Public Safety Committee on Jan. 30th, 2008

[Tom Smith]

Yes, they did.

The Home Office actually spent two years and £3 million. They did the same type of protocols, and they are now collecting the field data as well. When they went out to the initial use in 2003, I believe it was, they only limited it to five agencies. It was very controlled, and I believe it was over 18 months where they were very controlled in the use.

In France, where this unit is used by the police in the gendarmerie, they did do human testing prior to allowing the law enforcement...following the protocols that had actually been done in both Canada and the United Kingdom. There is a lot of sharing of knowledge among the countries and institutes of justice between Europe and North America, and in Australia the Alfred hospital had done the same type of research. So it's not just research that's been done in the U.S.; there has been human research done outside the U.S. as well.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

And that has not been contributed to in any way, shape, or form by your company?

[Tom Smith]

Absolutely not.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you so much on that.

This is a public safety committee, and I can think of other ways our federal government is involved in the health of Canadians. For example, with drug research, if a new product comes in the market, we don't take the U.S. studies; we do our own studies.

I would be very interested to go through this process, because I don't think most of us are experts in tasers, and there is a real concern in this country over their use. I see this even from clippings earlier today. We see in some of the studies on pigs, for instance, in the U.S. that there is a problem. Do you want to address that study? It certainly brought up some problems.

[Tom Smith]

It did, and that's why, when that study raised those concerns, the human studies went to find out if we had the same effect as they saw in those particular studies that were done several years ago, because obviously the human study is the model where we're using it. We did not reproduce it, and the studies that were done independently of us by the University of California at San Diego were unable to reproduce the results.

The committee needs to understand that the reason you start with the swine model in the animal studies is they are much more susceptible to electrical stimulus than the human being is. If you're proving it at a certain level there, it's certainly applicable to a human, but if you find something there, we then go to the human model, and we've not been able to reproduce the effect.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

You're talking about an animal that has a limited brain capacity. But you're talking to, say, a 100-pound person. Are there any studies done on the psychological effects of having been tasered?

[Tom Smith]

I'm not aware of any psychological studies that have been done. I know we have worked with the mental illness associations both in Canada and the United States. In fact, we were endorsed by the national schizophrenic group within British Columbia several years ago as being a good tool to have available to police, again, as another tool in the tool box. But there are no peer-reviewed published studies that I'm aware of on psychological effects.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Mr. Palmer?

[Steve Palmer]

No.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Are there any further questions?

Seeing there are none, I would like to thank our witnesses very much for their attendance at the committee today. I appreciate all the information you have given to us. We will find it very helpful as we go forward.

The meeting is adjourned.