Public Safety Committee on April 25th, 2013

[Chief Rod Knecht]

Sure. That's changing with time, actually. We're seeing even more high-level offences not being reported. Those offences that aren't being reported are minor thefts, minor damage to vehicles, often thefts from yards. We know sexual assaults are very significantly underreported.

Most people will report some property crime if they are putting in an insurance claim, because often the insurance company requires them to put in the claim, but folks who are experiencing thefts, minor assaults...those sort of things are not being reported. We have even found of late people aren't reporting break and enters. When a house is getting broken into, people aren't even reporting that. If they don't have insurance, and it's not a requirement to do so, they are not reporting more significant crimes.

So there's a whole gamut of crime that is not being reported by the public. There is apathy. Again, if you have to wait three or four hours for a police officer to show up because of volume of calls, people aren't prepared to do that. They all have busy lives and they do not want to wait around.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Thank you.

One other point you mentioned was regarding the $3 million cost for officers having to show up for court dates and so on when they are not necessarily required, and obviously the lack of notice and other things. You also mentioned that the police agency is required to pay them for eight hours of time when they don't necessarily show up and they aren't required. Is that eight hours a standard timeframe? Is that something that varies from one police agency to another? Does it vary from one province to another? Do you have any recommendations or suggestions as to how that can be more efficient in possibly addressing that issue?

[Chief Rod Knecht]

I'll answer the first part of your question.

It is different between police services and amongst collective agreements. For example, in the RCMP, if you go to court it's a four-hour callback, regardless of whether you have to testify or not. For other police services, it is eight hours. It can be time and a half; in some cases it's double time. It depends on whether it's right after a shift as opposed to a day off. It is different amongst jurisdictions and it depends on where it fits into your schedule. In most cases, that's all part of a collective agreement. With the RCMP not having a union, it is a bit different.

I think there is a better way. We have software that we're testing right now called CARM. It's software to better manage the whole shifting response, the court detail, etc. But often what happens in the criminal justice system is that a lawyer may not plead their client guilty until they see if the police officer is going to show up. Individuals may show up and plead not guilty for a speeding ticket and they'll wait to see if the police officer shows up. If the police officer shows up, they'll plead guilty. If the police officer doesn't show up, often the ticket is tossed out. There's always a bit of a shell game going on there, and it's hard to respond to that. Obviously when the police officer gets a subpoena he has to show up.

There has to be a better way to manage that, and I don't think the police can do that alone. Again, it has to be a collaboration between justice, the police, and others, in finding a more efficient way to run the criminal justice system.

The police can find efficiencies, but if there are no efficiencies in the courts or in corrections, those efficiencies may not be fully realized. It does require a full collaboration. We have to stop working in silos. We have to work together to find efficiencies because the system is crushing under its own weight.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

You mentioned traffic tickets. One thing I notice in the Region of Peel is that officers are basically dedicating a full day to court. All of the tickets that are issued by that particular officer are to be heard on the same day. That is something that I think helps the police agency to keep some of the costs low.

I have another question for Mr. Gruson.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Quickly.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

In your experience working with both the private and public sectors, what are some of the private sector management practices that could be implemented in the public sector?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Very quickly.

[Geoff Gruson]

We're clearly talking about modern workforce management practices. There isn't a sector in Canada that doesn't employ competency-based management. This is not something new in policing; it's just not fully implemented in policing across the country.

Chiefs of police generally aren't financial, IT, HR, or communications experts. They're cops who do operational work, and what we find increasingly is that they need to be experts in all of those areas. As Chief Knecht said, they don't yet have the competencies to be good CEOs of major organizations dealing with multi-departmental influences in the community, and that's not good. That has to be fixed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll move to our final question in this round, and that goes to Mr. Scarpaleggia.

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

Thank you.

You make an interesting point. You say that people running police forces have to have all these skills and so on, and maybe there's a shift from having the core policing skills to having skills in the management of large organizations.

Could you see a situation emerging, and maybe it exists already, where the heads of police forces are not actually police officers? Then you run into another problem where the force may not respect the head of the police force. I think that happened at the RCMP to some extent. Anyway, I think that's a very interesting point that you made.

You mentioned that many countries have central cybercrime organizations. Could you elaborate on that? Are you saying essentially that we lack integration in the investigation of cybercrime in Canada?

[Geoff Gruson]

The simple answer is yes. The interesting point of the study we did with Interpol was to understand the fact that cybercrime is pan-national and very seldom can be dealt with in a national legislative environment. You're dealing with criminality that works globally, yet every single country is trying to develop its own unique solution, its own unique approach. I think that's one of those areas where it's really clear we have to integrate, collaborate, and understand the issue, and understand the solution to the response to that issue.

So the answer is yes.

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

Even within Canada, there's—

[Geoff Gruson]

Even within Canada, province by province, we are looking at it differently. This really falls to a lack of leadership. If I were pointing fingers, which I never do.... We have to understand what the framework that Public Safety is creating for policing in the country. What is the framework for managing and conducting police in the country that should be created by Public Safety, and then cascade it down to the provinces and municipalities. That's lacking at this point in time.

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

This national governance framework that you're talking about would have to be voluntary, because of the nature of the federation—

[Geoff Gruson]

Voluntary, but I think—

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

—in the sense that you'd be establishing standards and you could say that this is the model you should follow.

[Geoff Gruson]

Exactly. You'd develop national standards, and the province would declare them as provincial standards, which would be great. Then municipalities would declare them as municipal standards, and that would be good. Really, they're benchmarks rather than standards. It's really saying that you don't go below this line when it comes to training, when it comes to management, when it comes to effective and efficient delivery of services. Get above that line, if you can.

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

We've said throughout this study that what we need in Canada is some coordination and a kind of clearing point for studies on policing, costs of policing, methods of policing and so on, to establish benchmarks. But this is what you were doing.

[Geoff Gruson]

That's exactly what the Police Sector Council does, and has been doing for eight years.

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

But its funding has been cut.

[Geoff Gruson]

Yes. Unfortunately, these things happen in program areas.

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

Yes, but we're talking about recreating this—

[Geoff Gruson]

I think it needs to be recreated, absolutely. We've put in place a shell organization with a shell board of directors, again from all the stakeholder groups, and we're looking for funding; we're looking for opportunities to continue the work.

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

That's interesting.

Chief Knecht, you were mentioning unreported crime.

My understanding is that Statistics Canada actually has some way of measuring unreported crime. Is that correct? They have some way of estimating, I should say, unreported crime. Are you aware of that?

[Chief Rod Knecht]

Not specifically, but I think there have been surveys done. I'm aware of surveys done in Alberta to find out if someone who has been a victim of a crime has reported that crime. That's where I got my information from, as well as from talking to people. They're not bothering to report certain crimes.