Evidence of meeting #27 for Public Safety and National Security in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was technology.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4 p.m.
NDP
Sylvain Chicoine NDP Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC
Great, thank you.
Do you have clients within or associated with the Canadian government?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Jemtec Inc.
We have agreements with CBSA, and we have had agreements with CSC. That particular agreement with CSC ended in August of 2011. The agreement with CBSA is an ongoing affair.
4 p.m.
NDP
Sylvain Chicoine NDP Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC
What types of services do you provide to those organizations?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Jemtec Inc.
We offer typically a rental agreement whereby we offer them technology on a daily basis. They take that technology and they put it on the clients of their choice, and then they monitor the data, the alarms, and the alerts, and they do updates themselves.
4 p.m.
NDP
Sylvain Chicoine NDP Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC
Is anyone from your company, you or someone else at JEMTEC, on the registry of lobbyists in Ottawa?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Jemtec Inc.
No, we're not lobbyists and we're not registered as lobbyists.
4 p.m.
NDP
Sylvain Chicoine NDP Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC
Over the past few years, have you met with members of Parliament or government members?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Jemtec Inc.
We have not met with anyone who is elected. We meet regularly with various operational people who run their programs. Those would be the only people we would deal with.
4 p.m.
NDP
Sylvain Chicoine NDP Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC
Thank you.
Do you also have American clients? Do you provide services to government clients from the U.S.?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Jemtec Inc.
We do not. To date we've only sold in Canada.
4 p.m.
NDP
Sylvain Chicoine NDP Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC
Could you go back a bit to the ties between JEMTEC and Omnilink? I didn't quite understand what brings you together. I think you are leasing the technology from Omnilink.
4 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
All right, we'll go back to the government side.
We'll go to Mr. Norlock, please. You have seven minutes.
4 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and to the witnesses, thank you for appearing.
I have a couple of quick questions, so if you don't mind and it's possible, could you give succinct answers?
In my previous occupation I was a court officer for two different jurisdictions. About 40% to 60% of the charges at one time in one of the courts were breaches of court orders. Most of them were related to recognizance offences for which you would provide a product—in other words, a bracelet or alcohol device, that sort of thing.
I thought there was a very appropriate and positive use for your equipment until some of our witnesses came before this committee. By the way, I haven't given up on that thought.
However, here's the problem that I have. I have a GPS. Most of us have a GPS in our cars. They're pretty good to within, I would say, 30 feet, or maybe even 40 feet, yet the witnesses tell us that with some of the technology, studies reported 40% to 60% false indications that a person had gone beyond the limits of where they should go.
I wonder if you have some answers as to why these types of products, which you may or may not lease, would give those types of inaccuracies. Could you explain that, for us to have some kind of reliance on why we should do business with you?
4:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Jemtec Inc.
I'm going to let Michael answer that, and I'm going to ask him to be relatively brief. He can speak for about two hours on the intricacies of GPS.
Go ahead, Michael.
4:05 p.m.
Project Manager, Jemtec Inc.
Basically these technologies rely on a number of components working in harmony. There are the various technologies that are all built into an ankle bracelet, including GPS devices and a cellphone type of device. These devices also rely on networks working.
Regarding the statement about 40% to 60% inaccuracies, that type of inaccuracy has never been my experience. When we look at the fact that a typical GPS bracelet can collect hundreds and up to thousands of points in the space of only four hours, that has never been my experience. A very small percentage of those might occasionally not be accurate.
The inherent accuracy of these devices falls within 10 meters, or about 30 feet, when we're talking about GPS signals. They're a little less accurate if we're talking about indoor tracking technology, which is not the same as satellite technology.
The 40% to 60% inaccuracy has not been my experience. It's not even close, but that has to be taken in the context of setting up these technologies for use on offenders or accused persons. If the zones that they should or should not be in are not properly configured, that can lead to what I would call “nuisance alerts”. These are alerts that weren't meant to be triggered but happen because of an improper configuration.
The 40% to 60% has certainly not been our experience. These devices have a lot of moving parts. Generally speaking, of the thousands of points that are collected in a day, a very small number may be inaccurate.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Are you aware of, or do you keep track of, evidence used in courts with regard to breaches of probation or breaches of recognizance, etc., while a person is using your product? What has been your experience? Have the courts been readily receptive to the information, or have they basically rejected it?
4:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Jemtec Inc.
I was going to say that usually the judge will entertain and look at the data, and in fact from time to time will call an expert from the monitoring company, such as ourselves, to ask for clarification on what the signals mean. For the most part they will take it into consideration. Again, it will be up to the judge as to whether or not they decide to entertain that information.
That said, it is our experience that for the most part they trust the technology over the client's word.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Thank you very much.
One of the other items that was brought up was the ease with which—I'm saying the “ease” with which, but it could be the opposite—they can be removed. Apparently there has been some experience that young persons—we'll say juveniles or young offenders—may remove their bracelets.
Could you tell me what kind of technology would alert the authorities that the bracelet has been removed, and in your experience, how facile is it to remove them?