Evidence of meeting #13 for Public Safety and National Security in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was taser.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Executive Director, Canadian Police Research Centre
The Canadian Police Research Centre is a federal government organization. We receive all of our funding from the federal government.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Fine. Do the members of your organization, or do you, on occasion receive benefits such as travel to conferences or even items of equipment from the companies that make this kind of device?
Executive Director, Canadian Police Research Centre
We do not. We pay our own travel; we are very careful not to accept funding from companies for things such as travel. Normally we will buy the equipment we are evaluating and testing. Sometimes it is customer or industry supplied. We have not received any equipment from Taser International or any funding from Taser International.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
When you buy these items, you use the money that the government gives you.
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Have you noticed a significant increase in taser use by police forces in recent years?
Executive Director, Canadian Police Research Centre
We as an organization do not track the quantity of use of force, so I can't give you an accurate response.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
In the police forces with which I am familiar and for which I was responsible, taser use is constantly documented. A report must be filed each time it is used.
Are you in a position to keep records of taser use for all of Canada?
Executive Director, Canadian Police Research Centre
If we were requested to do that, certainly we could take the information from the police services, tabulate it, and provide such a report.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
From what I have read, there is one situation in which it is believed that a taser can contribute to death, and it is often when the person is said to be suffering from excited delirium. What are the symptoms of excited delirium?
Executive Director, Canadian Police Research Centre
Excited delirium is a set of symptoms that can be severe agitation, sweating, violent behaviour, and the inability to process signals and respond to commands and questions from a police officer or anyone else. We consider it a medical emergency, and I think one of the greatest successes since our last report was the police community and the emergency medical services community starting to work together and treating this as an emergency, and we're starting to see lives saved.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Do you think that it should be made clear that tasers must not be used in cases of excited delirium?
Executive Director, Canadian Police Research Centre
In our report, when we looked at it, we didn't make any stipulation based on the peer review one way or the other on excited delirium. It is seen as an effective tool in rapidly subduing somebody in that state. So we didn't comment against it.
Bloc
Chairman, Taser International Inc.
Yes. We sell to civilians in the United States and have since 1994.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Do you not think that tasers should be used only by people who are fully trained, not only to recognize the circumstances in which they should not be used, but also those in which they should be used as a last resort, just before a firearm is used?
Chairman, Taser International Inc.
You have to remember that in the United States our citizens are allowed to buy firearms. The taser is completely illegal to be sold in Canada. So in the United States we felt that for somebody like my wife or my mother to be able to access the technology like this to protect herself when she didn't want to have a firearm, we made appropriate accountability of the technology so that we could make sure it was used properly.
Again, on where the product is used in terms of use of force by law enforcement, that is set by the experts, the law enforcement community, relative to the other tools. This is one tool in the tool box. There is no perfect solution, and they will establish when and where it is used. And as far as training is concerned, we provide a DVD and manuals and material to train.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
So you do agree that they should be used only by people who have been trained.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
That will have to be your final question.
Go ahead. You may answer.
Chairman, Taser International Inc.
Again, you can in the United States obtain a firearm and not have any training. So in our context, we do provide visual material through a DVD and written material through a manual that comes with it for training, and we do make the effort to try to train them, but like with other available devices, there's nothing mandatory or required.
Conservative
NDP
Penny Priddy NDP Surrey North, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Smith and Mr. Palmer, for being here today.
I think this session and this review was brought about by the tragic death of Mr. Dziekanski at Vancouver International Airport, although many other factors were attached to that as well. But I think it has galvanized people's concern about tasers across the country, which was already beginning to grow. I often refer to it as “taser creep”, because I am seeing more and more use of it in situations that, at least as they're described, do not seem to me to be the next step below using a gun.
Mr. Smith, when you're selling the taser, I don't believe you make a recommendation on where it should go in the continuum of force. Is that correct?
Chairman, Taser International Inc.
Again, I would tell you that 86% of the agencies that use our technology place it at the point of active resistance, when the physical threat of violence or somebody getting injured is going to occur. That is where it is typically used.