An African Sergeant from RCMP of Nueva Scotia who created anti -racism workshops for his employer says he was withdrawn from his position after expressing his concern for intellectual property rights when the initiative that was directed would be expanded.
The RCMP described Craig Smith, a Mountie for almost three decades, as a driving force behind his Canadian African experience workshop, but the two parts are disputes that have the course material.
The dispute began in 2023. Smith now works for RCMP in national recruitment.
“This last year, really, it has probably been the most stressful of my police career,” said Smith.
Smith, also author and historian, argues that the workshop was created with material that produced outside his RCMP work.
“I think I didn’t run out of other reason than the fact that I said I want to be compensated for my intellectual property rights,” said Smith.
The workshop evolved for a decade
Smith has spent approximately half of his career developing different versions of what is now known as the Canadian African experience workshop.
In 2006, Smith published his second book, It will be better to be white at 6 am: the African-Canadian experience in the RCMP.
Smith said he requested what the RCMP calls secondary employment to take a free time to write the book. He said his research for this book was adapted to the earliest version of the workshop.
In 2008, two black men were allegedly harassed by officers out of service in Digby, NS, which led to several recommendations on how RCMP could improve their relationship with black residents, including a series of workshops for officers.
“I developed it, I designed and delivered it,” said Smith. That version of the course was the African experience workshop of Nueva Scotia.
In 2017 he was asked to expand the course of one day to five and have a broader approach, which led to the formal creation of the workshop and the African Canadian experience unit that operated it, he said. He led that unit to the current dispute.
The workshop led Smith throughout the country and, as it became more popular, he said by 2022 that the federal government wanted the RCMP to make it available to police services throughout the country.
“So I was going to grow,” he said. “I didn’t think it was fair for my material to be used without my permission and without me being compensated for it.”
Employee employers’ work, says the lawyer
Employees do not have intellectual property about the content they create as part of their work with the exception of contractors and third parties, according to an intellectual property lawyer.
“Your employer will owe all the works he believes in the course of his employment,” said Catherine Lovics, director of registered trademarks and copyright of the legal firm based in Toronto, Marks & Clerk.
RCMP rejected requests to interview Smith supervisors.
The attached commissioner Dennis Daley, an officer in command of Nueva Scotia, said he is aware of Smith’s concerns, but cannot discuss it because it is a matter of personnel.
“What I can tell him is that I am 100 percent committed to the delivery of the Canadian African Experience course and I hope to continue educating our employees,” said Daley.
Smith said his employer has eliminated his entire material from the current version of the course, which has been condensed five to three days since he left.
He said it is contradictory that an institution like RCMP say that they want to address systemic racism and then do what they have done.
Smith said he built this course that attracted national attention, attended hundreds of officers throughout the country and gave racialized members a safe place to talk about their experience and “suddenly you want to dismantle it.”
“It makes no sense,” he said.
To obtain more stories about the experiences of black Canadians, from anti-negral racism to success stories within the black community, visit Be black in CanadaA CBC project that black Canadians can be proud. You can read more stories here.
