Evidence of meeting #38 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 person.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Assistant Commissioner, would you provide that to the clerk?
So that I'm clear, once a person has been admitted and, I assume, in most cases relocated, is the ongoing contact, either extensive or limited, always by RCMP officers, or is it by any other police forces?
A/Commr Raf Souccar
If it's an RCMP case, it will always be an RCMP witness protection coordinator. If it's a non-RCMP case, it could be either. Typically if the person is admitted to the program under the witness protection act, and assuming the Montreal police want a person relocated out of Quebec and there's a change of identity with that, because the RCMP has police officers across the country, we would help them with it as well as provide a handler, a contact person, in the other province they go to.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Of the approximately 700 cases that are currently in the system, are there any that have a non-RCMP officer assigned to do the supervisory work and the ongoing contact?
C/Supt Derek R. Ogden
We would actually have hundreds. Any time another agency approaches us and they request secure documents only, but they say, no, we want to do the...we'll look after the person, we'll look after all the obligations in the supervision. They are technically in the witness protection program. They're provided secure documents. That would be all of our involvement.
From there, we're dependent on the other police agency to advise if there have been breaches and what the action follow-up has been.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
So of the 700 cases, give me a percentage, if you can, of how many are RCMP supervised and how many are supervised by other forces.
C/Supt Derek R. Ogden
Of the 700, I believe very close to 100% would be ours. Of the 300, it would be the other agencies.
We normally take direction from the police agency that we're dealing with. If the Montreal city police didn't request that we take the person in and move him to a different location, we wouldn't.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Mr. Comartin, are you going to be able to wind this up? You're out of time again.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
I can't believe that, Mr. Chair.
No, I'm actually not finished. I have tonnes I want to ask. We're not going to finish today with these witnesses.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Okay, well, at the end of the meeting, I'm going to ask the committee whether we'd like to invite them back in a week.
After Mr. Comartin, does anybody from the government side have a question? No?
Ms. Barnes, it's back to you.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
Thank you very much.
Who usually negotiates the original protection agreement? Is it the defence lawyers, or do people come in with lawyers?
A/Commr Raf Souccar
Typically they don't, but certainly if they want to involve a lawyer we have no objections to it. We want to always hold onto the protection agreement for security reasons, but certainly we could provide their counsel with a copy of the agreement for his or her review.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
Taking into account the fact that you have said in your testimony that you're dealing with difficult people most of the time—or is that a fair comment on what you've said today?
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
Okay. If some of those protected people are unhappy, how do they communicate with you? Is there a real process, or is it just an ad hoc process where, if somebody is unhappy, they talk to whoever is in charge of them? Or is there some sort of internal mechanism for complaints of the program by the protectee who doesn't want to leave but just wants something fixed? What's happening currently, and how formalized is it?
A/Commr Raf Souccar
As soon as they are entered into the program and relocated, they are introduced to a witness protection coordinator in the area where they have been relocated. That witness protection coordinator will then look after that witness in a decreasing amount as time goes on; we want them to become self-sufficient.
They will be provided with a covert 24/7 telephone number that they can contact at any point in time. They're not contacting police; it's a covert number. They can contact the coordinator to deal with any issues that may come up.
As you can probably predict, there are lots of issues in the first days, weeks, months. The issues decrease as time goes on, as people become self-sufficient.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
Mr. Chair, I will hold my questions until later on. In a future business meeting, I think we can have some more witnesses.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Sure.
Monsieur Ménard, you indicated that you might have a question yet. Is that the case?
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
No. To be honest, I would like to keep my speaking time, but I think I would be better off turning it over to the committee as a whole, so that we can move on.
Conservative
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
I do have more questions. I want to be very clear on that.
If you want to break at this point--
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
I was going to go in camera.
We'll just give a moment for the witnesses to leave.