Public Safety Committee on Feb. 6th, 2007

[Michel Juneau-Katsuya]

Yes, this is just the last portion.

With regard to differences in terms of what we did, ModuSpec visited 21 sites, we visited 40. They interviewed 200 people, we interviewed 383 people.

What is also important to mention--and this will be my last comment--is that we're not only talking about border service officers, or what are commonly called customs officers, at the border point. We're also talking about regional intelligence officers and customs investigators. We see these people less, but they are on the road, and they are on the front lines tackling criminals right inland. So these people have a very risky job, because basically they're like plainclothes police officers without the gun.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Okay, thank you.

We're now into the five-minute round.

Ms. Barnes.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for being here. Because I have five minutes, I'd ask you for short answers.

The government has said it's not going to extend the arming to inland areas and airports. That's going to create a situation between those customs officers who are armed and those who are not.

How will you deal with that when you're doing your union negotiations? Are we going to have two levels of customs officers?

In the testimony last week they also talked about taking summer students away from any position and any area that does have armed border guards. Do you know what number of full-time officers—I would presume full-time officers, if they're not using students—would be required at the border points?

I'll give you that to start, and then I have some other quick questions that I'd like to get in, please, about the guns.

[Jean-Pierre Fortin]

Regarding students, we have always said that we have a certain position regarding students--

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Yes, I'm aware of that.

[Jean-Pierre Fortin]

I guess you understand that, as were a student. I also was a student, back in 1982.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Mine was a longer time ago. It wasn't in the last 20 years.

[Jean-Pierre Fortin]

Regarding the student aspect, you are correct; I think CBSA has clearly indicated that they will not be armed.

Our position is the same as that of any law enforcement agency. The RCMP, for example, have a student program, which they call the cadet program. Those officers are not armed and not allowed to perform certain tasks--for example, to drive the car and other stuff.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

I guess what I'm trying to ask you is, what are the numbers? I know that summer vacations happen for border officers. What increased numbers will you need for your borders? Have you done any evaluation?

If you take away the students, you're going to have to pay somebody to do those jobs. That's what I'm after, not the job description.

[Jean-Pierre Fortin]

To be clear, we don't have the exact numbers, but I think they're around 1,500.

Having said that, what we are proposing to CBSA is to hire seasonal officers: fully trained officers who would probably be the next officers to be offered those jobs on the line—full-time jobs, I mean.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

My second part of the question was with respect to classification levels.

[Ron Moran]

Our position is very clear and very unambiguous: we do not support two levels, and will not be going to the table prepared to negotiate two levels.

We've always worked out of one national job description, which means you can be called upon to carry out any of the duties in the job description. The advantage to the employer, and I guess just as importantly to Canadians, is that it allows you a very flexible workforce.

In other words, if you have two levels, and if, God forbid, we had another situation like September 11, you would not be able to deploy the inland officers to the border if you had that requirement.

So there's good reason not to support two levels.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you. I have some other questions.

With respect to the arming of the guards at the border, I know that police have protocols, and other people with guns have protocols. Obviously those guns...well, maybe not so obviously.

What happens to the guns at the end of the shift? Do they go home with the officer? Are protocols put in place for the safety of the firearm, not only for the work area but also in the non-work area?

[Jean-Pierre Fortin]

Well, right now, for CBSA we don't know. They're supposed to share these policies with us next week, on February 12, so we will be able to find out more then about what CBSA has in mind regarding the question you're asking.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

I'm basically asking, do these guards take the guns home with them? I think I have some answer, maybe, from—

[Ron Moran]

The indication we're getting from CBSA is that they don't. Part of the cost of the $781 million is the cost of the lockup and all of the procedures that go with it, as well as overtime and travel costs. A lot of people work from one office and are deployed to some of the other small offices. If they're called in for overtime, for example, they have to report to the bigger office to be deployed. There are a lot of costs involved in not letting officers go home with their sidearms, as is the case with all other law enforcement.

But I believe--this is my educated guess from the indications I'm getting at my level--that CBSA is contemplating lockup, which is increasing, by a large margin, the costs involved.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

So we're going to have armouries at our border crossings now?

[Ron Moran]

Well, you have to have lockup and lockers. Some of those offices close in the middle of the night; you don't want them broken into, and then the firearms—

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

He wanted to answer the question.

[Michel Juneau-Katsuya]

You're right; police departments have various policies about this, but in the vast majority of police departments in Canada--the extreme vast majority--police officers keep their guns. I would strongly recommend that customs officers should keep their guns and go home and be responsible for them.

One of the reasons is that they don't leave their uniforms. We had several testimonies during our research from customs officers where.... For instance, I vividly remember this young female customs officer who works at Dorval saying that during her shift, she seized some stuff from passengers coming off. She finished her shift at 3 o'clock in the morning and went to her car in the middle of the parking lot. She was in uniform, on her way home, and was subject to aggression twice--not once, but twice--by different individuals. They recognized her, and there was nobody there; she was still in uniform, and they knew she was the one who had seized their stuff.

So if they are trained, they should keep their guns. As well, as Mr. Moran was saying, sometimes they are deployed to other places. It would be an extra charge to the government and not efficient to keep those guns on site rather than to leave the guns with the officers, just as we do with all the police officers in Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you.

Ms. Mourani.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for joining us. I have a number of questions about peace officers. This is a fairly broad occupation. For instance, parole officers and corrections officers are also considered to be peace officers. Yet, they do not carry weapons, except when posted in security towers in certain maximum security facilities where a police squad is required or when responding to a riot. Otherwise, they are not armed.

I worked as a parole officer for nearly seven years, both in the community and in penitentiaries. The main reason given for not arming these officers was that weapons increased the risk of violence. Criminologists have long been debating the pros and cons of arming peace officers.

Consider, for example, the case of an unarmed border guard. As a general rule, in a dangerous situation, it's better for that guard to back off because removing himself from danger's path minimizes his risk of being attacked. In the case of an unlawful home entry, the first thing people are told is not to resist to avoid being harmed. People are told that even if they have a hunting rifle, they shouldn't use it because they face a greater risk of being attacked when they are armed. What are your views on the subject?

Also,we met last week with the Director of the Canada Border Services Agency. A woman was also present, but unfortunately, I've forgotten her name. I asked her how many agency employees had been killed or seriously injured and she replied that in fifteen years, no deaths or injuries had been reported.

[Michel Juneau-Katsuya]

We can supply you with the names of people who have been killed, of the officer who lost his life, of people who were either hospitalized, required stitches or were treated for various problems. These are real cases involving real people.

Getting back to what you said, with all due respect, there may be some confusion here. You're mixing apples and oranges. You're talking about parole officers and corrections officers. Let me just say two things. First, an ex-inmate certainly has no interest in assaulting the person responsible for keeping him out of jail or who has the authority to send him back to jail. Therefore, parole officers face a substantially lower risk at the outset because the ex-inmate wants to be on good terms with his parole officer.

In the case of those officers working in an institutional setting, weapons are close by and there are armed guards on site. If something were to happen, the inmates know full well that armed guards will appear at the scene very quickly.

Such is not the case at the border. There is no police or RCMP presence on site and when they are called in to provide back up, their arrival on the scene is calculated in hours, rather than in minutes.

It's important to understand that border entry posts are often remotely situated. Police officers patrol large areas and often find themselves as far away as they possibly can be from the border post. Occasionally, it may take them hours to arrive at the scene. For example, at the Lacolle border post in Quebec, the RCMP officer called upon to respond will be dispatched from Montreal and it could take quite some time for him to arrive on the scene.

As for senior management's policy of having border officers back off, situations are never black or white. For example, an officer may ask an individual to submit to a secondary inspection of his vehicle and upon inspecting the vehicle, the officer may discover a loaded weapon, drugs or some such thing.

It is a little known fact that last year, if memory serves me well, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of drugs were seized at the border. Recently, a vehicle carrying eight million dollars worth of drugs was intercepted in Canada. Obviously, when a vehicle carrying $8 million worth of cocaine is intercepted, some people may want to take advantage of the fact that border guards are not armed.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

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