Evidence of meeting #28 for Public Safety and National Security in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was training.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
Is the training model you're going to use for CBSA based on that model?
12:25 p.m.
Deputy Commissioner, Federal Services and Central Region, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
It's basically the same IMIM training, or incident management intervention model, that is used within the RCMP and applied to CBSA.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON
But also filtered down is training the trainers, so that CBSA would have their core group of trainers, who would in turn filter that down to a place like Rigaud, where they may end up using, perhaps, the Sûreté du Québec to help them out.
12:25 p.m.
Deputy Commissioner, Federal Services and Central Region, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
As I've indicated, our main objective over the next two years is to have 300 of these trainers who will ultimately train 4,800 of these border safety officers.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Raymond Chan Liberal Richmond, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Also, thank you very much to the civil servants, and to their ministers, for their being here today. I have a lot of respect for the work you're doing and always believe that you are very objective in providing recommendations to governments and duly implementing programs that are decided by politicians.
Mr. Fracassi, you talked about the 44 walkouts by the unions or the complaints that you investigated. How many of these incidents were related to long response times of armed officers to support them because of which they felt unsafe?
12:25 p.m.
Director General, National Labour Operations, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
Mr. Chair, I don't know the exact numbers related to the specific nature of the complaint. I can say, though, that a number of them raised that issue as a concern in the context of the work refusals. In those particular cases, as I mentioned, when the investigation was conducted to see whether indeed those concerns constituted a danger as it's defined under the code, the HSO, after looking at all the facts and all the information that was available at the time, determined that there were no dangers in those circumstances.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Raymond Chan Liberal Richmond, BC
Right. You mentioned that only two of the refusals were found to be in dangerous situations. Do you remember either of these being related to response time?
12:30 p.m.
Director General, National Labour Operations, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
In those two instances, I believe it was not related to response time. It was related to issues of whether the safety procedures, the notify and release procedures, had been properly followed.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Raymond Chan Liberal Richmond, BC
In other words, you have never found a situation where the refusal to work was based on the response time of armed officers to support the CBSA officers.
12:30 p.m.
Director General, National Labour Operations, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
To the best of my recollection, none of the decisions where there was a finding of danger--the two that we just mentioned--raised that element as a reason of concern with respect to the issue of danger.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Raymond Chan Liberal Richmond, BC
You see, from listening to all the facts and reasons for arming the border guards, it was so clear that response time was one of the biggest reasons. That is why I'm so glad to hear that in none of the refusals to work was it found to be dangerous because of the lengthy response time.
If you look at the cost of implementation, I think arming all the border guards is like killing a fly with a sledgehammer.
To Mr. Jolicoeur, when you provide recommendations or options for the government to choose from in terms of policy in dealing with this refusal to work issue, is there any option other than arming the whole border guard task force?
12:30 p.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
Every government, on basically any option we put to them, can use the “do nothing” option for any situation. You frame the problem as how to deal with situations where people go off work because they are concerned about the risk. We have a labour code that's fairly clear. If people are threatened by a situation, they have the right to basically move away from the work.
The only thing I can offer to any government is to bring the experts in. If there's something we can do to improve the situation, we will. You frame the problem as being a situation where people go off work. As I said earlier, I do believe that arming officers will significantly reduce those situations.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Mr. Chan, your five minutes are actually up.
To the witnesses, we're three minutes over time. Are you able to stay for maybe a couple more minutes to answer questions? Are you all able to do that?
12:30 p.m.
Deputy Commissioner, Federal Services and Central Region, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
My time is your time, Mr. Chair.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Okay, so you're able to stay a few more minutes. Because the meeting started late, we're a little bit over time.
I think we'll have to divide the questioning up so everybody gets a turn.
Mr. MacKenzie, please.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the panel.
Obviously there's a bit of a philosophical difference between my colleagues on that side and this side. Our belief is that we need to secure the border to protect the border guards and protect Canadians. Part of that is the RCMP would know that they don't send their people out unarmed, because you don't know what's coming across the border, and I think that's a fair assessment.
But what we do want to make sure is that we get good value for the cost. Mr. Jolicoeur and Ms. Hébert will know that this is and has been one of my concerns.
Yesterday, just as a matter of interest, I checked the Ontario Police Commission website on the Internet. I found that their basic officer training, which brings their police officers in Ontario to the standard required in the province of Ontario--which is probably similar to everywhere across the country, because there is that concern from the citizens' point of view--is a 12-week course and it costs $7,500 to provide that training. That may be subsidized somewhat, but it's a 12-week course. And we're talking about a three-week course.
I know we've talked about the need to backfill in salaries in that time, but if we took the number that you provided us with here, that looks like about $100,000 per border guard to arm them and train them. Have we looked at other agencies to provide that? As well, would we look at partnering with other agencies, like the Ontario police commission, the police facility in Quebec...and across the country?
12:35 p.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
Thank you.
The cost estimates and projections that we have developed are the best we think we could have developed. They've been tested inside and outside. They've been tested by Treasury Board, who basically had to do the due diligence before they released the money. They're also been tested by private sector experts now.
The number here--the size, the period--always surprises everybody. We're talking about a big organization. When we're talking about training 4,800 people, it's a lot more because of the turnover; it is probably around 7,000 or something. I don't remember the exact number, but it's a large number of people. And in the project we're also talking about transforming an organization. It's not like a police force already established with its procedures, with its firearms and process to manage that with oversight and everything. We have to build from zero, so this explains some of that cost. That $100,000 that you referred to is $10,000 per year per head including re-certification and all the overhead.
Having said that, and I'm confident it's the best number we have right now, we have, certainly for some elements of that package, to basically see what's outside, to open the door, as I indicated earlier, to expressions of interest from any organization that could do better. And if there is any way to reduce any one of those numbers, we'll definitely do that.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
Just in that regard, the RCMP does partner with other outside agencies. Does the Ontario Police College, for instance, provide training facilities for the RCMP?
12:35 p.m.
Deputy Commissioner, Federal Services and Central Region, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
That's a good question. I'll defer this to Deputy George.
February 1st, 2007 / 12:35 p.m.
Barbara George Deputy Commissioner, Human Resources, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
While there will be collaboration among police services for training, we would look to have any efficiencies that we could find in any local environment. But for our own training, the RCMP has our depot and we often have fire ranges that are shared with other agencies such as the military.