Wynne says police services board committee meetings should be public

One day after the CBC revealed that the Ottawa Police Services Board has been discussing police business behind closed doors at secret committee meetings for years, Premier Kathleen Wynne said she expects those meetings to be public.

Furthermore, the province has specific rules in place about when a meeting can be private — a personnel issue, for example, or a vote on labour negotiations or, in an extreme instance, if the public safety is somehow at risk.

And the board isn't following those rules.

"So my expectation would be that first of all, there are public meetings," said Wynne, who was in Ottawa Friday to give a speech to the think-tank Canada 2020. "And that the private meetings would have to do with personnel issues or issues that for good reason had to be private or confidential."

According to the provincial Police Services Act, police service board meetings "shall be open to the public .. and notice of them shall be published in the manner that the board determines."

The act, however, does not specifically address whether committee meetings need to be public.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services said the government "understands that the Ottawa Police Services Board has its own policies regarding its (sub-)committee meetings."

It wasn't immediately clear whether Wynne realized that the boards run their committees contrary to act, but she didn't support the practice.

"The rules are there to make sure that if a matter doesn't have to be confidential, then it is in the public realm," said Wynne.

Meetings never publicized

The board has four standing committees — complaints, finance and audit, policy and governance, and human resources — and while the membership of the groups is voted on in an open session once every four years, the details of the meeting locations are not made public.

Coun. Eli El-Chantiry, the board chair, said the committees meet "as required."

There have been three secret committee meetings so far in 2016 — more than the number of public board meetings. According to a list of topics sent to the CBC by police services board staff, 15 different topics were discussed.

Subjects at these secret meetings have included bias-neutral policing, a street check update and proposed amendments to the public rewards policy.

Last year, the committees met privately eight times and discussed at least 20 subjects, including updates to policies on racial profiling and the traffic stop race data collection project — issues of significant public interest.

The committee meetings have been held in secret: unlike a meeting "in camera," which is publicized as such, there is no way to find out where or when the gatherings are happening.

The minutes have only been made available to other board members upon request.

Chair promises to review the secret meeting practice

In an email sent to the CBC Friday, El-Chantiry said he will ask the board's executive director, Wendy Fedec, to "start looking at the options for such a review and to confer with her colleagues around the province with a view to determining best practices and bringing a report forward to the board later this year."

El-Chantiry pointed out that other police services boards in Ontario run their committees the same way. That is true, but some of them are already reviewing the practice.

A spokeswoman for Toronto's Police Services Board said their committee meetings are not public, but that the board is "currently in the midst of a review of our procedural by-law," and "it is our intention to develop formalized guidelines in this area that provided greater transparency and consistency."

El-Chantiry, on the other hand, said in his email that "governance has not previously been raised as a concern, nor have concerns been raised by the province or other agencies, such as the Ontario Civilian Police Commission, that oversee such things."

The Ottawa Police Association has complained about the board members having secret discussions. Until recently, almost no members of the public were aware these meetings even occurred.

Provincial consultations on police issues in Ottawa on Saturday

As it happens, public consultations are being held in Ottawa this weekend on how the province could update the Police Services Act, which has not been overhauled since 1990 and includes rules governing municipal police services boards.

Residents can attend the meeting in person Saturday afternoon, as well as fill out a wide-ranging online survey which includes a section on police services boards.

The province is looking at a host of issues, including: how to improve the relationship between police and community; the role of police in non-policing jobs, like court security (private security officers took over from police at Ottawa's provincial court months ago); how much education officers should have; and the role that other professionals, like mental health nurses, should play in policing.

Have your say

What: Police Services Act consultation

When: April 2, 2016, 1 to 3 pm

Where: Old Ottawa South Community Centre
260 Sunnyside Ave.

Online survey: www.ontario.ca/form/police-police-services-and-community-safety-survey