Public Safety Committee on June 18th, 2013

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

Good morning. This is meeting number 91 of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. It is Tuesday, June 18, 2013.

We'll begin this morning, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), with our study of the economics of policing, and then at the end of the second hour we'll take 10 minutes for committee business.

I'd like to welcome those who are substituting on the committee. Of course, once again we'll wish Kevin well, and we look forward to seeing him back in the chair after today.

This morning we have a first panel of witnesses, which will consist of Chief Matthew Torigian from the Waterloo Regional Police Service, and by video conference from Halifax, Professor Christopher Murphy from the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University. My thanks to both witnesses for being here this morning.

I'll just check with Mr. Murphy as to whether he can hear and see us. It looks good from this end.

[Dr. Christopher Murphy, Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Dalhousie University, As an Individual]

Yes, everything's fine here.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

Okay, great.

We'll begin with opening statements from the witnesses and then we'll go to rounds of questions. Because of my lack of trust in technology, we'll go first to Professor Murphy at Dalhousie before we lose him. We'll ask you to make a ten-minute presentation.

[Dr. Christopher Murphy]

Thank you very much.

Good morning, and thank you all for this opportunity to present to you some of my ideas based on my experience of looking at Canadian policing and policing in general for over 25 years. I've been a student of Canadian policing as an academic, but I also spent eight years in the old solicitor general department as a policing policy researcher when in fact the ministry had a capacity and an interest in national policing and police research. I'll come back to that later.

First let me say that Canada has a well-earned reputation and the Canadian police have earned a reputation as having a stable, publicly supported, and modern professional police force, one that I think has an excellent record when compared to our comparator nations—Australia, England, the United States, etc.—relatively free of corruption and the excessive violence that has characterized at least some aspects of policing in those countries.

Canadians have invested heavily in good government, and as a result have invested in good policing. We also invest in health care, education, etc. We've been willing to pay taxes and invest in public policing in order to have a high degree of public safety and personal security. Indeed, Canadians may invest more in their public police than almost any comparable country in the world, as measured by per capita spending, and we probably have the best-paid public police in the world. We have developed a good and professional, but very expensive, model of public policing, one that has grown significantly, as you're all aware, in police numbers and policing costs over the last 10 to 20 years.

However, the capacity and willingness of the public to continue to pay for more policing without at least more evidence of the value and efficiency of that model is at a tipping point in Canada. It certainly is in other countries, such as England and the United States. Municipal governments find it increasingly difficult to sustain their current policing costs, let alone meet rising policing costs.

In short, it's my belief, and that of many municipal police leaders and municipal government people responsible for policing, that the current model of public policing, as is, without change, is simply not financially sustainable, and that without significant change to the current model there will be an inevitable decline in both the number of police officers and the quality and range of police services that will result.

There are some possible, and not very attractive, policing scenarios that are out there already, and I'll just run through them quickly. One is to simply continue the growth scenario we've had for the last 10 years. You've seen the data—increases of about 5% a year. These are not sustainable without increases in municipal or provincial taxes, or simply cannibalizing other municipal services to pay for this increase.

In 2011 we see this increase suddenly stop, and we're moving to what I would call a static growth model. That is, we try to maintain the current number of police officers and the service levels with more moderate increases in annual funding. It's about 3% now, which means, to some extent, no increases in the number of police officers, but because of salaries and benefit increases, it remains about 3% on an annual basis. That means we'll have flat growth despite increases in population, so the police per population ratio will decrease. This is actually very similar...and we may be in a period like the 1990s, when between the years 1990 and 2000, Canada saw an actual decrease in the total number of police officers—not much, but there was virtually no growth—and a significant decline in the per capita ratios.

I did a study at that time to see what police were doing and how they were managing this period of fiscal restraint. Basically, they cut services that were considered not essential, non-crisis, and they had to reprioritize their limited resources to meet the demand they had. It wasn't necessarily a period of innovation or change, simply a reduction in the quantity and to some extent the focus of police services.

We have a negative growth option, which is simply to cut the number of police officers and cut the budgets, and that will of course lead to a decline in the level of police service and public safety. It's not a desirable one, but it's one we see in the U.S., where simply to meet financial crises in municipal budgets, they've cut the number of police officers. I don't think we're there yet, but a number of municipalities may be facing that kind of scenario in the near future, and that worries me.

Finally, the good news is that I think there is a change in the development model that is currently being explored in a variety of places. It's an attempt to manage the growth in police spending, but somehow without diminishing the quality and quantity of policing services, and to some extent even improving and expanding those services, primarily through significant forms of change, reform, and innovation.

You have no doubt had some witnesses from the English experience and have heard about the changes there, as well as witnesses from the United States and some municipalities. It's an attempt to change the current model of public policing in ways that make it perhaps more cost efficient and in some ways more cost effective. This can mean a rethinking of the fundamental policing model and the police role and their relationship to the community; the privatization of some police services, etc.; new organizational and occupational career models that allow for lateral entry; different kinds of recruiting and education strategies; new ways to deliver more cost-efficient services, such as civilianization, tiered policing, various forms of community service officers—there are experiments that address that issue—and more effective use of new information and communication technologies; and finally, a better educated and more diverse police profession and a commitment to evidence-based models of strategies in public policing.

We can watch and to some extent learn from the British experience. It's not entirely positive, and it's mixed, but at least they are documenting, researching, and evaluating what they're doing, and I think their ideas are having a significant influence on what Canadian police are at least looking at now.

I believe we're faced with the same situation as the British police and the American police. It's perhaps less dramatic, but I think it still is a situation that calls for some degree of change, reflection, and analysis. What's different about England is that they actually have an information base, a research capacity, to kind of underlie or at least stimulate these kinds of examinations and innovations.

This brings me to my last point. If we are going to adapt to the current challenges facing Canadian policing, and the more complex and sophisticated policing and crime issues, we don't have the kind of research and information base that other countries have. Compared to countries such as Britain and Australia, we invest very little and do very little either in-house police research—that is, police doing their own work—or applied academic police research. We even lack the basic information to assess whether in fact in some cases we're doing the kind of work that we think we're doing and being as efficient or as effective as I think the public and the police would like it to be.

The good news is that I think Canadian police are ready and interested in research information, knowledge development, and evidence-based strategies in a way that I haven't seen over the last 25 years, no doubt occasioned by this fiscal restraint or this crisis, depending on how you look at it. I think they're eager to become involved in a new kind of evidence-based, research-based enterprise that they see as going along with reform and change.

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police has reinvigorated its research foundation. The Canadian Police College is developing a series. Even the Canadian Police Association recognizes that research and evidence-based policing will have to develop more effectively in Canada.

The second piece of good news is that we do have the research capacity in this country to do that kind of work. There are growing centres of police research and an increasing number of academics who do applied police research of interest both to academics and to police. We have the interest and the capacity to develop this infrastructure. What we lack is an infrastructure that funds, coordinates, and facilitates research, knowledge, information, and innovation in this country.

In a sense, because of this, we are forced to import policies and practices from other countries, often without assessing whether they're viable or feasible here. We don't tend to evaluate whether they are appropriate or effective.

We need national leadership from Public Safety Canada, from the federal government, to coordinate these centres of regional and municipal interests and expertise, to facilitate development of a national research agenda to underline the reforms and changes that are coming in policing, and to make them as effective and efficient as possible.

I can close on that. I could certainly say more, and I will be pleased to answer any questions you may have on anything I've said.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

Thank you very much, Professor Murphy.

We'll now turn to Chief Torigian for a 10-minute opening statement.

[Chief Matthew Torigian, Chief of Police, Waterloo Regional Police Service]

Thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the invitation to speak with you today.

By way of beginning my comments—and I look forward to the discussion that will take place afterwards—I'll try to walk you through a description of where we see all of this coming together. Professor Murphy touched on a lot of the points that I think are very important when we look at where policing is headed in Canada.

This morning I hope to share with you some of our on-the-ground experiences on some of the work we've done and the initiatives we've undertaken to determine the best approach to delivering public safety and security for our community. At the same time, I hope to connect this to the overall direction of policing in Canada. In Waterloo we are beginning to develop what we would refer to as an economic model of policing.

We've talked about the economics of policing, and we've spoken at length about expenditures and revenues and trying to drive down costs and doing things more efficiently. We often get too far ahead of ourselves at times. We don't ask ourselves why. How does this all fit together?

I would take it back to one of the reasons why I got into policing in the first place. The purpose of policing is to protect the weak from the strong. Gangs are strong. So is addiction to a substance. The strong can prey on the disenfranchised or the marginalized in our communities. What can we do as a community and in policing to protect the weak from the strong? We often come in contact with the weak. Those are the people we serve, who we need to pay attention to.

So when we're looking at the economics of policing and when we think about our clients, the people we come in contact with the most—people living with mental illness, the homeless, the disenfranchised, the marginalized people in our communities, the students—none of them pay property taxes. That is the base from which we get our budgets. So it's very important not to silence our clients and not to look just at the cost of policing.

We can get ahead of ourselves by looking at other models. We can look at some of the one-off efficiencies, try to grab the low-hanging fruit, but that won't serve the sustainability of policing in the future. When we look at this committee, we see the great work that can be done at the national level in providing leadership for the overall direction and the sustainability of policing in Canada. If there's one area that I might disagree with Professor Murphy on, it's public policing. There's no such thing as public or private policing; it's policing. There's private security; there isn't public policing.

One of the initiatives we're probably proudest of in Waterloo would be our domestic violence project. It's a wraparound approach. We've taken our domestic violence investigators and collocated them with 14 other community partners outside the traditional police service building. We have them housed with sexual assault treatment centres, women's crisis shelters, crown attorneys, counselling services. We anticipated and realized a 20% increase in calls for service on domestic incidents alone in the initial stages of this initiative.

We also noticed...and the impetus for us to do this was that about three and a half murders a year were related to domestic violence. We began this project in January 2006 after extensive research. We went all over the world and took the best practices from many different areas: San Diego, Calgary, the U.K., Ottawa. We pulled them all together and created the family violence project. We are now averaging less than one homicide per year related to domestic violence—a significant reduction. We look at it as homicide prevention.

To do this, we had to look at data. We had to look at the evidence in front of us before we could make a decision on what we needed for our community. Right now, we're starting to see the beginnings of a national initiative to have more research, more evidence, more data in front of us. We look at outcome evaluations of some of the projects and initiatives that were undertaken, and as a result of that, we're starting to inform our business decisions in policing.

Some of that evidence-based decision-making comes in the form of weekly or monthly reports that we, as police leaders, receive. We use these to analyze the work that's being done. Currently in Waterloo, we're developing an impaired driving dashboard. We're working with a software company to put technology in the hands of our front-line officers. When they log on to their mobile workstation, the map of their zone comes up and through a pick list they can actually see where all of the hotspots are, where most of the collisions have occurred because of impaired driving. We can then deploy properly.

We also have another software program we are putting all of our data into. It's a queuing model, and as a result of it we now deploy based on where we're needed, so that we have the right number of people in the right place at the right time.

All of this is to ensure optimum efficiency, but none of it comes together unless we have all of the evaluation pieces, the investment in some of the tools, and an analysis of the work being done. This is what it takes to determine the value of policing. What we're trying to do is demonstrate a return on investment for our community. It's the last piece that I want to touch on now, the community.

At the core of all of this, be it a new model for policing, a new governance model, different oversight, mileposts, measurements, community or provincial or national direction—all of this speaks to creating the lighthouse, a beacon for us to move towards. We want to look at this ecosystem of work, which is a very comprehensive business. We take the research, apply it to some of the tools, and build capacity within our organizations. We develop leaders. We make sure that we can demonstrate a return on investment. We do this by assessing what we have. We need strong plans to build the data sets that inform the decisions we make on investments. This ongoing process really is an ecosystem. It ensures the sustainability of this profession, and it ensures that we are addressing public safety concerns in our community.

I have the good fortune of sitting on a number of committees. One of these is the Police Executive Research Forum of the Canadian Association Chiefs of Police. You've heard from Deputy Minister Dale McFee, and I'm fortunate enough to be sitting on his expert advisory council in Saskatchewan. In Ontario, we have a Future of Policing Advisory Committee, and as the immediate past president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, I sit on that committee. I also co-chair the National Police Services Advisory Committee and the Police Information and Statistics, POLIS, committee with the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. It's the last one that's really important. We have to start challenging some of the stats and ask ourselves if we are capturing these statistics in the proper way.

We hear a lot of discussion and debate about whether crime is up or down. What we've endeavoured to do at the POLIS committee is to index crime. What we know is that the complexity and severity of crime is increasing in some communities across Canada. It's very important for us to drill down and see if we need to capture more statistics on the crimes that are occurring.

I'd be happy to answer some of your questions afterwards. I hope I've enabled you to have some sort of picture of what we're trying to develop in Waterloo with respect to the economics of policing.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

Thank you very much for your statement.

We'll now begin with an opening round of questions of seven minutes, starting on the government side with Ms. Bergen.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good morning to the witnesses. Thank you both for being here this morning.

We've been engaged in this study for several months. We've had a lot of very good information provided to us on best practices by different police organizations that are doing fantastic work and by academics. We have heard from provinces like the Yukon, which has laid out a common ground plan, and we've heard some really good ideas.

Some of the committee travelled to the U.K., some to California and parts of Canada. I was one who went to the U.K.

It was an interesting exercise. The federal government in the U.K. provides the majority of the funding and provides an overall direction for the police departments. I think there are 43 different districts in the U.K. Each of them has been policing as a little individual unit, so when the federal government said to them that they had to cut 20% from their budget....

Then there were some political changes, whereby they now have commissioners who are elected, possibly to help carry the heat and also to provide ideas. We saw that the federal Home Office has, as you said, Professor Murphy, a small research department in which they determine value for money in policing. Also, there seems to be quite a large involvement of KPMG with various police districts with respect to efficiencies.

So we have seen a lot of interesting things here at home and abroad. What I'm looking at, and we are all, I think, starting to notice and wonder about, is how the federal government in Canada can bring all of this together and what we can do to provide something that is within our mandate as the federal government, because policing is not a federal issue. Add to this that we have municipalities and cities—Chief Torigian is here representing Waterloo—and we also have first nations. What we're seeing is that first nations policing is over the top, in terms of policing cost per person.

I want to ask you, with all of that—first of all, Professor Murphy—what realistic role you see the federal government in Canada playing. I'd like to ask you to keep in mind the fact that, for example, in the U.K., where it seems that they're pretty effectively cutting 20% off, they are doing it with almost a very professional business model, bringing in the professionals—the KPMGs of this world—and asking, just as any business would, how do we make cuts and still run a solid business?

With that in mind, Professor Murphy—I'm going to ask you first, and then go to the chief from Waterloo—what role do you see the federal government playing in bringing this all together?

I'll leave that with you.

[Dr. Christopher Murphy]

I think most people in the Canadian police community recognize that while there are institutions and provinces and capacities and innovations going on across the country, there is no central research policy centre that coordinates, that communicates, that doesn't necessarily dictate but in a sense simply allows the decentred nature of Canadian policing to flourish without being parochial and local and failing to learn, while duplicating each other's efforts.

Some kind of national policy research centre that would provide information, perhaps research support, is needed. I think there is a victims' centre in Public Safety Canada that took this initiative. I worked in a unit within the federal government at one stage that had four or five people whose job it was to facilitate and communicate research and fund research nationally. That was the research unit of the Solicitor General. I was responsible in those days for community policing. We were very successful simply by supporting and spreading information and knowledge to the Canadian police community, which the Canadian police community took up.

They also funded, by the way, centres of criminology to fund police-related research initiatives.

So there is a central leadership role, which doesn't have to dictate—it's more a networking and communications and best practices model, which I think could be created—and there are a number of models out there that could be looked at.

But I'll hand this over to the chief, because I'm sure he has some significant ideas about this himself.

[Chief Matthew Torigian]

Thank you. I'm not sure they're significant, but I certainly do have ideas.

I think one of the areas would be continuing to provide leadership in the area of perhaps some guiding principles and a framework for sustaining policing in Canada, not necessarily having to throw dollars at it, but in fact ensuring that we're all speaking the same language, that we have the right common visions and values for what we're looking for with respect to providing policing in all of our communities, regardless of whether it's a first nations community up in the territories or a strong urban centre in one of the more populated areas in Canada.

So it's those guiding principles, that framework, and perhaps a model, and an economic model, on how this all comes together and how it all works. I would resist the urge to try to grab some low-hanging fruit or hear what's happening in another area of the world and look at that as the panacea to finding a solution to whatever may be the cause.

I was fortunate enough to be part of a study group with Mark Potters—who's here today as well—from Public Safety Canada, when 12 or 13 of us went across to the U.K. and took a long, hard look at all of the reforms that were and are going on over there. We had an opportunity to speak with a number of people involved in those reforms.

I would hesitate to look at the U.K. as a solution by cutting 20%, because I can tell you that they're spending an awful lot of money where we cut many, many years ago. They're staffed at levels that we haven't seen in Canada for decades.

There are so many different approaches and models out there. I think from a national level, it's providing that leadership in the form of a beacon, of guiding principles for what we expect policing to deliver in every community for every Canadian, and ensuring that there is a framework of some sort in place. If that framework were an economic model, I think it would help lead us as police leaders.

I hear what Professor Murphy is saying about research. I think it's critically important. I'm not sure it needs to be in a central location. There are many advantages to having this free market of research out there that can be generated from a number of different areas, with perhaps different and maybe even competing interests but allowing police leaders the capacity to look at that research and make some informed decisions.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

Thank you very much.

Unfortunately, there is no more time for this round.

Ms. Michaud, you have the floor.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank our two witnesses for appearing before us today.

My first question is for Mr. Murphy.

During your presentation, you suggested it was time for Canada to start rethinking its current policing model. This has been mentioned during the committee's travels. We had the opportunity to go and see what is being done in Great Britain and in the United States. Moreover, we were able to see what is happening here in Calgary and in Prince Albert, among other places. We were able to see the HUB and COR models in action, which you must be familiar with.

Are these the kinds of models you are thinking of when you talk about controlling costs better and using resources more efficiently while providing effective services to the population?

[Dr. Christopher Murphy]

Absolutely, but I think the notion is that we have limited police resources under the current model, and that there may be ways to use them more effectively and efficiently by rethinking some of the assumptions that underlie that model, such as the notion that we need uniformed and empowered police officers to deliver the full range of police services out there, when in fact there are many aspects to what police do: either some variation of a fully sworn, fully empowered police officer could do it, as in the community service office model in the U.K., or increased civilianization—in some cases, some limited cases, perhaps even privatization.

That's one model, then: a new way of rethinking the various police functions instead of a generalist model. Some more specialized views of policing and the skill requirements would allow police to recruit more broadly, etc.

I don't think there's any one answer to the question. I'm not sure the English model is central or even relevant, but what I don't think we have is.... We have various places trying different things, and we have no sense of coordination or national purpose.

I wasn't actually suggesting that we create a centre that then does all the research and assessment of these innovations and new ideas, but that we develop some connected capacity in Canada with some kind of leadership role. Then we can look at these innovations and say, yes, these are really effective, they do work, and maybe it should be part of some national agenda, as opposed to an individual police department or a local jurisdiction.

I'm not sure if that answers your question.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Yes, thank you very much.

Chief Torigian, you touched on the same issue during your presentation. Would you like to add something to what Mr. Murphy has said?

[Chief Matthew Torigian]

I'm sorry, the translation wasn't working, but I caught some of what you were asking.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

I was asking if you wanted to comment or add anything to what Mr. Murphy said, because you did talk about that a bit in your own presentation.

[Chief Matthew Torigian]

I would agree with Professor Murphy. I understand and agree with his vision of where and how that research could get developed and the connection that needs to occur right across Canada to ensure that all police leaders have access to it.

One of the areas that I think is very important when we're talking about the sustainability of policing, and looking at different models or methods by which we deliver our services, what is going to be key to all of this is the new recruit: the training, the education, and the recruitment of the new generation of police officers.

Again, Public Safety Canada has looked at this as a fallout from the summit in January, and it is looking at new ways to train this new cohort, this new generation of police officers who someday will be the leaders of the future. We have to ask ourselves, are we recruiting the right people, and are we doing it the right way? And how are we training and what are the qualifications?

I sit on the Ontario Police College General Investigation Training Advisory Committee, and we are looking at the training period. Is it time for there to be a professional designation for policing? If that's the case, what do we need to get there? Is it a degree? Is it a diploma? Right now the minimum requirement is still grade 12 and you go down to the police college for 12 weeks after you get hired by a police service. I'm not sure that's the right model for what our expectations are for police officers today.

In fact, it's not reality either. We're hiring those with any type of post-secondary education, and very often we're hiring new recruits with master's degrees. The complexity of this job has grown. Thankfully, it didn't work when I was going through that you had to be six foot four and come off a farm and be able to fight your way out of a bar. That's not today's recruit; it's not what is necessary for today's police officer.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

You told us about a project that is more focused on the problem of domestic violence.

Do you have any projects or programs that are more focused on youth at risk of becoming involved with gangs or criminal activities?

[Chief Matthew Torigian]

Yes, we have partnered with our local crime prevention council. It's a crime prevention council that is extremely successful; it is really a table that has been set with a number of community stakeholders and representatives from a cross-section of disciplines right throughout our entire community.

As a result of the work they've done, and in partnering with us, what they're trying to do is generate programming where they can get out in front of, and identify, at-risk youth. Perhaps somebody who has a sibling who's been involved in a gang...get to them and create opportunities to direct them in a different direction. It's called inREACH, and it's an anti-gang program that's going on in Waterloo right now.

But to speak to Professor Murphy's earlier point, the evaluation of these programs is difficult. Even with this particular program, inREACH, there are differing views as to whether it's successful. What we really need is some very sound academically based research or outcomes evaluation that would inform us as to whether or not these in fact work.

What we're doing in Waterloo as well is we've partnered with a number of other agencies and police services in putting into place a Saskatchewan HUB model. It's a focus on health, because we know the social determinants of health overlap with the determinants of crime, and we're seeing an overlap there. We're focusing in on health, and again our goal is to get upstream and intervene upstream with a number of people before they come into contact with us, because we know that if they're coming into contact with us, they're coming into contact with emergency wards and other social services.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

Thank you very much.

Now we return to the government side.

Mr. Hawn, for seven minutes.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here.

We've heard a lot over the last several months, but I think, as with a lot of things, it comes down to time. Theoretically you can always get more money, you can always get more people, but what you can't ever do, of course, is get more time. If it's difficult to get money and people, then we'd better make the best use of our time. That goes back to doing the research, where are we applying our focus and effort, and so on.

Chief, you talked about challenging stats, because obviously we could be going down the wrong road if we don't understand the stats we're faced with, that we're basing our decisions on. Can you give me an example of some of the statistics that we should be challenging, or that you're challenging?

[Chief Matthew Torigian]

Right now we're exploring the manner in which we collect some of the data. As an example, whenever an incident in a community occurs and there are elements of crime to it, it gets coded. It's a code. It's called a UCR, uniform crime reporting.

If there is more than one criminal act that took place within that one incident, we assign corresponding codes, only to a maximum of four. Yet we have had incidences where 30 crimes have occurred. It's important to look at changing the manner in which we capture this, so that we can get a true appreciation of not only the volume but also the complexity of crime—because volume is only one aspect and not the only one—and track this over the years. Right now we're seeing 20 crimes that occur within one incident. Many years ago that wouldn't have taken place.

This all connects, because it informs us of what we're starting to understand and what we've understood for some time. But research can bear this out as well. Criminals don't specialize. We do, but they don't. There may be more than one criminal act within one particular incident, so we need to be certain that when we're looking at crime stats, we are in fact capturing the data the right way.

Another way we are challenging ourselves and educating ourselves as police leaders around this, going back to an earlier question around what can happen nationally—auditing is something that perhaps we need a little bit more of at CCJS. Right now, we currently see a bunch of different approaches to responding to criminal acts right across Canada.

I'll do this quickly. You could stagger out of a bar in New Brunswick and get into a fight, then drive to Alberta and graffiti a building, and then get to British Columbia and smash your car because you're impaired, and you might not ever generate a criminal occurrence that gets coded. If you do it in reverse, you would then get three. We need to ensure that we are consistent in the way we're capturing data and statistics right across the country. That's part of the work that I'm part of, that we are all part of, with the Police Information and Statistics Committee.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you.

Professor, could you give me a brief answer? You talked a little bit about importing policies from the U.K., or wherever, and obviously some are good and some are bad. Can you give me just a quick example of a good policy that we've imported and an example of a bad policy that we've imported?

[Dr. Christopher Murphy]

I think we're experimenting with the community service officer model. I understand B.C. is recruiting officers who will be in uniform but not have powers of arrest. They will be visible, in terms of walking the public streets, etc. I don't know yet if that's a good model or not, and I think one of the things that we need to develop is the capacity to assess these when we put them in place, so that we can say it worked or it didn't work. To me, that has potential, but I don't actually know whether it's going to be an effective model in Canada.

If I could, I'll just say something about the last point. I think we sometimes focus way too much on crime. The issue of public safety is something that crime stats don't measure very well. I was thinking about the initiative that we're involved in, in downtown Halifax, which is about bars, assaults, and disorder in the public downtown. It's a huge issue. There are very few crime stats generated by this, but it's a policing problem. There are very few crime-related issues with anti-terrorism, but it is a new and demanding area for police. Public order policing.... None of these things actually have any actual crimes attached to them.

So I think we need to go beyond crime data and say that police actually have a variety of other areas of demand, which we can also develop metrics for. But I think sometimes crime is way too narrow a focus.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I'd question the assessment that terrorism doesn't include crimes.

Anyway, I'd like to get brief comments from both of you, if I can, because I don't have too much time left.

We have a lot of police bodies across the country. Professor, you've been involved with some of them from a more academic point of view, and Chief, it sounds like you've been involved with most of them from a practical, hands-on point of view.

Do we have too many? Are we lacking focus? Is there something we can do between those bodies to bring some of this focus together for things like a national vision about policing and training and so on?

Chief, I'll start with you.