In this interview, Godfrey Archbold and Leslie Hildebrandt discuss their private corporation, The Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia (LTSA), which was formed in 2005 and administers the land titles and survey systems of British Columbia. Archbold and Hildebrandt go into detail about their own involvement with the program, which began forming in 2003. They go on to explain the process of establishing this organization, which required overhauling the previous administrative system and coordinating between government and private business to create a new one.
At the time of the interview, Godfrey Archbold was the president and CEO of the LTSA. He had been working with the LTSA and in service of the province of British Columbia for the past 35 years.
Leslie Hildebrandt was serving at the Vice President of the LTSA in Regulatory and Corporate Affairs. As stated on the LTSA’s offical website, “Leslie Hildebrandt, LL.B., leads the LTSA's corporate legal and regulatory services and her team directly supports the LTSA's corporate governance, compliance and public administration accountabilities
Neil Pouliot, a retired chief superintendent with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, discusses his experiences as the commander of the United Nations Mission in Haiti from 1994 to 1996. He recounts the security and rule of law challenges posed by the scaling down of U.N. multinational forces. In particular, he describes the challenges associated with effectively recruiting and training new police officers, including the need to demobilize and, in some cases, integrate officers of the former regime. Among the challenges that the U.N. and the international community face in effectively building police services capacity, Pouliot notes, is maintaining continuity between missions and leadership. He argues that police services training is best overseen by integrated multinational forces with diverse language ability and cultural frames of reference. Police reform, he states, requires broader commitment to justice and rule and law from the highest levels of the political sphere. Based on his experiences, Pouliot stresses that it is important that officers have field-based training and live and interact with the communities in which they work.
Neil Pouliot served as the commander of the military and civilian police components of United Nations Mission in Haiti from 1994 to 1996. In this role, he worked with the government of Haiti to maintain and safe and secure environment, prepare for elections, provide interim security, and oversee police services development. Prior to his work in Haiti, Pouliot worked with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Canada, including as the officer in charge of national/international drug operations. He also served as a course coordinator and lecturer at the Canadian Police College and as a resource person for the U.N. Division of Narcotics and Interpol. Pouliot also served as the officer in charge of the Security Offenses Branch for the Criminal Intelligence Directorate in Ottawa and the director of Criminal Intelligence Services Canada, an organization tasked with coordinating intelligence in Canada and internationally through the RCMP and other police forces. At the time of this interview, Pouliot was retired as chief superintendent and was working as a consultant with RCMP.
Chief Superintendent Dave Beer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police recounts his experiences in leading policing/justice development missions, particularly in Haiti, in the early 1990s and then about a decade later. His length of service in the arena of international peacekeeping and the parameters under which he has served, both as a representative of the Canadian government during a bilateral mission and under the aegis of the United Nations during a multilateral mission through the Department of Peacekeeping Operation, carries with it a broad viewpoint as to the development of policing in Haiti. His experience in other states, particularly Iraq and Liberia, provides a comparative study of best practices. He particularly offers insight into pre-deployment training by the U.N. and the Canadian government and on-the-ground knowledge of local recruitment strategies and requirements. The sentiments of this quote reverberate throughout the interview, "It is an axiom, I think, of this world of international development that you have to find local solutions led by local individuals supported by the local government for it to be either a) instituted; b) successful; and c) sustainable. You’re not going to have any one of those three unless it’s a locally-created program."
At the time of this interview, Chief Superintendent Dave Beer was serving as the director general of international policing for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a position that included peace-operations deployments, liaison with INTERPOL, and oversight of the international operations branch, the visits and travel branch, and the international affairs and policy branch. Beer led or participated in policing development missions under the auspices of the Canadian International Development Agency, the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the U.S. State Department. Although he spent the most time in Haiti, partially due to his being bilingual in French and English, he also served in Liberia, Central African Republic and Iraq.
John Nikita, a 33-year veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, shares his experiences in three different United Nations peacekeeping operations: Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Nikita discusses the challenges of recruitment and vetting, particularly in countries that are under the administration of the United Nations and have ceased to have a functioning military. His experiences with donor relations, between individual donor states and the U.N., offers insight into the coordination of efforts required for police reform. He reflects on the predeployment training policies of the Canadian government, as compared with the U.N.'s Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and on the changing nature of the "traditional" peacekeeping operation. Nikita stresses the importance of the preparedness, cultural sensitivity and suitability of the U.N. and donor state police advisors on the ground in addition to the quality of the recruits for the national police.
At the time of this interview, John Nikita had retired as director of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's International Peace Operations Branch in Ottawa, at the rank of superintendent, after more than 33 years of service to Canada. As a member of Canada's national police service, he served in a variety of positions including municipal, provincial and federal law enforcement. In 1994, he formed the RCMP's United Nations Civilian Police Administration and Logistics Unit. After establishing Canada's national police peacekeeping operations program, he went on to serve in three U.N. peacekeeping operations. In 1997, he served as the deputy commissioner and chief of operations for the U.N. mission in Haiti. In 2000-2001, he served as the chief of operations of the U.N. Interim Administration Mission Border Police, followed by a period as the chief of human resources of the Kosovo Police Service within the U.N. mission in Kosovo. In 2005-2006, Nikita served as the senior police adviser to the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
Doug Coates, the director of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police International Peace Operations program, recounts his experiences and lessons learned in building effective international and indigenous policing capacity. Drawing on his experiences in Haiti from 1993 to 1995, where he served as a regional commander with the United Nations Mission to Haiti, Coates describes the challenges associated with the effective vetting, recruitment, and training of police services. He notes that training and professionalizing local and national police forces, particularly in a country without a strong foundation in formal policing, necessitates taking into account the local context and community needs. Coates also discusses the current efforts of the RCMP to develop a more rigorous predeployment international police-training program. He stresses that support for police participation in international peace operations requires recognition of the fundamental linkages between domestic and international security concerns. He argues that the international community “has to invest and invest for the long term” to strengthen police services to deal “with the challenges associated to maintaining law and order in the 21st century.”
Doug Coates began his involvement in international policing in 1993 as a member of the United Nations advance team to the U.N. Mission to Haiti. He then served as a regional commander in Haiti’s Grand'Anse region, where he was responsible for the development of policing services, training of the (at that time) interim security force, and maintenance of law and order throughout the region. From 1996 to 2001, Coates managed the peacekeeping department of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, including the management of a mission in Haiti and the deployment of Canadian police to peacekeeping operations around the world. He then served as the director of police programs and as chief operating officer to the Pearson Peacekeeping Center, a private, nongovernmental organization based in Ottawa; in that capacity, he was involved in the development and implementation of military police and civilian programming. At the time of the interview, Coates served as the director of the RCMP’s International Peace Operations program. His international experience in international policing included Haiti, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu; he also worked on police capacity-building programs in Africa. Coates died in the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, where he was serving as the acting police commissioner for the U.N. Stabilization Mission.
Graham Muir describes the work of the United Nations Police as part of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti from 2005 to 2006. He goes into detail on multiple aspects of the U.N. mission, including the meaning of the U.N. mandate to the police force as opposed to the military. He also discusses the integration of the existing national police force with the U.N. international police force. Muir also describes the U.N. police role in training and reform and how that role interacted with security.
Graham Muir was the commissioner of the United Nations Police as part of the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti from 2005 to 2006. At the time of the interview, he had served 32 years in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Prior to his service in Haiti, Muir served as the director of general learning and development for the RCMP. He first became involved in international police work in 1993 as a part of the U.N. Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia. Between 1993 and 2005 Muir was heavily involved with the training of RCMP members for U.N. police service. He also had been involved with the Pearson Peace Keeping Center for a number of years at the time of the interview.
Peter Miller draws on his experience in East Timor to highlight the challenges of building a domestic police force. He stresses that reformers must resist pressures to politicize the police by hiring unqualified friends of elected officials. Miller also mentions the difficulties posed by donor countries that press for fast action in order to minimize their costs. He says such pressures often produce domestic police forces that are inadequately prepared to take over when interim police units withdraw, as was the case in East Timor. Miller also is critical of the quality of many of the international police officers from contributing countries, especially those without a strong tradition of community policing. He calls for greater investments in the training of police officers before they are deployed, as well as in situ training of citizens.
Peter Miller served with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for 35 years, during which we worked mainly in international police peacekeeping. Under United Nations auspices, he served as deputy commissioner of operations and training in Haiti, police commissioner for the United Nations in Western Sahara and later as police commissioner in East Timor. In Western Sahara, Miller had police officers from 10 countries under his command and in East Timor he oversaw a police force of 3,000 officers including both local and international police. After retiring from the RCMP, Miller worked with the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, a Canadian nonprofit organization, on capacity building in Africa related to peacekeeping operations.
