Public Safety Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2014

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

According to the public accounts, the RCMP, CBSA and CSIS lapsed by some $371 million. Now, I know deputy that it's not as straightforward as it looks, in terms of lapsing of money.

My question is for the RCMP. The RCMP lapsed by $158.6 million, yet the Commissioner of the RCMP told the Senate national security committee on October 27, and I'll quote him:

Frankly speaking, one of the challenges in managing and leading a police organization is that you never have enough money—you never do.

I wonder if the deputy commissioner could connect the dots for us.

Was it not possible to use some of that $158 million for human resources? Were they not available? Could you clarify those numbers and tell us why?

[D/Commr Mike Cabana]

Actually, I can probably provide you with a little bit of clarity around this.

The $158.6 million in lapsed funding can be broken down as follows: $15.2 million was in a frozen allotment, which means it cannot be used for anything else; $61 million was carried forward for projects in the new year. The true lapse was $82 million and the operating fund part of the $82 million was $9.4 million, which is 0.47%.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

When I talked to some in the rank and file, the members and member reps complained, at least to me, about salary levels. They said that salary levels within the RCMP are not keeping up with the salary levels of some of the other police forces, whether it's Calgary, Vancouver, or whatever.

As a result, I'm told the RCMP is losing fully trained officers that have come through the training depot and they're going to other jurisdictions with other police forces where they don't run the risk of getting sent to an isolated location.

Can you give us any numbers in terms of either direct numbers or percentage of your members that you may be losing on an annual basis to police forces of other jurisdictions? Given these indications, I think there is a problem in terms of either working conditions or salary levels.

[D/Commr Mike Cabana]

Unfortunately, I'm not in the position now to provide you the actual numbers that you're looking for, but the reality though is not a new reality.

I have 34 years in the RCMP and 34 years ago we were still experiencing back then members who were completing their training and were being transferred to remote areas where they were having second thoughts and were then finding employment in different law enforcement agencies.

The reverse is also equally true. We have members of other police agencies that consistently join the RCMP.

If there's an interest in the committee here—

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

If you could, Deputy Commissioner, it's not an absolute priority, but if you could put together the numbers of RCMP people out to other police jurisdictions, it would at least be information that we could maybe have a debate about at committee.

To the Canada Border Services Agency, one of the complaints I get from businesses is that all too often when they come across the Ambassador Bridge or the other bridge—but the Ambassador Bridge is where I get the most complaints—they see CBSA booths not filled. They are sitting idle with traffic backed up, especially if there's a football or baseball game in Detroit, and at busy times when traffic is heavy. I just emailed Ambassador Bridge while we were here and they said they're moving fine right at the moment, but it's not a busy time.

I have two questions. First, why are those booths empty by CBSA during busy times?

Second, in the Ambassador Bridge area, or the Detroit area, actual traffic now is still only about 40% below what it was in 2003, so our traffic is not nearly as heavy, yet we're still having backups. We also have the new bridge to nowhere at the moment. With that situation, the distance of the bridges apart, can you tell us how many more new Canada Border Services Agency booths you're going to require to man the new bridge as compared to the current situation?

[Luc Portelance]

Thank you.

Well, I guess I have a couple of thoughts. In terms of the statistics, the 40% reduction since 2003, I don't have those numbers. However, I've seen the numbers since 2008, and the numbers have been holding steady at the Ambassador Bridge, and in fact in the land mode in general. The Ambassador Bridge is our busiest crossing, as you know.

In terms of empty booths, for the last three to four years, we've developed a very elaborate system to assess the percentage of our booths that are occupied at any given time. To do that, we pay attention to what's going on on the other side of the border. For instance, in Detroit, between the tunnel and the Ambassador Bridge, we will pay attention to whether the Red Wings or the Pistons are playing, or the Tigers, whether or not there are any events. We're quite conscious of the fact that there's a lot of cross-border traffic associated with events.

Our entire plan, both tactical and strategic, is based on historical knowledge of traffic, of trends, and it is amplified based on knowledge of what will be happening on any given night. I wouldn't expect that the booths should always be full. We simply don't have the business plan to do that, and you'd find that's true, not just for us, but for CBP as well.

Our wait times at the Ambassador Bridge are generally pretty good, in the sense that we try to provide not much more than 10 minutes at off-peak hours, and not much more than about 20 minutes at on-peak hours. Now, that ebbs and flows, but for the most part, our wait-time strategy across the country is pretty effective.

The other factor is that our commercial clients almost have a better knowledge than we do of the trends, and usually they cycle through when they know that the wait times are going to be lower. We also post our wait times. As you know, people can go online right now and know specifically what the wait times are at any of our top locations.

Since last year, we've started posting historical wait times. The purpose of that is to allow the travelling public to assess ahead of time what they can expect. Rather than saying that right now they have an hour or a 15-minute wait time, we are predicting wait times from what the historical wait times were. That's an attempt by us to start shifting the patterns, and pushing people to times where we have less traffic burden. Thus far, it's been quite—

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Mr. Portelance, we're cutting into the next speaker's time.

Madame Doré Lefebvre, you have two or three minutes, please.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My questions are mainly for Mr. Head.

I have a question about the recommendations made by the correctional investigator in “Risky Business: An Investigation of the Treatment and Management of Chronic Self-Injury Among Federally Sentenced Women”. That report on self-injury made 16 recommendations. We know that self-injury is a major problem in the prisons.

Has there been any follow-up on the recommendations in the report? Where are we headed with that?

[Don Head]

We've put in place a series of initiatives to address the recommendations of the Correctional Investigator as brought forward.

A lot of that has been focused on responding to the needs of self-harming women. That's where a lot of our time, energy, and reallocated resources have gone. We've put in place a more stringent review committee, made up of health care professionals, including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and front-line nurses, to consistently engage and review the various women who are self-harming.

The short answer is that we've put in place a lot of new approaches, processes, to address the points that the Correctional Investigator has raised with us.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Excellent.

I would like to come back to a question I asked the minister earlier about the older population in the prison system, which has some impact on the work of correctional officers, depending on the prison.

There is a prison in Montée-Saint-François, in my riding, where the prison population is mainly sex offenders. For the most part, these offenders were caught a long time after their offence. So they are very old.

Do you have a strategy for these people? Are you putting anything in place to deal with these new challenges?

[Don Head]

We have in place a series of approaches to deal with aging offenders.

As you can appreciate, individuals who stay with us for long periods of time, who are as old as I am or older, come with a significant number of health care issues. One of the challenges for us is around palliative care and dealing with individuals who end up passing away in custody. Again, we put a lot of time and energy into looking at how we respond to the needs, for instance, whether there are opportunities to take special cases to the Parole Board for consideration. We've also gone to the point of using other offenders for peer support. This has been a program that we've found to be quite helpful in terms of helping elderly offenders, and in some cases, individuals in palliative care.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Mr. Head.

Colleagues, we have bells at 5:15 with 15-minute bells only. We have committee business just for a very short while. We will now thank our witnesses for coming.

You have a point of order, Ms. Ablonczy.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd just like to correct the record. I said earlier that I had been here longer than Mr. Easter. I've since been informed by an unimpeachable source that we were elected at the same time. The only thing I can say in defence of such a regrettable error is that my friend Mr. Easter does not look old enough to have been here as long as I have.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

The chair will take that comment in the spirit of Christmas.

We will suspend for one minute, and then we will go back in camera for committee business.

[Proceedings continue in camera]