The provincial government has introduced legislation Wednesday to improve police oversight in Saskatchewan.
The new legislation will transfer responsibility from an appointed Investigation Observer to the Public Complaints Commission in cases where someone suffers a serious injury or dies either in police custody or as a result of police actions.
Justice Minister Don Morgan says several enhancements are being made with one of those seeing the current model with a serious incident in which a call is made to another force or RCMP to review what has happened replaced.
“We don’t think that is a good method of openness, a good method of transparency so what we would like to have is a scenario where complaints would initially go to the Public Complaints Commission and they would appoint an overseer from there.” Morgan told reporters at the Legislature. “That overseer would be responsible for saying we can do this internally or we will bring in investigators or somebody from another staff. We think that a province that is the size of ours with the number of police forces we have to try and have a model like they have in Alberta or Ontario is costly and expensive so we think by having the PCC control the methods that we are addressing that concern.”
Other proposed changes include:
- implementing a new process within the PCC to address complaints against specific classes of special constables, such as Conservation Officers and Highway Traffic Officers working as part of the provincial Protection and Response Team;
- requiring police services to ask another police organization to investigate serious injuries, deaths or sexual assaults that occur in police custody or as a result of the actions of a police officer; and
- updating the Lieutenant Governor in Council’s authority to make regulations respecting special constables.
The opposition NDP has not had a good look at the legislation, but Justice Critic Nicole Sarauer says an initial look at it brings up a concern.
“Based on our initial look at it, it looks like a half-measure.” Sarauer said. “There are still instances where police will still be investigating police and that is just not acceptable in 2020.”
The government has allocated $350,000 from the 2020-21 budget, which was announced Monday, to hire staff to manage the additional work.
