Public Safety Committee on March 7th, 2013

[Tom Stamatakis]

The cost of an investigation is a factor that has a significant impact on the smaller agencies in particular. I think that in the context of this legislation, what would typically happen is that once a smaller agency realized they were dealing with a significant file where they needed to consider giving someone the protection offered by this legislation, they would probably involve another larger agency. So depending on which province you might be working in, you would go to the RCMP, who are typically the provincial police force in most provinces, except Quebec and Ontario.

I'm not sure that this legislation changes anything in that respect. The reality is that a smaller police agency would be challenged any time a significant organized crime investigation occurred in their community, and they would typically bring in other partners to assist with additional resources. In most cases they would probably engage the provincial government to provide some assistance with respect to the funding.

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

The fact that the costs for witness protection are billed back, you're saying, is always a problem and nothing in this legislation makes that either better or worse.

[Tom Stamatakis]

No, because witness protection is a very expensive proposition. Police forces across the country, including the RCMP, don't typically bring people into witness protection situations as a matter of course. I'll allow Staff Sergeant Townsend to comment on that. There has to be a significant reason, a legitimate threat to that person's safety, to the safety of other people involved in an investigation, particularly around organized crime.

Nothing in this legislation really changes that dynamic. It's an expensive proposition, and funding is always a challenge.

Any time we can amend legislation to make it more reflective of the kind of society we're working in so that the legislation recognizes the technology that exists today versus 10, 20, or 30 years ago, that's a good thing. I've already alluded to some of the provisions in this legislation that will help streamline things and arguably allow police agencies to become more efficient and maybe therefore reduce costs in other ways, albeit not specifically around the cost of the witness protection program.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have 15 seconds.

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

With only 15 seconds left, I'll just re-emphasize that it's very useful to hear the perspective of the officers on this. I think we've heard a couple of things today that were very valuable and that we hadn't really considered before. So thanks again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Garrison.

Mr. Hawn, please.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to both our witnesses for being here.

I want to start with Mr. Stamatakis and talk about the importance of flexibility in legislation like this and the impact of technology. I think we said this hasn't been updated for 17 years. With technology advancing the way it is, and I know this will be a shot in the dark for you, but have we missed anything in the current legislation that you would have liked to have seen in it? If it's been 17 years since the last amendment, is it safe to say that we'll probably be looking at maybe having another amendment in something less than the next 17 years because of the advancing technology?

[Tom Stamatakis]

One difference that I would mention—and of course none of us can predict how technology will change going forward—is how technology has advanced so much, and certainly in my career over about 25 years. When I started very few people had a cellphone, but were using voice pagers. Over a relatively short period of time we're now running into eight-, nine-, and ten-year-old kids with smart phones and people carrying laptops around, or tablets that give you ready access to the Internet, and on and on. I think that will be a challenge for all governments in the future: whether or not you need to look at these kinds of amendments on a more regular basis to keep up, as you say, with the technological advances that we might be exposed to.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Staff Sergeant Townsend, I want to talk a little bit about the risk to members and so on. There are so many opportunities for leaks of information, it's just hard to imagine how it all could be kept secure.

With regard to security within police organizations, does everybody know within an RCMP or a civilian police organization who is dealing with witness protection?

[S/Sgt Abraham Townsend]

If you look hard enough, you'll know who's assigned the responsibility in a source witness protection program. We all have substantive jobs. If you look hard enough, you can mine that out.

That being said, it's my experience that many members of the RCMP, if they were asked who the source witness protection person was for the province of Alberta, wouldn't know. They wouldn't know unless they went to seek it out.

And that being said, organized crime does have, and they can form, the interest to seek it out. They can seek it out by leveraging community sources, people who work within the policing environment, be they civilians or be they police officers. The fact that it's not openly available to this interested inquirer doesn't make it any less real. It can be found.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

The interested inquirer obviously is organized crime.

Did I hear you correctly that the member who is dealing with an active case is also actually leading a separate life?

[S/Sgt Abraham Townsend]

I didn't make that comment, but I can provide some clarity around that comment.

They are leading a separate life inasmuch as they don't expose their work life to their civilian life. There's no crossover. They're not the local police officer who coaches hockey and everybody knows what they do. They lead a somewhat covert professional life, or a separate professional life, from their private life as much as possible.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Obviously organized crime would try to track the member to find the witness, if they could.

[S/Sgt Abraham Townsend]

If you track the member, you can almost find who you're looking for.

When I have discussions with those who are employed in this discipline, the first thing to mind is organized crime holding their wife and family at gunpoint and asking them over phone, “Where's Johnny?” It is a high-risk activity for police.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Absolutely.

Mr. Stamatakis, we talked about administrative support for the identity change and so on. I mean, that is massive. As Ms. Bergen said, everything has to change, including even tax filings.

When we're dealing with the administrative organizations, whether it's the CRA or drivers' licence agencies or whatever they happen to be, is it correct to say that the administrative people who are doing that have no idea what the previous identity was? They simply know that they are producing a persona with a new identity.

Nobody there can make that connection, is that correct?

[Tom Stamatakis]

Yes, that's correct. You try to minimize the number of people who actually know why changes are being made. Those kinds of authorizations would come at a fairly high level. Then it would just be direction given to people who are processing the change, not knowing that in fact they're helping change the identity of an informant.

Often that can include providing the police officers engaged in the witness protection activities with an alternative identity as well, with different information that they can use for a driver’s licence, for example, or vehicle registration. It's to try to mitigate the risk of these interested parties being able to track the officer's activities while they're engaged with the informant.

It's almost like a dual life that people engaged in this type of work need to lead, so that they can, as Mr. Townsend indicated, keep a completely separate life between their professional activities and their personal activities.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

That's so complex it kind of boggles my mind. I mean, ordinary policing is—

[Tom Stamatakis]

It is a very high-risk, high-stress type of activity. I'm not as familiar with RCMP policies, but I know that in municipal and provincial police forces we typically leave people in those positions for a short period of time, depending on the file they're working on. You try to manage it organizationally so that the level of stress can be reduced.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Your time is up. We'll now move back to Mr. Scarpaleggia, please.

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

I would like to continue along those lines.

Sergeant Townsend, you or someone else, but I can't remember who, was saying that sometimes the person managing the witness, and I assume that's at the very.... At what stage would they be managing the witness, when the witness is not yet in witness protection? I would imagine that once they're in witness protection, they're sent off to another part of the country.

When you say managing the witness, do you mean in the early stages? Whoever said that the person managing the witness has to keep a second residence and so on, at what stage would that be? What do we mean by managing the witness?

[S/Sgt Abraham Townsend]

If you look at the authorities that are within the act, there's the authority for emergency protection. That'll be enhanced with this new legislation to broaden that time period. That will usually come during a fast-moving, fast-breaking investigation.

There are other investigations, such as organized crime investigations, that are slower to develop, and during that developmental phase, when you're assessing the potential of an agent or a witness and bringing or co-opting that person towards the public safety needs of Canadians, that relationship has to managed. If they are assessed and brought into the witness protection program, then there is the continued management or relationship-building. Boiling it down, it all becomes about human relationships on the front end to access the information, and then to continue the protection regime that you're bringing this person into.

I believe we're moving towards a more robust means by which we can support that person. What we don't want to do is bring the person halfway and then abandon the person. It takes away from the credibility of policing and it does a disservice to those who step up to engage and help us.

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

Obviously this police officer is an undercover police officer who is building relationships.

[S/Sgt Abraham Townsend]

Normally in our organization it's a police officer who, over a period of time, has gleaned a wide range of experiences, likely in the federal policing realm where there's an abundance of opportunity for covert and undercover activities. It's an experienced police officer whose training we will then take and enhance in relation to this specific function.

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

But this police officer who's managing the relationship, who has to keep a secondary residence, and who's trying to keep his or her life separate from their family life, would they be known to organized crime or would they be so undercover that the secondary residence is really an insurance policy but, generally speaking, no one would really know that they are a police officer?

I'm thinking that, if someone suspected that they were police and, even if they had a secondary residence, they could be followed back to their primary residence.

[S/Sgt Abraham Townsend]

A secondary residence—I'd prefer to use the term covert accommodation—could be used, whether it's a hotel room that's purchased under a covert identity or whether it's an apartment that's rented under a covert identity. It's a covert place to meet, removed from the police, where you have to meet with this person to coach them along, and to give them the support that's necessary.

It's the separation between your professional life and your personal life, and the separation within your professional life between what you actually do and the identity of the organization you're doing it on behalf of.