Public Accounts Committee on May 16th, 2019

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

I want to clarify a couple of things.

You talked about the 20,000 members that the RCMP has, but we all understand that these are not 20,000 operational members. It's obvious that we would never obtain carbines for 20,000 members.

The issue, and I think the Auditor General has made it clear, is that the operational people.... It should be understood, I hope, that every operational member and every operational vehicle in the fleet of the RCMP, no matter where you are in Canada, should have access to a carbine.

Is that your goal?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

I would say yes and no.

Obviously in a marked vehicle, yes. For unmarked vehicles, the ratio might not be one per vehicle. In the unmarked, plainclothes world, when they need the carbines, they work as a group, and they go and do what they need to do. They will take the carbines that they need for that. They are not reacting to front-line policing. There are other people who do that.

That's why I say yes and no.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

That's fair, but we know in policing that things are dynamic. When you have a Mayerthorpe and you have a Moncton, you don't have operational guys responding to these by themselves. You have your plainclothes cars responding. You have your guys who aren't necessarily equipped to handle that.

I think it's important to appreciate that those members might be on traffic in a plainclothes car. They may need access to a carbine in the right circumstance.

That's what I want to try to get at, as far as the training and the issuance of carbines are concerned. The goal in the MacNeil report is to have the members of the RCMP who are put in those positions properly trained, properly equipped, and then there's the maintenance and recertification of that equipment.

The other thing I want to ask about is body armour.

Your operational members wear soft body armour as a matter of issue, and it's a requirement in your policy, from what I understand. Does your soft body armour have the plates? When you say that you're now going to go to hard body armour, are you doing plate inserts or—

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

No.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

—are you doing a separate body armour?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

Separate body armour.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Fair enough.

The goal is to have those included in the equipment in the trunks of operational vehicles. Is that the plan?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

Right now, that's where it is. Our plan is to individually assign.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Okay.

On training, you indicated that 13% of your members are not certified in carbines. Is that 13% of your operational members or 13% of your 20,000 members?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

That's 13% of operational members, I believe.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

That's an important distinction. I don't know if the Auditor General found that number.

[D/Commr Brian Brennan]

Are you referring to recertification or certification?

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

I'm referring to certification. I'm trying to remember what the report said. It said that 13% of your members are not certified, I believe. I'm just trying to clarify whether that meant 13% of the 20,000 or 13% of your operational members. I don't know how many that would be.

[Nicholas Swales, Principal, Office of the Auditor General]

Mr. Chairman, if I may, that was a percentage of members who had received initial training on the carbine the first time around.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you for that.

From what I know from my background and from many friends and former colleagues in the RCMP, as well as from travelling across the country on many issues related to my portfolio in public safety, training on issues of handguns, carbines and officer safety tactics is not consistent across the country in the RCMP. You might have a funnel point, or touch point, in the Maritimes, with the ability to have your members recertified when they go there, but it's different from those around Regina or Ottawa.

Is it possible that the RCMP may expand their ability to recertify by involving private gun instructors who are fully qualified, as much or sometimes more than our own members would be? Is that a possibility for getting those recertification numbers up in those areas where we are falling short?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

It's not always linked to the number of instructors. It's location and the availability of ranges. Carbine is very specific in terms of what kind of range we can use, and we're very limited in that area. It's also geography. For instance, detachment members in Nunavut need to come to a central location to recertify. It's not just the fact that it's intense in terms of instructors. It's also intense in terms of moving members to locations where they can recertify.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Commissioner.

Mr. Brennan, did you want to add to that?

[D/Commr Brian Brennan]

Yes.

It's not just about the static training in use of the carbine itself. Using private instructors has barriers in terms of the articulation of RCMP policy and how we work in teams. While private instructors may have the functional capability to fire the weapon, they would not be exposed to all the things around it that are also included in our training.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Brennan.

We'll now move to Mr. Ayoub.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for appearing before the committee today.

I have five minutes, so I can't cover everything in that time. Like my fellow members, I'd like to talk about the serious concerns related to oversight. I'm not sure whether they can be described as management issues or management deficiencies. Given what we've heard so far, I feel there's a lot of justifying going on. We are being told about the challenges tied to geography, training and so forth.

In the past, I've worked with local police commissions in Quebec, and I can tell you that anything involving training, equipment, tools, firearms or bulletproof vests was considered critical. Those things were essential to an officer's work, and no one went out into the field without them. It makes me very uncomfortable to find out that, when the equipment was finally rolled out, it wasn't possible to achieve 100% compliance. A certain percentage of compliance will always be out of reach for a variety of reasons. Do the officers in the field lack any of the required training they are supposed to have? Are they missing any of the equipment they are supposed to have? Reassure me, please, because I find this very troubling.

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

I can assure you that they get the equipment and training they need. When you speak about justification, it's more about the realities that we're dealing with, and it's about when we roll out new equipment. There is the reality of not being able to roll out 20,000 items at one given time or train 20,000 members at a time. It's not really a justification; it's more a reality, and we're looking at how best we can do that in the safest manner.

When we talk about carbines, for example, we knew we could not stop and train 20,000 people in one week, so we had to figure out the best way to do that, within the realities and given the risk assessment.

As far as the existing equipment is concerned, yes, absolutely, we do regular training. They go to regular block training, and they get recertified in their existing equipment. It's just when we roll out new equipment that it becomes a bit more problematic.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Despite what you're saying, the Auditor General noted, in his report, shortcomings in firearms maintenance and officer training. A percentage of officers weren't trained. All kinds of things strike me as worrisome.

Even in Quebec and Ontario, the RCMP had police forces—if I can call them that—that used practically no equipment, that weren't in compliance with the requirements. How come the Auditor General has to be the one to bring these things to light? Internally, do you carry out periodic self-assessments, anything that would allow you to be proactive rather than reactive? Do you have any internal processes in place to detect these kinds of issues, so you don't receive this type of feedback? I don't think I'd be too happy to receive this kind of criticism from the Auditor General. I have the utmost respect for him, but, at the end of the day, these observations could come from anyone.

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

Absolutely. It's not that we don't welcome any criticism of our systems, but everything that's looked at is a snapshot in time. When we say that 13% of firearms have not been maintained, that's a snapshot in time. If a member gets advised that their pistol needs to be maintained, they will send it in. That one is now not maintained, but they're not carrying a pistol that's not maintained. They get a spare that's maintained. Obviously, the number of those that aren't maintained within that year—

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Are you saying that information should appear in the Auditor General's report? You're explaining the situation to me. You're giving me additional information, but was it shared with Mr. Ricard?

Mr. Ricard, were you aware of that procedure and that information?

[Sylvain Ricard]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, yes, it's a

snapshot at one point in time.

Be that as it may, on that day, during those months, in the preceding months, that was what the audit revealed. That is why this is so important when it comes to recertification. We heard about the challenges, the lack of access to firing ranges and shooting practice. It depends on how many sites are in the area and whether the location is an isolated post. Every organization has to deal with these kinds of challenges.