?
Julie Mugford
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Julie Mugford
2021-05-06 11:34
Again, I apologize. I am not sure of what is included, but I will get back to you and advise on that.
View Sylvie Bérubé Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My question is about First Nations police services. Earlier, Ms. Mugford talked about Indigenous police services, about self-determination and about protecting their territory.
What training have members of First Nations police services received?
Douglas May
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Douglas May
2021-05-06 12:05
I'm Douglas May with Public Safety Canada.
The training first nations officers get depends on the kind of model or agreement the first nation is subject to. If it is a community tripartite model, which is where essentially the RCMP are the police of jurisdiction, then that training is done through the RCMP depot, etc. If it is through a self-administered police agreement whereby the police services are authorized or established by the provincial or territorial government, it's the jurisdiction that would be responsible for that training. For example, in B.C. it would be the justice institute and in Ontario it would be the OPP, etc. It depends largely on the jurisdiction in that regard.
View Sylvie Bérubé Profile
BQ (QC)
Many studies refer to systemic racism.
What is the situation for First Nations police services? Is there any trust in that regard?
Jacques Talbot
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Jacques Talbot
2021-05-06 12:06
I can clarify a little.
The policing agreements signed with Indigenous communities to fund their police services are tripartite agreements signed with provincial governments. They establish their training requirements in those agreements. The principle is that Indigenous police officers receive the same training as non-Indigenous officers.
In Quebec [inaudible] or Ontario, the provinces also require cultural sensitivity training that officers must receive. Very often, the First Nations themselves play a role in establishing the programs designed for them.
The Government of Quebec has some very interesting initiatives. Of course, the people responsible would be in a much better position than we are to talk about them, particularly about what being is done at collegiate level or at the Institut de police du Québec in Nicolet. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police training depot also…
Nicole Rempel
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Nicole Rempel
2021-05-06 12:12
Thank you to everyone here for the invitation to speak on a matter of great importance to my community, which is the K'ómoks First Nation, and in fact to all indigenous communities, whether they are under the Indian Act, land code, or are self-governing under a modern treaty.
I'd like to start with the following statement.
Self-government and the rule of law are meaningless and empty slogans if first nation laws cannot be enforced. The Crown has the necessary tools to enforce its laws. Federal and provincial governments are well financed and equipped with police forces, prosecutors and courts to ensure their laws are enforced. Enforcement of first nation laws is complex because the right enforcement tools are not available and capacity for enforcement is not yet developed with first nations.
In British Columbia, the RCMP will generally not enforce first nation laws because the provincial prosecution service will not prosecute offences under first nation laws, whether they are bylaws under the Indian Act, land code laws, or laws enacted by treaty nations. This is because they are not enactments for the purposes of provincial law.
The K'ómoks First Nation helped fill this jurisdictional void by addressing the unenforceability issue head-on in court in 2018 with the K'ómoks First Nation v. Thordarson and Sorbie decision. K'ómoks had a lessee, Ryan Thordarson, and his wife, Amelia Sorbie, who refused to pay rent to their landlord, who held a certificate of possession. Their lease was terminated and they were evicted. However, they still refused to leave. By refusing to leave, they had committed a land code offence because they had no lawful right to be on our lands. They were thus issued a notice of trespass by me under our land code, which is a quasi-criminal offence.
I should state that the difference between Indian Act bylaws and land code is that the authority is transferred from Canada to first nation land code nations to develop laws and to have those enforced. That's where this confusion seems to come in.
The RCMP said they could not remove Thordarson or charge them under the land code offence. They would attend and keep the peace as our laws were not “real laws”. The Crown would not prosecute as it didn't recognize our laws or the authority we had to create these laws. These are not bylaws; these are laws.
K'ómoks had a difficult decision. We had someone squatting on our land illegally, so we decided the only way forward was to charge and prosecute the offence itself via Criminal Code provisions that allow for a private prosecution of a criminal offence. This was unheard of.
The court was baffled and unfamiliar with the land code and the authority granted to develop and enforce laws under the framework agreement of the First Nations Land Management Act. After 10 months in court proceedings, the court eventually got to the understanding and ordered the police to remove the trespasser. This carried significant costs to K'ómoks in legal fees for private prosecution, in the ballpark of $178,000. The trespassers got 10 months of free rent and were fined $1,000 each. This was hardly an equitable decision. It was an extremely costly process. We should not have had to go to court to get that court order.
Just this week—today, in fact—we have another trespasser on reserve who was issued a notice of trespass by me and an RCMP officer two days ago. We are not hopeful that he will leave. In fact, he has dared us to take him to court. We could potentially be looking at another costly court case.
With the court decision in Thordarson in favour of K'ómoks, the question of enforcement should be a non-issue and the RCMP should be there to enforce the matter. However, we've been told by the RCMP lawyer that they have not been granted that direction from higher-ups within the RCMP. While our relationship with the RCMP has drastically improved due to a change in inspectors, their hands are tied at the moment with regard to enforcing laws, because of the lack of direction from above.
A big selling feature of the land code framework agreement is being self-governing on our reserve lands, with the ability to create our own laws and have them enforced and recognized in courts, which wasn't happening under the Indian Act. Funding also remains an issue to develop laws and enforcement.
A secondary issue that we have is that K'ómoks is also in the ninth year of stage five treaty negotiations. We recently held a forum on first nation law enforcement in partnership with the BC Treaty Commission. This forum included land code nations, nations negotiating treaties and self-governing nations, as well as police officers and representatives from the offices of the attorneys general, both federal and provincial.
What we learned was that nations such as Maa-nulth and Tla'amin have been struggling with enforcement issues as treaty nations, and neither has successfully prosecuted a single offence under their laws.
To date, the only modern treaty nation to successfully address an enforcement issue is the Tsawwassen First Nation, which has a very costly enforcement agreement with the Delta municipal police.
To be self-governing, first nations need to have proper enforcement tools, including an adjudicative body, enforcement services and capacity for policing, and mechanisms that harmonize with the provincial court administrative systems.
We are trying to achieve the above through our land code by creating things like community protection laws, adjudication laws and a justice tribunal, and also through our treaty negotiations because we are very close to voting on a treaty. If we're dealing with this under the land code as a self-governing portion under the Indian Act, then how is this going to work out for a treaty? So far, modern-day treaties provide only the first of these tools, and that is law-making. It's the same with the land code.
Before closing, I just want to refer back to the enforcement forum that was hosted by the BC Treaty Commission. It had a number of recommendations. I'm happy to provide these to you, to whomever I need to provide them to, so that they can be shared. There are a number of recommendations, including needing language in the treaty to ensure that first nations laws under treaty can be adjudicated under a first nations justice tribunal.
With regard to the mechanics of enforcement, we need to change the treaty language and provincial law to clarify that first nations laws are “enactments” for the purpose of the Provincial Court Act. That will allow the filing of a first nations justice tribunal order and enable it to come to the order of a court to trigger court enforcement mechanisms.
With regard to policing and enforcement agencies, we have tried for years to negotiate a tripartite agreement with the Province of B.C. and the RCMP, and we have been told repeatedly that they no longer do these tripartite agreements. I understand that may be changing, and I really hope it does. The issues we're facing here in K'ómoks with drug dealers, people trespassing....
Keith Blake
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Keith Blake
2021-05-06 12:20
Good afternoon, everyone.
[Witness spoke in Tsuut'ina]
[English]
My name is Keith Blake. I'm the chief of police of the Tsuut'ina Nation. I'm also an executive member of the First Nations Chiefs of Police Association and am proud to represent 36 self-administered first nations police services across our country.
First, I want to thank you for this opportunity. It's a critically important discussion, and our communities have been speaking long and loud in relation to this very topic.
As this discussion relates to the enforcement of first nations, which really falls under the police jurisdiction, I thought it would initially be important to touch on the first nations policing program. I was fortunate enough to hear some of the other panellists, and this was a discussion point. I thought it might be good, however, to put it through a first nations policing lens.
The FNPP is over 35 years old and is in dire need of immediate change. The program is a signed funding agreement—in our case a tripartite agreement between the nation, the province and the federal government—which unfortunately creates inequities and unfair restrictions for first nations police services that are not experienced by the traditional mainstream policing services.
The FNPP has not yet been designated as an essential service and it falls under, as was mentioned earlier, the grants and contributions program. The funding is neither long-term nor sustainable, and our funding agreements, specifically in our case, are really year-to-year extensions.
This funding model truly does not allow us to properly prepare and strategize for the community's needs and public safety. It's also funded only for what could be termed core policing function—that is, responsive models. We're not funded to have community programming, prevention or the specified and specialty units other police services have.
It's important and, I think, really critical to note that former public safety minister Ralph Goodale stated that the program “does not cut the mustard” and is in dire need of change. The current minister, Bill Blair, stated that the FNPP needs updating.
Canada has a responsibility to improve first nations policing by making it an essential service and providing adequate funding for the nations to build and sustain proper infrastructure, including governance models.
This unstable funding model has really created an air of instability within our services, whereby our officers and our staff members don't feel that this is a program that will be sustained, and therefore feel that perhaps their profession and their jobs may not be sustained.
This disparity also includes what we receive in our salaries and in our pension and benefits. We end up usually losing our really high-quality officers to more mainstream policing services that have a sustainable funding model at a higher rate.
To sum up, our first nation police services are underfunded and understaffed and face unfair barriers and impediments; yet we still see unprecedented successes in effective, efficient and culturally appropriate community-based policing.
I will also state that we were very happy to hear of the infusion into the program in the last federal budget. We're guardedly optimistic that it will bring some needed support and changes within the program.
Speaking to the enforcement side, the enforcement role that the police undertake is just one important part of the structure of the justice system in our communities. There is the legislative piece, the enforcement piece, the prosecution and the adjudication component. Though we recognize that not many communities have the direct ability to change the way funding and the justice systems correlate, it is important to consider the historical traumas experienced by indigenous peoples, throughout our country and for generations, while considering the ongoing harm that inadequate funding causes in the justice resources that government bodies provide; it is to one of the most vulnerable populations within our country.
Nation-legislated offences are an important aspect of self-determination. They are created from a community lens to address the individual nation's self-identification and the specific needs of the community and the challenges they face.
A key piece of the justice framework is the prosecution of lawfully enacted nation legislation. Most jurisdictions across the country do not recognize or prosecute nation-legislated offences. The challenge most indigenous communities face in this country is the refusal or the reluctance to have provincial crown prosecutors or federal prosecutors undertake the prosecution of these nation-legislation cases.
Although this is unfortunately the situation that most communities find themselves in, there are glimmers of hope. In this instance I'm going to provide a brief glimpse into our Tsuut'ina Nation justice model.
We have a signed agreement with the Province of Alberta for what is termed our peacemakers court, which is unique. Across this province there are no other communities that have this agreement, so we are unique. Our court is configured in a healing circle and is mandated to have an indigenous crown prosecutor, an indigenous judge and indigenous court workers.
It also has a peacemaker present, who oversees this process. The peacemaking process can be utilized if the offence falls under certain criteria. Some offences are ineligible—things like manslaughter or sexual assault. The individual can be recommended throughout the peacemaking process and can be recommended by the Crown, by the judge or by the defence, and the recommendation can occur any time throughout that process, pre-charge or post-charge.
The process requires the approval of the victim. It is also an agreement that the offender must enter into. It requires the offender to appear before a peacemaking tribunal. That tribunal will consist of formally mediated, trained community members and elders. It's designed to be restorative and less punitive, and it really does look at the root causes of crime.
This peacemaking process enables the justice system to address what I spoke to earlier—the root cause of crime—as well as both Criminal Code offences and nation-legislated offences, through a traditional value system that provides the community a voice in determining what an appropriate resolution may be.
Although there are still many challenges and still much work to be done in indigenous communities across the country, I want to thank the committee for giving me this opportunity. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
View Sylvie Bérubé Profile
BQ (QC)
Could you tell me about the training you provide for the members of your First Nations police service?
How would you compare it with the training that non-Indigenous police services receive?
Keith Blake
View Keith Blake Profile
Keith Blake
2021-05-06 12:41
Absolutely.
Again, I'll speak on the Tsuut'ina experience, because provincially that will change throughout the country. We have to follow all the legislative requirements that every police service in Alberta does, so we are no different. Our training needs to be at certain levels. We previously would send our officers to Depot, the RCMP training academy, but what we now have is an agreement with the Calgary Police Service whereby our officers will attend their Crowfoot training centre for the six-month duration. They can continue to live here on the nation and travel to and from the training academy in Calgary. It also involves an ongoing training program that we have here.
We have the same qualifications and recertifications. All the things we do are the same as every other service. We have the same accreditation; we have the same authorities as other police services, and we're proud of that. We don't want to be less than; we want to be equal to.
When it comes to the ongoing training, I'm very proud to say that our service also looks to the leaders within the culturally appropriate training. Again, we don't like looking at the culture training; that's a very sterile term. We look at the reframing of our relationships with indigenous peoples. We offer this training to all police services within the provinces, and in fact the country. We held one two weeks ago, for three days. We had the global indigenous model of the situation that Canada has faced. Then we move it down to each region of the country. We also have the lived experiences from people who have suffered as a result of the justice system, and all that we know of. We speak to elders. It's a three-day program, and it's holistic and fulsome.
Again, we host that training every two to three months, and we invite people across the country, law enforcement officials from everywhere, to take that on with us. That's an essential need, and it's something that's missing, I think, in many jurisdictions.
Keith Blake
View Keith Blake Profile
Keith Blake
2021-05-06 12:44
I think it has.... The way in which we engage with our possible candidates has been more virtual. Again, it hasn't diminished the interest in policing. As I said, one of the challenges we face is that there's a disparity in the service that first nation policing receives, comparatively.
Again, we don't want to be a feeder system for other police services, whereby we get them trained, and they're great, and we get them engaged, only for them to go somewhere else. Again, that very much needs some support from our funding partners to [Technical difficulty—Editor].
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