Public Safety Committee on Feb. 1st, 2007

[D/Commr Pierre-Yves Bourduas]

Yes, it generally lasts three weeks.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

How does this course compare to training provided to police officers in Canada?

[D/Commr Pierre-Yves Bourduas]

Training provided by the RCMP is spread over a six-month period. Within that period, we obviously cover firearm use and the intervention model process. A police officer's work is highly complex. Police officers face situations and scenarios that are completely different from those facing customs officers. I will invite Mr. Jolicoeur to comment on that.

With the exception of firearm training and the intervention model, the two types of training and the roles are different.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Are the use of force and steps that must be taken to quell violent situations important aspects of police training? That training must undoubtedly last longer than three weeks, as they receive several courses in those areas.

[D/Commr Pierre-Yves Bourduas]

You obviously have considerable experience in the field, Mr. Ménard, given the roles you have played. I agree with you, but I will repeat that the work of police officers is dynamic: they process complaints and deal with highly delicate and volatile situations, whereas customs officers' work is more static, as people approach them. That is why the training is different.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

You start by training the trainers, who go on to train others. Would it not be better for this training to be provided in one of the police academies?

[D/Commr Pierre-Yves Bourduas]

The training, as such, must be delivered in a context where the environment permits this kind of activity, at a firing range, for example.

I would invite Mr. Jolicoeur to comment on the topic, since it touches on both the work of customs officers and firearm training.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

In police training, considerable importance is attached to the way—there is a word for that, but it escapes me—to quell a situation that may become dangerous.

[D/Commr Pierre-Yves Bourduas]

Yes.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Will customs officers receive any of that kind of training, that relies somewhat on psychology?

[D/Commr Pierre-Yves Bourduas]

Again, that goes back to the intervention model where we simply attempt to reduce the threat of confrontation that, ultimately, may lead to confrontation. But the verbal and non-verbal approaches aim to defuse situations that may lead to confrontation. The training is provided in that context.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

There is very little time left, but I am getting to the issue that concerns me.

The RCMP was clearly unable to take on training so many officers in so little time. Therefore, you decided to train the trainers, who will in turn train the others. You also received offers from police training academies in Canada, and I know that the École nationale de police du Québec was prepared to provide this training to customs officers.

Why was the possibility of entrusting this training to professional schools rejected? I apologize, but this way of proceeding leads one to believe that recycled training will be provided. You are training people who will subsequently train others, instead of sending them all to recognized training schools.

[D/Commr Pierre-Yves Bourduas]

There are two aspects to your question.

First of all, Mr. Ménard, we did not decide what approach would be used. As I mentioned earlier, it was the Canada Border Services Agency that requested the assistance of the RCMP. So it was the agency that made that decision.

As for the specific location where the training will be provided, that is ultimately the agency's decision.

If Mr. Jolicoeur wants to comment, I will invite him to do so.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Your time is up, Monsieur Ménard.

Monsieur Jolicoeur, I want to give you the opportunity to reply.

[Alain Jolicoeur]

Thank you, Chair.

Essentially, the arrangement we've come to is the one described by Mr. Bourduas.

Mr. Ménard, I apologize, I switched to English without realizing it.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

That happens to me too.

[Alain Jolicoeur]

That is not to say that in the years to come we will not take advantage of the services and facilities of other police schools in Canada. Our present initiative involves using the expertise of the RCMP to prepare a course specifically for us.

Moreover, to complete Mr. Borduas' answer, the situations that will be used, in the context of the three-week course, are situations that are specific to the environment our customs officers face.

After two years, the vast majority of the training, especially training for our new employees, will be provided over a much longer period of time, at our training institute in Rigaud, which is a national institute.

It is important for us to have a training program that is consistent, that is the same across the country. We did not want to end up with employees working with different procedures and different methods. Therefore it was important to have a single course.

Having said that, once the course is in place, once we have a sufficient number of trainers, we have not excluded the possibility—this is something that we are considering—of obtaining the support of other organizations, in the future, to enable us to train our employees a little more quickly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you. We're going over time on some of these, but you're giving us important information.

We'll go to Mr. Masse for seven minutes, please.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for appearing today.

The first thing I'm going to touch on, Mr. Jolicoeur, is you were talking about the lack of, it seems, this urgency, in my opinion, in getting border guards armed right now.

Representing Windsor, Ontario, where 40% of the trade goes through my corridor, I've seen a lot of different incidents, and not just smuggling. We've had American police forces actually come through onto our plaza and draw their weapons. We've had American police officers try to hide their weapons and discharge them in their own vehicle accidentally. From my knowledge of those incidents, I believe it's the local police that always respond, because they're the quickest there.

In terms of training, what is being done with regard to the facilities? I know you say you aren't going outside house, but in Windsor, for example, we actually have a Department of National Defence facility that has indoor and outdoor firing ranges. It's a joint facility with the Windsor Police Service that has meeting rooms and all kinds of training accommodations for our national defence.

Why not use that as a potential site for training, given that Windsor, Fort Erie, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, and Sarnia are very close to that area? As you noted, there is a high turnover rate in your department, and often officers move to the other professions. Why not use a facility like that to help move things along?

[Alain Jolicoeur]

Mr. Chair, there's no question that when it comes to re-certification, we will not be able to use just two or three facilities. We will be using facilities across the country to allow our officers to be re-certified, and there will be many opportunities similar to the one you describe.

In terms of the initial part of this important initiative, it was important to us to ensure we would have training that is exactly the same everywhere, and to go through the process with the RCMP, because in this organization we don't have that kind of experience. What we have been focusing on as one of our many parallel initiatives to make sure we can rapidly deploy our officers at the border has been obtaining and developing trainers. Many of our officers across the country are interested in obtaining that expertise through the RCMP.

These people have been tested. There is a series of tests related to training and ability. There are psychological tests, etc., because some of our employees would not be able to do that. That process is going on, and rapidly. As was described by my colleague, we will have the first group of trained, armed employees deployed next summer.

After that, and once we are comfortable with our process, we will look inside. We will ask for expressions of interest from other organizations that might be able to help us give exactly the same training that was developed initially. This is what is being done at the moment.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

You are committing that there could be expansion in the future on the two centres you have right now, provided there are the funds that I presume would be required to move this process along?

[Alain Jolicoeur]

There is no question, as I said, that we will use many facilities across the country for the re-certification process that our employees will have to go through every year. Even for the basic training, it's something we are looking at; I am opening the door to see if it's efficient to use other facilities.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Okay.

Until that time, I know that CEUDA had done a freedom of information request and found that of the 119 land border crossings, there wasn't...CBSA information of over 30, I believe, had actually a two-hour response time from other types of jurisdictional supports.

Are you going through an audit right now to find out where the greatest vulnerabilities are in terms of people in isolated locations or areas where there's difficulty getting a quicker police response time? Are you doing an audit with that and trying to improve those in the interim?

[Alain Jolicoeur]

Yes. We have reviewed that. It's also one important criterion in the deployment plan. Pretty soon we'll be in a position to indicate exactly where the first armed officer will be deployed. Quite a few criteria need to be looked at, and that will be one of them.

Barbara, I don't know if you want to add something.

[Barbara Hébert, Vice-President, Operations Branch, Canada Border Services Agency]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, as the president has said, we absolutely are in the course of trying to establish an implementation strategy, and we are looking at a variety of things that will help us prioritize where that rollout should be. Obviously we're guided by the government's direction in looking at high-volume ports, but we're also looking at response times, at risk generally, and at other things like that.