Public Safety Committee on June 13th, 2013

[Chief John Paul Levesque]

Through you, Mr. Chair, there are no civilians in the unit. There are five detective constables and one sergeant running the unit. We do engage civilians and other agencies for training and things of that nature. Outside of victim assistance workers who will show up at calls, they don't ride with our people. I guess the answer to the question is no.

The domestic violence unit was set up, as I mentioned, to free up front-line officers. For a domestic violence call here in Ontario where there are charges laid, it takes anywhere from four to six hours to complete all the paperwork, so you have two uniformed officers tied up for that length of time. What we're trying to do is have the uniformed officers get through the emergent part of the call, that is, get things calmed down, get things settled down, get people separated. Then this unit would step in and do all the follow-up work, thereby freeing up the officers to do, as I said, more proactive policing and be more visible on the street.

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

I wonder if you could make some more comments about the budgetary pressures you face and the reasons for them. I know that police services right across Canada, municipal services in particular, are being pressured by mayors and councils, and ratepayers, to not continually year after year ask for a percentage increase. I wonder if you could make a few more comments about that, or just expand on your comments.

[Chief John Paul Levesque]

Here in Ontario it's interesting for chiefs of police because the police associations bargain their contracts with the police services board. The police services board will settle the contract and chiefs are left to deal with it. As an example, last year our officers received the 3% raise increase and, along with a benefit increase, it worked out to 3.5%. The direction from the board was to come in as close to zero in a budget increase as I could. Well, 90% of our budget is wages and benefits, so without cutting jobs, it was near impossible to come in at zero. I was actually fairly pleased that we were able to come in at 3.5%, which is a very bare-bones budget.

We need to find efficiencies, and I understand that. There's no new money; it's been made very clear. Things like this domestic violence unit are one of the ways we're hoping to free up resources, so maybe we're not paying as much overtime for certain calls.

We're tied up at the hospital quite frequently for hours on end waiting for a prisoner to be seen by a doctor. It's those types of things. We're in negotiations with the hospital here locally to try to free up our officers from those types of things.

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

One of the other expenses we've heard about quite extensively from various police services is not just courthouse duty, but actually sitting in the courtroom for eight hours waiting for a case to come up, and then it's remanded or some other sort of situation. Often that's overtime for the police officer. How would you characterize that kind of expense is happening in Thunder Bay? Have you thought of some alternatives?

[Chief John Paul Levesque]

Through you, Mr. Chair, we recently did a study on just what you are talking about, and 82% of our officers who attend court never testify. It's a bit of a shell game with defence lawyers. They'll come in and they'll see if all the officers who were called are there to testify. If they're all there, they'll plead out their client. Our officers here in Thunder Bay get an automatic four hours at time and a half, so six hours' pay just for showing up.

We—the deputy chief and I—recently met with the regional crown attorney to address this issue. We're hoping that the new courthouse, which has a lot of automation in it, is going to alleviate some of those issues. Certainly, scanning the files more closely and determining exactly which officers need to attend to testify and those who don't will help.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

Thank you very much.

We'll now turn to Mr. Gill for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also want to thank our witnesses for taking the time to be with us today.

My question is for Chief Levesque. Chief, can you help us understand the makeup of your community? You mentioned you have about a 25% aboriginal community. Are there other community challenges that you face which you may want to talk about?

[Chief John Paul Levesque]

Through you, Mr. Chair, of the challenges I cited in my opening remarks, the addictions issues and mental health issues are huge for us. We spend a lot of time dealing with people in situations. Somebody mentioned that the police are responding to all sorts of things, and we basically have become what we refer to as a social safety net. People don't know whom to call. They find a handful of dirty needles in a park, and the police are called.

We're doing all kinds of things we shouldn't be doing as a police service, and it's taking away from our ability to investigate serious things like child exploitation, violent crimes, and things of that nature.

I talked about the makeup of our city. I said the aboriginal community is the fastest growing demographic. I also mentioned that we have an aging population as well, so we're seeing a rather big increase in crimes against elderly people, fraud in particular. In some cases we're seeing some physical abuse through family members as well.

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

What is the current population of Thunder Bay?

[Chief John Paul Levesque]

The current population of Thunder Bay is 117,000.

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

Could you also tell us how many police officers and civilians you employ? What sort of overall budget numbers are we dealing with?

[Chief John Paul Levesque]

Yes. Through you, Mr. Chair, we had 224 sworn police officers. We lost our funding through PORF, so it's down to 222. We have another 93 civilians on top of that. We deal with a budget of approximately $38 million.

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

Could you briefly give us a breakdown of your budget? What percentage is going toward salaries and other operations?

[Chief John Paul Levesque]

Mr. Chair, 90% of our budget is salaries, or wages and benefits. The other 10%, which is a very small portion and certainly is not discretionary...we're experiencing an increase in legal bills for discipline issues. We will have a large inquest getting under way shortly. That's going to cost a lot in legal fees.

The budget is being eaten up in a lot of different ways that it wasn't traditionally.

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

Does your force currently have any sort of volunteer or auxiliary officer program?

[Chief John Paul Levesque]

We do not at this time. As part of the overall deployment study we recently did, we just started a new initiative called the zone watch program. It's a virtual neighbourhood policing program. The city will be broken into five areas. People who live in those areas or businesses in those areas can join the zone watch program. They get some training through us. The other side of that is, the same officers will be assigned to those areas for one to two years. We're hoping they will get to know the people and the businesses in the area. They will stay connected with these people in the zone watch program via our website.

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

Chief, you mentioned in your remarks that you're having difficulty recruiting and retaining officers. Can you talk about the challenges?

[Chief John Paul Levesque]

Yes. Actually, that reference was to first nations policing. Nishnawbe Aski and Anishinabekare having all kinds of difficulties recruiting and retaining.

We are having some difficulties recruiting. We're not seeing nearly the numbers we used to. In particular, if you talk about a police service that's supposed to represent the community, 25% of our officers should be aboriginal. That's not the case. That's nowhere near the case.

As hard as we try to recruit, it's just not a profession that most aboriginal youth even consider.

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

Chief, can you also tell us your thoughts on further developing a whole-of-community effort to share information among police, the judiciary, schools, mental health professionals, and others?

[Chief John Paul Levesque]

I'm sorry. If you're looking for....

I mentioned our Crime Prevention Council, where we have all kinds of partner agencies we deal with, children's aid societies, Dilico Anishinabek Family Care, community groups. We meet regularly. I'm not sure if that's what you're asking.

Is that the type of community involvement you're looking for?

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

Yes.

[Chief John Paul Levesque]

Also, our officers are involved heavily, in communities and provincially, on different boards and committees. Our officers sit on more than 90 boards and committees both provincially and municipally.

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

As a chief of police you must deal with a variety of problems balancing the needs and wants of the community against the resources available to do a job. I'm assuming you must be regularly called upon to make decisions that increase the efficiency also of your force and its operations.

I'm wondering whether you can describe to us some of the initiatives that you are currently undertaking or that you would like to see.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Randall Garrison]

We have time for just a very brief answer.

[Chief John Paul Levesque]

Mr. Chair, I mentioned a couple of initiatives. What we're trying to do is find efficiencies by not having our front-line officers tied up with things that are non-policing issues and are not core functions of policing.