Public Safety Committee on Oct. 25th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you. Our time is up, unfortunately.

Mr. Minister, I want to thank you for coming today. You have given us the hour we asked for and a little longer, and we appreciate your attendance here. As you know, the committee will continue with this study for several more meetings, at which we will hear from various witnesses. We thank you for being here initially to kick-start this study.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Well, Mr. Chair, if I might just say, as always it's a pleasure appearing in front of this committee and having an opportunity to exchange views and comments with all of the members. I want to thank each and every one of them for the hard work they do on behalf of the people of Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

We're going to continue with the meeting as we go here, as the minister exits, and we will go back to Mr. Norlock.

Mr. Norlock.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My questions will be to Chief Superintendent MacNeil.

First, having some background in policing--about 30 years, although not in the same capacity as yourself, Chief--would I be correct in saying that the majority of costs in the RCMP or in the security arrangements were labour related?

[C/Supt Alphonse MacNeil]

Yes, that would be correct.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Would it also be correct to say there is a significant proportion of this that would be attributable to overtime?

[C/Supt Alphonse MacNeil]

There would be a portion of that, that's correct.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

And I gather, because you're still awaiting invoicing from the Province of Ontario, the City of Toronto, and other police agencies, that at this point you wouldn't have the exact numbers of hours used in police overtime.

[C/Supt Alphonse MacNeil]

I don't have the exact numbers in overtime, no.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

But it would be reasonable that it would be a significant double-digit percentage.

[C/Supt Alphonse MacNeil]

I can't comment exactly.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Okay, that's fair.

It would also be reasonable to say that some of those operational costs, if they have to do with labour, would be recouped by the government through income tax payments. You don't have to comment. I can tell you that I think it's all reasonable that if you receive a paycheque, this occurs.

The other significant portion is...the police also have a responsibility not only to protect the lives, safety, and property of citizens, but they also have a duty to protect the lives, safety, and property of people who are acting as either lawful demonstrators or, quite frankly, even as hooligans, and you're responsible for the safety of the people you arrest.

[C/Supt Alphonse MacNeil]

Yes. If I may, I'd just like to go back to the fact that if you look at the week leading up to the G-8 and the G-20, there was protect activity all that week, and sometimes that's not remembered. We had spent a lot of time--I'm talking about the Integrated Security Unit--in advance of the summits meeting with protest groups to talk about where they were going to protest, when they were going to come, in order to make sure that we had enough police officers on the street to handle the traffic and the crowd control issues that would come from that.

If you remember, and if you were watching television that week, we had protest activity all the way to Friday. We had no problems; we had no arrests. But you would have seen police officers on bicycles or walking along with the protest groups all week long to ensure that the intersections were blocked so the groups could go through. It wasn't an adversarial set-up between the police and the protesters at all.

We spent a lot of time in preparation for that. It wasn't until the weekend that there were arrests.

So, yes, it is absolutely true that it's necessary for the police to protect those people and those rights, and we value those rights. That's something that is lost in some of this.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Any more time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Yes, you have another minute and a half.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much.

Let me get this straight, because I always ask my questions in a way so that the person sitting at home can understand what's occurring here at committee, and I try not to get into the politics, as some people want to politicize this.

What you're saying is that for those people who were protesting the week before, in other words, surrounding the G-20, etc., for those people who wanted to lawfully protest, there were meetings between the police and them, and those protests went off fairly well, without any significant incidents, and the police and the protesters were cooperating.

[C/Supt Alphonse MacNeil]

That's correct. We had what we referred to as community relations groups that met with anyone who was planning a protest. They would come and meet with us, of course, and we tried to facilitate that to the best of our ability.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Without commenting necessarily upon motivation, from those that you didn't get that kind of cooperation, does the information you have at this time, as a result of the people who didn't want to meet with you, didn't want to discuss what their intentions were...would I be correct in saying that those groups, and your anecdotal observations from those groups, tended to be the people who you had the most reason to come into negative contact, in other words, arrests or detentions?

[C/Supt Alphonse MacNeil]

I can't really comment on that. I don't know exactly who represented what groups.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. MacNeil.

We'll now go to Ms. Mendes.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to put some questions and address some comments to Mr. Elcock.

I think that the minister's incompetence has clearly been revealed with respect to his explanations justifying the decision regarding the location and site of the summits.

When the decision was made to split the summits in two, one to be held in Huntsville and the other in Toronto, who defended the idea of putting on such a summit right in the heart of Toronto's commercial and financial centre? Who thought that this was a good idea, that it would be easy to make such a location secure, despite the tremendous amount of activity that takes place here?

[Ward Elcock]

The choice of a site for any summit is a complicated issue, and a number of organizations had an interest or a role in that process. It wasn't a security decision as to whether a site was or was not the appropriate venue. Once it was clear that Huntsville was too small to host the G-20—it simply didn't have the infrastructure to do so—the only alternative was to move the G-20 to Toronto, which had the capacity to host and the required infrastructure.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

But why would you choose Huntsville to begin with? Was it because it was Minister Clement's riding?

[Ward Elcock]

Huntsville was originally chosen as the site for the G-8, which has normally been held in rural areas. It was actually a pretty good site and did a very good job of hosting the G-8. It had the right size venue for a G-8, was a more rural area, and was relatively easy to secure. That's why Huntsville was originally chosen.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

I see.

Once we learned that we were also going to be organizing the G20 Summit, why did we maintain this idea of holding these summits in two separate locations?

Canada is a country that has a tremendous number of quite varied tourist facilities that are very well able to handle this type of event.

Why was no consideration given to other locations, such as Montebello, Mont-Tremblant or Banff? Canada has plenty of locations that would be easier to secure where we could have held this type of event.