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Saskatchewan’s Minister of Justice both agrees and disagrees with the Regina Board of Police Commissioners.
Last week, the board passed a motion to ask for improvements to how police are overseen in the province.
The board acknowledged the change the province made to the Public Complaints Commission (PCC) but said it doesn’t do enough to move away from having police investigating police. So it decided to request the minister, among other things, move the PCC to civilian-only oversight, expand the PCC’s resources and investigative tools, and that he move quickly to create a civilian-only independent Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT).
On Monday, Justice Minister Don Morgan argued the PCC was already basically all-civilian right now, that there are “virtually” no police officers on it.
He did admit there are places where improvements can and should be made.
“I would agree with them to the point that it probably doesn’t have as much robust abilities as it should, it’s not as well removed as it should be from the existing police forces, and I agree with that, and I think that’s a direction we’re going to go down,” said Morgan.
Morgan said he’s been meeting informally with the Chiefs of Police in Regina and Saskatoon and that they all agree that the current method of oversight has lacked accountability and transparency; he thinks they’re all going in the same direction.
According to Morgan, part of the improvements will be to bring serious incident investigations under the PCC and have it assign the investigators and independent observers.
“We think that process should include the same kind of things we’re doing by way of regular media reports, the ability to investigate beyond just the specific incidents there – if there’s a systemic issue as well,” explained Morgan.
The commission is currently being re-done, according to Morgan, and he said they want some new people. He’s moving to specifically bring in someone of Indigenous heritage, he said preferably as chair of the commission.
“For First Nations and Metis people in our province, to have confidence in the system, they would have a higher level of confidence knowing that we were willing to appoint somebody who’s of First Nations or Metis ancestry – I think those are the directions that we can and should go.”
Morgan said he has a timeline for when he wants things to get done, but it might not end up being the timeline the ministry works on.
His goal is to have commissioners in place over the next few weeks, and then he said he’ll urge them to do consultations with chiefs, the Sask. Federation of Police Officers, RCMP, and other groups over the next short number of months.
