Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Commissioner, for your willingness to come back and be part of this accountability session on your force's policy.
I will suggest at the outset, though, that to add the words “necessary” and “reasonable” to constraints on the use of force is not really something new. I don't know if it was ever the policy of the RCMP to have unnecessary or unreasonable force used in the operation of its duties, so that really doesn't help at all. I'll just leave that to one side for a moment.
When you appeared before us on February 18, your explanation of the change in the policy was that you were suggesting, as you did on February 18, that weapons would only be used when it was necessary to do so in the circumstance of threats to what was called “officer or public safety”. I had some concerns about the public safety notion because, again, it's all up in the air.
That same day, the minister, Mr. Van Loan, kind of had the same interpretation that we did, I guess, which was that the RCMP has set a new policy, a clear message, that tasers are to be used only in situations where they assess there's a real threat, not simply to deal with someone who is unruly. The device was to mean fewer people are exposed to actually being dealt with by a gun. That was kind of in accordance with my understanding of what you had to say.
When we looked at it, that very same day one of your members was on national television describing an incident where the use of a taser was deemed to be appropriate where someone was intoxicated, in handcuffs, and lying on the ground. The use of the taser was prescribed to get this guy into the car because there might have been a potential threat from some other people who might have been around the area.
I have a real problem with the clarity of the policy, both as you expressed it and also as written. Your new policy, like the old one, says that the taser was approved for RCMP use as an “intervention option to control individuals and avert injury to members and the public”. That's number 1.1 of your policy. Some of the other aspects of it later on talk about assessment of the totality of the circumstances, etc. They use the term “public safety”, which is very general.
I want to know this specifically: are you prepared to commit to a strict prohibition on the use of tasers for the purposes of restraint? This is not just for active restraint, or combative, but restraint whether it's active or passive. As you say, it's a prohibited weapon. Are you prepared to say that this not a weapon that is to be used for the purpose of restraint, but only to avert, as our committee has said, a threat of death or grievous bodily harm to the police, himself, or the public?