Evaluation of the First Nations and Inuit Policing Facilities Program

Background

As part of the Government of Canada's broad investments in Indigenous infrastructure, Public Safety (PS) developed the First Nations and Inuit Policing Facilities Program (FNIPFP) in 2018. The FNIPFP provides funding to repair, renovate, remediate or replace policing facilities owned by First Nations and Inuit communities. The FNIPFP is the only dedicated funding for policing infrastructure, in support of the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program (FNIPP). The FNIPP allows for the option of funding to be provided for policing infrastructure expenditures, however it is one of multiple options under the broad umbrella of "Other Policing Initiatives".

The FNIPP aims to enhance the effectiveness of policing services in First Nations and Inuit communities in terms of cultural relevance and responsiveness to the public safety needs of communities, through funding for dedicated policing services. Costs under both the FNIPP and FNIPFP are shared with provinces and territories in accordance with a 52% federal and 48% provincial/territorial cost-share ratio. FNIPP funding currently supports two main types of policing agreements:

• Self-Administered Police Service Agreements (SA): where a First Nation or Inuit police service is authorized under provincial/territorial (PT) policing legislation to provide primary (day-to-day) policing services to a First Nation or Inuit community; and
• Community Tripartite Agreements (CTA): where a contingent of police officers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) provide dedicated policing to a First Nation or Inuit community that is intended to supplement the level of contract police services provided to that community by the RCMP in its role as the provincial/territorial police service. CTAs are made pursuant to bilateral First Nations Community Policing Service (FNCPS) Framework Agreements between Canada and the participating PT.

Under these agreements, the communities are responsible for providing adequate policing facilities. For CTA communities, the community policing facility must meet the operational needs and standards of the RCMP, however there is an option for the local detachment to be the place of work for the RCMP officers.

Engagement Purpose and Methodology

The purpose of the evaluation was to assess the relevance, efficiency and effectiveness (performance) of the FNIPFP. The evaluation covered the period from fiscal year 2018-2019 to 2024-2025 and was conducted in accordance with the Treasury Board Policy on Results and the Directive on Results.

Key Informant Interviews

23 interviews were conducted with three interview groups: internal PS personnel (n=11); other federal government departments and agencies (n=5); and PTs (n=7).

Literature, File and Document Review

Program documents and literature (e.g. government reports, articles, academic research) were reviewed. The file review included an examination of all documentation that was available pertaining to completed FNIPFP projects.

Case Studies

8 case studies with FNIPFP projects that were completed or expected to be completed soon were conducted. These case studies covered a mix of regions, project sizes and agreement types (SA or CTA). All case studies included interviews with community representatives (n=8), as well as with police service representatives (n=6), provincial representatives (n=3), and PS representatives (n=6). Five case studies included site visits.

Limitations

The document and file review were restricted by the lack of performance information available. Case studies were used to compensate but are limited in their breadth and generalizability. As well, due to internal restructuring within PS, there are concerns that not all relevant documentation was available to be reviewed.

There were challenges reaching representatives for all PT jurisdictions, as well as representatives for all of the case studies. The case studies included both community representatives, and police service representatives in order to provide a more fulsome picture of the program.

The evaluation does not include the five policing infrastructure projects funded under the FNIPP that were funded during the time period of the FNIPFP being evaluated.

Findings

Relevance

Continued Need

Funding through the FNIPFP is the only dedicated funding available for policing facilities in Indigenous communities. There is limited funding under the FNIPP that can be used for infrastructure projects, but it covers a variety of other policing initiatives and has funded only five projects over the time period of the evaluation. While Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) provides infrastructure funding, through various programs, for housing, education, health facilities, water, wastewater, and general community infrastructure, policing facilities are not included. Additionally, evaluation reports for these infrastructure programs highlight insufficient funding and the inability of current budgets to address increasing construction costs. The funding issues plaguing these existing infrastructure programs mean that there are no additional opportunities for communities to seek other federal funds for policing facilities.

For non-Indigenous communities, municipal policing infrastructure is mainly funded by local property taxes alongside PT and federal funding contributions. As such, budgets and needs assessments vary between each municipality based on their economic position, requirements, and local safety concerns. Within the RCMP, infrastructure is assessed and maintained by a branch responsible for real property, and operates under a facilities management framework. Some Indigenous communities with CTAs do rely on the RCMP detachment facility as the location of work for the dedicated FNCPS officer. Those facilities are not considered within the scope of this evaluation.

The last full-scale review of policing facilities owned by Indigenous communities, under all agreement types, was conducted in 2015 and showed that over one-quarter of the facilities required immediate remediation to meet relevant building codes. This aligns with a recent Assembly of First Nations study that classified 18% of all infrastructure assets on First Nations as being in poor or very poor condition and reaching their end of life. There is also increasing concern that climate change and severe weather conditions will worsen existing facilities. While some of the issues identified in 2015 have been addressed by the FNIPFP, the current number of facilities that require remediation or attention is not clear. In addition, there is no comprehensive list of identified policing infrastructure needs for all communities under the FNIPP. As part of a forward-looking costing exercise for communities in existing SA policing agreements that took place in March 2024, 87 projects were identified that included renovation or expansion of existing facilities and the development of new facilities. The total cost of these projects is estimated at over $1 Billion over the next 10 years.

Almost all (7/8) of the case studies conducted during this evaluation demonstrated that the FNIPFP has addressed a real need, and that the need is either now fulfilled or will be fulfilled once facilities become operational. Half of the case study communities shared that they also receive other federal funding for non-policing infrastructure projects. These interviewees commented upon the absence of general infrastructure funding and noted that communities must apply to different programs for different types of buildings.

Efficiency

Design

The initial funding for the FNIPFP was part of broader investments into Indigenous infrastructure, with ISC receiving funding to supplement existing funding programs for on-reserve infrastructure projects. In some of those funding programs, ISC allocated resources for project managers and engineers to support communities. Having no other large scale capital investment funding streams, PS does not have internal expertise in the development and planning for the construction or renovation of policing facilities.

It has been noted in numerous evaluations of ISC infrastructure programs over the past five years that the lack of operations and maintenance support along with the time-limited investments and siloed programming prevented communities from adequately planning infrastructure in a way that meets the community's needs. These issues were also noted in the design and delivery of the FNIPFP. Recent work has been undertaken by PS to engage with ISC on the Interdepartmental Strategic Infrastructure Partnership Group. Given its recency, the impact of this engagement is not yet known.

The original design for the FNIPFP called for a National Professional Assessment (NPA) that was intended to assess the state of existing policing facilities utilized under the FNIPP and guide subsequent investments. This NPA was expected to include consultations with communities to fully identify and understand their needs and provide an assessment of urgency. ISC uses a similar approach in assessing the state of infrastructure, through an Asset Condition Reporting System (ACRS), every three years. As well, ISC supports communities in an annual First Nations Infrastructure Investment Plan process.

Public Safety's NPA was never completed and is no longer planned to be conducted. According to the program, it is intended that, in lieu of a formal policing facility needs assessment, a list of projects will be regularly maintained with PT input to serve as an ongoing forecast of infrastructure needs for First Nations and Inuit police services. This approach is aligned with PS' broader program modernization efforts which aim to reinforce the respective roles of Canada, PTs and Indigenous partners. Initial work on the development of an assessment tool building off of the ACRS was undertaken but this was not validated or shared with communities or PT counterparts. There was support from interviewees for community level guidance on monitoring and reporting of facility conditions.

While SA communities in both Ontario and Quebec have participated in provincial-led efforts to catalogue the facilities within their jurisdictions, no cohesive review has been done for CTA communities. As CTA communities are providing policing facilities to be used by the RCMP through the FNCPS, engagement with the RCMP would be crucial to the success of these projects. For the RCMP, infrastructure is assessed and maintained by a branch responsible for real property, and operates under a facilities management framework. It was unclear if this framework was utilized by the FNIPFP in the assessment of funding proposals, and no alignment of the projects undertaken with the framework was found. Despite this, some respondents mentioned that securing upfront clarity on project requirements, with RCMP involvement, may have increased the likelihood of on time and on budget project completion. Case studies highlighted the positive impact of effective communication between contractors, government representatives, the RCMP (where applicable) and the community, to ensure alignment with community needs while also adhering to requirements for safe and healthy facilities.

The FNIPFP is a cost-shared program, with the federal government through PS providing 52% of the costs. While in the original Terms and Conditions for the program, the other 48% of the costs was to be provided by the relevant province or territory, this has been amended to permit bilateral agreements with First Nations and Inuit communities, so that the communities may provide the additional funding needed. This is anticipated to reduce some of the challenges identified with the alignment of provincial and federal approval processes and funding cycles. These were noted as causing some delays in project approvals, which may have resulted in additional costs.

Interviewees identified capacity within communities to manage infrastructure projects as an important driver of success. It was suggested that standardized processes and tools (including guidelines, checklists, best practices for project management, risk management strategies) to support project management capacity within communities could be established and shared proactively. While PS may not have the internal capacity for this, the Police Facilities Planning Guide of the International Association of the Chiefs of Police, could be leveraged. The First Nations Infrastructure Institute was also identified as a possible resource for both PS and communities.

Performance Measurement

The Program articulated expected outcomes, indicators and targets as part of its business case in 2018, and revised the expected outcomes in 2021. The most recent set of outcomes are:

• Indigenous communities receiving funding have the capacity to construct police detachments;
• Indigenous police officers work in detachments that are safe and secure; and
• Indigenous communities are safe.

While these outcomes align more closely to the activities of the Program and the broader goals of PS, there was no consistent collection of data to support these outcomes and no ongoing reporting. The data currently collected is focused on project completion, rather than outcomes. The Program was not able to provide demographic information of the communities that received funding (such as socio-economic information, population and population characteristics, crime statistics, geography). This limited the ability to assess whether the communities funded by the Program have been the ones of highest priority in terms of urgency or equity considerations.

Despite resources being provided in the initial Program design for positions responsible for data collection and analysis, including support for an information management system, there is no comprehensive or coordinated approach to data collection, analysis, monitoring and reporting. Suggested improvements include determining clearer responsibilities for data collection, analysis, monitoring and reporting at both the project and broader program level, collecting both qualitative and quantitative data from communities, and focusing on SA communities where project outcomes are more directly observable.

Resources

The original funding for the FNIPFP provided for additional resources at PS, however there was no direct tracking of staffing or operational funding. Beginning in fiscal year 2018-2019, there were to be 9 full-time staff dedicated to the Program increasing to 18 by 2023-2024. As of January 21, 2025, 8.22 FTEs are working on the FNIPFP. The planned positions were shared across regional offices, and the policy and program areas within PS. While ISC has dedicated resources for project managers, and engineers to support communities with infrastructure projects, these are not positions available within PS for the FNIPFP. As mentioned previously, the anticipated positions responsible for data collection were not filled either at the program or corporate level.

During the time period covered by the evaluation, there have been numerous changes within the structure of PS as it relates to the responsibility area for the Program. In 2018, the Program responsibilities were shared between the Crime Prevention Branch (CPB) and the Emergency Management and Programs Branch (EMPB). EMPB was responsible for the management of the contribution agreements with their regional officers responsible for engagement with the communities. CPB was the lead for policy-related work and funding decisions. Challenges have been identified at both the program level and the broader departmental level with regards to the sharing of responsibilities and clear lines of communication. On April 1, 2024, the Program became the sole responsibility of the Indigenous Affairs Branch (IAB) at PS, as part of the Department's efforts to consolidate and strengthen the support for Indigenous communities and Indigenous funding programs. In April 2025, IAB moved to become part of a consolidated CPB. Given the recency of these changes, the impacts on program delivery and efficiency are not yet clear.

Since the launch of the FNIPFP in 2018, the demand for infrastructure projects has remained high. Additional funding for projects was secured through Budget 2021. This additional funding was used to support projects starting in fiscal year 2022-2023. Based on the additional funding, projects that would maximize the funding envelope until fiscal year 2026-2027 have been recommended for approval. This does not completely address all of the forward-looking proposed projects from the SA community assessment, which showed the need for federal contributions of close to $1 Billion over the next 10 years. As there has not been an assessment of CTA facilities, the full extent of the costs required to address policing infrastructure in First Nations and Inuit communities is not clear.

The program has underspent in six of the previous seven year, as seen in Table 1. As FNIPFP is a cost shared program, in some instances, delays in approvals within PS resulted in the misalignment of funding cycles at the provincial level. As well, there have been numerous challenges with project implementation. Projects were delayed or faced cost overruns for a variety of reasons. These included the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing costs of building materials and shipping costs, short construction seasons in remote communities and a lack of project management expertise at PS and within communities. For future years, PS has maximized the funding envelope and built in contingency funding to address expected cost increases.

Performance

As of April 1, 2025, 59 policing facilities projects have been completed and an additional 15 are underway. These projects supported emergency repairs or renovations to improve the accessibility, health and safety standards, and storage of the facility. Examples of emergency repairs include roof repairs, fixing the heating and vents to maintain proper functionality over the winter months, improving lighting and wiring, and grading and scaling of the pavement in the parking lot to prevent flooding and ice build-up in the spring and winter months respectively. Examples of renovations include constructing interview rooms, adding a septic system, upgrades to the security system, adding extra square footage to the new facilities to accommodate the growing staff, and other interior and exterior work on the existing facilities.

Of the 74 projects, 85% are in communities with SA police service agreements. The majority of these communities are located in Ontario and Quebec. In many cases, multiple projects were undertaken to support the communities covered by a single agreement. Overall, projects were funded in seven provinces.

While outcome-related data was not directly collected by the program, all of the communities profiled in the case studies indicated the funded projects have led to improved security, safety and police service delivery for their communities. In particular, communities characterized the service delivery as improved in the sense that it provided safer, more functional, more private, and more secure facilities through which police can conduct their work. They highlighted the heightened professionalism and trustworthiness of these improved and culturally appropriate spaces. In one community, the previous administrative building did not meet policing requirements such as having sufficient privacy, or discrete spaces to prevent interactions between perpetrators and victims of violence. The new and larger police detachment funded through the FNIPFP includes a secure visitor vestibule, secure lobby with washroom, cultural room, offices for senior and supervising officers, inner and outer exhibit lockers, file storage room, meeting/training room, police equipment room, male/female locker rooms, exercise room, break room with kitchen appliances, cold storage for equipment, breath testing/identification room, and separate secure interview rooms.

It was also reported by communities that the facilities enabled delivery in all areas where it was minimally available beforehand. They shared that a formal police building is the basis for a visible and permanent police presence, which enhances safety, trust, credibility and cooperation. Community representatives felt that the new or upgraded facilities have or will increase credibility and trust in the police services, which promotes engagement between the community and the police, and more specifically, increases the frequency with which crimes are reported. This in turn can lead to safer communities.

Communities also felt that the funded projects improved both cultural responsiveness and service delivery. In one instance, the addition of a cultural room allowed for better access to culturally relevant services. In another, the new policing facility will allow residents to remain in their own community, allowing for additional supports as they move through the police system. Finally, one community has seen improved response times as the new policing facility is more centralized within the area of coverage.

Additional benefits of the FNIPFP, identified largely through the case studies, included a greater sense of pride within Indigenous communities, improved recruitment of officers (from two CTA communities), and valuable experience in accessing federal funding and funding managing construction projects. One community found the experience of navigating funding opportunities (which they noted to not usually be a part of policing), as potentially beneficial for managing similar projects in the future.

Conclusions

The launch of the FNIPFP filled a gap in federal funding and addressed a deficit in Indigenous policing infrastructure. Between the program launch and April 1, 2025, 59 policing facilities projects have been completed and an additional 15 are underway. Evaluation case studies suggest that progress has been made towards improved police service delivery in those communities.

The FNIPFP faced many challenges in the early years of implementation, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented cost increases in building materials. As well, the lack of expertise within PS and communities related to infrastructure projects hindered some project progression. The FNIPFP has been adjusted since its original design, with additional flexibility for cost-sharing as well as contingency planning being implemented. With the lack of a comprehensive assessment of community policing infrastructure needs under the FNIPP, the completed and ongoing projects may not sufficiently account for areas of highest priority nor address all existing concerns.

The FNIPFP is not collecting sufficient data to analyse, monitor and report on performance and thus decision-makers face challenges in making timely data-informed decisions. The data currently collected is focused on project completion, rather than outcomes. This has limited the ability of the Program to determine the full impact of the projects undertaken and underway.

Recommendations

The Senior Assistant Deputy Minister of the Crime Prevention Branch and the Assistant Deputy Minister of the Indigenous Affairs Branch should:

1. Develop and implement a data management strategy for the FNIPFP, that includes ongoing performance measures, data collection requirements, plans for analysis, monitoring and reporting. The data management strategy should be able to inform decision-making and ensure continuity in the event of personnel turnover.
2. Consider the need for a comprehensive inventory of policing facilities in communities under all types of policing agreements within the FNIPP to help guide future funding decisions.
3. Explore opportunities to build the capacity of PS personnel and Indigenous communities to better design, oversee and manage police infrastructure projects. The development of standardized processes and tools could be considered.

Management Action Plan

Date modified:

2025-09-16