Policing in Canada due for an overhaul

Alberta prosecutors did the right thing this week when they dropped assault charges against First Nations leader Allan Adam.

Anyone who watched the 12-minute video of the brutal police takedown of this Indigenous man would have wondered why he was accused of wrongdoing in the first place.

Allan, chief of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, was stopped by an RCMP officer in Fort McMurray in March because the licence sticker on his truck had expired — no big deal in most cases. But Allan became angry. Tensions escalated. Then another RCMP officer arrived, tackled Allan and began punching him, leaving his face bloodied and bruised.

Based on what the RCMP’s own dashcam video shows, the assault and resisting arrest charges laid against Allan were baseless. Justice was done when those charges were quashed.

But only partially. Canadians will only be able to say Chief Allan has received his due if the RCMP is held fully accountable for its actions and inactions. In addition — and this is the greater challenge by far — there must be a major overhaul of how policing is done in Canada.

The problems are deep-rooted and go beyond Allan’s mistreatment by two RCMP officers, as egregious as it was. Of course we need to know why a trivial dispute over expired licence plates escalated into violence.

The investigation launched by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team should answer this and other key questions. Let’s hope the officers who arrested Adam face professional consequences of some kind. The public also needs to know why senior RCMP officials in Alberta failed to call for a review of Adam’s arrest. They insisted the use of force was justified — until the dashcam video was made public earlier this month and indicated otherwise.

Something has gone seriously wrong in Canada when a minor offence results in the beating of an Indigenous man by police, and their use of excessive force is officially sanctioned. There must be careful, nationwide soul-searching about how police in this country respond to calls involving racialized people, in particular Indigenous and Black people.

As the news of Allan’s violent arrest broke, Canadians were still stunned by the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police. Then they saw what happened to Chief Allan. Then they learned that no fewer than six Indigenous people had been killed by police in Canada — just since April. Then they knew we had a problem with our police, too.

The concerns of fair-minded people can only have intensified when RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki denied that systemic racism exists in the national police force. Although Lucki reversed that position within days, it’s fair to ask whether she’s the right person to lead the RCMP going forward.

If there’s anything good to have come out of this turmoil, it’s that Public Safety Minister Bill Blair confirmed this week that the federal government is working with Indigenous communities “to co-develop a legislative framework that recognizes First Nations policing as an essential service.”

This, in fact, is a six-month-old federal government promise. It’s about time they delivered. But Blair and the Liberals should broaden their reforms. Along with the provinces, they need to rethink how policing is done in Canada. What if the system this country has created is not only tainted with racism but structured in the wrong way and responsible for things that professionals other than the police could more capably provide?

True justice demands that we find out.