Evidence of meeting #25 for Justice and Human Rights in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was police.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
President, Chief Constable, Vancouver City Police Department, Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police
A large part of every police officer's job is a game of crime prevention. It's hard to break it out. A front-line officer will take a call, and then while taking the police report they will speak with the victim about preventative measures. Even with our school liaison officers, a large portion of their work is preventative, but of course they're also involved in investigating crime at the same time.
It's a primary focus of policing across Canada. A major portion of our job is prevention.
Conservative
Director of Operation, East Region, Ontario Provincial Police
I would have to say that everything that we do, from enforcement to lecturing kids in school, is a form of prevention. It would be very, very difficult to quantify.
We have focused specific officers through a school resource program, through our community services officers, through our youth issues unit, and our liaison with the media, but to actually quantify it...I would say 100%.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Chief Blais, do you have any additional comments to that question?
Chief of Police, Halifax Regional Police
It is a little hard to quantify. Mr. Pardy was not wrong when he said that, in a way, preventing crime is 100% of our work. I think it was you who said that prevention is of great value in criminal matters. It is just like a disease, when you can prevent it, you do. In every police force, officers are assigned to prevention in every sense of the word. In terms of numbers, funds are allocated for it, of course; it is at least 10% of our resources. So, whatever the case, it can vary between 10% and 100%.
Conservative
Officer in Charge of Policy and Compliance, Contract and Aboriginal Policing, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
In terms of cost, we can certainly cost programs that are financed to deal with prevention. But when it comes to the person costs, I have to agree with the other speakers: for all of our members, the mindset is to be involved in prevention. What they do in dealing with the community is geared towards prevention. Of course, there are the specific programs that they're involved in and the specific actions they take to head off issues in the communities, but that's all part of what they do. So I would go with 100% also.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Thank you very much.
I want to thank our witnesses for joining us today. It was very informative and we had very good answers to the questions.
As you know, there's a break week and we'll be back in the ridings. Then we'll be back at this probably until mid-June, when we'll hopefully be doing clause by clause back in the House. If you're interested in keeping track of how this bill is going, that is about the timeframe before this committee will deal with it.
Before the committee goes, we do have a budget for witnesses that I need approved. There are a number of witnesses who have been before us, and more to come. It's for about $18,000. My clerk says that's more than we normally need, but he wants to be safe just because we don't know where they're coming from.
Would somebody move that for me?
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Thank you very much.
Thank you for joining us.
This meeting is adjourned.
