Public Safety Committee on March 8th, 2012

[Robert Aloisio]

You're correct, very much so. As for manufacturers, there are none, to be honest with you. Normally things were sourced out of country and brought into Canada. What I can tell you is that SafeTracks is the only company that does, as I said, have the monitoring centre, the software, and an agreement with the airtime provider in Canada. I'm not saying that other bracelets won't pop up here and there. However, in terms of somebody of our calibre, there is absolutely nobody else in Canada who's at this level.

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

If someone, law enforcement or immigration, wants to use electronic monitoring bracelets, they have to go to you?

[Robert Aloisio]

Not necessarily, no. That's not what I want to put across. However, as—

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

I didn't mean that in a pejorative sense, but how many players are there in your market across Canada who could offer this kind of service?

[Robert Aloisio]

I'm going to use North America, if that's okay, because that's traditionally where the technology comes from. There are probably, I would say, six powerhouses out there, and up to about 10 to 12 are starting to get into it. Again, it would all depend on what you were looking for out of the device. What we've done as a business is try to make sure that the competitive advantages that we've installed are going to benefit Canada as well.

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

The competitive advantage is, as I understand it, that you have this central monitoring centre that can service the country. Is that correct?

[Robert Aloisio]

Yes, that as well as having the servers on Canadian soil, the airtime—it's just that everything is done in Canada as much as possible. That's what I mean by our competitive advantage at SafeTracks.

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

Is this your only business line or do you have other business lines?

[Robert Aloisio]

Actually, no, that's quite interesting. We have two separate divisions at SafeTracks. We have what I like to call court-ordered offender monitoring, which is the ankle bracelets, and then we also specialize in personal safety tracking devices. Not to get off the court, but we've also worked with some victims of domestic violence, where we've equipped them with the device, and they have an SOS button that's linked to our 911 response centre as well. So we've been able to leverage both technologies to create something that's never been available before. We do have two specific, different divisions.

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

Interesting. Thanks very much.

[Robert Aloisio]

No problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Scarpaleggia. You're right on seven minutes.

We'll go to Mr. Sandhu.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Thank you for being here, gentlemen.

I have a question for Inspector Clover. You talked about limitations in regard to the use of this device. Can you maybe elaborate on that.

[Det James Clover]

Yes. A technical limitation that we sometimes struggle with is that the device is only good as long as it's on his ankle. So one reason we went with this particular product was the metal band. Once the bracelet is cut off, you simply have a starting point and that's it. You also have a mischief charge. You've criminalized the wearing of this bracelet, so that's a limitation.

Two, like all technology, it has a battery. If the offender does not plug in the device and we go through the protocols to convince this person, once the battery is dead, again, it's of no use to you.

Another limitation would be an urban environment. Edmonton has high-rises, subways. There are certain locations that will hinder the signal—I don't know the technical terms. Our team doesn't like subways and urban environments. Those would be some of the limitations that come to me at this moment.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Can you maybe talk about the false alarms you get through this technology?

[Det James Clover]

Right. I was conscious of that when we started this program. One of the things we're sensitive to is the workload. I didn't want to have my team responding to lots and lots of false alarms.

What needs to happen is the conditions have to complement the technology and the technology has to complement the conditions. For example, I believe the committee's heard of something called drift. There's a satellite drift. If you think of it as a map and the dots are populated on an offender's house, the dots will sway back and forth. You need to make sure that when you're building, let's say, exclusion zones, you're doing it in such a way that you're capturing drift. You are anticipating drift when you set those up to reduce the number of false alarms.

Third-party monitoring is another way we layer this. For example, another alert we get is called a strap tamper. If an offender knocks the device really hard, maybe he's tripped and fallen down the stairs, the device will momentarily believe he's trying to take the bracelet off. Protocols need to be established for this. So now you have to build in a layer of monitoring. Do we respond right away? Or do we allow the device to reconnect, re-establish, say the device is fine, and then move along? That's an important question.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

You talked about the limitations of the devices when they're applied to specific offenders, like the attachment of the device in particular cases. You also said this should not be universally applied. Would you agree with that?

[Det James Clover]

Right. I'm particular about the type of offender we use. The technology has to complement the conditions. I don't believe in it as a stand-alone, simply because they have to wear a bracelet. The conditions have to supplement it. So I need to have a condition of curfew. The bracelet can support that. The device can support a condition of residency. The conditions have to collaborate with what the technology can offer. Simply having a dot on the map 24/7 doesn't provide me any benefit unless it's contributing to the supervision plan we have for that offender.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

You talked about not employing this technology with thousands and thousands of people.

[Det James Clover]

That's correct. There are a few reasons for that. I've been doing this project since 2010 and I've had only 10 opportunities. I'm speaking from a policing perspective. We need to be clear that this is a policing perspective. We don't have a lot of offenders that we're judicially tasked to supervise. These are the ones we've selected to supervise. I have concerns about capacity. If you have hundreds of offenders and hundreds of dots on a map, someone has to be responsible for monitoring, and it's an onerous task.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Would you say there are limitations to technology that would require additional resources?

[Det James Clover]

I'm sorry, I might need you to better explain that question.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

If you had to manage, say, 100 cases where they're wearing these bracelets and you had to analyze those dots on the map, would it require a lot more money?

[Det James Clover]

It would require more money, yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Your time is up, Mr. Sandhu.

We're going to go back to the government side. But I would like to ask a couple of questions, as the chair's prerogative.

I want to build a little on Mr. Sandhu's last question, and this may go to Mr. Aloisio. You say that Sudbury has the capacity to monitor and you have this 911 organization that does it. But it's only been in small pilot projects. Would they have the capacity to monitor 200 to 500 people at one time?