Finance Committee on May 29th, 2012

[Jerome Brannagan]

There is no formal agreement. We are daily integrating our police officers with Americans, all the time. We deal with anything that happens at the bridge, anything that happens on the water, anything that happens on the land. As I mentioned earlier, we are the primary policing agency in Windsor and that area, so my people are the ones who respond to anything. If the bridge were to close for some type of job action or something like that, vehicles that are on the NAFTA highway stop in Windsor. We have to deal with that traffic situation and things of that nature.

We are part of a communications interoperability project right now hosted by Homeland Security in the United States for southeastern Michigan and regions encompassing border areas. My police service has a member who assists the Americans in writing grants for that radio interoperability opportunity. Money has been flowing into southeastern Michigan, and those radio systems will be coming right to Windsor and the border—my understanding is, right from Sault Ste. Marie to Lake Erie and Ohio.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Peggy Nash]

Thanks very much, Mr. Brannagan. We're out of time.

Mr. Randall Garrison.

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

It's also my first time at the finance committee. I sit on the public safety committee, where I would like to have seen all of you, but that's not the way things are working this time.

I want to start with a brief question about joint enforcement operations under the Shiprider program. I have two questions. Before becoming a member of Parliament, I did some international work and reviews of police accountability. My question is, are there not significant differences in such things as use-of-force protocols between the Canada and U.S. forces? How are these going to be resolved operationally when you say that one is under the command of the other?

If that operation were in Canada, they might not be familiar with the use-of-force protocols here. How would something like that be handled?

[C/Supt Joe Oliver]

That speaks specifically to the use of force. When we first piloted Shiprider, we actually provided a full suite of use-of-force training from the U.S. side and on the Canadian side, and the feedback we received from participants is that they were so much alike it was a waste of our time—what we need to understand is the delta between use of force in Canada and use of force in the U.S.

As a consequence, a course training standard has been developed. It has been tested over a number of pilot projects. It's actually seeking federal accreditation in the U.S. through the FLETC, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. The course is eight days long and is delivered at the Maritime Law Enforcement Academy in Charleston, South Carolina. It is a partnership of the RCMP, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Coast Guard that delivers this training.

In the training, several hours are spent on use of force in order to teach officers what use-of-force requirements would be in Canada, and what is the use of force. In addition to this training—in addition to the theory and the law—they also practise this through a number of scenarios. A good portion of the training is actually getting out with actors, practising these use-of-force models, and getting critiqued on them.

So there is extensive training in the days leading up to a deployment. In fact, it's a requirement of officers, and it's a requirement in the legislation as well as in the framework agreement, that the officers receive special training before they can receive cross-designation.

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

It's interesting, because the RCMP public complaints commission report on the G-20 summit identified significant differences between the RCMP and the Toronto city police on things like kettling. One would think the cooperation there would be much closer than between Canada and the United States.

So if, let's say, an American officer, in an incident that requires split-second decision-making, reverts to the U.S. use-of-force protocol, what authority would any Canadian accountability mechanism have over them?

[C/Supt Joe Oliver]

Well, the framework agreement sets out the accountability requirements. For criminal misconduct in Canada, Canada would retain jurisdiction and investigate it like any other serious incident. For civil liability, Canada and the U.S. have to sit down and decide how that would be managed.

With respect to discipline of the U.S. officers, that would be managed by the contributing agency, so if a U.S. Coast Guard officer is found to have committed a discipline violation, they would be dealt with by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Then there is the public complaints commission that has oversight of this. In addition, the Commissioner of the RCMP has the authority to suspend and revoke the cross-designation of anybody as he sees fit.

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

I have a very short time, so I'm going to turn very quickly to Mr. Kennedy, who I've met before in other capacities.

There were some comments you made earlier about the assignment of responsibilities from the Inspector General to SIRC. Could you just go over that again? What would be needed or what do you see is missing to make that an effective transfer, if that's the right thing to do?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Just a brief response, please.

[Paul Kennedy]

Yes, if you were going to have it being credible, I would have to assume that you'd want to give all the powers that the IG currently has, which include the power to monitor and which I don't see there. Since what they're doing in monitoring is actually going down and looking at operational files, I would assume you'd want to make sure that SIRC had the staff capacity to do that very activity as well. Also, to ensure there's no loss of continuity from the work that has been undertaken in the past 28 years, I would assume you'd want to provide that the files be transferred over to SIRC as well.

So they'd have the knowledge base, and hopefully they'd have some money so they could do it, and then they'd have the skill sets to do it. If you don't do that, you're not consolidating. You're eliminating.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Garrison.

Mr. Van Kesteren, please.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks to all of you for appearing tonight. I want to thank all of you for your public service as well. Each one of you renders a very important part of service to our community and to our country.

Mr. Brannagan, I'm from your neck of the woods, too, in Chatham, Ontario, and I appreciate what you're doing. It's very interesting.

I have two sons who are in the Chatham-Kent Police Service. I'm curious. I've never talked to them about this, but is this something that Chief Poole is involved with as well, or does it stop strictly at the Windsor border?

[Jerome Brannagan]

To the best of my knowledge, Chief Poole has never engaged in conversations like this. I know Chief Poole very well. We do talk frequently. He and I have never had this conversation.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Okay.

I have another son that's an OPP officer. What about the OPP? Are you involved with the OPP?

[Jerome Brannagan]

The OPP are very well versed with the Shiprider program. They're very well versed with maritime issues in and around the Windsor area. They do put boats in the water in and around the Windsor and Chatham areas, Lake Erie, Lake Saint Clair, and all the way up through most of the lakes, Lake Huron as well.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Inevitably, there's going to be a time when someone is going to get off a boat and hightail it inland. At that point would you engage the Chatham-Kent Police Service or the OPP? Would they know about this program? Would they be familiar with it?

[Jerome Brannagan]

I'm sure that they would be familiar with it.

Whether or not they were engaged in it would depend on whether or not the RCMP was floating in those areas, or if they designated other police agencies to participate in the Shiprider program.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Let's shift gears.

Ms. Londerville, I'm curious what your thoughts are. Give me a state of the union address, if you would, on the Canadian housing authority. We just witnessed a total meltdown in the United States with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. How are we looking? Are we solid yet? Are we liquid?

[Prof. Jane Londerville]

We're in very good shape. We never did the silly kinds of lending they did in the United States. Our mortgage arrears rate went up from 0.4 of 1% to 0.5 of 1%, and it's back down to 0.4. It's not an issue here.

There are some housing markets that maybe are a little hot, but overall, the housing finance system is in very good shape.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

It can't just be a hot market. We know that both those institutions made some serious mistakes, but what safeguards do we have in CMHC that would....

[Prof. Jane Londerville]

The way we have it set up is that the government implicitly is backing CMHC. They're backing the private insurers. In order to get that backing, they have to follow the rules that the Minister of Finance sets. Maybe we were looser on our lending criteria in 2007 than we are now, and they've tightened them up from the length of the amortization period to how much you can borrow, all those kinds of things.

The Minister of Finance can set those criteria, and because they don't get their backing if they don't meet those criteria, the insurers go along with it.

It's really quite a nicely designed system.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

You were critical about the fact that there is 100% backing for the government institution, whereas for privates it is 90%, I think. Is that still the case? Has the government listened to some of those concerns?

[Prof. Jane Londerville]

There's nothing in the bill that addresses that.

CMHC is 100% backed just because it's a crown corporation. I think somehow we need to get to a point where everybody has the same backing. It could be 50%. They could spin off the mortgage insurance business out of CMHC and have everybody have a 50% guarantee. I don't care what it is, as long as it's the same for everybody.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

What percentage of the market is shared by the public sector?

[Prof. Jane Londerville]

CMHC has about 70% of the mortgage insurance market.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Is its percentage going down?