Will RCMP’s Lucki find cure for ‘toxic’ culture?
‘It hasn’t been an easy year,’ commissioner says as report calls for in-depth review of force
“I have to tell you, I am nervous. Can I say that?”
It’s not an admission one expects to hear from the leader of Canada’s national police force at the start of an interview.
But after the year RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki has had, it’s not entirely surprising, either.
Lucki has floundered over a question about the existence of systemic racism within the force. Perry Bellegarde, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, has declared she is not suited for her job. The B.C. Civil Liberties Association has announced it is suing her over the force’s “inexcusable delays” in responding to a watchdog report into allegations the RCMP had spied on Indigenous and climate advocates.
And just Thursday, an independent report found that a “toxic” culture existed within the force that tolerates misogynistic and homophobic attitudes. The “Broken Dreams Broken Lives” report, penned by former Supreme Court justice Michel Bastarache, called for an indepth external review of the agency and its future.
In a wide-ranging interview with the
Star this week, Lucki acknowledged, “It hasn’t been an easy year.”
But she said she has also done a lot of “listening” and “learning” — words she invoked no fewer than a dozen times over the course of a 50-minute interview.
And Lucki said she remains steadfast in her belief that she has found the right formula to bring about cultural reform within the RCMP and to rebuild public trust.
To that end, she outlined a slew of initiatives for enhancing training, diversifying staff and improving accountability.
“We want to make sure there is no racism, no homophobia, no harassment, no discrimination in our organization, because it will not be tolerated,” she said.
But some RCMP observers remain unconvinced, saying her initiatives are piecemeal and miss the bigger point: The force needs to seriously consider overhauling itself from the ground up and rethink its mandate.
The commissioner also faces pockets of resistance from rank-and-file members who challenge the notion of systemic racism and have said the commissioner “threw them under the bus.”
For now, Lucki’s political masters in Ottawa continue to stand by her, but their support is far from effusive.
A senior government source told the Star: “We support her,” but “we expect leadership from the commissioner.”
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When Lucki was announced as commissioner in 2018 — the first woman appointed to that position on a permanent basis — she pledged to “challenge assumptions” and ensure that “no stone will be left unturned” when it comes to modernizing the almost 150-year-old force.
But as anyone who has spent time looking at the force knows, the pace of change can be glacial. And a series of high-profile incidents and missteps this past year have called into question for critics whether Lucki can bring about meaningful change.
The most prominent flub, of course, came in June when, during international outcry over the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minnesota police, Lucki said in a television interview that she struggled over the definition of systemic racism and its existence in her police force. Days later, she changed course, acknowledging in a statement that “systemic racism is part of every institution, the RCMP included.”
Looking back on that episode, Lucki now says she’s “thankful” that it happened.
“I didn’t want our members, our employees, to think I was calling them racist. And so I was trying to choose my words carefully because, you know what? Words are important and the dialogue was even more important,” she said. “That stumble, I call it, actually opened up a lot of dialogue and discussion and so everything happens for a reason, and I am thankful for that.”
Try as she might, other incidents are not as easy to cast in a positive light.
This year saw a series of caught-on-camera incidents that sparked allegations of excessive force by Mounties. In Nunavut, video showed an officer using the driver’s side door of an RCMP truck to slam into an Inuk man.
In Alberta, dash cam video showed an officer tackling and punching Allan Adam, chief of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, during an encounter that ostensibly began due to an expired licence plate.
Meanwhile, Indigenous fishers in Nova Scotia who asserted their right to fish for a moderate livelihood under a 1999 Supreme Court of Canada decision accused the RCMP of standing idly by as an angry mob targeted them with violence and vandalism.
That appeared to be the last straw for Bellegarde, the chief of the Assembly of First Nations, who announced Oct. 23 that he had lost confidence in the commissioner and called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to replace her.
“Why there’s a breakdown in the relationship and trust is because leaders and commanding officers, in a lot of instances, publicly stated nothing was done wrong — and clearly there was,” Bellegarde told the Star in an interview.
“First Nations people have never had a great relationship with the RCMP because they were the ones that picked people up to go to residential schools … So, the RCMP have to build up a trust and relationship with First Nations people, no question.”
Lucki acknowledged that Bellegarde’s call for her resignation was “difficult to hear,” but she said she is working on rebuilding that trust.
“That trust needs to be earned. It’s earned through action, learning and listening,” she said.
“It’s a call to dig deeper, find out why — how I can do better, how we can do better as an organization. You check your ego at the door.”
In developing a road map for change, Lucki said she has consulted widely. Internally, she invited rank-and-file members to send ideas to her “innovation mailbox” and received more than 7,000 submissions.
Externally, Lucky says she has sought advice from leaders in racialized and Indigenous communities, such as Marion Buller, former commissioner of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and Sen. Murray Sinclair, former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as groups such as the Native Women’s Association of Canada.
Sinclair said he tried to impart to Lucki an understanding that getting rid of all the racists in an organization doesn’t get rid of the problem because it still leaves behind systems and practices — such as the training and the way people are hired and promoted and supervised — that lead to unconscious or blind racism.
“We did leave it as an openended conversation in which she would follow up with me if she felt the need to talk to me further. So far we haven’t had another opportunity.”
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Those conversations have helped to inform a series of new initiatives that were recently posted on the RCMP’s website, Lucki said.
They include the development of a system to collect data on police encounters with racialized and Indigenous people, mandatory anti-racism and cultural awareness training for all employees, and the creation of a new office dedicated to Indigenous collaboration and accountability.
Finding new ways to diversify membership in the force is another goal. Over the past 10 years, the percentage of visible minorities has nudged up from eight to 12 per cent. The percentage of women has marginally improved from 20 per cent to 22 per cent, while the percentage of Indigenous people has been stagnant, hovering around seven or eight per cent.
One way the force is trying to attract more diverse recruits is by accepting applications from permanent residents who have lived in Canada for three of the past five years. Previously the requirement had been 10 years.
The force is also looking to hire more civilians with expertise in financial and cyber security to assist with criminal investigations.
“Do you need a fully armed, fully trained police officer to do cyber-crime investigations? Maybe you don’t,” Lucki said.
Up north, Lucki said, the force is helping Inuit people who have expressed interest in careers in policing acquire the skills they need to make a successful application and to prepare them for the RCMP training academy in Regina.
Lucki said the force also plans to do a better job of screening for cultural bias and racism when recruiting people, though details of how they plan to do that were not immediately clear.
“When you are up for promotion within the organization,” she added, “again we’ll look at your character. Before, we were looking a lot at the functional skills.”
She noted that half of her senior executive team is now made up of women.
When it comes to the use of force, newly released data show that while the Mounties have seen a general downward trend in the use of certain techniques to control people, such as takedowns and punches or kicks, there has been an increase in the deployment of conducted energy weapons or Tasers.
Lucki says they are updating their models for de-escalation and crisis intervention and implementing more scenarios in their training.
Asked whether mental-health practitioners are better suited to respond to calls for someone in crisis, Lucki said they were important “partners” but was reluctant to say that they should respond to such calls alone.
“Often, north of the 54th parallel, there is no such resource,” she said. “We are the first responders. And we are the people that get those people the help they need, so we have to be really good at that, because we don’t have additional resources that the big cities have.”
When it comes to watchdog reports from the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, the force now says it has committed to responding to them in six months (they had been averaging 18 months), but only after clearing the existing backlog.
It’s given itself a year to do that.
Bellegarde, who seems resigned to the fact the government has no plans to remove Lucki anytime soon, told the Star he has not had a chance to review the RCMP’s initiatives but said he is encouraged.
“Let’s get them implemented sooner than later,” he said. “You have to begin somewhere.”
One initiative he’d like to see is greater incentive pay for experienced officers to police northern First Nations communities.
“A lot of the time, you have young rookies coming out of (the training academy) that haven’t built up the relationship with the community and don’t have experience,” he said.
Asked if he had any regrets about calling for Lucki’s removal, he said he didn’t.
“It was needed in terms of keeping the pressure on to bring about policy and legislative change.”
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Some observers don’t believe the RCMP’s blueprint for change goes far enough.
One critic is Mary Eberts, a human rights lawyer and senior fellow in residence at the University of Toronto’s Massey College.
“Many of the initiatives described should have been in place ages ago,” said Eberts. “There is nothing about doing a review of the force’s mission: What is it supposed to be doing, and how?”
Eberts said she was offended that Lucki initially showed “such an inadequate and shallow knowledge” of systemic racism.
After reviewing the RCMP’s initiatives, Eberts said she couldn’t help but wonder: Why does Canada still need a national police force?
“We have all these provinces and territories that have an established constitutional position,” she said. “Why do we still have to have a national police force where the policing structure and needs of local people are still determined in Ottawa? I think it would be a very good idea for there to be a devolution of many of the policing responsibilities of the RCMP down to the provinces or territories.”
Gary Anandasangaree, a Liberal MP who has posed pointed questions to the commissioner during her appearances before the Commons public safety committee, said the principles in the RCMP action plan are good, but the details will be key.
When it comes to race-based data collection, for instance, will it be comprehensive enough to determine whether there’s a disproportionate impact on certain communities? Will it cover police stops and who’s been charged or who’s not been charged?
When it comes to diversifying the force, efforts shouldn’t only be on the recruitment end, he said. Is there a path to leadership for Indigenous, racialized and female members? He added that the RCMP would be wise to follow the lead of the Peel Regional Police Service, which recently signed an agreement with the Ontario Human Rights Commission to implement legally binding measures to root out systemic racism.
An academic paper published earlier this year by a former senior RCMP official suggests there may be internal obstacles to modernization.
Angela Workman-Stark, a former RCMP chief superintendent, oversaw efforts to develop a more diverse and inclusive workplace following allegations of pervasive gender-based discrimination and harassment within the force.
Workman-Stark is now a professor of organizational behaviour at Athabasca University. In an article published in the journal Development and Learning in Organizations, she wrote that policing remains a male-dominated environment that emphasizes physical strength and emotional selfregulation.
As a result, there’s a tendency for female officers to downplay their femininity and go out of their way to demonstrate toughness, she wrote.
“The police organizational culture, with its focus on toughness and avoidance of anything deemed weak, had long conditioned leaders at all levels to consider personal vulnerability as a sign of weakness. ... In sum, the organizational culture presented a formidable barrier to inclusion and to organizational learning that was unlikely to be undone through a traditional approach to change.”
Informed of what Workman-Stark had written, Lucki suggested she’s tried to demonstrate vulnerability through her own actions.
“If I was going to be completely honest, there’s kind of an irony in what you say, because I was vulnerable when I said that I was struggling with the definition of systemic racism. I wasn’t allowed to be vulnerable, as you saw. In 2020, a leader is not allowed to be vulnerable right now.”
Some now question whether it’s Lucki’s position that is vulnerable.
Asked this week if Lucki still had the support of Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, his press secretary, Mary-Liz Power, said: “We are aware of the request made by the national chief.”
She went on to say that, “Together, we will bring forward meaningful change to ensure police treat the people that they are sworn to serve and protect with dignity and with respect, while taking the necessary steps to produce more equitable outcomes for everyone.”
If Lucki is worried about losing her job, she isn’t showing it.
“I am not afraid to learn and I’m not afraid to listen. I don’t have all the answers. I said that when I became commissioner,” she said.
“But gosh darn it, I’m going to ask all the tough questions, and that’s what I’ve been doing.”
Some RCMP observers say Brenda Lucki’s initiatives miss the bigger point