Public Accounts Committee on May 2nd, 2007

[Sheila Fraser]

Unfortunately, I don't have any detailed information about any such improvements. I know that the RCMP has been reorganizing its laboratory services since 2000 in the hope that the backlogs would be reduced. However, the audit tests indicated that the opposite is true, that there has been an increase in the backlog, especially for DNA analyses.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Is that a structural problem? Does the structure need to be reworked? Is more money needed?

[Sheila Fraser]

We observe in the report that the amount of additional funding for the laboratory was disproportionate to the increase in the number of cases. Before jumping to the conclusion that it is simply a question of money, we believe that the RCMP needs to carry out an analysis of its processes, more or less along the lines of an engineering report, to determine where the delays are, what causes these problems, and if there's a way of carrying out the analyses more quickly. We also encourage the RCMP to compare itself to other laboratories which have a faster turnaround than the RCMP.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

During your presentation, you referred to—and I hope I'm not mistaken here—DNA analyses, and not quality. I'd really like to know what that means. Can that lead to misdiagnosis or a wrong decision being made, for example?

[Sheila Fraser]

We studied the quality analysis management system and we observed that there were a number of issues the system failed to detect. Let's take a specific example, the robot-operated auto-extraction process. Several laboratory scientists detected problems. These issues were never detected or included in the quality management system. It would be expected that should a concern be raised, a study would be done to determine whether there is indeed a problem, how it should be addressed, and this should be done in a structured manner. It took a long time before they discovered there was a problem with the automated system. On a number of occasions, the automated system failed to detect DNA while the manual extraction system was successful in doing so. That's why we said the system looked good on paper, but that in practice, it didn't work well.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

You said that the delays in getting forensic results slow down police investigations and allow criminals to remain on the street, thus giving them an opportunity to commit more crimes.

Is this a theoretical conclusion, or were there some concrete cases of this?

[Sheila Fraser]

We did not mention any concrete cases, but I think we can assume that if it takes three months to get a DNA analysis, the police investigations will be slowed down.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Very well.

You mention that 1% of all the requests are considered urgent. Who considers which requests are urgent and which are not?

[Sheila Fraser]

The RCMP does that, in consultation with the other police forces. As mentioned in the report, these are mainly cases where there is a suspicion of terrorism or crimes that affect the community in general —such as serial crimes—which are considered urgent cases. They are processed in less than 15 days.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

What about the other cases?

[Sheila Fraser]

We noted in the report that even though the RCMP has set a target of 30 days, the current average is 114 days.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

The average target of 30 days is therefore almost never met.

[Sheila Fraser]

That happens rarely. Of course, it may be met sometimes, but in most cases, it is not.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

I assume that the RCMP offers its services to other provinces. Some provinces have their own system, do they not?

[Sheila Fraser]

Quebec, Ontario and Alberta have their own laboratories.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

So the RCMP offers its services to the other provinces.

[Sheila Fraser]

Indeed, it provides its services to all the other provinces.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

How does the RCMP system compare with that of the other three provinces?

[Sheila Fraser]

Although these data have not been audited, table 7.6 of the report gives a comparison with Ontario and Quebec and with a few labs in the U.S., England and Sweden. We see that a number of labs have a better performance than the RCMP labs.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Let me turn now to human resources management. You said that the department has no strategic human resources plan, does not really have an overview of the employees, skills and experience it needs in the future and does not have the basic information required to plan and manage its objectives. It does not even know exactly how many positions are to be filled.

Is there anything it does know or do well?

[Sheila Fraser]

Well, we did find that it lacked a great deal of basic information.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

It is more than that, Ms. Fraser, this is a very critical report. It looks like it is pretty much a free-for-all in terms of human resources in this department, if I may say so.

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes, I agree. There really is no planning. There is a lack of basic information. Even with respect to the number of vacant positions, we disagree with them about the percentage of such positions. When we looked at the database, we saw that 35% of the positions were vacant, but they had told us that the figure was 20%.

We also focused on the employees. They recruited people from outside offices, and we saw that they were assigned to the wrong jobs and that the information was inaccurate. It is really quite urgent to get accurate information about the current employees, but also to do some strategic planning, given the number of people who are expected to retire. At least 20% of the positions are vacant at the moment, and there are more employees leaving than arriving. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade must deal with this issue immediately.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Rodriguez.

You have seven minutes, Mr. Laforest.