Madam Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleagues who are here tonight.

First, I would like to sincerely thank the member for Nunavut.

I want to thank my friend, the member of Parliament for Nunavut, for bringing this forward for an emergency debate. It has been an emergency for some time. That is why I was relieved when the Speaker decided that it met the definition of an emergency for debate. However, as the hon. member put it when she made the argument to the Speaker, it is now almost expected that, when police forces are confronted with a first nations person, an indigenous person in this country, the person in question is killed. This happens even on a wellness check, when they are supposed to be sent to make sure that the person in question is safe. It has become far too common.

There have been a number of studies in Canada. We can talk about them. I know the specific examples that lead us into the debate tonight.

I will start with this APTN headline: “15 days and 6 Indigenous people have died when coming in contact with police across Canada”. The hon. parliamentary secretary quite rightly pointed out that we were told this in the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and in the report on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. We were told this in a report that came out in June 2021 from this Parliament's Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security entitled “Systemic Racism in Policing in Canada”. That report refers to a witness, the Hon. Michel Bastarache, who actually said that the culture within the RCMP is “toxic”.

Let us be clear: This is not one or two incidents that can be explained away by saying an RCMP officer thought something was a threat because they were faced with an indigenous person who they thought was threatening them.

Steven Dedam was shot and killed by the RCMP just earlier this month. After he had been shot three times, he was handcuffed and told he was under arrest as he lay there dying. He had been shot in the chest in Elsipogtog First Nation in the Mi'kmaq, Maliseet and Passamaquoddy territory. That is not the first time.

As we know, in June 2020, there were two people killed in the territory of the Mi'kmaq, Maliseet and Passamaquoddy people. Rodney Levi of another New Brunswick first nation was shot and killed by the RCMP on a wellness check. Chantel Moore, a young woman from the territory of Vancouver Island, was killed by a member of the Edmundston, New Brunswick, police force on June 4, 2020. I am honoured to be a friend of her family, and I know them well. Her killing is one for which there are no answers yet; the reports have been whitewashed. She was killed by a lone Edmunston police officer, who was a tall, burly man. He woke her up at three in the morning because he had been called to do a wellness check. He did not have a second officer with him. He shot her four times. She was five foot nothing. This is an insufficiently investigated murder.

Let us get back to what kinds of solutions we could look to. I have mentioned a number of reports. One that does not come up very much in this context, although it contains many clues for what we need to do for solutions, is the mass casualty report on the RCMP's massive failure to stop a killer on what is sometimes described as a “shooting spree”, which makes it sound as though he was shopping. It was a murderous rampage by a known dangerous man. He was known to be dangerous because of multiple reports for over a decade before he started killing people in Portapique, Nova Scotia, two years ago in April. He was known because many reports had been made to the RCMP that he had illegal guns. When we read the report, we find that various racialized people had reported him for beating up on or robbing them over the years. It was known that he was a threat to people around him. The RCMP notes to the report say that the RCMP did not believe the complainant. Why would a wealthy denturist beat up on poor and racialized people? We might insert the word “white”. The RCMP never investigated the complaints against him over a 10-year period.

The Globe and Mail, the national newspaper, is certainly not a left-wing or radical press; it is establishment with a capital E. The Globe and Mail editorial, after reading the mass casualty report, said the RCMP as an institution must be torn down to its foundations and then the foundations must be dynamited. Those are strong words. When we read that report, we realize that there is institutionalized systemic racism, as well as sexism and the unwillingness to believe that because someone had a domestic violence situation and was reported constantly to be a threat to the life of his intimate partner but was not reported by the intimate partner, there was an issue of coercive control. We have got to get that bill passed while we are here, by the way.

However, the issue of systemic racism comes screaming out of the report on the mass casualty report out of Nova Scotia for the killings in Portapique. That report pointed out this issue of training. The RCMP do not get as much training as even municipal police forces. I have talked a lot to the chief of police in Victoria, B.C., where I have watched officers in Victoria, B.C. in the municipal police force de-escalate tense situations and get people mental health supports when they need them. They do not shoot first and ask questions later. I am very grateful to Chief Del Manak in Victoria and those in other municipal forces across Canada. The chief of police in Montreal is another fine example. The hon. parliamentary secretary mentioned police forces in Thunder Bay and Edmundston. We have seen municipal police officers also exhibit a systemic racist attitude toward racialized and indigenous people where guns are pulled when people have been sent out on wellness checks.

With respect to solutions, we can go through volumes of reports. From the other place, another expert in this area, Senator Kim Pate, has done a lot of work looking at what has already been mentioned here tonight, which is the expanding population of indigenous women in our prisons.

Systemic racism is not confined to the RCMP. Let us be clear: It is a Canada-wide problem. It is manifested in the laws, the expectations, the doctrine of discovery, the Indian Act and we can go on and on. However, it is really critical that we do a couple of things and do them fast. I have said this to the Minister of Public Safety before. We need to take the time to go through the social media of every single person in this country who wears a uniform and carries a gun. That includes the kind of person who actually drove through the gates at Rideau Hall determined to shoot the Prime Minister. We need to go through social profiles of every single person in this country who wears a uniform and carries a gun and look for any evidence of white supremacy, look for people wearing a patch of the thin blue line.

A friend of mine was a Fairy Creek supporter to stop the old-growth logging in British Columbia. Recently the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, just last week, ruled on the police arrest and handcuffing and insistence that somehow my friend from Salt Spring Island was violating the law by refusing to give the RCMP his name. This was the RCMP rogue unit called the Community-Industry Response Group, demanding to search his backpack and then arresting him. In that report, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission said the RCMP need training in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Their arrest was groundless.

However, regarding the abuse and the mistreatment of people in a number of indigenous land defenders' cases, it is clear that there is greater violence directed toward people defending forests or fighting pipelines if they are indigenous, than if they are arrested with kid gloves the way I was so nicely by the RCMP on Burnaby Mountain.

I urge everyone watching this debate tonight and participating not to turn the page and think this was the debate for September 16 and now it is over. We have got to take this seriously and ensure proper training. It is not a couple of rotten apples. It is systemic. Get them out of our police forces, protect indigenous lives and ensure that there is no place for racists where they are allowed to wear a uniform and carry a gun.

Elizabeth May

$565,861.00