Public Safety Committee on March 24th, 2011

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I will turn that issue over to the RCMP. But I will just make one observation. If that is the amount of time that is required to put that information together, you can see how complex and time-consuming an area this is.

But I will allow the RCMP to answer the question.

[Rod Knecht, Senior Deputy Commissioner, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We do have a backlog in criminal records. Everybody who is either convicted of a criminal offence or charged with a dual procedure or an indictable offence is required to be fingerprinted. In most cases those fingerprints are submitted manually. We are currently working on a technology that will allow us to do that electronically and speed up the process. We're not there yet. We do have a backlog, and in some cases we have to refer to manual searches of documentation.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

I would like to know how many cases are backlogged. When I asked, I was told the RCMP is unable to provide an answer. Can you give me an answer, Mr. Knecht?

[Rod Knecht]

I can tell you that there is a significant number of records that are not electronically scanned right now that contribute to the backlog. I do not have an exact figure of how many records that would be. I would say it's in the thousands.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Does that mean that there are now about 1 million criminal records that are not registered in the CPIC?

[Rod Knecht]

Again, I don't know exactly what the number is, but it is quite high. We're working hard to turn that into an electronic format, similar to what we do with real-time identification processes. In the future we'll be able to turn that around in minutes, if not days.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

This means that a police officer doing a search in the system anywhere in Canada might get no information at all about some criminal records.

[Rod Knecht]

There is that potential. There will be some cases where records aren't in the system and won't be called up when a police officer queries them.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Thank you very much, sir.

My next question is for the Minister of Public Safety.

Mr. Minister, you have decided to close some border crossings. There will be cuts at the Franklin Centre, Jamieson's Line, Big Beaver, Morses Line and East Pinnacle crossings. We have been told there would be a savings of $500,000 at Franklin Center, at a time when the USA is investing millions of dollars to update Churubusco, on their side of the border.

You said in your statement that you want to strengthen the ability of the CBSA to keep our borders secure. However, when you close border crossings or reduce their hours of operation, you certainly do not make our borders more secure.

What is your answer? Will you suspend your decision, Mr. Minister?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madam Mourani.

Our time is up, but you can respond.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Our hiring practices and the hiring of somewhere in the range of 10% to 20% more border guards indicate our commitment to safety.

All of the decisions on the hours of operation of local crossings are analyzed by local CBSA officials. They determine not only whether that is in the interest of public safety, but in fact whether it's a value for taxpayers. Some of these border crossings will have under a dozen crossings a day.

CBSA is the border services, and the RCMP patrol the border generally. Not only have we increased our border services, but we've increased the number of officers we have in the RCMP. We take the border very seriously.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Minister.

Mr. Davies, please.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Minister, I appreciate what you're saying about it being difficult to cost some of your bills, but I want to put a scenario to you that--

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I assume you're talking to the chair.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Chairman, through you to the minister, I want to put a scenario to you that happened in this very building about three weeks ago. We were here on a Tuesday examining the bill that would end accelerated parole. We had your deputy minister here and asked how much that bill would cost. She said she couldn't tell us; it was a matter of cabinet confidence. That was on the Tuesday.

On the Wednesday, parliamentarians went in and voted at third reading. We voted on that bill and it was passed without knowing what the cost was. On the Thursday, you and Mr. Head were again in this room, and you told us that the cost was $40 million.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

It was me and Mr. Head, not the chair and Mr. Head.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Davies, we're going to continue doing this through the chair.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Chair, the minister was in this room with Mr. Head on the Thursday saying that the cost of the bill was $40 million.

If he knew that information on the Thursday, why couldn't this committee and parliamentarians know that amount of money on the Tuesday, before we actually voted on Wednesday night and spent Canadian taxpayers' dollars without knowing what the cost was? Can you explain that to me?

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Chair, I'm not familiar with the sequence of events that Mr. Davies has indicated, but I will get back to him with that answer.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, 80% of offenders in our federal prisons have addictions. We know that mental illness is a significant and growing problem in our prisons. The Conservative government has said that there are people in prisons who shouldn't be there because they actually have health issues. Yet this budget doesn't say a word about increasing funding for mental health treatment or addictions treatment.

Given that these are some of the prime causes of crime, and dealing with these issues is an absolutely identified way to reduce recidivism and make our communities safer, can you please explain why?

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I can talk about some of the initiatives that our government has taken in funding, for example, that was never in place under the prior government to address issues of mental health. We've contributed significant millions of dollars to the issue of mental health in prisons.

This is an issue, Mr. Chair, that both the provincial and the federal institutions are facing as a result of the shift in policy in the provinces some number of years ago. I was a lawyer for a provincial government during the course of those occurrences that were essentially shutting down mental hospitals or asylums and putting these individuals out onto the street. In many cases, not only were they then out on the street with mental health problems, but they became prey to the drug dealers, so you had a double problem of mental health and drug addiction.

Essentially these--

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Given that, Mr. Chair--

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Let him finish.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Essentially these individuals then find their way into the provincial jail system and the federal institutions. We have taken steps to address that, but I think we need a more vigorous discussion with provincial mental health authorities about what would be a more appropriate way of dealing with these individuals. The policies of the 1970s and 1980s in closing down these institutions have not worked, quite frankly, and what we're doing is developing--

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Okay, Mr. Chair, I'm going to intervene here. The minister is talking out my time.