Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank the committee members for their invitation.
My name is Pierre-Paul Pichette and I have been working for the City of Montreal Police Services for almost 33 years. I have been the Director General of the Criminal Intelligence Service of Quebec since the 15th of September, 2008.
The SRCQ's mandate is to promote the secure sharing of intelligence between the stakeholders involved and to ensure the gathering of information from public organizations. It is primarily intended to coordinate criminal intelligence between Quebec partners.
The SRCQ team is made up of civilian personnel, police officials from various police forces and interns who come from various areas of study such as criminology, communications, and who participate in the drafting of analyses.
I am also responsible for the coordination of meetings between the different committees in the service in order to follow the development of its mandate and the unfolding of its three-year plan. The goal of creating an independent and transparent organization is to promote the exchange, the sharing, the accessibility and the development of intelligence for the various police services.
The SRCQ was created by an order in council of the Quebec government on February 14, 2001, and its budget comes primarily from Quebec with the exception for the moment of one person who is seconded to us by the RCMP. I would just like to specify, Mr. Chairman, that the SRCQ is part of the Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada, the CISC. However, it truly is independent because we report to the Quebec government.
As for our three-year plan, the activities and initiatives of the SRCQ fall into four main areas. The first is to ensure the integration and pooling of all criminal intelligence gathered and held by the police forces of Quebec, and to put this intelligence at their disposal securely. The second is to promote the exchange of criminal intelligence between police forces and information between public organizations and the gathering of data from internal and external agencies in order to fight against criminality and organized crime. The third is to ensure best practices in criminal intelligence as well as their development through the establishment of standards and working methods and by promoting training. The fourth is the production of strategic analyses to support the decision-making in the fight against organized crime.
In Quebec, recognizing the impact that organized crime has on Quebec society as well as the constraints imposed on public agencies, criminal intelligence officials from the main police organizations agreed in 2003 to exchange information on the nine main branches of organized crime active in Quebec. This distribution of responsibilities allowed each organization to concentrate on three of the major branches, allowing for the best value for money in terms of the investment of resources while ensuring full access to information held by each of the services concerned.
The subsequent exchanges of provincial status reports allowed us to follow the evolution of these nine branches, thereby contributing to a comprehensive overview of the common trends. The ensuing reports underwent impact analyses and were the subject of discussions between the parties after which it was agreed that certain adjustments would be made and a new version of the protocol was extended in 2008.
The protocol also provides for the participation of all Quebec police services. This contribution is a result of the obvious fact that organized crime activities are felt in all communities and that vigilance and awareness are the best weapons with which to fight against this phenomenon.
In this way, taking into account the obligations set out in the Police Act concerning criminal analysis and contributions to intelligence, the Quebec police forces at every level are invited to participate in the exchange process in order to take advantage of the common documents generated by their contribution.
In short, the implementation of the protocol resulted in several significant advantages. For example, it allows us to optimize the gathering and distribution of intelligence among the participants; to maximize the use of human, material and financial resources of the police organizations involved; to contribute to the awareness of the new modus operandi and the new kinds of crime associated with the branches of organized crime. I must point out that the advantages of this strategic monitoring are however strictly limited to the nine targeted branches. It also allows for a sharing of criminal intelligence on an on-going basis, and for us to improve trust between stakeholders.
We should point out that no provision of the protocol should be interpreted as limiting the ability of the services involved to investigate any aspect of criminal behaviour, including the branches that other services are responsible for. This is a protocol on the exchange of intelligence.
The objectives of the Minerva protocol are: to improve common knowledge of the identified organized crime branches in order to support decision-making and to ensure the cohesion of police strategies; to improve cooperation between intelligence professionals by promoting targeted exchanges on strategic themes; to improve the methodology of intelligence exchanges by establishing a framework; and to share the responsibilities of the stakeholders under the current protocol and define the limits of their responsibilities.
In conclusion, the organized crime branches were divided according to the following chart. The Sûreté du Québec assumes provincial responsibility for what we call organized crime—motorcycle gangs from Quebec and from Eastern Europe. The City of Montreal Police Services, for its part, assumes provincial responsibility for all organized crime involving "Asian", street gangs, and Middle and Near East gangs, whereas the RCMP assumes strategic monitoring for aboriginal, Italian and Latino-American organized crime.
Mr. Chairman, I have finished my presentation and I am now available to answer any questions the committee members may have.