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Q&A: Healing Division Through Inquiry, Forgiveness and Open Talk

Day 3 · 8:31:24 · Shawn Buckley · Dean Allison · Drew Taylor · Cst. Helen Grus

  • 🎤 Grus sees the Allison Inquiry as restoring voice to the silenced and a concrete step past societal division.
  • ❤️ Guided by faith she forgives hostile colleagues and still wants a simple sit-down conversation that executives previously refused.
  • 🔄 Chair and counsel stress learning from pandemic failures, caring for the injured, and reclaiming the ability to discuss hard topics without hate.

How society and police services can move beyond COVID-era fractures.

← Q&A: Mandates, Ostracism and Liberating Support from Colleagues | Q&A: Call for Criminal Negligence Probe Following the Evidence →

Transcript

Shawn Buckley · 8:31:24

True.

Dean Allison · 8:31:24

So moving forward, how do, how, you know, your plan moving forward, I'm sure, you know, will unfold as things do inside of the police service. And your skill sets, when you'll be rewarded for doing that. But from a larger perspective, how do we get past the division that's occurred in organizations? I mean, we have, it was mentioned earlier today, we have, you know, family members against family members, the divisions there inside of employers and employees, you know, friends, employee to employee, and there's division among people still about this issue.

Shawn Buckley · 8:32:08

And the name-calling still exists if you, you know, even if you ask a question.

Dean Allison · 8:32:14

And, you know, I think, how do we as a society, as legislators, like, how do we move forward to get past this? Because I look back and I when I saw somebody mentioned SARS or H1N1 earlier, right? Um, you know, I mean, you would know this from your policing background. There's, there is emergency management protocols, yes, on everything, including a pandemic.

Speaker D · 8:32:42

Absolutely.

Dean Allison · 8:32:44

And, um, this government failed Canadians on how they handled the pandemic, um, from day one, because it never involved the emergency management experts in it.

Drew Taylor · 8:32:56

They didn't.

Speaker I · 8:32:56

No.

Dean Allison · 8:32:57

And so, I mean, again, there's a lot of fingers to point at.

Shawn Buckley · 8:33:03

You know, we can blame a lot of people, but we have to move beyond this so that it doesn't happen again. And we can, we can care for those who have been impacted by this negatively and get past the division.

Dean Allison · 8:33:15

How do you see it happening?

Cst. Helen Grus · 8:33:17

Well, I absolutely see this inquiry that— and thank you, Dean Allison, for bringing us forward. I see this as a huge move forward that we're giving people their voices back to be able to speak and be heard. Who's listening? Well, right now we see it's a limited portion still, but by spreading the word and being kind about it— I'm a person of very strong faith. My faith in God is very strong, and I really lean to my faith in this. And I would say, you know, not, not to compare myself to Jesus, but what would Jesus most of us do, right? So, and be kind, forgive, and forgiveness is huge. So I, I forgive the officers that dislike me. I'm not angry with them. I would love to sit down at a table with them and communicate. I said that day 1 when I was brought back off my suspension in October 2022. I had a meeting with a couple executives and I said, can we not just sit down at a table and talk? No, that was, that was turned down.

Cst. Helen Grus · 8:34:18

So I think we can move, move forward now.