Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
It is an honour to be able to assist and to present today.
Before I begin, I would like to point out that I am here to speak mainly about the methodology and about the study we conducted. I was getting ready to do just that a few moments ago, but just to give you an idea of who I am and where I'm coming from, I will summarize my career very briefly.
I have been working in the field of law enforcement for over 29 years. I began my career in the late 1970s with the RCMP, and subsequently continued working for CSIS, finally retiring after 21 years with this service. Therefore, I have been working in the field of law enforcement since the start of my professional career and I have long worked with customs officers in particular.
I'd like to address the issue of the methodology we've used and the way we went about it. I know that last week Mr. Cullen had certain concerns and raised certain doubts about the objectivity of the study, so I'd like to shed a little bit more light on our methodology.
We were brought in by CEUDA after CEUDA had requested from three different firms the submission of a proposal to do this kind of study. So we were not hand-picked, necessarily, by CEUDA; we went through a certain selection process. We demonstrated that we had a fairly good knowledge of the work, what we needed to do and what we were to accomplish.
It was very clear and very important, and it was stated right at the beginning to the CEUDA members and the executive committee that we were not going to necessarily seek the answer that somebody might suggest, we were going to seek exactly what the findings and the facts led us to.
To that effect, CEUDA answered right away, an answer that was also presented to Minister McLellan at that time, that whatever conclusions Northgate would come to, CEUDA would follow them and they would put to rest, if need be, the issue for good. That was stated to the minister and to Monsieur Jolicoeur as well at that time.
So how did we go about our methodology? First and above all, we were not going to try to demonstrate that there was a need for the border officers to be armed. What we were going to demonstrate, first and above all, was the type of risk and danger they are facing.
After identifying the risks and dangers that border services officers face, we examined various possible ways of resolving safety issues for the men and women who work as our borders. We considered different solutions, ranging from providing an armed police presence to possibly arming customs officers. This led us to the conclusion that it was necessary and imperative that custom officers be armed.
I have often used the following analogy. I worked as a police officer myself. Officers who work in downtown Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal may never have to confront an arms dealer, a drug trafficker, a mule for an organized crime ring, a terrorist or some other criminal.
What needs to be understood is that the border point is like a funnel: everybody has to go through. What police officers may never encounter in their entire careers, border officers are likely to meet at least once a year, if not once a month--sometimes more, depending on how busy the point is. The risk faced by those people is superior to the risk faced by police officers, and yet we do arm police officers.
I want to stress again that we are not members of CEUDA. We have never been customs officers. We have never been members of that union. We were really seeking to try to objectively investigate their situation.
We have conducted the study fairly...more extensive than the ModuSpec report. We have found also that we were not the only ones who actually recommended that border officers should be armed. We actually identified six reports that were written by different entities. Two reports came from CBSA itself. One report came from the Auditor General. Two reports came from the Senate committee. I'll dare to say that the first, non-edited, report from ModuSpec even recommended that border officers should be armed.
Everybody had various perspectives or degrees of understanding, but I'd like to put before you that I'll dare to say that the Northgate report is by far the most extensive report on the situation for the border services ever performed anywhere in the western world. We've searched for it, and even in the United States they have not conducted a study as thorough as the one we've conducted.
We went out and interviewed 387 officers face to face. We visited over 40 sites. The people with whom we spoke came from more than 50 different locations. It is twice as much in every aspect as the ModuSpec report. The ModuSpec report was very important because of the reason that Mr. Moran mentioned, but it was important to demonstrate and go even further than what they had performed and done.
On that note, I'll finish my introduction in order to give plenty of time for debate and discussion.
I hope that I've been able to review the essential points and that I've not gone over my allotted time. Thank you.