Public Safety Committee on May 2nd, 2013

[Insp Tyler Bates]

Yes, there are standard components. Certainly, the RCMP intervention management model guides how they're to respond to incidents where there is a physical intervention of some sort with a client. So there are components that are standard, the CPR course and whatnot. But as far as the totality of the training they receive is concerned, it is very much determined by what they require for the functions and duties they're performing in their division.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Because most of them are done under contract, are provisions for auxiliaries written into the contract? Or is this something that's simply done on an ad hoc basis under contract policing?

[Insp Tyler Bates]

As far as the volunteer requirements and the requirements of their...is concerned, it's divisionally determined in terms of those requirements and that's why there's such variance. When I talked about the minimum hours of volunteering, it runs the gamut from 100 to 192 hours a year.

So each division has a divisional policy that contributes to the auxiliary function and the parameters of their duties as well.

[D/Commr Doug Lang]

Perhaps I could clarify that point as well.

The contract determines the number of full-time employees on the regular member and civilian member and public servant side. It doesn't speak to the number of auxiliaries. We are not so much free but it's available within the budget funded to us for O and M to hire as many auxiliaries as we could fit in a specific detachment. There's no quota, standard, or number that we have to live within. It's all based on consultation with the province or territory.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll go back to Ms. Bergen, please, for seven minutes.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you again to both witnesses for being here today.

I'd like just a couple of details on how you organize and run the auxiliary program. Can you tell me if there is a standard procedure for how you recruit volunteers? Or does it change, depending on the community?

[Insp Tyler Bates]

I think we're proactive in educating the community with respect to the auxiliary constable program, whether it be via presentations in the community or just with local TV or radio, for that matter. We have a variety of recruitment methods, but in essence, people express an interest.

Oftentimes we have folks in the community who have an interest. I've had magistrates who acted as auxiliaries, and people from all walks of life. But we also get a stream of folks with an interest in law enforcement as a career, and this is their way of getting some exposure to the career and getting a bird's eye view as to whether it's something they want to continue on with in terms of their career ambitions.

Generally, people express the interest. They're aware of the program. In many communities it's a long-standing program where there's been a number of auxiliaries—folks they're aware of who have worked in the program—and they come to us with that interest.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

One program that's very popular and quite successful in Manitoba, and for sure in Portage la Prairie in my riding, is Citizens on Patrol. I don't recall that there's actually a lot of discussion about auxiliary members because the Citizens on Patrol program seems to work very well with the RCMP. In fact, the RCMP will help them with their charity golf tournaments or different fundraisers, but there's no actual real cost to the RCMP.

I'm assuming you can probably tell me what the difference would be. Citizens on Patrol is probably separate. They go out on their own. They're the eyes and ears and they can give some assistance, which would be different from the auxiliary program, as far as going to schools and that kind of thing.

I wonder if you have any comments on the two programs. I know and recognize that there are other values that volunteers and an auxiliary program would bring to community involvement and some of those intangibles. When we're looking at efficiencies and when we write our report, with reference to value for money, do we want to be encouraging a continuation and expansion of an auxiliary program? Do we want to rather be encouraging an expansion of something like Citizens on Patrol where, again, they raise their own money and help? How would you compare and contrast the two in terms of value and also the costs?

[Insp Tyler Bates]

They're both invaluable programs.

I have first-hand experience with the Citizens on Patrol program in Selkirk, Manitoba, as well. There are different functions, but the Citizens on Patrol are the eyes and ears of the RCMP and have regular contact and communication with the RCMP as to potential or ongoing criminal activity. They're very helpful.

Certainly an expansion of that program has value, and it's been value-added everywhere I've worked with Citizens on Patrol. They're a non-uniformed presence and they're somewhat covert in their activities as far as how they conduct themselves. They have their own provincial coordinator. They do provide for some efficiencies in reporting ongoing criminal activity.

The auxiliary constable program is entirely different. It provides us with a knowledge base we wouldn't otherwise have and a comfort level in terms of resolving conflict in the most sensible, peaceful way. To have that knowledge base is invaluable as well.

My preference would be to have both programs in every community that I worked in, if there were that interest.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

How much time do I have, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have two and a half minutes.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Okay, good. You can let me know if I run over.

I want to come back to something I asked the last time you were here. It had to do with policing on first nations. It's related to this, I believe. We were talking a little bit about the COR program or multi-agencies and how those take community involvement.

On first nation reserves where, again, it's much more complex with a much different way of life, it's very difficult sometimes to even just get basic involvement with parents going to parent-teacher day. As I recall, we used to have to have a contest. We'd say to the kids, “Whichever class has the most parents out for parent-teacher day will get a big pizza party.” Otherwise, there didn't seem to be that knowledge, and there was a lack of involvement.

Is this something that, if built on, could actually be an even bigger contribution in terms of policing and community safety on reserves or in difficult areas, even in some rural areas where there are different challenges than in urban areas?

Yes, Mr. Lang, but you did take all of Mr. Bates' time last time.

[D/Commr Doug Lang]

Oh, I know—but I have a good answer for this one.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[D/Commr Doug Lang]

It ropes into the diversity question we had from the other side.

That was a very interesting comment. We see it as well. Our auxiliary program and our various volunteer programs attract different sort of persons to each. Tyler touched this morning on the fact that we have our weekend warrior types who want to be out with, and seen working with, the police. They love that. That's the little charge they get out of being in the auxiliary program. We have others who just want to help out in the community. They're the kind of volunteer who wants to volunteer for everything, right? They want to be seen as working with the police and being helpful with the police.

We have lots of other people in the community who don't want to be seen as overtly helping the police, because they get the, “Oh, you're one of them. You're ratting us out. You're telling stories about us. You're not very helpful. You're one of them, you're not one of us.” We probably see that problem more in aboriginal communities than we do in other communities, because there is a bit of a divide between enforcing the law and doing what you want.

So it's hard for us, when we go into some of these communities, to attract that volunteer into certain areas. We probably have a better opportunity, in aboriginal communities, of engaging elders to become kind of quasi auxiliaries for us. They give us that link into the cultural traditions that we're missing, the stuff we need to know about that community. That's part of their engagement with us when we come in.

We have a big thing on cultural engagement with the Yukon right now, on having those kinds of groups, and making sure we have that community assimilation—for us, when we go into those communities, not them to us. When we go into the communities, we ask them to help us learn what we need to learn about them. So we try, in our proactive recruiting, to touch on all the diversity in the communities that we have. We try to find aboriginal women and visible minorities to be part of our auxiliary program. We then try to recruit from those people, as well.

It's kind of a three-step stage sometimes. We get a person to get their finger in volunteering, and we talk them into becoming an auxiliary. That gives us the opportunity to kind of test drive them on how they'd be as a police person, and then we get them into our recruiting process.

Then we have those others, the 45-year-old guy or the 40-year-old guy who just wants to come out and spend some time with the police on the weekend, helping us out.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Scarpaleggia, please.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Thank you.

If you had to give us a sense of the distribution of age groups within an auxiliary force, if you will, would it be heavily weighted towards the young or towards older people? When I hear “auxiliaries”, my first thought is police cadets, but it's not that, it's....

Are there some young people—you could almost call them cadets—as well as people from other age groups who aren't necessarily looking for a career in policing but who just want to be involved, who want to help, who are community-minded, and so on?

[Insp Tyler Bates]

There are. There are young people who don't necessarily have an interest in a career in law enforcement but who just want to help and contribute to their community in that way. I don't have specific statistics with respect to the distribution of age group, but that's something I can look at to see if we can get a handle on it.

But it does run the gamut.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

It runs the gamut.

[Insp Tyler Bates]

Yes. I've worked with bankers, with folks who are retired, as well as with young folks who are just out of high school, for that matter, who are wanting to work with the police and contribute.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Do some of these younger auxiliary members choose a career in law enforcement, perhaps the RCMP or other police forces? Do you see that some go on to pursue a career?

[D/Commr Doug Lang]

Absolutely. In fact, first, as Tyler mentioned, just to touch on the longevity of some of our auxiliaries, we have some who've received 20-year pins for being on the auxiliary for 20 years. It's quite an achievement for a volunteer to do 180 hours' worth of volunteer work for us for 20 years. It's fantastic. We have others who come in the rotating door. So we try to find that balance of both. The person who's been around the community a long time is of really great benefit to us, but there's that young person who comes in, too.

We don't have a formalized cadet program, as you called it. I know the City of Winnipeg has a cadet program. When you apply to be a police officer in Winnipeg and get on that list of applicants, they get you into their cadet program. Right from the get-go they have you start doing that type of cadet stuff as you move through.

We don't have that. In terms of our recruiting strategy and the controls in our recruiting program for regular members, we're required to recruit the members from each province and territory equivalent to the percentage of the RCMP. We have a target for the Yukon and we have a target for the north, all those kinds of things. We also take a lot of people from Ontario and Quebec, where we don't have members in uniformed detachments. It's tough to put those people through any kind of an auxiliary program.

I know in the west, particularly where I've served, in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta, we use the auxiliary program as that step-in. Let's see what you're like, get a feel for your type of personality, and see whether this is what you want to do.

We can do it on summer student programs, which are very limited in duration, and some of these things. In the auxiliary program, you get somebody on a commitment, because the process to get through now is sometimes a year, sometimes longer, depending on what group you're from.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

I'm wondering if it wouldn't be useful for the RCMP, but also for the conclusions we will draw in our study, if the RCMP had statistics on how many auxiliary members eventually became full-fledged law enforcement officers. That becomes a good justification for the money spent on..., which as you say, is modest. It would be nice to have a systematic look at the contribution the auxiliaries make to policing, either by becoming police officers themselves later on, or what have you.

In terms of the role they have, you said something interesting, Inspector Bates. Maybe you were just giving an off-the-cuff example, but you said that if you had to respond to a domestic violence dispute, you would drop off the auxiliary at the detachment. Does that mean that you're...? First of all, you're travelling at different times with an auxiliary in your car. So the auxiliary doesn't just go to local fairs and provide some kind of supervision, and take part in some kind of annual parade. They're driving around with the police officers. I imagine that's the case in most cases.

[Insp Tyler Bates]

First, it depends on their level of training and which province you're in. That's certainly a consideration. Each individual call or function that you're having that auxiliary constable perform is a risk assessment that has to be undertaken. Certainly they are on regular preventive patrols with a full-fledged member of the RCMP in a variety of provinces throughout the country.