Public Safety Committee on April 23rd, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Good morning, everyone.

This is meeting number 81 of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, Tuesday, April 23, 2013.

I'll remind our committee that towards the end of the close of the meeting today we will go in camera to consider some committee business. In the meantime, we're continuing our study of the economics of policing in Canada. On our first panel today we have with us Chief Rick Hanson of the Calgary Police Service. Welcome to the committee this morning, Chief Hanson.

[Chief Rick Hanson, Chief of Police, Calgary Police Service]

Thanks for having me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We also have, appearing by video conference from Toronto, Deputy Chief Peter Sloly from the Toronto Police Service, who is in charge of divisional policing command. Deputy Chief Michael Federico was to attend, but he is unable to speak with us this morning. He has also notified us that he will send us a written presentation.

We want to thank both the Calgary chief and the Toronto deputy chief for appearing this morning and helping us in our study of the costs of policing in Canada. Our committee recognizes the good work of these two police forces and the efforts of the men and women on the front lines who serve and protect these large Canadian cities.

I would invite each of you to make some brief opening statements before we proceed into questions. Chief Hanson has provided us with a chart. Unfortunately, it's only in one language, so we are unable to circulate it. We will see if we can get that translated so you will get a copy later on, but he may be making reference to it in his presentation.

Welcome, Chief Hanson. We will begin with you.

[Chief Rick Hanson]

Thank you very much. I apologize for not having that translated. I was just notified late last week about attending here, and I was working on a presentation right up until the last moment on the plane last night.

I very much appreciate the opportunity to speak about the economics of policing. With 38 years in policing, I can safely say there has been tremendous change that has occurred in policing.

Frequently there is one measurement criterion used to relate crime rates, and that is specifically around homicide rates. Because homicide rates have dropped over the last 25 or 30 years, there's a belief that crime rates are down. I'd like to start by saying homicide rates are impacted more by the quality of health care today than by certain members of the population not endeavouring to continue on with that. I think it's safe to say that far more homicides would occur if it wasn't for the extremely high quality of trauma care in the hospitals today.

Secondly, it's important to note that the police over the years have put in a great deal more effort in regard to things like homicide prevention via domestic conflict units. In Calgary, for instance—and you will see this throughout my presentation today and in answering questions—we use an integrated approach to policing that partners other social agencies with the police in an endeavour to reduce victimization and deal with the issues in a more effective wraparound way that not only reduces the risks to citizens in the community but also prevents further victimization. To that effect, the HomeFront model, which includes the crown, the police, women's shelters, social workers, and a domestic violence court, has reduced homicides involving domestic situations in most years by up to 70% compared to previous years.

One thing also of note, which has remained consistent over the last 30 years, is that the rate of attacks against people has remained constant. An event that would have been a homicide years ago is a wounding with intent or a serious assault. The workload that is associated with these types of crimes has greatly increased again, primarily due to the advent of the charter, charter rulings, things like the Stinchcombe decision around disclosure.

To that end, I don't want to spend too much time on the investigations part, which takes an immense amount of resources. I did a bring a CD. Unfortunately it wasn't translated so I couldn't hand it out, but I will endeavour to get that translated because it goes into an actual homicide and then relates the amount of effort and the resources required to take a homicide—and this is a real homicide we did—from the event to its successful prosecution in court.

I think you're more interested in, at least I hope you're more interested in, the reality around policing today as it relates to our greater understanding of the science around bad guys, around criminals. Eighty per cent of those people in prisons suffer from anti-social personality disorder. Now that doesn't really mean anything to most people. They are bad guys who go to prison. The only time it means something to people is when you look at the science indicating the vast majority of those who suffer from anti-social personality disorder, and as I say, it's 80% of the population in the prisons. They make up 2% of the general population. They are reluctant to diagnose it in kids, but the same behaviours manifest themselves in conduct disorders.

In other words, here's what I'm saying and the research supports this: if you can't get to kids before they leave elementary school, it's too late. I would ask that all of us here sit back for a few moments and think of your own time in school or your kids or—you're all too young to have grandkids. Thank you, there are two of us, then.

All of us can look back and look at our time in school, and teachers tell us the same point all the time. They will tell us that they can tell in grade 1 or grade 2 who we're going to be arresting before the kids leave high school, and nobody does anything about it. Those are conduct disorder issues.

We've recognized that many of these unresolved behavioural issues with young kids, and sometimes mental illness issues, if left unresolved, evolve to a point where these young kids will grow into adults, victimize others, and wind up in the justice system. Combined with that is a huge increase in the number of people nowadays with mental illness issues who self-medicate. They wind up homeless on the street and fall into the justice system because they're committing crimes to support their drug addiction or their alcoholism.

What are we doing about this in Calgary? Our whole approach is based on early intervention, education, and a prevention model that has evolved.

We recognize what the psychiatrists and psychologists tell us, that early intervention starts in kindergarten. We had two psychiatrists address our members two weeks ago so we could see the science that applies to our approach to policing. For instance, we've started what we call our start smart stay safe program. It's all about partnerships. Both school boards, Mount Royal University, and the Calgary Police Service got together to build curriculum-based education that's age appropriate, and we've spelled out the kindergarten to grade six, K to 6, component.

The idea is that the old approach to lecturing kids about crime was too focused on the compartmentalized outcomes of what they do. In other words, the police would go in and lecture on drugs and then they'd have a separate lecture on gangs and a separate lecture on bullying. The reality is that when you get to kids you have to give them the education they need in a way that speaks to what they understand—in other words, associating with other kids, how they get along, and how to deal with situations that arise when there is inappropriate behaviour.

We've started that. We've piloted it in elementary schools in the northeast part of our city and we've gone city-wide now. We have 12 officers in the elementary schools delivering curriculum-based education to every elementary school grade in the city. This is about prevention.

When we rolled this out, the teachers told us if we were going to do it for the kids, we had to do it for the parents. So Mount Royal University also developed the parallel piece that goes to the families. It's a family and youth education piece. It gives them the type of knowledge and the information that kids need to counteract what they're exposed to today, the toxic waste that's called social media and television. The Internet is good in some ways, but kids get exposed to awful things and there is nothing to counteract that. Too often too many parents don't want to talk to their kids about things like drugs because they don't want to give them the idea.

We can get into some research that just came out of the U.K. that talks about kid-on-kid sexual assaults that have been brought on by what kids see on the Internet. When we dealt with that with the teachers they said somebody has to deal with these kids we can identify in elementary school. They knew they were going to go to jail. Nobody did anything about it, so we started what we call our multi agency school support teams. These are police officers paired with social workers, in cars. The partnership is with both school boards.

We've also partnered with Alberta Health Services, so those five agencies partnered. We have 12 teams of two and here's how this works. I'll give you a quick story because I think stories provide more context than just talking about what these teams do.

We know that bullying is a big issue in school. We know that the so-called criminogenic factors that contribute to kids evolving into a life of crime are easily predictable and easily seen. The kids are academically unsuccessful. Generally they tend toward bullying. They have no friends, and they usually come from a background where there is disrespect for any kind of authority, whether it's teachers, the police, or whoever.

We started this program and here are the types of situations they deal with. Day one, we get called to a school because a kid is going into grade 6. He's 11 years old and in the last two years has missed one complete year of school. In other words, he's skipping every second day. He started grade 6 in the same way, so they called us into the school and said they didn't know what to do with this kid. He's one of those we know is going to get himself into serious trouble because after they leave elementary school into the cesspool we call junior high, and then high school, it's just too tough.

The police officer-social worker pair showed up at the school and got the facts. At 11 o'clock in the morning, they showed up at the kid's house. They rang the doorbell. He answered the door. They said, “What are you doing here?” “Well, I didn't want to go to school today.” “Where's your mom?” It turns out his mom was still in bed. It was 11 o'clock in the morning.

It turns out, to give the Reader's Digest version, that mom was suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness: chronic depression. She was physically unable to care for those kids. There was no dad; he had gone. There had been an abusive relationship. There was an eight-year-old boy also involved, who worshipped his 11-year-old brother, so you're fighting for two kids here.

Now, this is a kid going into grade 6, academically unsuccessful, with no friends, known as a bully in the school. As one of our chief superintendents in one of the school boards said at the time, when we talked about this particular file, “It's no wonder that kid wasn't doing well in school”. Here's a kid who felt that he had to look after the family, that he was the man of the house, and the frustrations were palpable.

They got the mother in to see a doctor, got her medicated for the mental illness, got her back functioning at a certain level, and hooked her into a parent support program provided by the United Way. The MASS team got the 11-year-old into tutoring and into sports, because one of the greatest indicators of whether you're going to be successful—and we can get into this—is that if you have a conduct disorder, you have to be successful at something. If it turns out to be sports, that may be the one thing that gets you over the hump, or it could be a significant adult in your life.

This is a true story, and I wanted to tell this story because this kid, because of that intervention, finished that year on the honour roll. Now let's look at the eight-year-old, his little brother, who worshiped his older brother, who was the man of the house. He paralleled the improvement.

Now juxtapose that against this kid going into junior high school the following year with the same profile. Academically he's no good in school. Somebody comes up to him—one of the older kids—and gives him 20 bucks to deliver a package to such and such an address. You've just created a drug trafficker, you've just introduced him to crime, and you've just introduced him to the earliest stages of gang life. You figure out the cost.

I could go on and on with stories like this. We've expanded the program from the original four teams that piloted it to 12 teams of two. Alberta Health Services has now assigned health clinicians, because mental illness is so prevalent for these teams, so that we can maximize the effect.

The reality is that an early intervention, with a conduct disorder issue in the early stages, requires less investment than allowing the development of that conduct disorder to produce an anti-social personality disorder involving the young person in the justice system. Those are the people who either wind up going to jail, wind up going to prison, or continue to victimize.

We have other programs that we've linked to this, including our cadet program.

Shall I wrap it up?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Yes, please. We've gone about 14 minutes now.

[Chief Rick Hanson]

I'm sorry about that.

I won't get into the issues around mental illness, then, and the fact that we know that too many—the numbers are up to 78% of those in the justice system—who are in prisons and jails are suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness and are there because they self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. We have programs now, which again involve police officers working with mental health workers in a system designed around getting those people out of the justice system and into the help programs, because the reality is that these are people with health issues. They are not criminals.

I'll wrap up with that, because I'm sure you will have questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Chief Hanson.

If we have our connection with Toronto, we would now welcome the comments from Deputy Chief Peter Sloly.

Are you with us, sir?

[Deputy Chief Peter Sloly, Deputy Chief, Toronto Police Service]

Yes. Good morning to the panel, and thank you for including me today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We don't have a video connection yet. The problem is at the other end. I'll ask our technician here to turn the volume up a little more.

All right, Deputy Chief Sloly, we can't see you but we can hear you, so the floor is yours.

[D/Chief Peter Sloly]

Thank you.

I'm responsible for all of our divisional policing operations, which includes our 18 police divisions that serve all of the city of Toronto, 4,200 members who work for me, and a $450 million budget. Virtually two-thirds of all of our members and one-half of all of the operating budget for the Toronto Police Service revolve around my operations.

I am a big believer in community mobilization. In fact, I brought community mobilization into the Toronto Police Service. We didn't invent it, but there are lots of great agencies, including Calgary, that are outstanding examples of how to apply community mobilization.

My recommendation for this committee is that if you want to see the best agency in all of Canada, it is Waterloo Regional Police Service, under Chief Matt Torigian. It was Waterloo that gave me the idea of bringing it into Toronto. I think they deserve reference in this conversation around the concept and the model.

I will give you a very brief context around why I think it's important. John Fielding, back in the 18th century in the United Kingdom, just before the founding of the new model of policing under Sir Robert Peel, coined the phrase “an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure”. It's a very simple statement. If you put a little bit into prevention, you don't have to do a lot of stuff downstream around the cure.

Sir Robert Peel talked about the police being the people and the people being the police. I think that's the most overused portion of Peel's nine principles. In fact, the one that drives me is that the absence of police activity is actually the measure of police effectiveness. The less we have to do, the better we actually are. People don't want to have to call the police to respond quickly and effectively to a crime. They don't want to have to call the police in the first instance.

Under our Police Services Act here in Ontario, which governs all of our police service delivery, the number one policing mandate for all police agencies in Ontario—and it's very similar across Canada—is to deliver community policing in partnership with our community. The functional areas of police service delivery start with crime prevention. They then go on to order management. They then go on to emergency response. They then go on to law enforcement. They then go on to assisting victims and witnesses and the prosecution of crimes. But they start with crime prevention.

Logically, the more you prevent, the less you have to do downstream. It's in that context that I'll move on to discussing community mobilization. My research on the topic found that the field of public health services was the one that first embraced this at an institutional level. The public health field in Canada, particularly one in which we have universal health coverage, places a great stress on governments to provide health services to their citizens.

Health Canada recognized very early on that you can't build enough hospitals and you can't hire enough doctors and nurses in order to treat everybody who wants to walk into a doctor's office or an emergency ward. We have to have a healthier community and healthier individuals in the community. Let's start to move health services out of the bricks and mortar and the human capital we've invested in and back into the community's hands. Let's teach people to be healthier. Let's encourage healthier practices in the community. Let's reduce illness at the upstream level, as opposed to treating it all downstream where it's too expensive and not sustainable to fund and resource.

The same concept can be applied to policing. The more crime we prevent upstream—the healthier we make individuals and their choices about life, the healthier we'll make communities so they're more resilient to criminal activity and other elements of disorder—the less likely they're going to need police services or need to call on police services, particularly the most expensive parts which are, in fact, rapid response to emergency calls and law enforcement, meaning the enforcement of criminal statutes, provincial statutes, and municipal bylaws.

The Toronto police has a long history of being involved in prevention, but I would suggest that, even as good as we are, we do not have the balance right in the mix of our focus on prevention and our reactive style of policing.

I could talk about the community mobilization model as though it were a new model in policing. I don't believe it is a new model. I don't believe it's a model that we need to adopt. I think the police legal framework that I referenced, the Police Services Act, with its common sense approaches to keeping communities healthy and safe, dictates just good policing practices, which include engaging and working formally with community partners, and more regularly and more consistently using community assets in the service of public safety and in the provision of police service delivery.

We've had a couple of examples here in Toronto that I was asked to comment on, specifically our Toronto anti-violence intervention strategy, which uses community mobilization at the heart of our service delivery model to reduce the effects of guns, gangs, drugs, and violent crime on our inner-city communities. As well, our mobile crisis intervention team is a model based on using police and public health practitioners to respond to people in crisis, emotional or psychological crisis.

Both of these models are fully developed, with over a half decade of program delivery and program evaluation. They're extensively used in almost every aspect of our violent crime investigations, our violent crime operations, as well as our service to the mental health community, including response to heightened levels of emotional disturbance and mental illness in individuals on our streets.

There was a report submitted to the committee by Deputy Chief Federico on the mobile crisis intervention teams. We have over 19,000 calls for service each year. Over the course of our implementation of this, we've had 3.6 million contacts. We've apprehended over 8,600 persons. We've reduced the incidence of severe injury. We've prevented a lot of high-cost involvement with the police by this partnership, where we have a police officer and a mental health provider working in the same scout car, responding to the same calls for service.

It's been an effective way of mobilizing community assets, working directly and in intimate contact with our policing operations—completely sewed into our operations—for some of the most high-risk situations that officers face. It's something that we're continuing to expand to more areas of our city. We're having more and more uptake in the public health sector and the mental health survivors community in regard to this particular program.

A report has been submitted. There are lots more details. I'd be happy to answer questions, if there are any from the committee.

The Toronto anti-violence intervention strategy is a model that's gone province-wide. It's now been implemented as the provincial anti-violence intervention strategy, with police leaders across the province using our basic model. There are three basic components to our model: intelligence-led policing, risk focus enforcement, and community mobilization. For intelligence-led, we put the right people in the right place at the right time.

With risk focus enforcement, we're not looking to arrest everybody and charge everybody with everything we can. We're looking at the highest-level offenders, the 1% to 2% in every community who cause 80% to 90% of violent crime and very contentious public safety issues. We focus on them. We target them. We incarcerate them. We put them before the courts.

The two previous elements are not sufficient on their own. We can clear the swamp of alligators, but if you don't change the conditions of the swamp, the next generation of alligators will move in. You have to mobilize the community to make them, on their own, more resilient and more capable of sustaining the public safety results that come from enforcement. It's with the support of police, but primarily on their own initiative. If you can't mobilize a community to use their own resources, their own passion, their own people, there are not enough police forces you can hire to keep that swamp clear of alligators.

It's a very simple concept. It's not easy to implement, but we've found year-over-year crime reductions right across the board. In particular, violent crime reductions have been sustained for seven straight years. We're confident that we can continue to sustain and drive down that crime bubble even further.

I'm not sure how much time I have left, so I'll start to wrap up my comments. Certainly I'll be available for any questions that anybody has.

All of these things still require a different change in the way that we structure our police services. I'm not saying we need a new model. We just need to structure our police services around the legal framework that we have.

I've done enough research on this topic that I can dare say Toronto isn't where I'd like us to be. Look at the total number of resources in the Toronto Police Service dedicated specifically to the area of crime prevention and community mobilization. When I say “resources”, that's people, the human beings we hire and pay; that's our priorities; that's the time we spend on those areas; and that's the financial resources, the line-by-line operating budget items that are associated with prevention and mobilization.

Only about 5% of our resources are dedicated to that, and yet it is the number one police service delivery requirement under the Police Services Act. I can safely say that every single other police agency in Canada, North America, and western Europe is structured in the same way. We talk a good game about prevention and mobilization, but we don't make it a priority. Your real priorities are where you put your people, your time, and your money. We're simply not structured in a way to make a prevention model, a prevention-focused model, a reality.

The second thing I'll say is about the culture of policing. There are two things that every cop hates: the way things are, and change. We need to change from a reactive enforcement model to a prevention, pro-active model, and change is going to be difficult to do. Whether it's for a chief of police in Calgary, a deputy chief here in Toronto, or a constable on a small town street anywhere in Canada, this is not easy to do. It's going to take a real commitment.

I believe the heart of the matter is the cost of policing. Let me make a comment on the mandate of the committee. I'm reading here from a document that was provided to me as a support document:

That the Committee conduct a study into all aspects of the economics of policing, by speaking to federal, aboriginal, provincial, territorial and municipal, police forces in all areas of enforcement, with a focus on improving the efficiency....

By simply using that term “enforcement” to describe police services, you've already increased the cost of what you're doing. We are not in the enforcement business. We are in the police-service-providing business. We are in the public safety business. We're in the prevention business. Nobody wants to be a victim. People want us to prevent crimes from happening in the first instance, and respond effectively, efficiently, and economically when we have to. I think you need to focus on the prevention more than on the enforcement going forward. It's a tough sell inside policing. It's going to be a tough sell in government. I think the community will be more receptive to it, quite frankly.

Those are my comments. I'm happy to answer any questions that may come my way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Deputy Chief Sloly.

We'll move into our first round of questioning. We'll go to the government side, to our parliamentary secretary, Ms. Bergen.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to both our witnesses, Chief Hanson and Deputy Chief Sloly, for being here with us.

Deputy Chief Sloly, as you wrapped up your comments, you said what I was hoping to say, that the focus of our committee meetings is the economics of policing. We're looking at ways to do things more efficiently, more effectively, and not only to save money. I think we all know in this time of fiscal restraint that this is important to all of us, but we're also looking for ways to do things so that we get the results that we need.

What I'm hearing from both Chief Hanson and you, Deputy Chief Sloly, is about this whole notion that police officers are social workers, counsellors, medical officers, and educators. It almost sounds as if you are saying that has become what you do. You talked about the whole notion of prevention and that being a major part of what you should be doing, whether it's actually a budget priority or not. But it sounds like this whole notion of community policing and agencies being involved, and even, Chief Hanson, the stories that you told us....

Are you telling us that this really is the role that police should be playing and that this is the most efficient way to do policing? Or are you taking on jobs that other agencies should be doing?

Deputy Chief Sloly, I'll start with you.

[D/Chief Peter Sloly]

I believe that what has been broadly described as the social work aspect of policing is an important and vital part, but it should not be the predominant role that police officers play. We have been forced to take on more and more of this role, because structurally, the way we line up with other service providers—public health and public education are two quick examples—we are not in really good formal partnerships.

Our mobile crisis intervention team is a better example of how we could be, functionally, working together better. The police could do more of what they're really good at, which is policing, and public health could do more of what they're good at, which is public health interventions. That's a better example of how we could and should be doing business, but we can and should be doing that in terms of guns and gangs operations. We can and should be doing that in terms of cyberbullying. We can and should be doing that in terms of preventing radicalization and extremists within our communities across Canada.

So I think there is a role for us in social service provision, but we can do it better if we do it in better coordination with those other social service providers.

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

I think that's what we all need to hear so that it's clear. It's not actually your job as police officers and police service providers. It's partnering with other people and surrounding yourself with a team that can do this.

Chief Hanson, do you have any other comment? I have a whole list of questions. Did you want to comment on that?

[Chief Rick Hanson]

Yes, I'd like to say that there are certain jobs, certain functions, that we bring to the table as part of that partnership that no one else can do. That's why it's vital. Teachers would love to be able to intervene early with some of these kids, but they can't. They don't leave the school. If you don't get into the home, you don't deal with the real problem. What we bring to the table is the ability to work with other partners, literally work with them together in the same cars, going into the homes, finding out what the real issues are, and bringing in the appropriate resources. It is important to have the police as part of that team.

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

Chief Hanson, I'm not sure if you're aware that our committee is going to be coming to Calgary. We haven't quite set the time down yet, but we hope to be there in the next month or so to look at what you're doing and to get more information. I'm wondering if you can tell me whether you've had a chance to do research on how this has improved efficiencies in the police department and how long you've been operating under this community model.

[Chief Rick Hanson]

We've implemented these teams in the last five years; most of them in the last four years. Some of these have had some early evaluations on them. We're currently partnering with Mount Royal University and the University of Calgary, because the best measurement is a longitudinal study that compares this approach to other approaches that don't use this model. We're still in the middle of the evaluation stage using that academic approach.

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

So would your motivation for doing this be that it is an efficiency in terms of real budgets, or is it more that you want to see if you're actually reducing crime over the long term, which would mean obviously saving money in the long term? What's your sense right now, in terms of efficiencies and using your resources more wisely?

[Chief Rick Hanson]

The ultimate goal is that if you target early enough, you'll have an outcome down the road. Right now we're still dealing with 16,000 domestics a year and a quarter of a million dispatch calls, all those things. But with these focused early intervention strategies that partner with the other agencies, we're very confident that what we'll see is a reduction similar to the reduction we've seen in domestic homicides because of the coordinated approach. Right now though, as Deputy Sloly said, we're out on the street dealing with all the issues that are out there, while we're starting this new approach that we are very confident in to reduce crime and those who get involved in crime. The payoff will be down the road.

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

How much time do I have, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have a minute and a half.

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

Okay, I'm just going to switch gears a little bit. We've talked a lot about the community approach, but I want to ask you both, as Chief of Police and Deputy Chief of Police, when you're looking at your police department and other ways to be more efficient, what are some things that you've been doing to cut costs and make sure that if there are jobs that civilians could do, you don't have police resources doing them? Can you give us a kind of laundry list of some things that each of you have been doing?

Maybe I'll start with you, Deputy Chief Sloly.

[D/Chief Peter Sloly]

One of the things that we've done from an operation standpoint is adopt a pilot project to deliver a hub model similar to the one that Chief McFee did in Prince Albert. In fact, we went to Prince Albert and virtually stole, copied, begged, borrowed, and everything else, what he did there. We're piloting that in one of our tougher divisions, up in 23 Division, in Rexdale. We're starting to see the same types of benefits, financially and on an efficiency basis, that Chief McFee experienced when he was chief at Prince Albert.

Chief Blair has already implemented—in January, 2012—a complete review of all of our administrative and operational functions within the police service to look for efficiencies and economies. We've begun to civilianize. Front-line positions that were formerly done by police officers are now becoming civilian. For instance, our booking hall officers, who were fully sworn officers, 115 in total across the 17 divisions that I have, have now become 80% civilianized using special constables out of our court services division.

As an example, we're looking at fully leveraging information technologies. Toronto was one of the first major police services in Ontario, one of the first in Canada, to fully implement a social media strategy. We're now leveraging digital media and social media in many new ways to reduce human cost. The number of officers and the time it takes to go out and stop and talk to 1,000 people in the street.... With a $2.99 software app available through open source, we can get more rich information, more geocoded location information, a complete picture of crime networks and good-guy networks. It's all available from open source information without putting a single pair of police officers into boots and onto the street with all the risks and costs that come with that.

I could go on. I'd be happy to submit a list of review areas that the chief has undertaken through his review of his whole service as material for you to consider, and a process for you to consider, for police chiefs across Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Deputy. We're out of time on that question. I'm sure we'll come back to it.

Mr. Garrison, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to both our witnesses for being here today. I found the alternative models that you're talking about very interesting. But I'd like to back up for an instant and talk about the demand drivers in policing, because these strategies are obviously a response to that ever-growing demand for police services.

I'd like to get an idea, and I'll start maybe with Chief Hanson, of what you find in the community as the main drivers for increased police services and increased police calls.