Public Safety committee  No, I didn't brief the minister on it. However, I did provide an executive summary. The document is in very plain language, and I gave an action plan in three or four pages that spoke for itself.

Public Safety committee  I would enjoy doing that, and I will do it, because the minister has asked for this. The first one was an interim report, but I want to have all my details, and I will sit down and take the minister through it.

Public Safety committee  There are 10. They have implemented a number of them, some partially. There are two that are the most important. The first one deals with where you position it. This hasn't been acted upon. They have a coordinator for the use of force. I believe they are finishing up their first

Public Safety committee  No.

Public Safety committee  They were cooperative in that they produced what we asked for, if they had it. We are now taking some of the data and we're going to reformat it, re-input it, and design a computer program so that we can do a proper analysis of it. To that extent, they certainly have been open an

Public Safety committee  Yes. I certainly would have preferred to see some movement on this. There was marginal movement in redefining active and passive resistance, but there wasn't substantial movement in—

Public Safety committee  Be aware that this is a dynamic relationship. I am a review body, an oversight body, and my job is to identify the problem and bring it to the public's attention. I will pursue this with vigour. But I don't assume they're going to come back and say, “Yes, sir, no, sir, three bags

Public Safety committee  I agree entirely.

Public Safety committee  And that is why I have not pursued that particular line of argument, because it becomes a battle of experts. As a lawyer--I've been to court--you can get experts who will say whatever can be said. You're not going to have that clarity of purpose. I fall back on what I think shou

Public Safety committee  I didn't include pain tolerance as a factor in whether or not you deploy the taser. The officer uses his normal judgment, in terms of, is the individual going to be violent or combative? Just what is there—because it is designed for a particular purpose. You don't look at a perso

Public Safety committee  I'm quite happy to have that punch. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about when it should be used.

Public Safety committee  I can respond to your general question on whether the taser is necessary. If you look at the history of policing, police through their history, starting with Bobby Peel in the 1820s, clearly used different tools. They didn't always start out with weapons. They started out with ba

Public Safety committee  The problem I have is we don't have any empirical data. I'm quite prepared to let the data lead me to a conclusion. It has been said that the use of the taser results in less injury to officers and to members of the public. I haven't seen the empirical data as to the number of in

Public Safety committee  My recommendation at this stage, based on the information we have, is that in the RCMP model a taser should be put up in the same category as an impact weapon and not an intermediate.... And by the way, what's important to bear in mind, because people say we classify it the sam

Public Safety committee  This is a bit of a loop we get ourselves into through the Gordian Knot of whether the device causes death. At the end of the game, do you know how often? What's the material risk? I prefer to approach it on the basis that we've already authorized police officers to use guns that