People-Centred Approach to Justice (CA0077)

Issue to be addressed The events of 2020–21 showed the importance of justice, anti-racism and anti-discrimination efforts, which were brought to the forefront through international movements. We also saw side-effects of the global pandemic, which created access to justice issues, such as legal problems related to detention, employment, housing and debt. Access to justice and open justice are key to helping all individuals, communities, civil society organizations and governments across the country have access to the data, information and services they need to identify and effectively resolve their legal problems.

Problem statement There is a need to address the access to justice crisis in this country and promote just outcomes for all.

Commitment The Government of Canada commits to collect and share data, including disaggregated data, advance legal literacy, identify and share promising practices, and foster partnerships and collaboration. Overall, it will promote a people-centred approach to justice, which works to advance equality, legal empowerment, and a better understanding of the legal needs of all the people of Canada, including Indigenous Peoples, racialized communities and other traditionally underserved populations.

Milestones

4.1 Collect and share data, including disaggregated data

- 4.1.1 Complete the Canadian Legal Problems Survey (CLPS) and share the results, including Public Use Microdata File (PUMF) February 2022 JUS

- 4.1.2 Complete and share the findings of qualitative studies on LGBTQ2S populations, Black Canadians, persons with disabilities, immigrants and Indigenous Peoples, to complement the CLPS quantitative data Spring 2022 JUS

- 4.1.3 Prepare and publish Legal Aid Reports Annually JUS

- 4.1.4 Update and maintain the State of the Criminal Justice System Report and Dashboard Annually JUS

- 4.1.5 Collect and release high-value data related to various policing activities, workforce composition and more May 2023 and ongoing • 4.1.5.1 Establish and release an RCMP inventory of data and information resources of business value • 4.1.5.2 Release to the Government of Canada open data portal identified and approved open RCMP datasets RCMP

4.2 Identify and share promising practices DEPT. JUS

- 4.2.1 Collaborate with the Council of Canadian Administrative Tribunals (CCAT) to support delivery of workshops to better understand and promote good practices June 2022

- 4.2.2 Support development of Community Justice Centres as a promising practice Winter 2024

- 4.2.3 Publish promising practices from evaluations, annual reports and federal, provincial and territorial work, as appropriate Winter 2024

4.3 Advance legal literacy and empowerment DEPT. JUS

- 4.3.1 Regularly update Charterpedia on the Justice website Winter 2024

- 4.3.2 Publish geo-spatial mapping of services funded by Indigenous Justice Program Winter 2024

- 4.3.3 Release a range of family law tools, including: • 4.3.3.1 Five forthcoming online courses on Bill C-78 (family violence, relocation, family dispute resolution and the duties of the parties, parenting, and Inter-jurisdictional support proceedings under the Divorce Act) • 4.3.3.2 Online fact sheet on the official languages provisions in C-78 • 4.3.3.3 Online materials for legal professionals on the 1996 and 2007 Hague Conventions • 4.3.3.4 Online materials for professionals on the amendments to the Family Orders and Agreements Enforcement Assistance Act, particularly those relating to income disclosure • 4.3.3.5 A family violence tool for family law legal advisors Summer 2023

- 4.3.4. Develop a Children’s Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA) tool and guide on how to use the CRIA tool, with the accompanying online course on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child May 2022

- 4.3.5 Support for a network of legal information hubs providing free services to official language minority communities Winter 2024

- 4.3.6 Communications activities to support legal literacy, including: • 4.3.6.1 Promotion of Charter anniversary and online resources each April • 4.3.6.2 Public awareness of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the proposed federal legislation • 4.3.6.3 Updates to the digital Braille version of the Criminal Code and the release of accessible versions of legislation and related content • 4.3.6.4 Accessible versions of Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) communications products Winter 2024

4.4 Foster partnerships and collaborate
to advance access to justice DEPT. JUS

- 4.4.1 Work with provincial and territorial partners Winter 2024

- 4.4.2 Participation on OGP Coalition on Justice Spring 2022

- 4.4.3 Collaboration with Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters Winter 2024

- 4.4.4 Fostering international partnerships, including OECD and Pathfinders Winter 2024

4.5 A multi-year roadmap for open government at the RCMP DEPT. RCMP

- 4.5.1 Develop an RCMP open government strategy with multi-year action plan (released publicly) September 2022

- 4.5.2 Establish an Open Government Office with resources dedicated to the advancement of openness and transparency across the RCMP June 2022

- 4.5.3 Establish an RCMP Open Government Working Group of key stakeholders across the RCMP to identify and release data and information, and advance a culture of openness, transparency and accountability based on open government principles and practices. In addition, the RCMP will be an active participant in interdepartmental working groups/efforts around justice and justice-related topics of transparency and open government June 2022

- 4.5.4 Establish an RCMP Multi-Stakeholder Forum (non-governmental organizations, other government departments, private sector, academia, community representatives including Indigenous Peoples, LGBTQ, youth) to help engage in discussions on priorities and areas of focus for openness and transparency in the RCMP Fall 2023

Action Plan Review

Commitment 4. Justice

Potential for results: ModestCommitment 4: Justice

Lead departments: Justice Canada; Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP); International Development Research Centre (IDRC); [24] Multistakeholder Forum

For a complete description of the commitment, see Theme 4 in https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/canada-action-plan-2022-2024/

Context and objectives:

Comitment 4 marks an effort to bring opennes to an issue area not addressed in previous NAPs. Its timing and origins coincided with broader societal calls for social justice such as the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements of the early 2020s in North America and elsewhere. The majority of milestones and success indicators associated with this commitment seek to advance access to information relating to justice and to improve legal literacy through the collecting and disseminating of justice data and best pratices—e.g., Milestones 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3. Commitment 4 also seeks to foster collaboration among national and international stakeholders to advance access to justice—e.g., Milestone 4.4. Within the broad theme of justice, Milestone 4.5 targets one specific problem area for redress through the introduction of open government strategies. Namely, reforming the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

There is a long history of calls both for improved oversight of the RCMP and for better accountability. Most recently, the Mass Casualty Commission that was tasked with investigating the RCMP’s response to a mass killing that took place in rural Nova Scotia in 2020 noted:

More than two years after the event, RCMP leadership had done very little to systematically evaluate its critical incident response to the deadliest mass shooting in Canada’s history… In our process, it was apparent that the organizational structure of the RCMP both contributes to these failings and makes it challenging to hold the organization accountable for its work. [25]

According to government and civil society representatives of the MSF with whom the IRM Researcher met in preparing this report, the RCMP-focused component of this theme was the product of widely recognized longstanding demands for reforming Canada’s national police force and the federal government’s receptivity to moving forward with transparency-centered reforms. In the words of one government representative “seen through an OGP lens, and as previously recommended by the IRM, the inclusion of the RCMP open government strategy reflected the fact that we wanted to apply open government to ‘real things’ that were not abstract or just internal to government.” [26]

The objective of Milestone 4.5, its success indicators, and success indicator 4.1.5 are all elements of a plan to develop “a multi-year roadmap for open government at the RCMP.” [27] Success indicator 4.1.5 is a compenent of Milestone 4.1 that deals with collecting and sharing justice-related data more broadly. It is distinguished by its a focus on the collecting and making public “high-value data related to various policing activities [and] workforce composition” pertaining to the RCMP. [28] Indeed, this success indicator could easily be situated as part of Milestone 4.5 insofar as the actions it sets out (establish and release an RCMP inventory of data and information resources of business value; release approved open RCMP datasets on the Government of Canada’s open data portal, https://open.canada.ca/en) go hand-in-hand with the actions specified in the milestone.

As written in the action plan, the open government lens for Milestone 4.5 and success indicator 4.1.5 touch upon the OGP values of transparency and civic participation. Milestone 4.5 and success indicator 4.1.5 also potentially align with the OGP value of public accountability as the actions they embody raise the prospect of the RCMP taking steps toward meaningful transparency. This could potentially make an important, though indirect, contribution to public accountability. At present, there is insufficient information to assess whether this is the case because neither Milestone 4.5 nor success indicator 4.1.5 meet the accountability threshold specified in the IRM Procedures Manual. As per this document:

Formal accountability commitments include means of formally expressing grievances or reporting wrongdoing and achieving redress… A commitment that claims to improve accountability, but assumes that merely providing information or data without explaining what mechanism or intervention will translate that information into consequences or change, would not qualify as an accountability commitment. [29]

Potential for results: Modest

The activities associated with Milestones 4.1 through 4.5 and the various success indicators ascribed to them continue “ongoing practices in line with existing legislation, requirements, or [and] policies without indication of the added value or enhanced open government approach in contrast with existing practice.” [30] They also do not “generate binding or institutionalized changes across government or institutions that govern a [the] policy area[s].” [31] Equally noteworthy, the theory of change and the logic model underlying Commitment 4 is ambiguous. Nonetheless, some activites associated with this commitment do constitute an incremental positive step in working toward providing opportunities for those Canadians possessing the necessary resources, capacities, and skills with access to new justice-related information and tools. This broadly contributes to establishing one of the many necessary conditions for creating opportunities that enable both expert and non-expert members of the public to make purposeful use of these resources. Given the centrality of online tools, data release, and training within this commitment, Commitment 4 is assessed as having a modest potential for results.

The standout element of Commitment 4 is Milestone 4.5. The aim of this milestone centers on establishing the requisite administrative and institutional infrastructures needed to facilitate, guide, and support change in the future. It focuses on creating a multi-year roadmap for change, with the listed success indicators comprising actions that directly pertain to the creation of this roadmap: developing a strategy for action, establishing a RCMP-centric open government office, establishing a RCMP open government working group, and establishing a RCMP multistakeholder forum. Milestone 4.5 is a first step in what, if seen through to completion, will be a long and arduous process of institutional reform.

As a stand-alone action, success indicator 4.1.5 offers little in terms of potential results per the IRM’s ‘Potential for Results’ indicator definitions. This is because it focuses solely on releasing RCMP data and non-defined ‘information resources of business value.’ Any determination and measurement of success is contingent upon specifying a priori the expected outputs and outcomes. Despite being an important aspect of opening government, simply releasing data is not synonymous with open government. However, when considered as part of a larger project of developing an open government strategy for the RCMP, the actions associated with this particular success indicator are noteworthy given their potential to augment transparency and, assuming citizens are sufficiently motivated and possess the necessary resources and skills to access and make purposeful use of the data and information, civic participation.

Bearing in mind the context and objectives of Milestone 4.5 and success indicator 4.1.5, the potential for results in relation to reforming the RCMP may initially seem substantial. However, despite being a laudible initiative, developing a roadmap does not in itself generate binding or institutionalized changes across government or the the relevant governing institutions. Hence, the potential for change flowing from reforming the RCMP is noted but at this time, and in accordance with IRM’s indicator defintions , Milestone 4.5 is assessed as having modest potential for results. This assessment echoes the views of two former civil society members of the MSF who despite embracing the idea of reforming the RCMP, were less sanguine about the success of the initiative. Both stressed that the outcome of the mapping exercise, let alone reforming the police force, is yet to be determined. [32]

Opportunities, challenges, and recommendations during implementation

Ultimately, the success of the most substantive feature of Commitment 4—the multi-year open government roadmap for the RCMP and accompanying infrastructures (Milestone 4.5)—will be contingent, in large measure, upon overcoming institutional inertia, the ongoing presence of change champions, sustained political will to bring about the types of open-focused change proposed, as well as buy-in from, and on-going engagement with, a diverse range of civil society, First Nations, Métis, and Inuit stakeholders. To this end there are five key challenges:

1. Advancing openness and transparency across the RCMP will constitute a dramatic change in how Canada’s national police force conducts its affairs and engages with the public. To succeed, a shift toward open government at the RCMP will need a culture shift and ‘leap of faith’ among the RCMP leadership and those who comprise the force;

2. Beyond initial commitment, there will be a need to foster and sustain enterprise-wide commitment to open government within the RCMP;

3. Ensuring ready access to adequate resources—financial and otherwise—to help the RCMP leadership and those who comprise the force:

(i) build capacity and competencies in the areas of dialogue, information, and data;

(ii) be more open and responsive to the public; and

(iii) embrace the principles of open government;

4. Cultivating and facilitating public engagement by redressing information disparities between the RCMP and members of the public; and

5. Catalyzing sustained commitment, inside and outside of the RCMP, to ongoing inclusive dialogue with diverse, relevant stakeholders that ensures stakeholder ownership and safety in the change process throughout the period of reform, and after.

These considerations highlight the scale of the capacity-building effort that will be required inside and outside the RCMP to ensure members of the public will be served well by this initiative over the near-, medium-, and long-term.

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