Thank you.
Evidence of meeting #13 for Public Safety and National Security in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was taser.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #13 for Public Safety and National Security in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was taser.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Now we come over to Ms. Brown for the final round of questioning.
January 30th, 2008 / 4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Palmer, was the study your centre did restricted to a review of the literature, or did you actually have human subjects and test them with taser application?
4:50 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Police Research Centre
In the 2005 study, we did not do any human or animal testing ourselves. We reviewed literature.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON
Thank you very much.
Mr. Smith, you list 12 studies in your presentation, one of which is this one. How many of those 12 studies involved testing on humans?
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON
No, I'm talking about your presentation. There's a list of 12, so I have to assume you think those are the best 12 or the most convincing 12.
4:50 p.m.
Chairman, Taser International Inc.
Actually, they're more just a representative sample of some of the international flavour, but I would tell you that the Wake Forest University study at the bottom was a human study on 1,000 taser applications in the real world use. Dr. William Bozeman presented that.
The study above that is by Dr. Ted Chan at the University of California, San Diego. He's performed three or four different studies. They looked at breathing. They looked at the acidosis question.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON
I just really want the number. Of the 12, how many had human participants?
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON
Mr. Palmer, you said your centre, which is the research centre for Canada, does not track the use of force in Canada. Is that correct?
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON
Thank you.
Supposing we asked you to do that, do you think the police forces across the country would share that information with you? For example, supposing we asked you to compare the number of times a firearm was discharged by a policeman as compared to the number of times a taser was used, supposing we challenged you with that and gave you the money to do it, do you think the police forces would disclose to you those kinds of statistics?
4:50 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Police Research Centre
They're certainly tracking those statistics.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON
They are, but I'm asking if they would they share them so we could get a national picture.
4:50 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Police Research Centre
Quite honestly, I believe they would.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON
Okay. Thank you.
For example, Mr. Smith says in his presentation that he is aware of--that Winnipeg shared with him--the fact that their municipal police force tasered 160 times in 2006. Did they also share with you how many times a gun was discharged by the Winnipeg police?
4:50 p.m.
Chairman, Taser International Inc.
We collected that data from the newspaper. So the only thing it referenced in the newspaper was that particular citing.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
4:50 p.m.
Chairman, Taser International Inc.
I have not seen anything. Our source, as I referenced before, was from what has been published in the media, and I think most of this was published at the end of last year and was still referencing 2006.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON
Thank you.
It seems to me the research is showing some places on the chest seem to absorb the more damaging effects compared to, say, being tasered on the thigh or the shoulder or something. I'm wondering if you would be willing, in your future training exhibits and public demonstrations, to include the barbs on the chest in the exact locations determined by scientists to be the least safe.
4:55 p.m.
Chairman, Taser International Inc.
In the human studies we've done, we've tried to replicate the animal models where those concerns were raised and we have not been able to do that. In fact, just last week, Dr. Mark Kroll, who is on our board of directors and holds 200 patents in pacemaker technology, was shot with the probe in the centre of the sternum in a demonstration. What we try to simulate in the training is really what they're going to see in the real world and to reach those more susceptible locations is going to be very challenging, but we have seen that duplicated in the human studies that have been published without being able to achieve the same result.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON
You suggested to us that you have been tasered and that your mother and your wife have purchased tasers, or you have given them to them.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON
Would you be willing to subject yourself to taser testing on those very sensitive parts of the chest?