Government Operations Committee on Nov. 4th, 2010

[Chief William Blair]

Yes. We all planned for the event together. There was an integrated planning unit. I had officers from the Toronto Police Service. The RCMP had officers from their service. The OPP and other participants were all planning this security, but we all submitted separate budgets to the federal government for our costs and we divided up those costs. I must also advise you that there is a separate agreement between the City of Toronto.... The agreement that we entered into was for emergency services, which included the Toronto Police Service, the Toronto Fire Services, and the Toronto Emergency Medical Services for our related costs for the security. The City of Toronto has a separate agreement with the federal government related to costs incurred by the city other than emergency services.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

You said to my colleague that you did some financial planning of your own operations for the City of Toronto. You also said that you would be prepared to table that document.

Did you spend quite a bit more than projected? Did your spending exceed your planned budget?

[Chief William Blair]

No, Madame. I'm not allowed to go over budget. We submitted a budget to the federal government, and we will work within that budget and we will not exceed it. As a matter of fact, I am reasonably confident--the final numbers have not been tallied yet--of coming in under the budget that was submitted.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have less than one minute left.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

The Parliamentary Budget Officer told us that the relative personnel density was an important cost driver. You also said earlier that 60% of supplementary budgets were used to pay staffing costs.

How many outside officers did you need?

[Chief William Blair]

I'm delighted to tell you that I actually have that number. I think somebody put this together for me last night.

The number of external uniformed police officers who assisted us in Toronto was 2,028. Of course, not all of those officers were working all the time--they worked various shifts--and not all of them were there for the full ten days with us. The total number of sworn uniformed personnel from external services was 2,028; in addition, 18 civilian personnel also came to provide assistance.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

And those officers were acting as reinforcements for city police. How much did that cost? How much would you say those additional staffing requirements cost?

[Chief William Blair]

I can tell you that it represents--I'm going to have to give you an approximation--about 30% of the total personnel costs.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Fine. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Madame Bourgeois.

Chief Blair, I appreciate that we're asking you questions for which you may not be fully prepared. If, on subsequent reflection, you realize there is a difference in that number or any substantial variation to that response, would you please let the committee know?

[Chief William Blair]

My people advise me that they believe the number I've just given is what they've termed about 97% accurate, plus or minus 3%, but when I have more precise numbers, I'll be very pleased to forward them to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Well, in politics, that's 100%.

Go ahead, Mr. Calandra, for eight minutes, please.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for coming, Chief Blair. At the outset, let me say that I represent a riding just north of Toronto, and I know the York Regional Police had a role to play as well. I was extraordinarily proud of the efforts of not only the Toronto police force, the RCMP, and the OPP, but also of York region.

I'm going to ask you the question that I think the opposition has been desperate to ask for weeks, and for some reason they just won't simply come out and ask it. Of course, I know the answer, but on their behalf, I'm going to ask the question: did you deliberately pad the expenses or overestimate what it would cost to secure the event in order to deliberately rip off the taxpayers of Canada?

[Chief William Blair]

No, sir.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Okay. Thank you. I knew that to be the answer, of course, but we've been circling around this issue for weeks--

[Chief William Blair]

As a point of clarification, sir, we didn't deliberately do it, nor did we inadvertently do it; we just didn't do it.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Thank you, Chief.

I know that, of course. As I said, I was extraordinarily proud of the efforts of the Toronto police and of all the police services. You had 35 world leaders representing 95% of the world's population. You've told us there were thousands of delegates. It was a truly remarkable effort. I think you should be very proud, and I know you'll go back, as I did, to York Regional Police. I have told them how proud I am of them.

We're supposed to be monitoring the expenses, and sometimes it's difficult to separate the security aspect, on which you've already testified at the public safety committee, with our line of questioning here. Some have continually suggested that it would have been cheaper to have this event at the CNE, for instance, as opposed to the downtown core. It's hard to separate the two, but from a cost perspective, would it have been cheaper for us to house the delegates in the downtown core and have the conference at the CNE, or is there some other place where we could have held the 10,000 or so delegates?

[Chief William Blair]

I believe the security challenges might have been greater had the summit event actually taken place at the CNE. I say that because we had a responsibility to secure the hotel sites where the delegates and their staff were staying and to secure the site where the meetings were taking place, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Had those meetings taken place over at the CNE, there would have been some different security challenges, but we would have also had to secure the corridor between the hotels and the CNE, which is a fairly extensive area. Securing that corridor would also have had an impact on a lot of people who live along it. Because of the length and vulnerability of that security site, the site would probably have presented significant additional challenges to us. You can't collapse your security at one place and move it as the summit moves; we'd have to have maintained it.

In addition, I think that whether the summit took place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre or at the CNE would not have had an effect on the demonstrations and the violence and vandalism that occurred in Toronto. In all likelihood it was going to occur in Toronto in any event, and it would have occurred in the downtown core in and around the central business district and along Yonge Street, as we saw. I don't think a variation of venue would have impacted on that outcome at all.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

There has also been the suggestion that we should have saved costs. I suppose the opposition is also contending that the military would have been better suited to do this: we could have saved money, and somehow your force and the police forces that participated in this were not capable of policing the city and we could have done this with the military. How do you respond to that type of criticism?

[Chief William Blair]

Well, I have great respect for our military and the role of the military, but the role of the military is not to police the streets of our municipalities. That's the job of the police.

I can also tell you that we have a long and I believe successful history in peacefully managing large demonstrations and events. I think we have a good reputation for managing very large demonstrations peacefully, to facilitate lawful, peaceful protests. I would hearken back to the year before, when we had hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets during the Tamil demonstrations. Although we faced unique challenges with those demonstrations, they were facilitated peacefully, without injury, without damage to property.

Throughout the entire week—it was about a 10-day period—we were able to facilitate lawful, peaceful protests throughout that entire period--very substantial protests. Even on the Saturday of the summit, there were tens of thousands of people out on our streets exercising their free and democratic right, which we respect and support and facilitate, to protest peacefully. We were walking with them; we were working collaboratively with them in order to keep that peaceful.

Unfortunately, a group with a different intent, an intent to engage not in protest but rather criminality and violence on our streets, launched their attack on more vulnerable areas of the city from within that larger group, making it very challenging to continue to facilitate lawful, peaceful protests while simultaneously trying to control a mob.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Yes.

[Chief William Blair]

Unfortunately, I think the actions of that mob compromised our ability to continue to facilitate lawful, peaceful protests and took away the ability of those people who had every right to be there to speak to do so, because it was very difficult, as I say, to continue to facilitate a peaceful protest of tens of thousands when you have several hundred rampaging across the streets.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Yes.

Let me ask you about the planning process.

I guess clearly the answer is yes, because they were not very successful, but did you have enough time? How was the working relationship with the RCMP, the OPP, and the summit officers? Were you able to get the information you needed? Were you able to organize and plan this properly? And how would you describe the openness?

I know the Parliamentary Budget Officer has said that the costing of this has been very open in comparison to other places. How would you categorize it?

[Chief William Blair]

Well, first of all, I would agree that our budgeting processes are far more open and transparent than in other venues that I'm aware of. I can tell you that the collaborative working relationship, the integration that exists between the law enforcement agencies of this country, led in large part by the RCMP, but including the provincial police and the municipal police services, is excellent. We've been working together well for years, and we've planned major events together for years. We just had the experience of all working collaboratively on the Olympics security planning, for instance, so there was a model upon which we could build.

I put some of my best people into the integrated planning team. We worked very collaboratively, and I felt that the concerns of the Toronto police were respected and our viewpoints were valued throughout. We worked very carefully together to ensure that there was an appropriate delineation of responsibility and no overlaps to manage our expenditures.

It was a compressed period of time for planning. I would have liked to have had more time. In hindsight, I'm not sure that more time would have been necessarily impactful. I think we were ready to deal with what took place. The fact is that the security of the summit site was at no time compromised, and from a security standpoint for that major event, which was primarily why we had all gathered, we were very successful in providing security.

We were also aware, as I think one can reasonably anticipate, that there will be demonstrations and perhaps even violence, and we were prepared for that. You can't prevent every crime, but when it began I think we were able to maintain the peace and to protect the people of Toronto. So we did have the resources necessary to do our job.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Calandra.

Mr. Martin.

And just as a point of order, for those colleagues who are at the far end of the table, I don't wish to interrupt you towards the end of your questioning period, so if you could just sort of look my way, I can give you some indication as to what time is left in the period.

Mr. Martin, you have eight minutes, please.