Evidence of meeting #80 for Public Safety and National Security in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site.) The winning word was opp.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
Thank you very much, Commissioner.
We'll now move back to Mr. Leef, please.
April 18th, 2013 / 9:40 a.m.
Conservative
Ryan Leef Conservative Yukon, YT
Thank you, Commissioner.
We've talked a fair bit about the first nation policing, and of course we've renewed that federal funding for the next five years, which certainly will provide some certainty for the first nation communities across Canada.
Having policed in northern Canada up in the Yukon Territory, I know there are some similarities, obviously, in what we'd be facing in the Yukon and in native northern policing and rural and remote Ontario. You touched on the things that we hear other witnesses say and that I have experienced—and that you would have experienced—as a police officer, which is that we can't be all things to all people. Yet we can't help ourselves in still trying to be that.
The real question is, how do we bring.... I mean, costs going up will only do so much, because that will also then drive the demand. As police officers, our human nature as police officers will be to take those resources and just do more and more with them, which will keep that demand going up and up. With the increased funding, we will be responding to calls that we never responded to before. I think the real trick is driving down that demand of the public's expectations.
I know that's a challenging question, but how do we go from that community policing model that we've driven, that I think is very important.... I mean, you play football with the kids at school and integrate into the community, which is a critical role of policing. We've set the bar so high. How do we bring that bar back down to a reasonable level now for Canadians, so that we aren't going to the cat-in-the-tree kind of scenario, or where our emergency response people aren't answering the phone to tell people how to spell the word “subpoena”? That sounds ridiculous, but I know that our telecom operators have done that for people.
How do we do that now that we've set the bar so high? Do you see that as a really important point, versus just pushing that financial envelope up more and more, which in my opinion will only increase our demand and our response to it?
9:45 a.m.
Commissioner, Ontario Provincial Police
Pushing the financial bucket higher isn't the answer. It is a big piece of the issue in the first nation communities, because in many of them now they just don't have anything.
In the case of the OPP, for example, we're not going to get more money, so we have to change how we do business, and we are. We're not going to go to the cat in the tree anymore, and that's a sad commentary because we were proud to go to the cat in the tree for many years, but we have to focus more on prevention.
There has to be a more cooperative relationship between police and the private sector. There are a lot of companies out there that we should probably work more closely with than we do now, because they're losing money through frauds in banks, and telecommunication companies are losing cellphones, etc.
Also, with all social service agencies.... That's happening very effectively in some communities, but not so much in others. That's a big part of it. It's the prevention piece, I think, that is the most important part of all this. I wouldn't have said that 35 years ago. I would've said, “what the heck do they do?”, but....
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
Ryan Leef Conservative Yukon, YT
Yes, and you raise an interesting point with that integration part. I think it's valuable. I know that in the Yukon it's going on very well right now. The one thing that I experienced in policing, certainly, and heard in my years of law enforcement after I left the RCMP in the Yukon, was that people really wanted to integrate and work together. For the peripheral agencies, I think their general feedback was that information goes into the policing world, but rarely comes back out. That wanting to share is a one-way street a lot of times.
I can only characterize that as an experience with the RCMP, but how would you characterize the OPP's relationship with that information sharing? I do know that services have said that they'd love to cooperate and collaborate with police, but that the police want the information in and they're not always willing to share, either it's privacy concerns or it's just simply “we're the end of the road for information and we don't give information back”.
9:45 a.m.
Commissioner, Ontario Provincial Police
It's a challenge, without a doubt. It ends up in the hands of lawyers at times, and information privacy people—you hit the nail right on the head—and there are times when we're prohibited from giving as much as we would like to give, whether it be to victims, organizations, or whatever. To say to someone, “You've been a victim, sir”, and then have them give you a call and reach out to you creates problems. There are all kinds of issues. We're trying to work through those to the benefit of “what's the best thing for the victims” and to try to get at some of that, but it is a huge job for us, without a doubt.
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
Thank you very much.
Commissioner, thank you for coming. We appreciate it. As was mentioned, we did have someone from the OPP here on Tuesday. He referenced you coming and being able to answer some of the questions that he wasn't able to. We thank you for doing that today.
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
We are going to adjourn.
To those who are going to serve on the subcommittee, we'll reconvene here in about five minutes.
To the committee, the next meeting will be in camera.
This meeting is adjourned.