Public Safety is collaborating with Indigenous peoples from coast to coast to coast as Public Safety creates and implements legislation for police services in Indigenous communities across Canada. The project is complex and will span many phases over the next two years. The first phase was to work directly with First Nations communities to find out how they would like to discuss Policing Legislation and what they want to talk about, and then plan and facilitate those engagement sessions on behalf of Public Safety. KES segmented the work into two parts: pre-briefing discussions and engagement sessions.

The pre-briefing sessions were designed to accomplish numerous goals:

• Make connections with organizations and communities, beginning the process of building rapport and trust
• Introduce the project and outline the intentions
• Work with organizations to structure the topics and agendas for the engagement sessions

Three pre-briefing sessions were held with more than 100 participants. After the pre-briefings, KES worked closely with Public Safety to create engagement sessions that aligned with what the organizations had indicated would work best for them. Agendas, session dates, and discussion papers were sent to all interested partners and stakeholders, and engagement sessions were hosted. The goals for the engagement sessions were:

• Hear from nations and organizations about what an essential Indigenous police service meant to them
• Discuss roles and responsibilities across governments and partners
• Consider funding options and hear about current flaws in the funding models
• Share between nations and organizations approaches and best practices that are working across Canada

Twelve engagement sessions were hosted with more than 350 participants. At the conclusion of the sessions, KES had helped Public Safety to accomplish:

• Building and improving relationships between Indigenous partners and government
• Hearing ideas about governance, funding, and ongoing support of First Nations police services
• Identifying partners who may be interested in and contribute meaningfully to an expert symposium, to be hosted in the Fall
• The creation of a What We Heard Report to summarize the work done to date, common themes, issues, and ideas, and outline next steps