Public Safety Committee on Feb. 14th, 2012

[Pierre Meunier]

No, you're correct in your perception. There are two-piece GPS systems and one-piece GPS systems. There are the types that are the RF frequency and there are combinations of the two that you can get, but that's about it.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Interesting.

One of the things we heard at the last meeting from Dr. Bonta, I think, was that there can be significant margins of error in terms of the information these devices give out. For example, he said the system could be telling you that the person is moving in a certain direction and in fact they're actually at the other end of town. Have you delved into those kinds of quality issues, those kinds of precision issues?

[Anthony Ashley]

Again, the folks I mentioned who work out at Shirley's Bay look at those sorts of things in a military context. Those inaccuracies tend to fall into this word “drift” that people use all the time. As I tried to mention earlier, the basic GPS technology, the cheapest form of implementation, basically assumes that you've got these nice, direct, uninterrupted paths from the satellite to your receiver, and you've got at least four of these and the signal is very strong. Based upon those assumptions, depending on the processing you use, because all these different units potentially use different processing inside them, you can say that this device has an accuracy of something—say 10 metres, 20 metres.

The problem is that accuracy is only valid while all those ideal conditions are satisfied. As soon as the signal starts to break up and you don't get good signal lock, then the accuracy goes down. As soon as the radio waves bend as they go through the atmosphere, and a whole bunch of other factors, the accuracy starts to be degraded.

Someone asked earlier about the cost. I think cost is probably a big issue. The manufacturers of these things, of course, try to keep them inexpensive, so as a result of that they're all trying to use the cheapest technology or the least expensive technology they can find. We haven't looked at the range of devices, but I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if a device costs twice as much, if it's designed properly, it's probably a better device because it incorporates a number of different ways to try to mitigate all of these factors I just tried to describe. Military systems, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, are actually quite effective at mitigating those factors, but they come in boxes, not something you can strap on your leg.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

If you were to get some specifications from Correctional Services Canada, what would you do? Would you buy off the shelf, or would you actually start working with a supplier who would then either design or modify a product to suit your specific needs? In other words, is it a customized product or an adapted product or is it pretty much off the shelf?

[Anthony Ashley]

Again, that's driven largely by the cost. I can't imagine that a Canadian program could afford to go out and improve on the performance of these devices. Pretty much, I think, you're looking for something that's off the shelf, and the question is what the differences are in the implementations.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Yes.

That's pretty much it for me, Chair, other than to say that if you do buy some, make sure they work in cold climates.

[Anthony Ashley]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Scarpaleggia.

We'll now move back to the official opposition.

Ms. Morin, you have five minutes.

[Marie-Claude Morin, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

I want to begin by thanking the witnesses for coming here to talk to us. It's been very interesting.

I would like to know more about the various types of devices, especially as far as active or passive systems go. I would like to know what the difference between those two types of systems is and what each system's limitations and weaknesses are.

[Anthony Ashley]

I'll respond in English, if you don't mind.

The terms “active” and “passive” refer, as we understand it at this point in time, to the GPS type of systems. Active refers to the notion that the system is essentially in continuous contact with the monitoring centre. How often it actually interacts with the monitoring centre is, again, one of these operational specifications: does it need to be every five minutes, every 10 seconds? But the system is basically using cellphone technology to be in contact with the monitoring station on an ongoing basis, so in theory you could track someone's ongoing path. A passive system, as I understand it at this point in time, is one where the path of the individual during the day is logged on the device itself and there's no communication with the monitoring centre until at some point in the day, when the device is connected up to a transmitting unit, if you will, that downloads the information to the monitoring station and you can then see where the person was during the day, but of course it's hours later.

So depending upon the requirement you have, you can use either an active or a passive system, but it's all dependent upon how much oversight you need to have of the individual.

[Marie-Claude Morin, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Some studies have indicated that analysis, especially on GPS technology, was time-consuming and expensive. Could you tell us what the difference between active and passive GPS devices is, especially regarding data analysis?

[Anthony Ashley]

I think—and I'm speaking not so much from experience but based upon my intuition as an engineer—if you have a system like a GPS system, which can actually log the individual's position on a minute-by-minute basis, that represents a fairly large data file of information that needs to be transmitted and sorted and digested by some individual who assesses the response, whereas one of the RF systems or biometric systems tends to work based upon a single sample of information that's sent to a monitoring centre. So the amount of data that goes to the monitoring centre is far less, and obviously far less effort is required to understand what it means. It tells you where you are now and that's it, not where you've been, etc.

[Marie-Claude Morin, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

How much time do I have left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have two minutes.

[Marie-Claude Morin, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Between the moment the alarm goes off and the intervention, the signal must first get to the monitoring centre, be transferred to the probation officer and then to the police. Can these devices really be used to prevent a crime? I would like to know what you think.

[Anthony Ashley]

I'm not a police officer and I'm not involved with Corrections Canada, so I really can't answer that.

From a technical perspective, the response time from the time the individual transgresses to the time that a police officer is informed of the transgression could be very short. I don't know what that means for the police community or for the Corrections guys. You'd have to ask them that question.

[Marie-Claude Morin, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Bonta, who testified last week, told us that the false alarm rate could be as high as 70%. Is that possible? Can you confirm that statement?

[Anthony Ashley]

I think it depends upon the circumstances. If you're in a very heavily wooded area close to big buildings, you will get very poor data. In fact you could get huge numbers of false alarms. So it's very situation-dependent, and it's hard to come up with just one number for the false alarm rate. You need to say, “In this circumstance, this is the false alarm rate that we had expected. In this circumstance it would be higher. In this circumstance it might be lower.” So it's very dependent, and getting one number to describe it across the entire spectrum of possible circumstances would be very difficult.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll go now to Mr. Trottier.

Welcome to our committee, Mr. Trottier.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Dr. Ashley and Monsieur Meunier, for coming in today.

I like your description of the technical requirements of these new technologies and how they have to flow from the functional and operational requirements. Can you describe how long you've been working with Public Safety Canada and discussing those kinds of functional requirements? I'm not sure when the terms of reference came into effect.

[Anthony Ashley]

In a more general sense, if you're asking me about the Centre for Security Science—

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

I know the Centre for Security Science was established in 2006, but when did you enter into this arrangement with Public Safety Canada?

[Anthony Ashley]

Do you mean for this electronic monitoring issue?

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Yes.

[Anthony Ashley]

Over a number of months now we've had a few relatively brief interactions, if you will, to try to understand what we might be able to bring to the table. The situation, as I understand it, is that Public Safety and Corrections are looking at doing something else, and they're looking for potentially some form of advanced technical support to help them in whatever it is they're going to do. Frankly, I don't know what it is they want to do at this stage.