Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 27th, 2014

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you very much. I have a last question, if I have a moment, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the fact that the unification of security forces is a work in progress. Would we be able to—and we being this committee—get status update reports from you? I say that because I've been a member of this committee for close to 10 years, and the concept of unification and security has been one that this committee has embraced for all of that time. It has never happened until now. Unfortunately it took an incident such as October 22 to get us to that point. It's certainly a move in the right direction. I think it's the right thing to do.

I would certainly like to know the progress of that unification program. Would we be able to receive such updates from you, Mr. Speaker?

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Certainly I can commit to that. Obviously once everything is ironed out from the administrative level and it's put into place, there will be an announcement for members and people in the parliamentary community that it has taken place, but absolutely, as we move closer to getting there, we can provide an update. Of course we'll have the opportunity in the mains as well to come back. We'll probably have a better idea of what the merging of the two budgets would look like at that point as well.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Scott, you have four minutes, please.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks very much for being here, everyone.

I just want to follow up on what Mr. Lukiwski was asking about. I think when Tom referred to unification of forces on the Hill, he might have been referring specifically to the two security services. Of course, there's an ongoing discussion about a broader unification. I'm wondering if any kind of financial planning is taking place in parallel to any discussions that may be taking place about whether a broader unification is needed, not just inside the building, so to speak, but also almost in sort of a Capitol Hill police approach.

Were that to take place and a dedicated service be part of a broader parliamentary precinct than we currently have, let's say an expanded parliamentary security force moving out, do you have any thoughts about how that would look financially? Would that all be assumed by Parliament? Would somehow or other that get partly put over to a public security budget?

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

I think it might be a little bit early to put down hard numbers on that. Right now we have been able to accomplish the unification, as we mentioned. That was something that has long been identified. There are several reviews going on at this time, and those reviews and those analyses will spark more conversations about the best way to move forward. Until that happens and those reviews and reports come back, any kind of discussion would be kind of theoretical, hypothetical, and not based on information coming from experts in the field.

We went after what we could accomplish. We kind of achieved the achievable, something that had already been identified as necessary to do regardless of what other changes were made on the Hill. That's what we're proceeding on. It's an incremental approach. We control what goes on in the building. It's something we can more easily do because it did take some back and forth on it. Now that we've accomplished that, we'll be in a better position when the reports come in to look at these other areas that you brought up.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

So just to be clear, it's premature to be talking about what those costs would be because the actual planning on that is not sufficiently advanced.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

I think it's safe to say that we'd like to see what the reports come back with and what the recommendations are, bring those to the boards, have a larger discussion, allow Kevin and his team look at them, and then proceed from there. We're waiting on those reports to be completed.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

My only comment would be that it was kind of a forensic question about whether the budget would be the House of Commons, Parliament as a whole, or broader public security. I guess the point would be that it doesn't really matter, that whatever is necessary to do is necessary to do, and it's all coming from one big coffer.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Currently the things the RCMP spends money on comes from the RCMP, Public Safety, and the things that the House of Commons does.... That's what exists now, but going into a different structure or looking at other things, it might be different. It would depend on what Parliament wants to be responsible for, and what the RCMP feels that it needs to do to do its job. They have a different focus on some aspects like the anti-terrorism units, things like that, which are slightly different from what the House has. Those will all be negotiated out and worked out. I think you touched on the key point that there is a strong recognition to work with all the partners on the Hill, while remaining an open precinct, to create a safer precinct

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I recognize that this may be a question that you can't or shouldn't answer, but I think Mr. Watters mentioned—no, you did, Speaker—that while there may be savings with the unification of the internal Senate and House of Commons security, there may well be additional spending on other enhancements. I'm assuming that you can't really talk about what those enhancements would look like, but are there categories you could tell us about versus specifics?

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Sure. Some of it we will be able to. Some of it will come through in various reporting mechanisms. I would say, in terms of broad categories, it's personnel and materiel. Those would probably be the two biggest, the physical security. Whether we're looking at enhanced security measures at entrances that are more structural in nature versus extra personnel on the job, deployed at any given time, training, those types of things. Physical infrastructure versus human resources spending, those would be the two broader categories. From there, there are slight differences.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I would also like to echo what my colleague, Alexandrine Latendresse, said in French in a conversation with Mr. Vickers, that indeed it's good to hear that attention is being paid to the well-being of the security forces. As she put it so well, they take good care of us, so it's important that we take good care of them. Thank you for that.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

I do appreciate those comments. I think October 22 was a very difficult day for everyone on the Hill. I know the feedback I received was that the House of Commons constables provided a very high level of professional service, not only in keeping us safe but also throughout the day, dealing with individual members, their staff, visitors on the Hill. The feedback I received from people who were on the Hill that day was that they very much appreciated the role House of Commons constables played in helping keep everyone calm and secure. I appreciate that.

I can speak to a few things in terms of changes. We have installed security posts outside Centre Block to conduct the preliminary screening of visitors before they enter the building.

We've eliminated tours during caucus meetings. That was identified as something that would assist the constables, having fewer people moving around at any given time during that sensitive timeframe. We've also reduced the size of tours, again to reduce the number of people moving around the building that guards have to deal with.

We've locked the doors of all the buildings after business hours. We've also requested some funding for enhanced security measures in constituency offices. That was identified as a potential area the House wanted to turn its attention to. I think a communiqué has already gone out that members can have an assessment of their constituency office done, and if they want to make some enhancements in terms of alarms and automatic locking doors and things like that, the House of Commons central budget would cover it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

I have no one else on my speakers list.

Mr. Christopherson, would you like to speak?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

If I may, I have one quick question.

During my time at Queen's Park I served on a speaker's security committee to do exactly what we're doing here now, and that's to review all of the security. One of the things we did was visit here on Parliament Hill.

Again, we had the same issue, though instead of the RCMP it was OPP and the Queen's Park security people. But there's a third component to that. In that case it was the Toronto Police. As we saw on October 22, when all hell breaks loose, all three components are now moving parts and interacting together.

Number one, can you speak to how well that worked or didn't work on October 22? Secondly, what's some of the thinking is right now about incorporating that third piece. If you're dealing with something happening here on the Hill, you can't leave it to only the Hill security folks inside the building and the RCMP on the immediate grounds. It has to involve the Ottawa city police because we're now into city streets, city property right outside the Hill. Could you comment on that sort of third component of the security pieces that come to bear to protect the Hill?

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

I'll invite Kevin to speak about some of the specifics. I do know that there's a strong partnership between the Sergeant-at-Arms' office and all the entities you've mentioned. I know that over the years, as incidents happened, they've worked to enhance that.

Kevin, perhaps you want to speak to how that actually operates.

[Kevin Vickers]

Times are changing in 2014, Mr. Christopherson. I was just over to Israel to attend an Israeli national police conference on these types of issues.

It seems to me we always think there are one, two, three, or four services doing the Hill. In fact the Americans, for example, are finding that's the reality no matter where they are. All the different agencies—the FBI, Homeland Security, and the municipal police force—have mandated roles.

Now, instead of that old question, “Who's in charge?”, the trend in security is shifting to an emergency management cell, where you have the police leaders of each respective agency in a cell working together and being able to respond.

On that day in question our director general of security, Pat McDonnell, very shortly established very close relationships with the Ottawa city police, who were also allowed to come into the building. The RCMP and the RCMP command site out on St. Joseph were all activated very quickly. When you get into these types of situations it's what we term now a management cell where you have the leaders of each jurisdiction next to one another working in collaboration in a seamless manner and dealing with these issues.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

I have no one else on the speakers list. I thank you for coming.

Referring back to October 22, you're absolutely right. We had acquaintances with some of the constables up until that day. I think some of us have formed lifelong friendships with some of them now. I thank not only the security force, but the whole precinct for how it reacted on that day, and the reaction since has been fantastic.

I thank you for coming and answering our questions today. It was pretty painless today.

We will suspend for a couple of minutes. We'll go in camera, as a committee.

[Proceedings continue in camera]