Public Safety Committee on May 2nd, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Good morning, everyone. This is meeting number 84 of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. It is Thursday, May 2, 2013.

I'll remind you that in our second hour today we will be going in camera. We will be discussing some of the future things that our committee is going to be doing after the break. But in our first hour we're continuing our study of the economics of policing in Canada.

Who was it who coined the phrase “déjà vu all over again”? We're pleased to have with us again, Deputy Commissioner Doug Lang, with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, contract and aboriginal policing; and also Inspector Tyler Bates. Let me just explain that the last time they appeared the topic of aboriginal policing was more the focus. Today I think we're looking more at the topic of auxiliary policing, and maybe some of the volunteering as well.

Our committee wants to thank you for being here last time and coming back again today. We invite Commissioner Lang to bring us an opening statement again today. You know the exercise here. There will some questions afterward.

The floor is yours.

[Deputy Commissioner Doug Lang, Deputy Commissioner, Contract and Aboriginal Policing, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

In fact we had so much fun the last time that we could hardly wait to come back.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You had to come back.

[D/Commr Doug Lang]

On the way home Tyler said that I didn't give him enough time to talk, so I'm going to turn over the opening statement to him. The auxiliary program is within his bailiwick of responsibilities in the national aboriginal policing services program.

I'll turn it over to Tyler for the opening comments, and we'll be happy to answer any questions the committee has after that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Commissioner.

[Inspector Tyler Bates, Director, National Aboriginal Policing and Crime Prevention Services, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

My apologies for the late submission of the redraft. A number of topics that were in the initial version went out. We had some reworking to do on that.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairperson and honourable members of the committee. My name is Tyler Bates. I'm the RCMP's director of aboriginal policing and crime prevention services. I thank you for inviting me to discuss the RCMP's auxiliary constable program, one of the volunteer programs that serve to enhance the RCMP's service delivery.

As mentioned at the last appearance before the committee, on April 30, the RCMP has 29,000 employees that are complemented by thousands of volunteers, the largest group of volunteers in the Canadian federal government. The use of volunteers enhances police efficiency, responsiveness, and service delivery, which in turn leads to community engagement and increased effectiveness of the RCMP as a police agency.

The contingent of volunteers within the auxiliary force numbers over 2,000, and they provide over 250,000 hours of volunteer services every year. Typically, auxiliary constables are gainfully employed within their communities. Each division has a minimum requirement for volunteer hours, which averages about 192 annually. These are weekend warriors who want to work with the police and are community members who have other gainful employment and who join us and give us a community perspective on some of the issues in our communities. Auxiliary constables receive anywhere from one to three weeks of basic training. That includes training in first aid, CPR, CBRN, the RCMP incident management intervention model, and occupational health and safety, as well as public and police safety courses, which include baton and pepper-spray training.

Though their presence is an enhancement to service delivery, they are not a replacement and cannot perform core policing functions as they do not have tactical or investigative training for enforcement or for investigational support of regular members of the RCMP. They're specially trained volunteers, but they're not armed with a firearm. Their training enables them to perform a number of authorized activities under the direct supervision of a regular member, including school presentations, proactive foot and bike patrols, coordination of neighbourhood and business watch programs, home and business safety checks, and block parent programs, to mention but a few.

The auxiliary program is funded and resource levels are determined by the contract provinces, territories, and municipalities, and the program is administered by the RCMP. The coordination of their recruitment and training requires several subject matter experts, and any augmentation to the base of auxiliary constables is managed at the division level. Recruiting and training auxiliary constables depends on available resources, and outfitting each with a uniform and the required equipment costs approximately $2,600.

The RCMP is unique in that our members work in a diversity of communities over the course of their careers. They are required to flexibly adapt to the distinct characteristics of urban, rural, remote, and aboriginal policing environments. This diversity is advantageous to their development and contributes to a well-rounded police officer. That said, the mobility of our membership can sometimes have a negative impact on the transfer of community knowledge and the integration of new members into a new community. The presence of auxiliary constables within a detachment bridges this gap and facilitates a regular member's transition as well as that knowledge transfer. It's often the auxiliary constables who educate incoming members concerning crime trends, long-standing conflicts, and the historical context of community life, thereby enabling proactive police and community engagement.

Auxiliary constables provide valuable insight into the fabric of community life through their knowledge of their home community, local culture, and language. They facilitate the integration of incoming regular members into community life, and they complement our regular members, permitting them to focus on core policing duties.

Furthermore, auxiliary constables enhance the cultural competence of the RCMP, aligning police service delivery with the priorities of the communities they serve. Community representation in the RCMP via the auxiliary constable program builds trust and communication between the police and community, and serves as a bridge between the RCMP and our clients through increased community engagement and participation in crime prevention priorities.

In summary, the auxiliary constable program provides cultural and community knowledge that enables the RCMP to tailor our service in a manner that is respectful of community values. Though the auxiliary constable program enhances our service delivery, it would be difficult to surmise that there are significant realizations of cost savings as their activities are all supervised by a regular member of the RCMP. This, however, does not minimize the valuable contributions that are made daily to the well-being of our communities across Canada by the RCMP's complement of auxiliary constables.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll move into the first round of questioning. It's a seven-minute round.

We'll go to Mr. Norlock, please.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Through you, to the witnesses, thank you for appearing.

I thought your appearance here today was maybe because you got the short straw, but anyway....

All joking aside, in the dying days of my previous career I was the program manager in Northumberland detachment. One of the programs I brought in, which was already in existence in other places, was the auxiliary program, because as I suspect you did, I thought it was a cost-effective way of supplementing some community needs, and more than just one.

Number one in the community needs were that we had a lot of parades—a Christmas parade, Canada Day parade, etc.—and the fire department was stretched thinly. We also had a group of young men and women who wanted to become more involved in their community from a policing aspect, so we thought the auxiliary unit was....

I looked at your numbers in the RCMP and I gather that those numbers of volunteer hours.... We had the Commissioner of the OPP here and I think his numbers were significant. I wonder if you contemplated expanding the auxiliary program?

I'm going to give you time to flesh that out.

The second part is, I also did first nation policing on the James Bay and Hudson Bay coast and I noticed that in those communities they had people like peacekeepers, and we had first nation constables. It was a different kind of policing, and of course we had the Nishnawbe-Aski police chief here telling us about how the force has transitioned to a different type of policing. But it seemed at that time to have been effective.

I wonder, in your first nation territories, do you have people like peacekeepers who are essentially volunteers in the community who to a lesser extent or to a greater extent help with bylaw enforcement?

I know that even the judge, when he went up to the first nation territories, because it was a dry reserve they looked into his velvet bag and his robes to see if he was bringing in something he shouldn't have. Although at first I know some of us thought this was kind of, wow, but in the end they just wanted to make everybody equal.

I wonder if you could let us know some of your thoughts in regard to those two things.

[Insp Tyler Bates]

With respect to your first question on the expansion of the auxiliary constable program, we're certainly always looking within our communities for interest in that program, and in expanding that program where it makes sense. The costs are minimal. Certainly there are some training aspects that need to be considered and coordinated, but we are always looking to expand that program.

With a $2,600 cost for outfitting an auxiliary, it's not a significant consideration in terms of the expansion of that program. We're always looking for those opportunities, and we do so. It's a challenge because there is a minimum requirement of hours that an auxiliary has to work, as I mentioned it's between 100 and 192 hours a year, so that's in essence one eight-hour shift and in some provinces two shifts a month. So at times it's a challenge to find people, but we do look for expansion opportunities.

As far as working with peacekeepers—a variety of security agencies, band constable programs—is concerned there are a number of different entities that are in existence that we work with and collaborate with, with respect to the safety of remote communities. The challenge is the same. With our auxiliary constable program everything they do is very well supervised because we don't want to expose our volunteers to any undue risk. We're ultimately responsible for them and when they hop into our police vehicle for a shift, we're mindful of the fact that they don't have the same intervention tools that we have. They have some basic training and we're mindful of what we expose them to.

On a routine shift, a constable working the beat who has a call to attend to a domestic violence complaint would not likely take an auxiliary constable. The auxiliary constable would be dropped off at the detachment.

That said, if the constable has a talk he or she would like to do at a school, or as you mentioned there is a parade that requires some participation and the constable is tied up with a number of other things, the auxiliary constable enhances the service that we provide in communities by attending to some of those functions that we might not ever have the opportunity to attend, just because of our reactive responsibilities and our core policing responsibilities.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you.

Do I have another couple of minutes?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have two minutes.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

How does community-based policing fit into your model? In your various detachments, do you have community policing committees of people who volunteer from the community to give you feedback from the grassroots level?

The example I like to use is that police always like to look at their clearance rate as the most important thing. People are going to look at clearance rates, but in actual fact, sometimes people just want to see Officer Mary or Officer Joe walking down the street or patrolling the township road where they live, so that they can visibly see their taxpayers' dollars at work. I wonder if you could comment on that.

[Insp Tyler Bates]

It depends on the manner in which the community wants to engage the police. A number of communities have community consultative groups of volunteers and professionals from the community. They're a body within the community that meets with the police to establish community policing priorities.

In some communities, that particular process is done through the elected political representatives. It's part of the annual performance plan process. The detachment commander meets with the elected body of officials and has those same discussions that you'd have with the community consultative group about what the issues are in the community and what they would like to see the police focus on. In seeking that input, we're very mindful of not defining for the community what their problems are. If the concern is speeding at 3:30 when school closes, then we'll be mindful of a proactive program to address that particular community concern.

We do seek that feedback. Detachment commanders are required to have those consultations and to have an annual performance plan with measures that are established at the outset of that particular year to deal with those community issues that are identified.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll move to the opposition and to Mr. Garrison, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for coming back to be with us again today.

Just to be clear in my understanding of auxiliaries, I think the auxiliaries are all operating under contract policing, right? So—

[Insp Tyler Bates]

That's correct.

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

—are there federal ones as well? Yes?

[D/Commr Doug Lang]

I know of one. When I was the criminal operations officer in Winnipeg for D Division in the province of Manitoba, we had one that was involved with our commercial crime and financial crime group and that wanted to come in on weekends and help them work through sticky files and those kinds of things. That's the only one that I know of personally.

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

Okay.

In your opening statement, you talked about increased community knowledge. I'm going to go back to some experience that I've had with policing. We had a community police station that was opened as a kind of an experiment, and what we found was that we did not get a diversity of volunteers that reflected the community we were in. We got a certain segment of people who wished to volunteer, and they were good volunteers, but they didn't actually reflect the community that we were volunteering in.

I just wonder about the diversity of your auxiliary members in terms of gender and then perhaps in terms of participation in the program from others such as first nations and other ethnic communities.

[Insp Tyler Bates]

I can only speak to my experience, and I have worked in a diversity of communities. I've worked with male and female auxiliaries, and with auxiliaries of a variety of ethnicities, including aboriginal auxiliary constables. We are constantly trying to drum up the interest in the auxiliary program. It's a significant commitment for volunteers, but that said, it's invaluable.

I can remember working at my first detachment. I was headed out the door for a call for service that related to a trespassing complaint about cows that had gone into somebody else's pasture. That was the nature of the complaint, so seemingly that's not a significant complaint to concern yourself with. The auxiliary caught me before I was going out the door and asked me if I realized that there was a decade of conflict between those two neighbours and that there had been volatile conflict that had involved assaultive behaviour.

What seemed like a really innocuous and non-threatening call very quickly became a call that three armed police officers went to, because of the level of violence that had escalated between those two neighbours. That's the value that auxiliaries provide in terms of public and police safety. I learned very quickly that the first person I sought out at the detachment was that long-standing community member who was an auxiliary and had the knowledge of where those historical conflicts were and what the history of that community was.

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

Thank you, and I couldn't agree with you more that this kind of knowledge information is very important.

I'll go back to the question of diversity. I know you may not have figures available with you today, but if you do go away today and find you have any figures on that, it would be useful. Yes, anecdotally, I know all of us know diverse members have been auxiliaries, but I still suspect overall that we may not have as representative a group in the auxiliaries and therefore not as much community knowledge as we could have in that group.

I want to talk about the question of training. In your opening statement you talked about one to three weeks of basic training. Can you talk a little more about why that varies so much? It's a very large difference.

[Insp Tyler Bates]

It really depends on the nature of the duties that are defined by the division. There is some variance in terms of the tasks that are assigned to the auxiliaries, depending on these service delivery requirements in each division. If the interest is in having an auxiliary do crime prevention talks in the schools and that's the extent of their responsibilities, then they would probably receive far less training than if they're on patrol side by side with regular members of the RCMP, responding to low-level complaints. There they would require additional training with respect to the use of some intervention tools to protect themselves, and whatnot.

So there is a variance in terms of the nature of their duties depending on the province, and that determines the level of training that's required for each auxiliary.

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

Again, just drawing on some of my own past experience, one of the problems we ran into with volunteers is their understanding of their roles and responsibilities. So is there any standardized module that they all go through? What would that make up?

[Insp Tyler Bates]

There's a national policy that certainly provides parameters as to what they can engage with and what they can't. It is stipulated that all of their activities have to be under the supervision of a regular member of the RCMP. That is something our field members are mindful of. They're responsible for that auxiliary and we do have to be very mindful that we're not exposing them to situations that could cause them harm.

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

Is there a standard training module that the volunteers themselves go through that would make them aware of the kinds of limits on what they're doing?