Public Safety Committee on April 16th, 2013

[D/Chief Michael Federico]

In Toronto, of course the training will encompass the fundamental values and responsibilities that are associated with the position of special constable, but then it depends on their particular assignment and they will be trained to carry out their assignment. But if we're talking about public accountability, public scrutiny, the oath of office, it reaches the same threshold for a special constable in Toronto as it would for any other employee, including uniformed members.

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

Superintendent Couture.

[C/Supt Gary Couture]

We're a little bit more limited as to the range of positions that our special constables can hold, so for us it's offender transportation and court security. They are trained for a two-week period upon their engagement. It relates to their positions, as the deputy referred to, the expectations of their role, and they also complete a use-of-force training component. That aspect of the training is renewed on an annual basis afterwards. We are limited in where we can put these civilian court officer positions—very few in our respect—but they would not be trained on the use of force, etc. They're more administrative positions. Again as the deputy said, it's specific to their role.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll move back to Ms. Bergen, please. You have seven minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

And thank you to all the witnesses who are here today.

Mr. McFee, I want to talk to you a little bit about the hubs and CORs program you described. I think we've heard of hub and spoke, and in this case it's hubs and CORs, and we get the general idea. I think you described it well as something that you could almost franchise, that you can move to bigger or smaller markets, I would assume, and be able to develop it.

Actually, this break week, I had a chance to meet with a group out of Selkirk. It's called START, and it actually is more community driven, which is interesting because they have it basically arranged the same way that you describe but at a smaller level.

So, for example, the Selkirk school board contributes about $5,000 a year, the child and family agency, the local one, contributes $5,000, $10,000 a year. The RCMP provides an office, a computer, a BlackBerry. It's sort of the same scenario but on a smaller scale, and again it's community driven. I think that what we're hearing from you is something that can be transferred to a rural area, as well as used in a larger urban setting, which is very encouraging because I know that some of us had concerns about that.

Chair, I think this group will actually be sending us a letter. I think they'd like to come and present to us. It would be useful to have them here.

But what I'm wondering about, Mr. McFee, is the cost of training. You talked about the possible federal role. I'm really just brainstorming here, because during the break I also had a chance to stop at RCMP Depot division in Regina over the last few days and see some of the great things they do, the training that they do. They're actually starting to do a bit of training at that facility, for example for the Correctional Service of Canada, and there seems to be an opportunity for continuity as far as training is concerned.

Is there a role for the federal government to play, even for example at RCMP Depot, to help with training not just with the RCMP but actually at the OPP level also, or at more of a local level? Is there some opportunity? I'd like to get your feedback—yours, Mr. McFee, and then the other witnesses'.

[Dale McFee]

That's a great point and a great question.

Their success is the ability to act locally. For instance, in northern Saskatchewan you can't give a Regina solution, just as you can't give an Ottawa solution.

There's no cost to a hub; it's just folks doing their business differently, committed to meeting to address issues on a regular basis in a short timeframe.

The COR is taking another step to the franchise. We have a group of workers from multiple disciplines: mental health, addictions, police, social services, education. They work for a community governance board. So they're focused on working on community priorities—not police priorities, not health priorities, not social service priorities. That is the part that absolutely 100% can be franchised and built. That's why it was built.

What we're really talking about is focusing on risk, early and immediate intervention, and multiple agencies and services. To your point, what we're trying to do now in Saskatchewan is to look at a centre of excellence concerning the following: why are we not training, whether it's in a public safety college or moving from a policing college to a public safety college, front-line police officers, workers in mental health, social services, education, and corrections? You're bang on. Is there a role? Absolutely, there's a role, and it's important that we get it right and we do the right thing. That stuff is all on the table to be discussed.

The opportunities here to deliver better service to clients are phenomenal. With those opportunities, there's no question that significant value comes. Better service to clients gets people out of the system. The court system wasn't designed to deal with everything it does.

We even go a step further. Every time we have a specific issue, we design a different court on the back end. With due respect, our judges do a great job, but are we giving them the opportunity to be successful? A lot of policing, 75% to 76%, is anti-social behaviour calls. We need to take that stuff out of the system before it's in it so we can do a better job on the back end with the serious stuff. The only way to do that is back to balance. So I fully support what you're saying.

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

Thank you.

Superintendent Couture, what are your thoughts as far as training is concerned? Do you find that the cost of training at the OPP level is a big portion of your costs? Is there a role, for example, for RCMP Depot, which is their established, built infrastructure? Or do you find that training costs are not an issue?

[C/Supt Gary Couture]

The biggest for us is the desire to move forward and engage our partners in our civilian governance on the training aspect. If I may, I'll speak with regard to east region, because our commissioner is coming on Thursday.

But if I can again go with the community engagement mobilization model, in Ontario its relating to much that's been said this morning about engaging everybody in the community to start focusing on local issues that we can address before these get to the point where there's an arrest, a court process, etc. But we need to get everybody trained and engaged in that aspect to make sure they move forward with it. In this region, in the last year, we've started with our governance. We've brought in our police service boards, our local councillors, etc., to try to get them to endorse this and support us moving forward. Some municipalities have.

Somewhat to the point you made earlier about smaller communities versus larger ones, I'll talk just to the region I command. I know three detachments are moving forward heavily with this model. Bancroft has 3,000 people. They have developed a plan with the community engagement model. Everybody's engaged. They're talking about issues they can address and resolve and reduce before they become criminal activities that police need to address. Another community is Quinte West, which has 50,000 people. They are engaged in it. Hawkesbury has 15,000. So I don't believe there's any population limitation to the application of this mindset to get everybody engaged to work toward issues that can be resolved together.

We need to commit to the training piece. For us, it involves bringing in the officers, bringing in partners, etc. We don't have a budget line for it. For us, our priority—as a region anyway—is that we see a huge beneficial outcome afterwards. So we do invest in training, etc., and we develop as we move along.

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

How much time do I have, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You're out of time.

Thank you.

We'll now move to Mr. Scarpaleggia, please.

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

Thank you.

Mr. McFee, could you go over the point you made a little while ago about the part of your system that is franchiseable? You seem to be saying while part of your system is maybe unique to your circumstances, part of it could be a model for others. I wasn't clear on the distinction. I understand what your force is doing by getting all these intervenors active at the same table to deal with matters in a collaborative way.

As you say, I envisage a table with people working together, and so on. As you say, it doesn't cost anything, it's just bringing people together. But what portion of your system can be replicated and is franchiseable?

[Dale McFee]

Let me give you that in a visual example that I think probably would help everybody understand. If you take a MacDonald's in Ottawa and a MacDonald's in Japan, basically MacDonald's International runs both of those. The software systems are the same, the cooking order is the same, the “M” is the same, the colours are the same. Everything is the same. The COR is exactly that. What's basically deliverable in each community is the same. The only thing that's different between the MacDonald's in Japan and the MacDonald's in Ottawa is the menu. The menu shows the ability to act local on local problems.

So use the structure of the process, solve the privacy issues, solve all those issues that cause troubles and let the local folks, who are the experts in their community, use the structure to deliver results at that community level. If you keep it that simple, it works all the time.

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

Your COR system that can be used anywhere, is that a set of procedures? Or does it involve software? Does it involve, for example, an economic model that, following Mr. Garrison's point, could estimate the costs not only to the local police force but also to the social agencies involved in collaborative interventions? Is it that sophisticated, or is it really a set of procedures, like a manual? Do we get into some highly technological instruments or tools that can be used in different jurisdictions?

[Dale McFee]

It's basically policy procedures. It's putting it all in a box. It does have a system we've designed that makes it a lot easier from a technological point of view, but it's basically boxing it all up so that it's replicable. You may have to tweak that to meet each region in the country, no question, but that's easily done. The whole point is that we're getting to the final strokes with our privacy commissioner. We've made sure that every system—health, social services, education—understands how it works. It meets everybody's needs. It has a rotational executive director, so one year it could be the police supplying that person for two years. Every two years it rotates. It could be health, social services. It's meeting everybody's needs. It's following a process through some defined practices, and it has research and evidence and outcomes in the middle of everything.

Don't do it if it's not based on outcomes and research and evidence. We're doing a lot of things that we found, quite frankly, we shouldn't be doing. The World Health Report tells us the number one world problem is violence. That's not the case in Canada. I would ask why. Public safety or community safety is way bigger than policing.

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

I'd like to ask you about the point of entry into this system. I think it was Superintendent Couture who was saying the calls keep coming to the police and then they find out that some of the calls could have gone to a social agency or what have you. In your system, Mr. McFee, is the police call centre the point of entry? Or is there some other point of entry?

I thought the point of entry for just about any kind of call was 911. You call 911, the operator asks you first what the problem is. You may say you'd like to speak to the police. But if they ask what the problem is, and you say somebody just had a heart attack, they're going to direct you to ambulance services. Isn't 911 the triage centre for these calls? I don't understand why point of entry is such a problem—we have 911 and they seem to do a lot of this sorting.

[C/Supt Gary Couture]

I would suggest that some of this is broad community expectations. People in some communities simply expect that police will come and solve all their issues. I agree with you, 911 in the vast majority of communities is the initial point of contact, but the person making the contact has an expectation and will often ask for the police. I emphasize that the communities we police as a provincial organization—not the size of Toronto, but our smaller communities—may have fewer resources. So it's always in relation to police.

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

And they can call the police directly, too, I suppose.

[C/Supt Gary Couture]

Yes, sir.

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

Mr. McFee, do you have anything to add to that?

[Dale McFee]

The police in a hub/COR environment is different than a 911 response. The 911 response is going to get the police, absolutely, or the emergency responders. But it's just one facet. There's stuff coming through the schools and social services. We're getting stuff through health and mental health; we're getting stuff through the community. The point is that a lot of this acute, elevated risk doesn't need a full police response; it needs a solution to a problem that's multi-faceted and multi-agency. I call it the low hanging fruit. About 75% of the call logging is generally your low hanging fruit.

We'll always be able to respond to those obvious emergency calls. We're very good at it in policing. We're very good at it in first response. We can't lose sight of that. We still need to be very good. We need to take some of the low hanging fruit, that anti-social behaviour stuff that left unchecked becomes crime, out of the system by solving some problems rather than continue to respond to it. The continued response is not effective and it's way too costly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Scarpaleggia. We're out of time.

From what the analysts have asked me to pass on to Mr. McFee, one of the things that you said was that it everything has to be evidence-based.

But you also talked about evaluation and accountability through an evaluation at the end. Is there an evaluation form that you go through? Do you have a real process of evaluation? How do you do the evaluation?

[Dale McFee]

Right now, each ministry, each service provider, that's involved in the hub and the COR, evaluates themself. What we also do is that we put the university right into the COR; the University of Saskatchewan is in there. We're trying to do a more comprehensive, in-depth and brand new evaluation on how they relate to each other.

For example, we've got an economist hired in our ministry. We have him working on an optimization rule. You heard me talk about jobs and how many jobs equal how much income tax revenue, and how much that takes in relation to the system. There's got to be an optimization rule that tells you that we need this many jobs, this much done in intervention prevention, this much done in recidivism rehabilitation, and this much done in cheaper forms of service providing. There needs to be an optimization rule. There has to be. There always is for your RRSPs, when you're going to retire. There's always an optimization rule. That's the next level that we're starting to look at.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Rousseau, you have five minutes.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you very much for being here.

Our main goal, here in the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, is, of course, keeping Canadians safe, ensuring our borders are secure, and protecting our nation's sovereignty. And the trend we're seeing stems from the desire to make our police systems more efficient, getting more bang for our buck, so to speak. In your view, what dangers does this eagerness to streamline and be as cost-effective as possible in meeting our goal, which is really public safety and national security, expose us to?

I am going to give you an example. When I talk to RCMP officers, they tell me that their priorities are combatting terrorism and fighting drug trafficking, including the trade of marijuana. When I talk to border services officers, they say they no longer even have the resources they need to conduct thorough searches of goods entering the country.

How, then, does an overeagerness to cut costs jeopardize our personal safety, as well as the security of our businesses?

I'd like Mr. Couture to answer first, please.

[C/Supt Gary Couture]

Would you like me to answer in French?