Public Safety Committee on Jan. 29th, 2013

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

Basically, you're saying we need more outside consultants to provide advice on how to save money. We know that often when we bring in outside consultants in any scenario, we end up spending more, but I agree that they will probably see areas in which cost savings can be made.

“Civilianization” is a new term. I'm not familiar with it. Civilianization—is that what it is?

[Mark Potter]

Yes.

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

It sounds to me as though it means one of two things. It means taking some of the services that are performed in-house by police forces and essentially contracting them out to outside specialists. Again, the state will still be spending money, except it will be spending on outside contractors, and sometimes that doesn't save that much money.

Is there another element of trying to download costs onto the civilian population? In other words, are we saying, “Create more neighbourhood watch groups, and we won't have to patrol as much”, and so on?

In terms of demand management, I think if you speak to any citizen who's witnessed a break-in or whose house alarm has gone off or what have you, they'll say they didn't call the police because it takes them so long to get here and so on. Whenever they do come and take a report, they say—and this is just anecdotal—“Look ma'am, it's really going to be hard to find this person. It's like a needle in a haystack”, and so on.

It seems to me there's a sort of pent-up demand for policing services, so I don't think there's a lot reduction of demand to be had. I just think the system's overwhelmed. That's what citizens seem to be saying to me.

I'm really curious about the jurisdictional aspect of policing. We say policing is a provincial jurisdiction unless we're talking about the RCMP, and yet we have all kinds of federal programs and crime prevention, and the government—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Scarpaleggia, we're well over our seven minutes already.

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

Okay. Well, I appreciate your patience.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you for your enlightening talk, though.

Go ahead, Madame Lefebvre.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Gentlemen, I would like to thank you for being here today.

This study is extremely important. It gives us some clarification on the direction we want to take and what to do to straighten all this out. I should say that this is an important national issue.

I'm in favour of looking at where we can save and where the money needs to be put so that this is as effective as possible. We all want our police forces to be as effective as possible, with the best possible budgets.

Mr. Potter, you've probably heard about the Police Officers Recruitment Fund, which is going to end in March 2013. In Quebec, it was used to fight street gangs. Four years ago, joint squads were formed to that effect. It worked incredibly well. Positive results were seen in the first year, and at a lower cost because these were joint squads that travelled from town to town. So fewer police were used to do a larger job over a broader territory. It worked extremely well.

Now, we are unfortunately stuck because this recruitment fund is going to be discontinued. The joint squads for fighting street gangs, which worked well, are unfortunately not going to receive any more funding. I think that's a problem.

When a program is effective, could we not invest the money and use it as an example instead of getting rid of it? Could we not use this type of program nationally with another type of fund?

[Mark Potter]

Thank you very much.

I think you're referring to the police officers recruitment fund, which was a program initiated in 2008. From the outset that was announced as a one-time investment to support provincial and territorial police recruitment efforts. I understand that the minister has conveyed on more than one occasion to his provincial and territorial colleagues that the government currently has no intention of continuing that program.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

It's extremely unfortunate. So, in your opinion, there is no alternative. For Quebec, it meant about $92 million over five years. We're talking about $400 million nationally.

This part of the program worked well. I don't want to insinuate that other parts of the police forces don't work as well, far from it. But was the functioning of these programs, namely this partnership with several towns, not raised during the summit? Was it mentioned that it could be a good example, that it might be necessary and that it had been requested by the police forces?

[Mark Potter]

That particular initiative was not specifically referred to at the summit, but I think the more general question relates to the fiscal constraints faced by both the Government of Canada and all governments in Canada to a considerable degree. Much of the point of the economics of policing summit and the development of that issue and getting ahead of that issue is to recognize fiscal reality and recognize that the answer is not necessarily putting more money into policing but instead taking the considerable amount of money that's currently invested in policing and finding ways to use it as efficiently and effectively as possible.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

I agree with you; we must use this as effectively as possible.

You mentioned some examples that we should or should not follow, but you didn't delve too deeply into it. You mentioned the United Kingdom and the United States. What approaches are these countries taking that you would not want to have here? For example, we often hear about privatization in the United States. Is that a direction we want to take or are we reluctant to adopt that approach?

[Mark Potter]

Thank you.

As I mentioned earlier, I think it's not the role of the federal government to tell police services across Canada what they should do in terms of specific programs and how they should approach improving their efficiency and effectiveness. I think our role is facilitative: providing them with information, sharing best practices, providing tools that will help them to make that decision with their communities and their residents as they see fit.

In terms of your broader point about what can we learn from other jurisdictions, I think there is a tremendous amount we can learn from other jurisdictions, whether it comes to structures to support policing or to individual actions within policing.

Your colleague a moment ago was asking about civilianization. Civilianization is not a new phenomenon. It's been in policing for a very long time. We have about 69,000 sworn police officers in Canada. We have about 30,000 civilian staff working in police services directly with them. It's a question of basically looking at the skill sets of the different individuals and applying them as efficiently as possible. A person trained to be a sworn police officer has certain skills, often to deal with a tremendous range of challenges and problems in the field, but that doesn't necessarily make them an IT expert, for example.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Potter.

I have a couple of questions.

First of all, I want to comment on Mr. Scarpaleggia's statement at the beginning about the opposition critics not being invited to the conference. To make it clear, I don't think the government was invited either. As far as the invitation list is concerned, it was something that was worked out with the provinces and with all levels of government.

Also, the challenges of moving in 10 years from a $6 billion budget to $12 billion budget for policing have been brought out here, and the challenges of just how we can keep some of these costs in line but still maintain protection of society as a guiding principle for all this. I'm wondering, as we begin this report, if there is some way that you could brief us a little bit about the process in allocation dollars. We understand that we have a role as a federal government, but we also know that a lot of this can fall under provincial jurisdiction.

What is the process? As we decide to send money to the provinces, be it the RCMP or municipal policing, can you give our committee a bit of an idea? Is it based on per capita? What is the consideration for geography, for rural areas or large areas to police over? Where do “case calls” come in, if we can use that term? How is this allocation of funds divvied up?

I think that's maybe part of what Mr. Scarpaleggia was asking as well when he at the end talked about jurisdictions.

[Mark Potter]

Thank you.

I think there are a few layers to this aspect. There are the overall budgets that often are driven by the fiscal situation in a particular jurisdiction, as well as things like collective agreements that have been reached with police officer associations, which have been an important factor in those budgets.

For example, let's look at the City of Toronto. Over the past two years Toronto has been going through quite a challenging situation with their city budget being reduced. As part of that, the city has been working with its Police Services Board, which has been working with the police service to try to find efficiencies and to try to find savings. They look at the whole range of their operations and how they can improve efficiency, trying to do that and meet the broader city financial objectives. That's an ongoing process within Toronto.

As you go deeper within a police service—and Steve could speak much better to this than I can—you find resource allocation models that most police services like the RCMP have that allow you to rationally determine how many police officers you need in a particular location at a particular time. Those are fairly sophisticated models that they use, and they look at a whole range of factors to help them make those decisions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Ms. Bergen.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to go back to the police officers recruitment fund. I think it's important for all of us around the table to be very clear what the police officers recruitment fund was, how it was communicated, and how it was used.

It was announced by our government that there would be $400 million for police recruitment across the country. Is that correct?

[Mark Potter]

Yes.

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

Was it made clear at the time to all jurisdictions that this was a temporary fund, or was it ever indicated that this was permanent money?

[Mark Potter]

It was communicated as a one-time investment.

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

Then it was up to the jurisdictions, including the City of Montreal, as to whether they were going to set up a permanent program or a temporary program, correct?

[Mark Potter]

The discretion as to how they use those funds to meet their policing needs was at the discretion of the province and territory.

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

It was their decision, so when they took the money and assumed that it would be permanent, that was their error in judgment. That was not a miscommunication by this government.

[Mark Potter]

I think the government was clear, when it announced the program, that it was a one-time investment.

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

Everybody else across the country got that. They understood that. Correct? I think so. Thank you very much.

I want to ask you another question. One of the programs that works really well in Manitoba, including in Portage la Prairie in my riding, is the citizens on patrol program, which is a really good example of.... What was the term?

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

It's “civilianization”.