Justice committee  I think it can still go on. But to put it into context, one of the problems is that police agencies across the country don't spend that much time dealing with issues related to prostitution. I think the issue, from a policing perspective, is that when you believe that someone's engaged in human trafficking, or where vulnerable women are being exploited, you have to build the case before a judge to get the authorizations to do a number of things in order to build a brief to present to the crown and pursue a criminal charge.

Justice committee  Thank you. Good afternoon, honourable members. I appreciate having the opportunity to appear before your committee today on behalf of the Canadian Police Association as part of your study of Bill C-36. For those of you who may not be familiar with our organization, the CPA represents more than 54,000 front-line civilian and sworn law enforcement personnel serving across Canada in more than 160 police services.

Public Safety committee  In terms of your first question, we have about 160-odd member associations, so we have regular meetings annually and then a general meeting biannually. We use those meetings as an opportunity to share information, and on an ongoing basis by e-mail and other means. We also collaborate regularly with our other stakeholder partners, the Canadian Association of Police Boards, and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

Public Safety committee  That's right. In the States they have PERF, the Police Executive Research Forum; in Scotland they have the Scottish Institute for Policing Research; in the U.K. they have the College of Policing. Every country with a similar democracy, a similar style of policing, has those agencies, and I think they make a huge difference.

Public Safety committee  The one thing that needs to happen is that organizations in this country need to look at what they have and identify from a research-based perspective, in an informed way, what resources they need and how to best put those resources together—how many sworn police officers, how many civilian personnel, how many trained specialists.

Public Safety committee  I'm not going to be able to understand what you're saying. I can't get the translation. I apologize for that.

Public Safety committee  I think this is very important for your committee. In Canada, we have two types of policing. I hope you spend some time trying to address this, which is going to be very challenging. You've got your urban policing that happens across our major cities and then we have our rural and remote policing, which I think is what Chief Phillips has touched on today.

Public Safety committee  Building capacity within police services to provide for police officers to have proactive time to engage with citizens in their communities is absolutely critical to successfully policing any jurisdiction, any community. There's no way you're ever going to be effective as a police force if all you do is enforce the law.

Public Safety committee  That's the difficult question, because—

Public Safety committee  Well, yes, it's probably more difficult for you. I don't know. Each jurisdiction is going to be different because the expectations in the community will be different. What you have to look at—and I'll go back to the question from Mr. Garrison and my answer there—is what are we delivering?

Public Safety committee  We're working on it. I can send you the booklet we've produced and the—

Public Safety committee  One of my priorities as the president of the Canadian Police Association is to shift the—and I hate using the trendy buzzwords—dialogue or the discussion or the paradigm—that's the word people like to use all the time—away from an “us and them” approach to a more collaborative discussion such as you're describing.

Public Safety committee  In my remarks, I talked about efficiencies. I think the way to deal with or manage policing costs is not by just throwing a bunch more money at it. This is about finding those kinds of efficiencies. How do we partner with other government services, which are also expensive and consume a lot of tax dollars, to deliver a better product, a more holistic approach to dealing with quality-of-life issues in the community, which includes policing issues and law enforcement?

Public Safety committee  Yes, and I think the jury's out. This Vancouver program that I talked about is a pilot. It's being evaluated. It's a joint evaluation that'll be done by the Vancouver Police Department and the Vancouver Police Union, jointly funded as well, to determine whether or not you realize those savings.

Public Safety committee  Some of the research now suggests that police officers spend only about 23% of their time dealing with traditional law enforcement activities, with the rest of the time spent on social issues, mental health, etc.