Public Safety Committee on June 18th, 2013

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

Okay.

What is the next step for your department? You've done what you had to do on this. Or are you putting out more...?

[Mark Potter]

Absolutely. Right now we're in the midst of finalizing the index of policing initiatives. That will hopefully be later this summer. We're going to be organizing the training summit with the CPKN, and, most fundamentally, we're working with the steering committee on developing a strategy for policing in Canada that will go to all FPT ministers in the fall.

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

So that strategy will be released in the fall. Will it be released after our report is released? In other words, will you be taking account of what we've learned? No doubt you have been following the study through the testimony and so on. Will some of the ideas that have come up in this committee be factored into your strategy?

[Mark Potter]

To be frank, I think there has actually been great alignment between the schedule and the deliberations of this committee, the work on the summit, and the sorts of speakers there as well as here. I understand your report is likely to appear in early fall, which would feed in very well.

We don't know when FPT ministers are meeting. It hasn't been scheduled yet, but it's usually around the end of October, and I can't get ahead of ministers in presuming what they'll ultimately approve. We will certainly continue to draw upon your transcripts and discussions, and certainly your report, and feed that into the process in developing the strategy.

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

Right.

In terms of economic modelling, are you going to delve into this in some detail in your strategy, other than to say we need to do economic modelling? Are you going to be looking at models of economic modelling, if you will? Are you going to be making more detailed suggestions than simply saying each police force should do more analysis of its costs, benefits, and so on? Is this something the federal government—Public Safety Canada—will try to explore in more depth?

[Mark Potter]

Once again, I can't get too far ahead, certainly, of my own minister and collectively all FPT ministers in talking about the way forward. When you look at the Public Safety Act and the Minister of Public Safety's role to provide leadership for public safety, including policing in Canada, I think he's been doing that very much through the summit and other actions.

What is the federal role? Well, there's a leadership and a coordination role. Certainly there are accountabilities for the RCMP, and the minister has taken actions in that regard. Beyond that, there's the constitutional administration of justice residing with provinces. So we're being very respectful and working with the provinces. Through the steering committee developing the strategy, we have three champion provinces, who, in those three pillars, are actually taking the lead in identifying actions that will be brought to ministers for their consideration. So it's very much a collective undertaking of the governments.

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

Ms. Huggins, is the RCMP involved in this kind of economic modelling, this kind of analysis that Chief Torigian and others have mentioned, this kind of “embedded in the force” capacity for analyzing and getting a handle on what works, on what doesn't, on what is cost-effective, and what brings quantifiable benefits, and so on?

Is this something the RCMP does, or is the RCMP sort of at the same stage as many police forces, where this is something it's going to have to look at and build up within its organization? Is there a lot of quantitative analysis done on the cost-benefit ratios of certain policing practices, and so on?

[Rachel Huggins, Acting Director, RCMP Policy, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

I think the RCMP, like many of the police services across the country, are working very hard and diligently to look for cost benefits. Doing the right kind of analysis, they are involved in many of the committees that Chief Torigian talked about, such as POLIS. They're there at the forefront looking for better ways to analyze and to determine the best type of policing to do in Canada.

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

Can we say that the RCMP then is assuming a rightful leadership role in this area of economic modelling and analysis of policing? Is the RCMP leading the pack, or is part of those leading the pack, on this? Is the RCMP involved?

[Rachel Huggins]

I think they are leading the pack. I think they're very much involved. They're part of our steering committee on the shared forward agenda. They have the capacity to do that research, and they are out there doing it.

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

Mr. Potter, I don't know if you were here when I read something from the May issue of The Economist magazine about the volume of data that governments produce but typically don't analyze. They don't have the capacity to analyze it, but others are taking this data and using it.

Is this something that was discussed at the summit, this idea that...? It was brought up a bit, when we were in the U.K., by Lord Wasserman. He said you have to predict crime, where it's going to occur, in order to prevent it, and thereby diminish the demand for police services.

We've talked a lot about the cost of police services, but only recently have we started to discuss the notion of.... If you want to get the costs down, get the demand down. And that's very important. A lot of police forces are working on that.

But there's all this data out there that can.... As I was referencing before, if you know there are properties with liens on them, you can almost predict that fires will occur there at some point. If you have—

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

Unfortunately, Mr. Scarpaleggia, you've run out your time once again.

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

That's fine. Thanks very much.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

We will now come back to Ms. Michaud, who has five minutes.

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

I thank our witnesses very much for their presentations.

I would like to talk about what you want to study in terms of training, that is to say new approaches. You want primarily to study the way in which training is offered, in other words, how much time is spent in class compared to using technology, for example? You also want to look at the content of the training and what police officers are taught to see if the community-based approach should be used more, or that sort of thing?

[Mark Potter]

It would be both.

The goal is to look at the various approaches, whether it's technology-based or traditional in-class.

The more fundamental question you're asking is, what should police be learning? What are their true training needs?

I'll refer again to the work of the Police Sector Council and its development of competency profiles. It doesn't sound that exciting, but it's actually quite significant in terms of realizing efficiencies in the way you manage your human resources, which is 80% to 90% of the cost of policing.

If you have an agreed standard or competency profile for a certain level, a front-line officer, let's say, you would have certain requirements associated with that standard and certain training to meet those requirements. You could then better orient your training around that.

Right now in Canada there's a great diversity around the skills and the expectations of particular police officers. All police services are working through the Police Sector Council, and have been for some time, to bring greater alignment and take a more rigorous look at the actual skill sets needed to deliver certain services and be an effective police service. This is clearly evolving over time, so it's not going to be a static standard. But it is all about professionalization, more effective management of your human resources, and modernizing the way you manage human resources as an organization.

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

I presume that the findings or conclusions you will be able to draw during the two-day training, which will take place in September with the Canadian Police Knowledge Network, will allow you to fuel the joint program you intend to present to the minister in the fall?

[Mark Potter]

There are considerable expectations that have been raised around this issue, and that's great. It has created a certain momentum. But realistically speaking, most change, if it is to be sustainable, tends to be incremental.

I wouldn't want to create the expectation that there's going to be a training summit in September and it will solve all of the training needs.

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

In fact, how do you intend to use your evaluations of the training summit to feed into or develop a national program that you want to present during the course of the fall?

If I understand correctly, the training should be geared towards shared national objectives that could be established. You would hold the training summit before publishing the national program. Could you tell me how the two might be interrelated?

[Mark Potter]

I'm afraid it's not a simple answer. The nature of change in this sector, as with many others, is happening at multiple levels. There are things where, whether it's the federal government, the provincial governments, or even the local government...they can be directive. They can encourage change in certain directions, let's say in training. That's one dimension of this.

But I think a bigger dimension is the awareness, the information-sharing side, which tends to be more diffuse, a little bit messier in terms of how it actually leads to change. By police services participating in this summit on training, they will hear things, they will learn things, they will take things back to their own police services, which they will begin to look at, apply, and gather more research on. I think when I talk about the nature of change being incremental...you're going to have change happening in a variety of ways.

I don't think we should necessarily assume the strategy and central direction are what's really going to truly drive this. I think that's a part of it, and there will be areas where we can collectively cooperate, and it makes sense to build that into a strategy, but there are a lot of things going to be happening incrementally, in a diffuse way, simply by being aware and learning from others about what works and what doesn't.

It's the ongoing research, the validation of best practices, and communities defining their own needs, their own priorities, and in that context drawing upon these lessons, drawing upon these experiences, to reform and strengthen their own police services in a way that works for them.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

Thank you very much, Mr. Potter.

We have time for a final question and answer from the government side.

Ms. Bergen.

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

Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.

I just want to clarify. The number that jumped out at me concerning first nations policing was in regard to Chief Doug Palson, who is the chief of the Dakota Ojibway Police Service, which is located in my riding of Portage—Lisgar. I know this area extremely well. He told us they were policing five communities, about 8,000 people, with a $5 million budget—about $650 per person, per year.

That compared to a small town, again in my riding, Morden, Manitoba—a small city of about 8,000 people. Their cost was under $200 per person, per year. Those numbers jumped out at me. I recognize there's a huge difference. I know these aboriginal communities as well, so I know none of them are fly-in. Certainly, there are more social problems in some of them.

I'm really comparing apples to apples. I think it's incumbent on us as politicians and leaders to not just say we need to send more money into this situation, but to look at why the costs are so high for first nations policing.

The testimony we heard has been frankly rather dismal. When we've heard success stories, it has not been in first nations policing or with the chiefs of police in those organizations.

I'm wondering, Mr. Potter, have we at Public Safety a breakdown of the cost of policing in different jurisdictions? For example, what would it cost, per person, in a major city like Toronto or a small community like Selkirk, Manitoba, or in a first nations community, or a number of them? Do we have a breakdown as far as costs per capita in different jurisdictions are concerned?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

There's time for a very brief answer, Mr. Potter.

[Mark Potter]

We draw on StatsCan data. The average for Canada is about $370 per person, the average in the provinces is about $300, and the average in the territories is about $1,000 per person.

That is broken down in a more disaggregated fashion through StatsCan data. You can actually get to the level of individual communities in many cases.

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

But you have that already, so if we wanted it, could you provide it to us?