First Nations complainants who waited years for a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal inquiry into the RCMP’s investigation of alleged abuses by a “well-known Canadian” will have to wait a little longer for a decision.
According to CHRT procedures, the tribunal has six months from the conclusion of final submissions, in this case until Jan. 19, to issue a decision. On Friday, a tribunal spokesperson confirmed to The Tyee that, while work on the decision continues, it would not meet that deadline.
The spokesperson said the parties have been notified about the delay but did not provide an update on when a decision could be expected.
In June 2020, six people from the Lake Babine Nation complained to the tribunal that the RCMP’s investigation sparked by reports of historical abuses by a teacher at two northern B.C. schools was flawed, incomplete and racially biased. Three of the complainants, including lead complainant Cathy Woodgate, have since died.
In addition to an apology and compensation, the former students are seeking a new investigation into the abuses and a new approach to police investigations in First Nations communities in B.C.
The identity of the former teacher who was the subject of the RCMP’s investigation is protected by a confidentiality order issued by the tribunal and has been anonymized in tribunal documents as “A.B.” The high-profile individual successfully argued the tribunal should conceal his identity. He has never been charged in relation to the allegations.
CHRT chair Colleen Harrington heard 44 days of testimony from 38 witnesses over nearly 10 months, beginning in May 2023 and ending in February 2024.
Among those who testified were former students, policing experts, RCMP officers, journalists and provincial employees working on police reform.
The tribunal heard that the 18-month police investigation began in July 2012 after a former student reported historical sexual abuse by the physical education teacher who worked at Immaculata Catholic elementary school in Burns Lake, B.C., in the late 1960s before the teacher moved to Prince George College. Other students testified about experiencing and witnessing sexual, physical and emotional abuse at both schools.
In final written arguments, the complainants argued that discriminatory attitudes tainted the RCMP’s investigation and denied them access to police services.
“The case also demonstrates how bias in favour of a powerful non-Indigenous individual, in this case A.B., serves to exacerbate the discrimination of Indigenous peoples,” the complainants wrote in their submission, adding that A.B. had been responsible for a $900-million RCMP contract a few years prior to the investigation.
Department of Justice lawyers representing the RCMP argued that police investigations are not “services” under the Canadian Human Rights Act and called on the tribunal to dismiss the complaint. They denied any discrimination, saying that investigators interviewed 37 witnesses in a “respectful, trauma-informed and culturally sensitive manner” and concluded there were insufficient grounds to recommend charges.
Will the CHRT’s decision provide answers to the broader questions raised during the inquiry hearings? Here are five points raised during the inquiry that The Tyee will be watching for the tribunal to weigh in on.
1. Did RCMP brass influence the investigation?
On July 13, 2012, two days after a woman from Lake Babine Nation brought allegations of childhood sexual abuse to Burns Lake RCMP, senior officers in Vancouver circulated an internal briefing note, including details about the “accolades” of the man who’d been accused of abuse, and a warning that the case could “be an embarrassment at a number of levels of government.”
According to internal RCMP emails shared with the tribunal, the briefing note was sent to then-RCMP commissioner Bob Paulson — and shared with the accused’s legal team.
Lead investigator Quinton Mackie, then a corporal with the RCMP’s Prince George detachment, kept in close contact with the man’s lawyer, Marvin Storrow, throughout the investigation, sharing details about the allegations.
“Mackie agreed that he had never before in a sexual assault investigation talked to the lawyer of a client and told them all of the allegations before taking a statement,” the complainants’ lawyer wrote.
While Mackie engaged with the accused’s lawyer more than a dozen times, he spoke to the accused only once, in October 2012. That meeting was not recorded, nor could any information be used in court, as the investigator did not caution the man or warn him about his Charter rights.
The RCMP’s lawyers told the tribunal that its treatment of the man was “consistent with how police should treat someone facing potential criminal jeopardy.”
“The assertion that the officers treated A.B. with more deference as contrasted with the allegedly unfavourable treatment of the complainants and other Indigenous witnesses is without basis,” the DOJ wrote.
But the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which is also a party at the inquiry and did the initial investigation into the complaint, wrote in its final arguments that the accused’s lawyer Storrow “dictated” how RCMP conducted the investigation.
“The evidence clearly points to the person of interest setting the parameters for how the investigation should be conducted, including inserting narratives into the investigation,” CHRC lawyers wrote.
The “narratives” A.B.’s lawyer put forward — and the RCMP followed up on — included an unfounded extortion attempt and allegations that a journalist who wrote about the alleged abuse had a “vendetta,” the commission wrote.
2. Were police investigating a sexual assault — or a journalist?
Testimony shared at the tribunal suggested that, at times, the RCMP’s investigation appeared to focus more on a journalist who had reported on the abuse allegations than it did on the man accused.
Laura Robinson, a sports journalist, travelled to northern B.C. in April 2012 — three months before the police investigation began — to interview former students about their experiences at Immaculata and Prince George College. Her article appeared in the print edition of the Georgia Straight on Sept. 27, 2012, and remains online today.
The same day, the alleged abuser held a press conference. He denied the allegations and suggested that they may be linked to an attempted extortion several years earlier. He said he’d been approached by a First Nations woman alleging abuse and was told that “for a payment it could be made to go away.”
Following the press conference, Mackie’s superiors in the RCMP directed him to look into the alleged extortion attempt, suggesting Robinson might be involved. A.B. had “singled out the reporter on this matter as having a personal vendetta,” an RCMP briefing note said.
During the hearing, Mackie testified that “their concern was that the extortion was connected to Laura Robinson.”
But Mackie had already investigated the alleged extortion attempt, having previously heard about it from Storrow, and determined it was unrelated to his investigation.
Despite that, at the urging of senior officers, he continued to investigate the extortion allegation “long after” satisfying himself that it was irrelevant, the complainants wrote in their concluding arguments.
“Mackie admitted all his information about Robinson came from Storrow, counsel to A.B., and his PR person Andrea Shaw,” the complainants wrote. “This direction meant that the RCMP were now considering that A.B. may be a victim and asking the same officer who was investigating him as a suspect to investigate a possible crime against him.”
Alberta RCMP investigators who reviewed the file in July 2013, as the investigation neared its conclusion, recommended interviewing those involved with the alleged extortion. But that never happened. “Mackie made no attempt to investigate whether A.B. had made a false extortion allegation,” the complainants wrote.
But he did ask questions about Robinson.
The Georgia Straight article resulted in a bitter legal dispute, with A.B. suing the journalist for defamation and Robinson responding with a countersuit. In January 2013, Mackie emailed Storrow and asked the lawyer to send him Robinson’s response to A.B.’s civil claim, which contained affidavits from former students — potential witnesses against Storrow’s client. Storrow obliged.
But when RCMP officers arrived at one witness’s doorstep asking about Robinson, Pius Charlie, a member of the Ts’il Kaz Koh First Nation, expressed confusion. At the hearing, Charlie testified that he didn’t understand why the RCMP was focusing on Robinson instead of the allegations against A.B.
“Pius doesn’t know what any of this has to do with Laura,” Mackie wrote in notes that were later shared with the tribunal.
3. Why did the RCMP exclude witnesses who did not attend Immaculata?
The RCMP’s investigation omitted witnesses who may have corroborated the sexual assault allegation, the tribunal heard.
As the investigation expanded to include broader allegations of historical abuse, in response to recommendations by Alberta RCMP investigators who reviewed the file, Mackie created a “spin off” investigation. Some potential witnesses were shifted into the secondary file.
But the parallel investigation focused only on Immaculata, excluding anyone alleging abuse at Prince George College.
“The most egregious deficiency in the investigation of the allegations in the ‘spin off’ file was the completely unexplained exclusion of complainants who had experienced abuse by A.B. at Prince George College,” the complainants wrote.
The rationale for restricting the scope was “never justified or explained,” the complainants said, nor did anyone take responsibility for imposing the restriction.
Among those excluded was a woman who wrote in an affidavit that A.B. had “followed her into the dark small room” where athletic equipment was stored at Prince George College and blocked her way out.
“He reached down and tried to grope her by her crotch,” according to the affidavit, which was summarized in the complainants’ final submission. As she ran away, he grabbed her and ripped her shorts, it said.
When investigators met with the woman to take a statement, they cut the interview short upon learning that the alleged abuse had occurred in Prince George rather than at Immaculata.
Another former Prince George College student wrote in a statement that “it was known among some students that A.B. was sexually abusing girls in the college.” The potential witness was not approached because he did not attend Immaculata, the complainants wrote.
In their final submission, the RCMP’s lawyers wrote that the decision to ignore alleged abuses at Prince George College “had a bona fide justification.”
“The RCMP had not received criminal complaints or have any evidence of criminal acts relating to this school. There is also no nexus between Prince George College and this complaint because none of the complainants attended the school,” the DOJ lawyers wrote.
4. Did police accept ‘gossip’ about the alleged victim without further investigation?
While RCMP investigators rejected the sexual assault allegation “even when there were at least 10 different pieces of corroborating evidence,” according to the complainants, they accepted statements from A.B.’s team and others “without verifying them for accuracy.”
In addition to accepting Storrow’s suggestion that Robinson had a “vendetta” against A.B., the complainants wrote in their final submission, Mackie accepted without evidence or further investigation that the alleged victim was “making up the allegations for attention.”
The comments, described during the hearing by the complainants’ lawyer Karen Bellehumeur as “just pure gossip,” were made during a conversation at the Burns Lake RCMP detachment between Mackie and a police-based victim services worker who was assigned to help the woman, the tribunal heard.
Mackie testified that he had not done any further investigation into the claim. He wrote in his final report that it was not uncommon for the woman to “alter or embellish a situation if she feels like she is not receiving adequate attention.”
“She had no reason to lie to me,” he said to explain why he accepted the victim services worker’s comments.
5. Will the province’s jurisdiction-related claims hold water?
Nearly five months after the inquiry got underway, B.C.’s attorney general filed a last-minute application to join, saying policing is under provincial jurisdiction.
While the tribunal rejected B.C.’s request for party status, it granted “limited interested person status,” allowing the province to call evidence and make a final argument to the tribunal.
That argument focused on the complainants’ request that the tribunal direct the BC RCMP to collaborate with an Indigenous-led organization, such as the BC First Nations Justice Council, to “create a team to provide abuse investigation services in Indigenous communities.”
That team could include a language speaker, an Elder, a spiritual leader, someone trained in abuse investigations, someone with experience in mental health and trauma, and an RCMP officer, according to the complainants’ statement of particulars.
B.C.’s attorney general wrote in final arguments that any order divesting RCMP of policing services in the province “is beyond the jurisdiction of the tribunal,” with changes to policing subject to review and approval by the province.
The RCMP agreed that both policing and provincial matters “lie beyond the tribunal’s jurisdiction.”
“The RCMP is established as the provincial police force in British Columbia under the policing agreement with Canada,” federal Justice Department lawyers wrote, adding that there is “no constitutional or other lawful authority allowing the tribunal to alter that agreement or establish a police unit.”
The Canadian Human Rights Commission disagreed that law enforcement is not under the authority of the tribunal and the Canadian Human Rights Act, saying the tribunal has previously made findings related to RCMP conduct during a police investigation.
“The RCMP has accepted that officers have to act in accordance with the law — that law includes the CHRA,” the commission wrote in its final submission.
Read more: Indigenous, Rights + Justice
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