Public Safety Committee on June 11th, 2013

[Prof. Christian Leuprecht]

These red serge duties are particularly ironic in Ontario because Ontario is all federal policing. Technically, these are all plainclothes officers. The logic behind the plainclothes officers is that we don't make them public. Yet we send them out on red serge duty for these types of events. That's a simple example of a case where—

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

I would submit that's not how we're going to control police costs in Canada—

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

I would submit that it is.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

—just on one example of red serge duty.

Anyway, I'll move on to another point, which is the digital records management system. We understand the idea behind it and its utility.

Are there other countries that have achieved this and have a good centralized digital records management system that includes all the evidence that is required in court cases and so on? Or is this still something that is aspirational at this point?

[Prof. Christian Leuprecht]

I can't comment on the technicalities, but I'm happy to get back to the committee on that matter. I can tell you one of the pushbacks on that is always security and how many people might actually see all the evidence that's being collected.

I would submit that if Xythos and if this type of record-keeping is good enough for the U.S. Special Forces and for the U.S. military to coordinate its missions—some of its most highly sensitive missions abroad.... Because they have so many players across the world, moving paper around is not an option. In many cases it's far less secure than actually keeping everything on a cloud where you actually have a considerable measure of security and you can track everyone's access to that particular documentation.

So I think the pushback that often comes is on the security side and I would submit that this system is more secure and more efficient, let alone the costs that some of the current paper systems generate.

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

What I found though is—and I'm not arguing with the idea, it's obviously a good idea—that often when you get into IT systems, the costs just skyrocket. Budgets are surpassed. Whether it's the public sector or the private sector, you start with a great notion and a good plan for an IT upgrade or a new system and the thing gets away from everybody. That's why I was wondering if there were examples in other countries where systems like this had been economically implemented and on time and so on and so forth. I think that would be something to look at.

On the notion of a police college, you're talking about a national police college that would do certification and some parts of training or all training?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

It's time for a very brief answer on this.

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

Do you think Quebec would go along with that?

[Prof. Christian Leuprecht]

I'll give a very quick answer. One example is Frontex. The private data on over 300 million European citizens shared among the law enforcement agencies of 27 European Union countries. Their system works terrifically. I'd be happy to provide you with lots of examples.

Police college.... I think whether Quebec goes along with it or not, we have lots of opportunity for symmetry in this country. If Quebec wants to have its own police college, that's perfectly fine and acceptable. If other provinces want to come along and we want to have a national standard.... Whether we have a national college or 10 different colleges that ultimately—

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

We'll have to return to this, perhaps in another question.

Now it's time for a second round of five-minute questions.

We'll go to Mr. Rafferty.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you, professor, for being here today.

One of the things you didn't touch on in your opening statement, and I wonder if you would like to make some comments on it, is the idea that when we're talking about the economics of policing, if you want to save some money ultimately, you might have to spend some money on things like prevention, for example.

It just makes sense that if there's less crime it costs less to have a police service in place, because you did talk about lessening the expansion of police services. You mentioned collaboration as one, but I wonder if you could talk about prevention specifically.

[Prof. Christian Leuprecht]

I think one of the biggest challenges in our system—in particular the way we train our officers—is that it's all about catching bad guys. It's about the how but it's not about the why. Ultimately, good policing services should be about crime prevention, not primarily about “there are always bad guys out there” but ultimately about a police officer who knows this community.

But the challenge is that the way we currently train officers, that's not happening. Because all we teach officers—whether it's at the police college in Ontario or whether it's at Depot—is about how we do all the tactical things in terms of arresting people. If we want to get to a prevention-based policing model, we need a leadership and ethics concept that asks not just how we do policing, but why we do policing. What is the relationship between the police and their society? It requires a much different approach to embedding a police officer and educating a police officer within their society.

One example is in Switzerland where it's a year-long course in order to be a police officer. Half the year is spent on tactical things as we do here. The other half is based on things such as history, leadership, ethics, basic norms and values, explaining how government works. Many police officers I have met can't really tell you exactly why the outcomes in traffic court and criminal court are different. Why is it that in traffic court, so often, it doesn't go the police officer's way? It's because, chances are, you won't go to jail in traffic court, but in criminal court you are. Obviously the standard of evidence is going to be higher.

I'm absolutely on line with that, but it requires a complete shift in how we train and educate our police officers.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

You talked about core policing functions and about getting to the point where that's clear, where there aren't so many blurred lines. Again, you talked about collaboration, but in municipalities right across Canada, for example, you have paramedics, you have the fire service, and you have the police service. They're all first responders. A lot of the calls they get are from seniors in distress and that sort of thing.

Do all three have to show up at the doorstep? Are there ways to make this safe, to continue to make it as efficient and safe as it is, but without using all those resources? That's just one example that comes to mind. I wonder if you could expand a little more on core police functions.

[Prof. Christian Leuprecht]

Well, as a student of federalism, I would submit that by and large this is a municipal coordination problem in most cases. There's considerable variation across this province, for instance, as to who gets called out and when. In principle, I entirely concur with you that it's hardly a good use of taxpayer resources to call the ambulance, the $350,000 fire truck with eight people on board, and the police cruiser when grandma, as tragic as it is, breaks her leg walking down the stairs.

But ultimately I think we need to make sure that we stay within our areas of jurisdiction, and I'm not sure the federal government can provide a whole lot of leadership, because, as Mr. Norlock pointed out, for instance, this would be a local community decision, and different types of communities have different types of needs in that regard. But in principle, I concur.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

I'd like to go back to my first question just briefly. I have just one minute left.

In Ontario, there's a police foundations course, which you're probably very familiar with at the college. I don't know what the rest of the provinces do with regard to this, but when you talk about changing the way that's done, I wonder if you could comment. This is not to cast the police foundations course in Ontario, for example, in a bad light with regard to the course and how it's taught now.

But what sorts of things would you concentrate on if you were to change that course to reflect, for example, that emphasis on prevention?

[Prof. Christian Leuprecht]

What I would change is the entire way you get promoted. The way you currently get posted into Depot, because it's the quickest and easiest way to get promoted, is that you go into the applied police science program and you teach in that program, and this is sort of your path to promotion.

Teaching at a police college should not be a path for promotion. Teaching at police colleges should be done by professionals, by those who are professionals in matters of criminal law, for instance, and whatnot.

I would encourage you, sir, to sit in on a course. You will see that people literally read PowerPoint decks, people who don't entirely really understand what it is that they are actually teaching about. It becomes a check mark sort of approach to training individuals, as opposed to having professors who can help people paint a much bigger picture.

I always compare it this way. One of the challenges is that we teach them all the tactics, but the problem is that the tactics can bring down the government tomorrow. Somebody might make the right tactical decision on the ground, but it might be a decision that would never be accepted by Canadian society in regard to the way that particular decision, while tactically correct, was actually carried out. I think this is the understanding that's missing—

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

Thank you very much, Mr. Leuprecht. We're out of time again.

We'll go to the government side for five minutes.

Mr. Payne.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for coming. It's an important study that we're doing and you gave us some very interesting information. I found the thoughts you had for us extremely inclusive.

We have heard from a number of different organizations, such as police forces and so on, that the cost of policing is going up. In fact, one of my colleagues here has suggested that the policing costs for some of the communities here in Ontario are going to be somewhere near 50% of the municipal budget, which is huge. I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on that.

You did talk a bit about auxiliary police officers and some of the alternate duties they could perform. Do you have any other thoughts you'd like to give us on that?

[Prof. Christian Leuprecht]

My concern is that we focus too much on the actual cost of what we pay police officers and not enough on what we actually want these officers to do. Then we have them do all sorts of functions that ultimately aren't in their particular field of expertise. I think it is important not to demonize police officers who are putting their lives on the line for duty, and in many cases, are absolutely terrific. Some of the best people I know are police officers. I'm happy as a taxpayer to pay them what they are worth.

This is partially due also to the legislator and what the legislator expects with regard to accountability and to what citizens expect, for instance, in terms of response time in a domestic dispute, which is normally a two-car call on every dispute. We've imposed a whole bunch of requirements on police officers that they didn't choose for themselves, that we made them comply with.

At the same time, investigations and the carrying out of police work has become much more complex over the last 30 years. The amount of paperwork, the amount of investigation, the amount of evidence that is required to be collected for a prosecution, even for a simple traffic issue, for instance.... If you're appearing in traffic court and you have 10 cases that are up, you need to write a separate brief for each one of them, but then the same police officer also has to provide the driver's licence background record to the defence for that particular case. Now, there's an easy function that could readily be performed by a civilian at a cost proposition.... You want the driving record of that particular individual. Why should we be having the police force...?

I think the challenge in the cost of policing is that policing is an easy profession in which to push off the cost, because for the courts, it doesn't cost anything to have the police officer write the transcript. It doesn't cost MTO anything to make MTO enter additional data. It doesn't cost the defence anything to request the driving record.

So we essentially externalize. So many other agencies have externalized what are essentially their tasks onto the police. In part it's that the police have a tradition of not pushing back, of not standing up, but rather as good civil servants saying, sure, whatever you ask us to do, that's what we'll do.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

You make a good point on that. We visited a number of police stations on our study.

You talked about the training they should be getting. What we've seen in a number of institutions—the Calgary police force, the Prince Albert police force, the L.A. police force, the San Diego police force—is that every one of those police forces has changed the type of officer that they're trying to hire. Instead of hiring someone just for enforcement, they're looking at opportunities for these individuals to look for better uses of their time, to better help those individuals, whether it goes to social services or health services.

We see a number of those types of things happening. I think you'd probably support the process that's happening in a number of different communities across North America.

[Prof. Christian Leuprecht]

I support the process, but I think there are different types of models to try to achieve those particular outcomes. I think we're still doing too much experimentation and we haven't really had the type of leadership that we need ultimately to arrive at a more comprehensive model.

One example is the difference between the provincial and the federal levels. With the OPP, and with most municipal forces in Ontario, for that matter, if you don't have a university degree now, or a minimum of a college policing justice degree, you're virtually not going to get into the organization. One of my concerns is that while there are some absolutely terrific people in leadership at the RCMP, there are still too many positions that are “minimum qualification at entry”, which means a high school degree and no criminal record.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

Thank you very much, Professor Leuprecht.

Mr. Rousseau now has the floor for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As I listened to you, Mr. Leuprecht, I realized that, when it comes to matters of public safety and national security, we do not instinctively turn to academic organizations like yours when looking for ways to improve our policing system.

Your input today is showing us, however, just how much we can learn from you about those matters. Numerous solutions need to be considered, but no such work has been done. It could be something along the lines of assessing a police officer's routine task, from beginning to end, to identify where the weak links are and where efficiencies could be gained.

With that in mind, I'd like to ask you what you consider to be a front-line police officer's typical duties? Investigations are another component. You said there were many professionals that were not being used effectively in this environment.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on those questions.

[Prof. Christian Leuprecht]

The federal government could conduct a study on all the costs and requirements imposed on police forces, whether it is the RCMP, the Sûreté du Québec or other provincial or municipal bodies. The idea would be to determine which costs and which requirements they are responsible for, which ones they should really be responsible for and which ones should be paid for by the courts, the defence or civilians.

Criminal record checks—there's no need for civilians to carry out those checks, let alone for a person in uniform to carry out those checks or to file all those records.

I think a fairly comprehensive study on all the costs imposed on our police forces and networks could be carried out. It would give us the basis for a discussion on which duties could be funded in other ways. It could also help free up funds, allowing police forces to spend that money on activities that are, first and foremost, truly policing duties, instead of on administrative tasks and so forth.