Thank you very much, and thank you, gentlemen, for being here.
I don't know whether it's coming from British Columbia or not, but tasers, long before the incident at the airport, have been very much in the forefront of the public's mind in terms of their use, and so on.
What I've heard people say today I think is very consistent with what I at least gathered from the witnesses who appeared before us, although they didn't state it in quite that way, and the questions raised by the public about the incredible inconsistency in how tasers are used, recorded, followed up on, decided to be used, and so on, across the country.
As Mr. Kennedy said, people are fairly quick to criticize, perhaps, the RCMP, perhaps in general, but this has eroded confidence enormously, certainly in my province. I say with great pride that I come from a city of 400,000 that is still policed by the RCMP. We've been very pleased with that. But I also know how little faith, in many places, people have. So there is incredible inconsistency in recording, usage, charting, follow-up, all of that, and that has been confirmed by you here today.
The other thing we have not spoken of here is when people read in the paper—and I think we just had one example locally—that an RCMP officer had been charged or there was a complaint and it was found to be fine. I don't doubt that might be the case, but the question of oversight does come up in terms of who is overviewing or overseeing the evaluation. Well, yes, it might be somebody from another police force, but that doesn't necessarily always give the public the greatest sense of confidence—as it doesn't with any profession, by the way—when people of the same profession are reviewing each other. We see that with physicians and many other professionals.
I have several questions that I will leave with you.
I'm very concerned about Mr. Kennedy's comments in two respects. One of them is that nobody has any ability to actually ensure that these recommendations are carried out. We might think the recommendations are great and might be exactly what should be done, and so what? That does worry me.
Also, the health piece worries me. We have found, as Mr. Kennedy has spoken to, that there's a dearth of health research out there. What is there is all over the place. The piece I haven't found in health research is that we all have very different pain thresholds. If somebody has a very low pain threshold, that person is going to have a much more severe reaction to a taser. I don't know what the long-term effects of that kind of really severe pain will be to somebody with a very low pain threshold, because they're getting the same amount of electricity. So the fact that the medical part sits over here and nobody yet has done that worries me quite a bit, because those are the concerns that people raise, or those deaths or those people who have health consequences.
First of all, the interim recommendations have been made. When do you think they should have been acted upon?
Secondly—I'm afraid part of this is medical and part of it is training—did I hear correctly that the Toronto police force must retest every year? The police force in Toronto has to retest or requalify every year, so that would still be an inconsistency with police forces. I would be curious at some stage, and I don't have to have that answer today, why you picked two years when another police force that seems to have handled theirs well picked one year.
Thirdly, around accountability to the public, regarding the quarterly reports you're recommending go to this variety of people, is there any reason they could not be up on a website? Obviously there are no names or places attached. I don't want the public, who are very concerned about this, to have to apply under freedom of information in order to receive more information. So is there any reason that could not be more publicly available? I would certainly recommend that it should be.