Thank you very much for your very thoughtful presentations. This has, in fact, been one of the most interesting sessions so far, because these are the kinds of questions that haven't been raised so far.
It appears to me, having come from four and a half years of law enforcement as an AG, that over the last number of years since the taser was first started as a pilot project in Victoria, the law enforcement community has essentially fallen in love with it and has done so somewhat blindly. In fact, there has been significant usage creep.
I was interested in Dr. Butt's remark that we shouldn't ask for moratoriums if this is an alternative to lethal force. From all of the reports, the most recent one coming out of Nova Scotia, I believe, it is indicated that the usage of tasers has gone up phenomenally. Deaths with the use of force using guns at the hands of the police in Calgary, Montreal, and Vancouver have remained stable. The usage of tasers has gone up phenomenally, and there have been 20 deaths in the last several years, as you mentioned.
Then it appears to me that perhaps one can arrive at a conclusion, in a very simple kind of way and without going into too much complex detail, that the taser is being used somewhat mindlessly and somewhat unnecessarily, because if you previously needed only so much usage of guns and you only killed a few people and that number has remained stable, has our society become suddenly so violent that you need tasers with every third police officer?
All of the ethical questions you've raised bring to mind, in fact, the very question I raised with the complaints commissioner the other day: the fact that the RCMP have not implemented his top two recommendations to classify this as an impact weapon, which some of you, I believe, would agree it should be.
The question I have for you is this. You say, Professor Savard, that there is no evidence that this is a safe weapon, that there hasn't been enough research that it is a safe weapon. If that is the case, what is your prescription? How do we change the use of this to take into account all of the hesitations and questions that you've expressed?
All of you can answer that question.