Government Operations Committee on Nov. 4th, 2010

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Martin, I had suggested earlier that you look my way.

Unfortunately, Chief, that question will have to go unanswered.

Mr. Regan.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Chief, for coming this morning.

I want to talk mostly about the cost, but let me first ask you, following up on some of the questions that Mr. Martin asked, were any protesters given medical attention?

[Chief William Blair]

Yes.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

For what sorts of things?

[Chief William Blair]

Actually, at our prison processing centre we had medical personnel on site who were immediately available upon entering, if it was necessary. For example, there were medical personnel for decontamination if pepper spray or other forms of tear gas had been used, and to deal with any injuries that anyone might have experienced. In addition to that—

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

It follows up on the question about what Mr. Martin said. He used the phrase “busting heads”, and when I read the story about officers removing their name tags, it does cause me discomfort. I'm sure it would cause you discomfort, because for whatever reason they may have removed them, the concern may be that it creates an impression of what their intent might have been going into those events, in relation to the protesters. That is a concern. I'm asking in that regard: what kinds of injuries were sustained by protesters?

[Chief William Blair]

There were, I understand, five instances where protesters received injury. All of those matters were referred to the Special Investigations Unit, which is an independent investigative body in Ontario. They are independent of the police, and those matters are being investigated by them. By law, we cooperate and provide whatever assistance the Special Investigations Unit needs. I think their investigations are very important. There were five instances.

I also want to advise you that with our public order unit, we have embedded within those public order units emergency medical services personnel who are available to render any assistance required to both the police who were on the line having things thrown at them or to any of the protesters who might be injured as well.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Could you comment about the concern I expressed about the impression that could create?

[Chief William Blair]

I'm well aware of it.

We have a rule in the Toronto Police Service; I implemented that rule. It was in response to a policy of my police services board. The rule requires that police officers wear name tags identifying them.

I'll show you the name tag, if you like. It's Velcro. It affixes onto a Velcro strip on their uniforms. It's fairly visible from a distance. It's their first initial and last name.

We've had this policy in our service for the past three years. There is overwhelming compliance with it, and I think there is real value when we're interacting with the public. I think it gives the public confidence. They know who the officer is. They can see there is a certain accountability that comes with that. So it is an important rule in our service.

I take it very seriously when anybody breaks the rules. I am responsible for the discipline and the conduct of all of my officers.

We received a number of public complaints--13 of them, in fact--that police officers were not wearing their identification. Rather than simply investigating those complaints...we investigated, but we also looked further. We reviewed a number of videotapes that were available to us--and by the way, there was a series of videotapes that we reviewed--and we identified a number of officers who were not wearing their name tags.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you, Chief.

I'm sorry for cutting you short; I only have five minutes. I have lots of questions, and now I have two minutes.

[Chief William Blair]

I have no short answers, sorry.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

You said you had a budget for this. It was assigned by the Government of Canada, I think, for $124.8 million: 60% was for personnel and 40% was for equipment and infrastructure services. I don't know how much of that was radios.

That 40% for equipment and infrastructure services amounted to $50 million. Now, this raises the question in my mind of what that was. Obviously part of that was communications.

Clearly, your officers have radios. Were you unable to use any of the radios you had? Did you have to buy a ton of radios for the 2,000 officers who came from other services? Was that a big part of the cost? Where did that $50 million--

[Chief William Blair]

We actually didn't buy the radios. I had some capital money for a radio infrastructure project. I moved it forward and spent some of my own money to acquire the radios. We leased the rest because we didn't have the money to buy them; we leased them for the period of time.

With regard to our total costs, we also had some infrastructure we had to put in. We had some additional towers, to handle that capacity of radio communications in the city and to facilitate all the different equipment coming in. Our total expenditure for radio infrastructure, including the purchase and leasing of hand-held radios, was approximately $15 million.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

What was your cost for operating the detention centres--leasing, prisoner processing, etc.? What were all the operations cost?

[Chief William Blair]

Bear with me while I find that out.

I don't readily see the number here. I know there was a facility on Eastern Avenue that we leased. A substantial portion of that facility was used as our prisoner processing centre, but we used it for other things as well. We used it as a marshalling area for our personnel, and for the storage of vehicles and other equipment.

The leasing costs were primarily for the prisoner processing centre. We had to retrofit that in a relatively short period of time. We leased the property as close to the event as possible to minimize our costs, and then we retrofitted it according to provincial standards that had been established for the housing of prisoners in temporary detention.

I'll get you the costs. I don't have the precise number.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Vincent, you have five minutes.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

These figures are absolutely astounding. You talked about 15 million dollars for radio infrastructure and towers that you needed for 10 days. You also leased radio equipment.

We are talking about an overall budget of 124 million dollars, including 15 million dollars for radio equipment. Planning operations may have cost you 10 million dollars. But if we calculate what is left after removing that, it means that 10 million dollars was spent every day for 10 days. Ten million dollars was spent every single day. Can you please explain how it is possible to spend 10 million dollars a day?

[Chief William Blair]

As I've indicated, we had approximately 2,000 personnel who came from out of town. They had to be housed, so part of our expenditure was for hotels and meals for those individuals. We had the personnel costs of their salaries.

By the way, all of that will be documented line by line, right down to the hour. We will be able to provide to the government and to the public a complete articulation of every hour that was being paid for.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Then please explain why you needed 2 000 additional personnel? Why did the Toronto Police Service require an extra 2 000 officers, when RCMP, OPP and CSIS personnel were already on site? How is it that the Toronto Police Force required an additional 2 000 officers when all those other police forces were already there in Toronto?

[Chief William Blair]

We had a reasonable apprehension, I think. We looked at other G-20 events that had taken place in other areas of the world, at other such large public gatherings where there were security challenges, and the likelihood of public demonstration and even violence was, I think, reasonably anticipated, given the history of such events. So we planned to provide a secure environment to try to police those things. It was determined by the planning team that these were the personnel and the equipment that were required to do that.

I can tell you that after the events of Saturday, when quite a violent clash occurred--a number of our cars were burned, many of our windows were broken--there was a great deal of intelligence available to us. We were monitoring the social media sites and the communications. We had people who were working and providing us with information on the planning of the various anarchist groups that were coming to Toronto, and were from Toronto, that were planning to engage in criminal behaviour.

As a matter of fact, on Saturday night they were widely advertising that they were going to rampage through the city of Toronto. They called it “Saturday Night Fever”. So we had a reasonable apprehension that we needed help.

Fortunately, because the G-8 had successfully concluded in Huntsville, the OPP sent a great deal of its resources down to Toronto to help us, to have additional police officers on the street. We wanted to ensure we had enough people there to resolve things as safely and as effectively as we could. Frankly, having enough police officers there to do that was, in my opinion, necessary.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Personally, I think there were far too many police officers there compared to the number of people who gathered to demonstrate. There were more police officers than there were demonstrators, in my opinion. Furthermore, you set up a “temporary”, as you put it, centre in a building that you leased. It was a film studio that you leased and then retrofitted, but you don't know how much that cost? You don't have that information.

I think it's important to do that planning. How often was the planning centre used and how was it set up? Was it set up to ensure it would be safe for the prisoners or was it a facility where you would just put 40 people into the same cell, altogether, lying down on the floor, with only one bathroom? Was that how it was set up or did you make space for offices for your staff and just leave a small amount of room for the prisoners — just a small cage you could pile them into and that's it?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Chief Blair, you have less than 30 seconds.

[Chief William Blair]

Yes. By the way, I found the numbers for the precise cost. The leasing of the facility was $1.7 million. The renovations, to put in various detention facilities, etc., was $1.1 million. Additional equipment, primarily cameras and video systems, were set up. Every place within that centre was videotaped in anticipation of the complaints we would receive. The cost of that was approximately $0.7 million, for a total of $3.5 million for the prisoner processing centre.

It was constructed according to provincial standards for the temporary housing of prisoners. It was a secure facility. There was a facility for access to legal aid, for prisoners to make phone calls to their lawyers or whoever. There were also investigative facilities there.

These were not opulent facilities. They are intended to temporarily house persons who are detained for various reasons during the summit. Then if they were going to be retained in custody beyond 24 hours, they were transported from that facility to other provincial institutions for transport to court.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Chief Blair. Thank you, Mr. Vincent.

Mr. Holder.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Chief Blair. I sincerely appreciate your attending, as I know all of us do.

Let me declare a bias, if I might. I believe your municipal force and all the forces across Canada provided security for the leaders, for all our international visitors. For all the work you've all done, I think you all deserve our thanks and our respect for the great result.

It's interesting. I really believe we would have heard the outcries, as one could never have imagined, if there had been serious injuries or worse at the G-8 and G-20 conferences. In terms of G-8 and G-20 summits in the past, which have been overshadowed by incredibly dramatic and violent protests, I'd like to get your opinion. Do you think the security measures that you and the other forces put in place prevented such an outcome?