Public Safety Committee on Jan. 29th, 2013

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Is there any comment, then, just on the basic idea of police having to go through the process of putting a criminal in jail and then three months later having to go through it all again? There's a cost associated with that.

[Mark Potter]

Certainly there have been some analyses done of the costs of crime and victimization in Canada. They're not longitudinal so they are of limited utility, but the figures regarding the costs of criminality to individuals, communities, and the Canadian economy are pretty staggering.

Getting back to a question that was raised earlier, the reported crime rate is dropping, but police are still busy. There are a lot of service calls. The nature of our society and the nature of policing in modern industrial countries is that you're often dealing with more intractable social and criminal challenges, so at one level you have your response and you have your integrated teams, but it goes even deeper on the crime prevention front to get at the roots of criminality.

These are individuals who may at one point be on a trajectory that leads to their having drug problems, mental health issues, and so on. Right from the beginning we want to get them the help and the support they need through integrated approaches that basically, over the long term, change the nature of criminality in Canada, in order to deal with the much more intractable social and criminal challenges we face.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Potter.

We'll move to the opposition and to Mr. Garrison, please.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'll resist the temptation of creating Bill C-10 planks and trying to make our witnesses walk off them.

I have to say that when we're dealing with mental health issues, one of the concerns I have certainly heard in my community is the question of mandatory minimum sentences and their impact on those whose cause of offending may have been mental health issues, but I'll just leave that there and not try to make our witnesses walk that plank.

I want to talk a little bit about the question of privatization.

In looking at the economics of policing, we've had the discussion about civilianization. I guess there's a concern on this side of the table that sometimes that too quickly turns to privatization of policing services. We seem to have had a trend that's simply been accepted in Canada that large areas of what are really public spaces—and I'm talking about malls—have now become areas that are policed by private police services. I hope when we're talking about the economics of policing that we at some point can come to terms with the accountability problems raised when we have private policing of public space by people with less training than the police and by people without good accountability mechanisms. I wondered if that issue was raised at the summit.

[Mark Potter]

Thank you. I think that's a great question.

There are a few dimensions to it, and you're keying in on one of them. We've seen pretty dramatic growth in the private security industry in Canada. In fact, right now for every two public police officers there are three private security officers. They do some of the tasks that you referred to—mall security, building security, and so on, some of the fairly routine stuff—but they also do increasingly sophisticated work with banks and so on to provide support to them. That's definitely a growing industry.

We had an interesting presentation at the summit from an individual in that industry. In fact, he raised exactly the concern you just raised, which is whether there is sufficient regulation of the private security industry to ensure that you have the right level of professionalization and accreditation around those individuals. He said it would help them as a business to be able to function in society if people had confidence that they were fully qualified and fully trained and that they knew exactly the bounds of their responsibilities. He was actually making the case—and the regulation of the private security industry is an area of provincial jurisdiction—that provinces should have pretty robust regimes in place to regulate the private security industry. There's a bit of a mixed bag across Canada.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I wonder whether Deputy Commissioner Graham has any comments on the growth of private policing and any challenges it creates for the RCMP.

[D/Commr Steve Graham]

In terms of challenges generally, I would consider a lot of the work being caught in the area you're articulating supportive of the general public safety need. I think Mr. Potter has hit the nail on the head. From my discussions with deputy ministers in several provinces, I would say they're all trying to update and modernize their regulations and legislation specific to this area. It's going to continue to grow. If we see the same patterns here that are indicated from other countries, it would seem that it will continue to grow.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Continuing with Deputy Commissioner Graham, I'd like to follow up on something I think Mr. Rousseau may have run out of time on. That's the question of whether there has been a shift of some responsibilities that were formerly RCMP responsibilities at the border to the Canada Border Services Agency. I wonder if you're in a position to comment on that.

[D/Commr Steve Graham]

Well, not really. It's a shared responsibility at ports of entry and at the border in between. Both entities work very collaboratively, often in an integrated fashion. In many cases, it's a very positive working relationship. I would articulate it more as that we want to make sure that the best resources available are dealing with the most challenging cases.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

If I can, I'll just ask you one more question.

I've had a concern raised with me about overlap between CSIS and the RCMP in the area of national security. We're talking about the efficient use of resources. CSIS was created to take over some national security responsibilities, but there has been a tendency of the RCMP to regrow some of those functions within the RCMP. Are you in a position to comment on that?

[D/Commr Steve Graham]

I'm not in a great position. I would just say generally, however, that our emphasis and attention is always on criminal activities related to national security. Again, the relationship and sharing with CSIS is exceptional. It's a very different world today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll move to Mr. Hawn, please, for five minutes.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to go back to Deputy Commissioner Graham on the issue of the cost of the revolving door. From your experience in leadership and so on, you probably can't comment on dollars, but what's the impact of time—which is dollars—on the officer, and what's the impact on the morale of the officer when he sees the same guy coming back time after time?

[D/Commr Steve Graham]

I think my response would be more around a lot of the work that's been done in recent years on crime reduction. It really focuses on frequent offenders or chronic offenders. How do we interrupt that?

In some of the cases that have already been cited here, it's more about the right social supports. In other cases it's about more effectively dealing with patterns of behaviour and interrupting and stopping them. We've had some very good success in many areas of the country around working in that genre and that activity. No doubt, if you're dealing with the same people over and over again, you have to get to the root causes, as Mark often talks about, and figure out what drives that behaviour. Many times there are other issues going on, whether it's mental health, substance abuse, or other challenges. If you can do something there and get better engagement there, you often can change the dynamic you're seeing.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I ride along from time to time with the Ottawa Police Service. You talked about being on a first-name basis with some of these people you pick up: “Oh, yes, it's old Fred again. Fred, come on in. You know the drill. Up against the wall,” or whatever—

[D/Commr Steve Graham]

Yes—

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

It's a bit of a joke at times, but also they're frustrated because they feel as if they're wasting their time, so anything we can do to nip it in the bud obviously is productive.

I want to stick with you, Deputy Commissioner. The RCMP's portion of the budget savings is about $195 million over the next two to three years. Can you get specific at all about how you are specifically looking at reducing spending in your area and how you're auditing that to see whether we and you are doing what is mandated?

[D/Commr Steve Graham]

There have been targets apportioned across the organization. Some of that relates to such things as the administrative efficiencies I spoke about earlier. For instance, in compensation we used to have pay and benefits offices in each region of the country. We're now going to one. Similarly, for accounts payable—how our bills are paid and how we manage that—we're going from four to one. We're looking at the rationalization of forensic laboratories and are reducing the number across the country. We're looking at re-engineering in federal policing and re-engineering in forensic sciences as well. What that means is workflow, processes, and people. Do we have the right specialties? Are we putting investment in the right places? How can we draw savings out of that?

Civilianization has come up here today, and we've civilianized a lot over the past decade. That pattern continues. If you don't need peace officer status to do your job, then we look at ways of civilianizing that. The savings there are often around salary. Salary levels tend to be somewhat less, or there are savings on benefits.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Have you changed your audit process to keep track of that, or is your previous audit process sufficient to track it?

[D/Commr Steve Graham]

No, we have a very robust audit system. We have a chief audit officer. They do their plans based on risk, as well as initiatives such as this. You know, the money's gone, we'd better save it, so....

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Okay.

Mr. Potter, we talked about non-uniformed police such as mall guards and so on. Were the commissionaires involved in this conference just recently past? They do a lot of that kind of stuff.

[Mark Potter]

I believe a representative of the commissionaires was invited, yes.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Okay.

That's all I have, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hawn.

Go ahead, Mr. Garrison, please.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I know we're drawing to a close here.

I have a question about timing. We've launched this study in the committee, we're going to hear from witnesses, and we would like to be able to provide a report that contributes to this process. You've talked about the department's initiatives and proceeding with these three pillars. What is the timeline the department is proceeding on for coming up with a plan or a product, and does that allow time for this committee to have input into that process?