CALGARY, Alta. — Canada’s police chiefs wrapped up a four-day conference in Calgary on Wednesday without drafting any new strategies to combat bullying and harassment in the workplace, despite the event being billed as focusing on human resources improvements.
None of the six new resolutions from the conference of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP), billed as “From the top: A strategic HR approach”, related to the association’s human resources policies.
Instead, the resolutions focus mainly on improving regulations and access to resources for organized crime, terrorist financing and cybersecurity:
- Address the issue of organized-crime groups circumnavigating existing precursor control regulations to facilitate illicit domestic methamphetamine production.
- Resources and costs currently imposed on the police to safely dismantle clandestine drug labs.
- Develop a new trauma-informed interview training program to ensure consistent and effective responses to victims of traumatic incidents.
- Improve information available to police, competent authorities and the public to better support investigations into money laundering and terrorist financing.
- Combating illegal online drug sales to curtail organized crime initiatives and reduce access to youth.
- Prevention of criminal exploitation of cryptocurrencies by adopting a financial action task force.
The head of the CACP, Vancouver police Chief Adam Palmer, said the resolutions each support one or more of the organization’s nine priorities:
- Policing with Indigenous peoples
- Drugs
- Mental health — employee wellness and police interactions with people in crisis
- Public perception, confidence and trust in policing
- Electric or cybercrime
- Gangs, guns and organized crime
- Road safety
- Equity, diversity and inclusion
- Innovation and the future of policing
Though Palmer and Calgary police Chief Mark Neufeld said workplace harassment, bullying and intimidation would be a key topic of the conference, no new policies were adopted.
“Over the last couple days we’ve had a lot of discussion on issues like workplace harassment and different things to consider for organizations as they’re building such policies, but there was no model policy,” Palmer said Wednesday.
“There’s no more oversight in any other profession than policing, so we have much more oversight than anybody else,” he added. “Everybody is watching what we’re doing and the accountability in our profession is like no other profession.”
In March, CPS officer Kim Prodaniuk filed a lawsuit against the Calgary Police Service and the Calgary Police Association alleging harassment and intimidation in the workplace. She called the conference outcomes disappointing, “tokenism and a PR effort.”
That came after a 2013 internal workplace review revealed claims of sexual assault, sexual harassment , bullying and intimidation within the Calgary service.
“To me, this conference wasn’t even about bullying and harassment, it’s about neglect of duty for Canadian chiefs of police in their responsibility to their employees to create and maintain safe workplaces,” Prodaniuk said. “It’s about police management failures, in my opinion.”
Prodaniuk said Palmer’s comments about police oversight “seem like almost an admission that they knew what was going on.
“There hasn’t been enough public scrutiny into police oversight . . . bullying is one issue but the autonomy of the police and a lack of oversight of police management has been really lacking.”
She added that change is possible but it can’t continue to be swept under the rug.
“If there is a minority population being targeted inside of an organization, you need to act for those people and increase their influence,” she said. “They need to do a direct-entry program . . . You can’t rely on attrition and culture change, it keeps the issue in purgatory.”
Twitter: @oliviacondon
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