A new act intended to enable RCMP to investigate missing persons cases is currently collecting feedback from residents in the Beaufort Delta and across the NWT.
Members of the Standing Committee on Social Development were in Aklavik on April 9 and Inuvik on April 10 to gather feedback on Bill: 2 — The Missing Persons Act, which is currently at second reading and expected to become law this summer.
”This bill will give more tools for the RCMP to work with,” said committee chair and Monfwi MLA Jane Weyallon Armstrong. “This will go back to cases over 1o years — any open cases.”
Under the proposed legislation, when a person is reported missing, RCMP would have powers to investigate their circumstances, even if there is no criminal element to the case. Currently, police are unable to investigate a matter if it is not criminal in nature — this has hampered missing persons cases in the NWT.
Specifically, the proposed legislation grants three powers to police: the ability to apply for a record access order, a search order or an emergency demand. All three requests require the approval of a judge.
If RCMP obtain a record access order, they’ll be able to access any known records associated with the missing person. This ranges from telephone and other electronic communications, both from the missing person’s telephone as well as from people who were last known to be with the missing person. Police will be able to access video surveillance of last known whereabouts, records of employment information, personal health information, child services records, school records, travel and accommodation records, financial records, internet browsing records or “any other records specified in the order that the justice considers appropriate.”
Similar language explains the extent of an emergency demand. Police would be able to serve such a demand in writing to a person if police believe they have a particular piece of relevant documentation and police believe either the missing person or the records in question may be in immediate jeopardy.
Should police believe an important record or information related to a missing person may be in a specific location, a justice of the peace will be able to issue a search order, which works like a warrant in allowing police to enter the premise to search it. Police may obtain such an order if they believe a missing person is at a specific location but also if a container, like a locked box, is believed to contain records that could help RCMP locate the missing person. Once the search order is obtained, police may use “as much force as is reasonably necessary” to execute the order.
Police will also be able to share information with RCMP in other provinces. The NWT legislation is being drafted to line up legally with both Yukon and Alberta’s missing persons acts.
Once a missing person has been located, the act spells out what police can and cannot do with their knowledge. If the person is alive, police will inform the individual who reported them missing they are in fact alive and well, but will not reveal the location of the missing person unless said person consents to their whereabouts being shared. No information gathered by RCMP would be released publicly without the consent of the person in question. The exception to this rule will be instances when the missing person is a minor, whose whereabouts and circumstances may be released publicly if the police force “reasonably believes that the disclosure will protect the safety of the minor.” If RCMP learn the missing person is deceased, they will also release that information.
In the event a missing persons investigation becomes a criminal investigation, any information obtained by police in their initial investigation can be transferred to more severe case.
When the legislation becomes law and the powers are granted to RCMP, it will apply to all open missing persons cases, regardless of how long the file has been opened.
“Everything is an emergency with a missing person,” said Range Lake MLA Kieron Testart, adding the GNWT would consult with RCMP about the best way to put the legislation into force when it passes.
Feedback to the act can be emailed to Committees@ntassembly.ca. You can read a plain language summary of the act here or the act in its entirety here.