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The Saskatchewan RCMP announced that after some delay, they would be taking part in Clare鈥檚 Law.
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Clare鈥檚 Law, also known as the Interpersonal Violence Disclosure Protection Act was adopted in Saskatchewan in 2018. The act allows police to warn people if their partner has a history of violence or abusive behavior. Police services are permitted to share the history of the partner, which can include criminal convictions or police responses to domestic violence complaints.
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听But the RCMP was unable to take part in the act. Due to Section 8 of the Privacy Act, the RCMP was not permitted to disclose personal information of individuals without their consent.
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Relationship Violence Coordinator Constable Joelle Nieman with the Saskatchewan RCMP explains that this is due to the RCMP having to adhere to federal regulations.
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鈥淭he RCMP is a federal institution so we鈥檙e bound by federal legislation such as the privacy act. In this case, the privacy act does not allow for an institution to go ahead and release an individual鈥檚 information without their consent. So we had to look at this privacy section and really see what part of the legislation that we can identify was affecting our participation. Through consultation with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and federal and provincial governments we were able to make a regulatory amendment to the RCMP regulations that now allows us to participate in Clare鈥檚 Law,鈥� said Neiman.
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鈥淚t was a regulatory change and not a legislation change. It is only for the Saskatchewan RCMP.鈥�
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She explains that while the Saskatchewan RCMP worked on a solution to take part in Clare鈥檚 Law, they provided additional services to ensure the safety of potential victims of domestic violence.
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鈥淎s the Saskatchewan RCMP, we felt that it was extremely important that we were able to put policy and procedure in place in the interim prior to us getting this regulation change so that we could address and deal with any sort of Clare鈥檚 Law requests coming in.
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鈥淲e weren鈥檛 able to participate fully in the process but we did have our own processes in place to safeguard potential victims.
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鈥淲e had safeguards in place to ensure that these people could receive information from other agencies as well as be better informed about how to make appropriate decisions about their safety.鈥�
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Nieman says that with Clare鈥檚 Law, members of the public can request information about their partner at any police station now that the RCMP is able to disclose personal information for Clare鈥檚 Law.
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鈥淭he process is called 鈥楾he Right to Ask鈥� and that is triggered when a potential victim of interpersonal violence attends to the RCMP detachment and requests risk-related information. This 鈥楻ight to Ask鈥� application can also be triggered by a third party so this would be a person that has personal knowledge of the person at risk relationship and is seeking the information to safeguard that person.
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鈥淚t鈥檚 as easy as going to any RCMP detachment or any municipal police agency.鈥�
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鈥淥nce it鈥檚 in place, there鈥檚 a protocol so that if someone was interested in getting information on a partner, potential partner, or former partner there is a process they can go through to get an application to get that information.听
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鈥淭here鈥檚 a risk assessment that is done by the committee then ultimately the information is provided to the individual. It wasn鈥檛 difficult bringing it forward, as I mentioned before we have one of the highest rates of interpersonal violence in the country, so anything we can do as a province in conjunction with our partners and stakeholders is very important so this was one of those steps.鈥�
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