Evidence of meeting #138 for Public Accounts in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was carbines.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Sylvain Ricard  Interim Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Brenda Lucki  Commissioner, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Commissioner Brian Brennan  Deputy Commissioner, Contract and Indigenous Policing, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Dennis Watters  Chief Financial and Administrative Officer, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Nicholas Swales  Principal, Office of the Auditor General

9:05 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson

You wanted it specific to B.C. I apologize.

We'll now move to Mr. Davidson.

9:05 a.m.

Conservative

Scot Davidson Conservative York—Simcoe, ON

Good morning. I want to echo my colleagues' comments and thank the RCMP for all the good work the officers do.

I'm going to roll back to the Moncton shooting. I think what's disconcerting to some Canadians is that, in a report on that, it was determined that the RCMP had failed to provide adequate equipment and training to the Mounties who responded to the Moncton shootings in 2014. There was a judge, Leslie Jackson, who actually applied a $550,000 penalty to the RCMP, which was allocated to various community initiatives, educational trust funds and the children of the Mounties who were killed. According to Judge Jackson, the sentence should tell future leadership of the RCMP that the duty to ensure member safety should be given the highest priority.

Based on the findings of the Auditor General's report being discussed today, do you believe that the leadership of the RCMP has adequately ensured the safety of RCMP members since that sentence was applied? Has the leadership given this the highest priority? We're looking back at 2014, and now we're in 2019, still dealing with this problem. I recognize you have started a couple of committees. Who exactly do those committees report to?

9:05 a.m.

Commr Brenda Lucki

First off, safety is of the highest priority for the leadership of the RCMP. We've done many initiatives in the tactical training area with immediate action rapid deployment training. Every member has to recertify on all their intervention options, and we have added to that training. This is not training for new members; this is for members in the field. When they go to recertify on their firearms, they also get training on immediate action rapid deployment. That was added to their annual recertification. That was one portion.

We will also, in the coming years, be looking at various soft and hard techniques and adding them to our recertification annually. We also have added a critical incident response. What happened was that we saw the gap. In Moncton or in a big area like Surrey, it doesn't show itself, but in smaller areas, where a bunch of members come to a scene before an emergency response team or a trained critical incident responder comes on the scene, we needed to require the detachment commanders and leadership to have that training so they could deploy members safely, having an eye on the situation and creating parameters. We created that training so that each supervisor would have the training needed to deal with a critical incident before specialized teams arrive on the scene. That's been rolled out. I'm trying to think of some of the other training we had....

9:10 a.m.

Conservative

Scot Davidson Conservative York—Simcoe, ON

On the new committees that you've created, do they report directly to the leadership?

9:10 a.m.

Commr Brenda Lucki

They would report to deputy commissioner Brian Brennan as part of community and indigenous policing. Brian is in charge of the critical incident program, as well as reviewing any type of equipment, looking at new equipment and testing. For example, we're in the midst of evergreening our side arm. The deputy commissioner of indigenous and contract policing is the person who would start that review.

9:10 a.m.

Conservative

Scot Davidson Conservative York—Simcoe, ON

In paragraph 5.23 the Auditor General's report indicates discrepancies between the RCMP's data and the number of carbines located in various detachments across the country. We have a big country and a great country, but is it possible that carbines have gone missing due to these discrepancies? Approximately how many RCMP firearms go missing every year?

9:10 a.m.

Commr Brenda Lucki

I haven't received any reports of missing carbines. A lot of the side arms, for example, will go into our armour shop and they'll be accounted for there. They may not be accounted for outside of that environment. I haven't received any reports of a—

9:10 a.m.

Conservative

Scot Davidson Conservative York—Simcoe, ON

I'm just saying it says that there are data discrepancies. If we don't have good data, if we don't know how many guns we have, how do we know if any have or haven't gone missing? Is the data in check now, so we can confirm all the serial numbers and that all the carbines are accounted for? Do we have that data?

9:10 a.m.

Deputy Commissioner Brian Brennan Deputy Commissioner, Contract and Indigenous Policing, Royal Canadian Mounted Police

In the early stages of the rollout, we rolled it out from divisions. Divisions rolled it out to districts, and then to detachments. At that time, we didn't have the most robust system to track those movements.

As pointed out in the OAG report, we have improved the system. We now have an interactive, web-based model by which we track them right down to the detachment level. Now we can go, almost in live time, right to the detachment, determine how many they have, the exact serial numbers, and how many people in that detachment are trained. We've moved the yardsticks quite a bit in that regard.

9:10 a.m.

Conservative

Scot Davidson Conservative York—Simcoe, ON

Okay, so are you a hundred per cent confident that no carbines have gone missing and every one is accounted for?

9:10 a.m.

D/Commr Brian Brennan

Absolutely.

9:10 a.m.

Conservative

Scot Davidson Conservative York—Simcoe, ON

Okay.

9:10 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson

Make it quick.

9:10 a.m.

Conservative

Scot Davidson Conservative York—Simcoe, ON

It's encouraging that the RCMP has accepted all the Auditor General's recommendations and there's a plan to improve the situation. Does the RCMP recognize that the findings of this audit undermine any public confidence in our national police force, especially when there is a threat to public safety, for example, an active shooter situation?

When members of the general public read this, they get a little disconcerted.

9:15 a.m.

Commr Brenda Lucki

First, everything that gets reviewed always gets improved. If we were to say that something was perfect, then I think our organization would be naive. Even today, if we were to re-review.... Given the evolution of policing and how the dynamics change so often, we always have to be nimble and dynamic to change with that environment. That's why we welcome these reviews. We work very closely with the OAG when we're looking at things to review to make our organization better.

9:15 a.m.

Conservative

Scot Davidson Conservative York—Simcoe, ON

Thank you.

9:15 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson

Thank you, Mr. Davidson.

We'll now move to Ms. Yip, please.

9:15 a.m.

Liberal

Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON

Thank you for coming.

In your detailed action plan, on page 1, it mentions static maps from the national headquarters to monitor carbine distribution. What are static maps? How do they relate to the monitoring of the carbine distribution and training?

9:15 a.m.

D/Commr Brian Brennan

The static maps are a web-based mapping system that tracks the carbines as they get deployed to detachments. The commanding officer of the division or the people working for that particular commanding officer can bring up the detachment, and the map will show that they have so many carbines and so many trained members. Then they're able to use that in determining more deployment of carbines and to identify which members need that training in those particular detachments.

Because of the nature of mobility within the RCMP, it's important that we have eyes on the training to ensure that we keep a robust complement of members trained with access to those particular weapons.

9:15 a.m.

Liberal

Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON

If it's interactive, that means it's being updated regularly and that any time another detachment wants to see it or needs to have access to additional carbines, it can see it, right?

9:15 a.m.

D/Commr Brian Brennan

That's correct.

9:15 a.m.

Liberal

Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON

Okay. That's great.

In your opening remarks, you mentioned that there's an average of 20 to 25 newly trained members who are deployed across the country every week. I think that's great. Is there enough body armour and carbines in reserve for these new members, as well as spares?

9:15 a.m.

Commr Brenda Lucki

Our eventual goal is to ensure that they are issued to—assigned, we say—each member. That's our goal. Right now, we ensure that they're in the vehicles so that they have access to that equipment when they go out on calls. Unfortunately, we have a lot of attrition, too, so it sort of balances out.

9:15 a.m.

Liberal

Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON

The Auditor General's report said that in 2013 there would be a need for about 3,000 total rifles, and the force has now bought over 6,000 carbines. What has caused this number to increase so dramatically?

May 16th, 2019 / 9:15 a.m.

Commr Brenda Lucki

We have three long guns: shot guns, rifles and carbines. We're actually doing a study on whether we need all three. Each one serves a different purpose, depending on the type of policing and the rural environments. Do we have enough of each? We are studying that, but for the time being, some divisions have opted to not recertify rifles, for example, and to keep shot guns. It depends on the dynamics of the division, and we've given that decision to the individual commanding officers.

I sometimes think that we have so much equipment. We have to be sure that members can make great decisions with the equipment they have, so we want to make sure that they have the right equipment. That study will be done....

Brian, maybe you can expand on the three different....