Public Safety Committee on Nov. 21st, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Good morning, colleagues.

I will call to order this sixth meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

On today's agenda we have two panels of witnesses to continue our hearings on the economics of policing. Given the time, we will take a very few minutes at the end of our session to do future business so that we can establish our work for Tuesday.

We are certainly very pleased to welcome our guests today. From the Canadian Police Association, we have Tom Stamatakis; and of course we have Chief Lloyd Phillips, Chief of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, and representative of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador.

To our witnesses today, our normal process is to allow each of you up to 10 minutes for an opening statement, should you wish. And then we will open the floor to our members of Parliament for cause and concern, and for questioning.

At this particular point, I'll welcome your opening statement, Mr. Stamatakis, please.

[Tom Stamatakis, President, Canadian Police Association]

Thank you.

I have a prepared statement, so I'll start with that, and then I look forward to any questions.

Good morning, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee.

I see a number of new faces around the table today, so first l'd like to take this opportunity to welcome the new members of the committee, including you, Mr. Chair, and congratulate you on your election. As well I'd like to welcome Ms. James and congratulate her on her recent appointment as parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Public Safety.

For the benefit of the new members, the Canadian Police Association is the federal voice for over 54,000 front-line civilian and sworn personnel from across Canada. Our members serve in the country's largest cities and smallest villages as members of federal, provincial, and municipal law enforcement agencies as well as first nations police services.

To also give you a bit of background about me, I have had the privilege of serving as president of our association for the past two years, and I also serve as the president of the British Columbia Police Association and the Vancouver Police Union, where I began my career as a police officer in 1990.

My opening statement this morning will be quite brief, since this is my second opportunity to address your committee on this important topic and I want to leave as much opportunity as possible for questions. But I want to provide some updates on a few of the issues I had raised during my first presentation back at the beginning of this year.

First, l'd like to offer my thanks to the Department of Public Safety, and particularly Mark Potter—I understand he appeared before this committee quite recently—and his team for the work they've been doing on the “Shared Forward Agenda”. One of the CPA's key recommendations has always been to increase the amount of valuable research being done within the police sector and to help facilitate the spread of that information. With the recent launch of the public safety index of policing initiatives, we can start to see the seeds of this information sharing being planted, and that will, no doubt, have a direct impact on the costs of policing as we will, hopefully, see more best practices coming into effect more consistently across the country.

The second area our association has focused on has been around the need to find efficiencies within the policing and justice systems. While we seem to have achieved broad consensus over the past year that those efficiencies exist, l'II admit we haven't seen as much movement to address this problem as our members would like to see.

There are two major factors that would help tremendously to alleviate much of the duplication and redundancy that is a large driver of police costs, particularly the cost of forced overtime, which puts a strain on law enforcement budgets.

The first relates to oversight and accountability. Let me be clear, effective oversight is a necessary component of the trust that Canadians put into their police services, and the CPA would never suggest skirting those levels of accountability. However, in most provinces now each police service is subject to multiple layers of regulation, both internal and external. Eliminating some of the duplication, while still maintaining the necessary oversight, would improve the job quality of our police personnel while introducing important cost savings into the sector.

The second area of efficiency relates to the need to streamline the processes that currently keep our officers tied up doing administrative work behind their desks rather than having them out on the street, where the community expects them to be. As you have no doubt heard by now, changes forced on our profession by well-meaning judicial decisions have led to increased workloads and processing times for some of the most basic charges our officers lay.

As I said, I wanted my opening statement here this morning to be brief to give us as much time for discussion as possible, but I do want to close by saying that while there are some very serious concerns regarding the economics of policing, the situation is not nearly as ominous as some vested stakeholders would have you believe.

While I understand this committee has heard from law enforcement agencies in other countries and in other jurisdictions regarding some of their solutions and suggestions to help make public safety funding more sustainable, I also have spoken with my counterparts in countries such as the U.K. and Australia where deep budgets cuts have taken effect. The message they give to me and that I pass along to you is that Canada shouldn't be learning from their mistakes, but should be leading with our own homegrown solutions.

l've been encouraged by the fact that all levels of government, along with our colleagues with the Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Association of Police Boards, have been engaged from the very beginning to work constructively to address our funding issues. I look forward to this committee's final report, which l'm certain will help to shape the discussion going forward.

Thank you again for the invitation this morning. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Mr. Stamatakis.

We will now hear from Chief Lloyd Phillips, please.

[Chief Lloyd Phillips, Representative, Chief of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, Assembly of the First Nations of Quebec and Labrador]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, everybody. I am Chief Lloyd Phillips from the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, also representing the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador, obviously in the province of Quebec, where we have by far the most stand-alone first nation police forces across Canada.

I'd first like to indicate that we're here today to present our point of view on the matter. However, we had less than two days' notice to attend this session. We had to put together very quickly a presentation, not even knowing the full scope and the intent of this committee in the hearing today on economics of policing. However, we do feel it is important for us to share our opinion on the economics as well as the police situation within first nations territories.

Maybe the first thing we could talk about is our review of the economics of policing guide that was recently put out in one of your publications. It talks about the effectiveness and efficiency of police services, as well as the sustainability in times of greater fiscal constraint. I think those are some quotes out of a document that I recently read.

The first thing that comes to our mind is what does this mean for first nations policing? You talk about constraints, effectiveness, and efficiency, so whereas first nations policing is not even deemed an essential service, this makes us question whether or not, if there are constraints, we are the first ones to be cut.

As we all know, in 1991 the first nation policing policy was approved by the federal cabinet. This program was created to improve and also to fund a variety of policing agreements, whether self-administered or tripartite agreements. The intent of the first nation policing policy was to provide first nation communities with access to police services that are professional, effective, culturally appropriate, which is extremely important, and accountable.

The agreements are shared between federal and provincial governments at 52% and 48%. However, this policy also fails to reflect, as mentioned earlier, the essential needs and the essential services of police forces in first nations territory. Rather, it only views it as an enhancement to current police forces, whether it be federally or provincially.

Public security in first nations territory is quite complex and very diverse. It's different from mainstream policing. I can give you a couple of statistics going back to 2008, from the first nations regional health survey from the Quebec region. Many of the concerns involve alcohol and drug abuse. Nearly 82% of adults and youth recognize alcohol and drug abuse as a major factor in their community. As well, the lack of housing and job opportunities is a major concern.

Criminal incidents on first nation territories, which happen to be governed or currently policed by stand-alone police forces in Quebec, are 3.8 times higher than in the rest of Canada. Violent crimes are close to six times more frequent than in the rest of Canada; general assaults seven times more; sexual assaults approximately five times more frequent; and drug trafficking 3.8% more.

Those are some dismal numbers, and some numbers that we're not proud to talk about, but we have to also look at why these numbers are like this. There are many reasons. Obviously there's a social breakdown. There are issues going back to the Indian Act, the lack of recognition of aboriginal and treaty rights, access to resources, as well as residential schools and things of that nature—things that are not directly the responsibility of this committee but the responsibility of the Government of Canada. Any reduction or decrease in the policing within these communities would certainly have a negative impact on the communities and on social well-being, and these numbers would certainly have little hope of becoming much better.

However, despite these dismal numbers that I just quoted, first nations policing, from 2004 to 2011, has also seen a decrease in violent crimes by 19%; in homicides, by 36%; in general assault, by 20%; and in sexual assault, by 23%. So despite the issues that our communities face, they are showing that there are positive movements, moving forward. We also understand that there is a lot of work to be done and it is a long road ahead of us, but certainly there are positive indicators that the first nation policing is a valuable tool.

There are also many jurisdictional issues that are unresolved, aboriginal rights issues that create grey zones sometimes in the area of policing. Whereas sometimes political disagreements between first nations in Canada are handled by police forces, if you have a culturally appropriate and embedded police force within a community, part of the community, a lot of these situations could be diffused long before they become national interests, as we have recently seen in New Brunswick.

Last year the then minister of public safety, the Honourable Vic Toews, announced a five-year renewal of the federal policing program, which allowed for some stability in medium-term planning for first nations, which has been a longstanding concern for first nations. When you're going on year-to-year renewal, from one year to the next, fiscal year to fiscal year, trying to make long-term planning and sustainability for a police force is nearly impossible when you're more worried about renewing an agreement than concentrating your efforts on policing. Although that was a positive sign, a renewal for five years, once again it fails to address the policy itself, which went through extensive review recently and calls for, among many things, that first nations policing be deemed an essential service.

It also has to be mentioned that on July 22nd of this year a letter was sent from the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador to the now Minister of Public Safety, the Honourable Steven Blaney, asking for a meeting to discuss, on a very short-term basis, the quality of policing services in Quebec. However, to this date we have not even received an acknowledgement of that letter despite many follow-ups, and it's disheartening because we're trying to talk about effective and efficient policing service to the first nations and we don't even get a minister to acknowledge our correspondence.

Officials at the Ministère de la Sécurité publique in Quebec are committed to upholding first nations policing in the province. They understand the diversity that exists. They understand the fact that the best way to move forward in securing first nation communities is with the first nations policing. They are keen on long-term agreements. Although certainly things aren't always perfect with the government, they do seem to have an understanding for the cultural diversity that exists and the differences between mainstream policing and first nations policing. This is something that I think the federal government has to acknowledge as well.

Certainly there are areas that are not desirable. We have currently eight first nations communities in the province of Quebec who are utilizing the Sûreté du Québec, the Quebec police force, to police their communities. That has proven to be a great cost for the Province of Quebec, and the services being provided are less than acceptable to most of the communities.

They have shown that there is a lack of response in time for emergencies, slow response time, language barriers, as well as often what could be viewed as abuse of first nation citizens. There was one incident recently where an Innu man was brutally beaten by an SQ officer and there was no type of justice handed out in that situation. So there are certain problems that exist. Again we emphasize that first nations policing first nations is the way to go, and to have SQ do policing services for first nations is certainly not a reality in some communities. In my community of Kahnawake in particular and I know in Akwesasne—and I could speak for many other communities—to have SQ presence would only cause many more problems than it would solve.

In closing, first nations need to be supported in their work to find new and innovative measures driven by first nation leadership and based on the specific priorities of each first nation. We're advocating for a new framework to fund and standardize police services to ensure that public safety needs are met for our first nations members.

We all understand that, in order to be an effective police service, you have to have a police force that is recognized and supported by your people. Again, first nations police must be the answer. We are confident that, through positive dialogue and political willingness, an effective and efficient mutual goal of public security can be achieved, which we believe is essential to a healthy community.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Chief Phillips, for your presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Stamatakis, as well.

At this point we will start our round of questioning. We will start the first question with Ms. James.

You have seven minutes, please.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank both witnesses for appearing.

Mr. Stamatakis, you've appeared before some of my other committees as well, so it's good to see you again at this committee.

I have a couple of questions and I'm going to direct them first towards Mr. Stamatakis.

Hopefully I'll have some time to ask you some similar questions as well, Chief Lloyd Phillips.

In your brief opening remarks, you talked about the two factors that are driving up the costs of policing. You talked about duplication and redundancy. In the first part, you talked about oversight and accountability on multiple levels, from the very lowest to the highest, causing the increased cost of policing.

When do you know that we have gone too far with our oversight of the process? What is it that you can say to us specifically about where we have gone wrong? What do we need to do to bring that back to a level where there is sufficient oversight and accountability, but not to the point where it's gone too far?

[Tom Stamatakis]

That's a really good question, and I'm not going to profess to have the best answer.

We are doing some research around how the multiple levels of oversight have driven costs in policing. It's not just the cost of creating and sustaining the oversight bodies, but it's also then the impact on the time that it takes to assist with investigations, to participate in interviews, and to go through the various processes that are established by statute in each province.

Using B.C. as an example, we have one body that deals with conduct involving complaints from the public, another body that deals with serious incidents where there is a reportable injury involving a member of the public, and then there is a subsequent investigation to determine whether or not the police officer engaged in any criminal misconduct.

I don't know that we've gone wrong in creating those different levels of oversight. Where I think we've gone wrong is that first the Independent Investigations Office will conduct their investigation, then the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner will conduct their investigation, and then the police service will do their own investigation internally.

Where I think we've gone wrong is that some of the steps are duplicated. Why can't we rely on the initial investigation, import to the next process whatever components are not controversial or don't need to be repeated, and only engage in further investigative steps when something hasn't been properly canvassed, for example? I don't think we're suggesting that the types of oversight that have been established are wrong. I think what we're saying is that we don't need to duplicate the investigative steps every time.

Another example would be where a police officer is involved in a motor vehicle accident while on duty. We now have jurisdictions that are conducting the police services act investigations according to the provincial statute in each province around the conduct piece, but then the police department is conducting their own collision investigation. Why can't that just be one investigation to determine what happened and whether or not there was any culpable misconduct?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you very much for that clarification. I was actually looking for a couple of examples and you gave me two, so I appreciate that very much.

The other thing you talked about was the administrative tasks behind the desk. I think when the general public thinks of policing and police officers, they think of them out on the streets protecting the community. They don't picture them sitting behind a desk. My father was a police officer. I know he had to do reports and so on. My father is now 80, and he's long since retired from the Toronto police. But when you compare the way he served with the tasks that are required of our police officers today, you see there's a real trend towards work behind a desk, as opposed to what police should be doing—enforcing the law and keeping our communities safe.

We've heard that a simple break-and-enter takes 58% more time to process, and a DUI takes 250% more time. It could be the administrative tasks; it could be the reports, the court time, and so on. But when you talk about administrative tasks, do you think someone other than a police officer could be doing some of these tasks?

[Tom Stamatakis]

Oh, absolutely.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

We had the Chief of Police of Abbottsford, Bob Rich, here in the last committee meeting. And he talked about a two-tiered type of thing. They had it studied by KPMG, and they're thinking of a way they can direct some of the work police officers do today to civilian workers, to reduce costs.

Do you have any comments on that, do you think that's a good idea?

[Tom Stamatakis]

Absolutely. I'll give you one concrete example of some work that we've undertaken at the Canadian Police Association. We just sponsored, an operational review of the Winnipeg Police Service. We brought in two academics, Dr. Curt Griffiths and Dr. Nahanni Pollard. Curt Griffiths is a professor at the Simon Fraser School of Criminology. We identified around 98 positions in the Winnipeg Police Service that were occupied by police officers whose positions could be filled by civilian personnel, with some additional training. That would free up those police officers to be redeployed into front-line positions on the street protecting the public, which is exactly what Canadians expect from police organizations.

That's not to say that you would necessarily save money. In some places such as Vancouver we've created a lot of hybrid units. Work that's traditionally been done by police officers is now done by civilians with specialized training. They work with police officers in a hybrid unit that yields a much better product. This leads to greater efficiency in how you deploy and respond to crime in your city or in your jurisdiction.

In some cases, there are savings. In others, the civilian personnel with the special training sometimes cost more than the police officers. But you're getting a better product, and it's more efficient in how you deliver the service. So there are some very good opportunities. I think the bottom line is that you have to look at whether the position requires the authority or credibility of a police officer in order for the duties to be performed effectively. If the answer to those questions is no, then you can look at an alternative.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

There are certain tasks too, as well, where—

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Please be brief, Ms. James.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

With regard to community-based policing in the metro Toronto area, we've seen a different approach. Do you think there's more handshaking going on and less policing overall? Do you think resources for police officers would be better used doing actual policing, as opposed to being out in the community shaking hands?

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Give us a brief response, please.

[Tom Stamatakis]

Some of the research now suggests that police officers spend only about 23% of their time dealing with traditional law enforcement activities, with the rest of the time spent on social issues, mental health, etc.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

We will now go to Mr. Garrison.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to the witnesses for appearing today. I apologize to Chief Phillips for the short notice.

I'm also quite concerned. I know that we met last May and you were having trouble getting a meeting with the previous minister. I just want to double check: is this now a request to the new minister that has not been acknowledged?

[Chief Lloyd Phillips]

Correct.

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

We'll make our same offer. We will also write to the minister, asking that you be treated with courtesy and that this meeting take place as soon as possible.

[Chief Lloyd Phillips]

I appreciate that.

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

I'm going to leave most of the detailed questions on Quebec policing to my colleagues.

Mr. Stamatakis, one of the reasons that we on this side were concerned to have the CPA back is that some in the room have made arguments about the costs of policing that I think you should have a chance to give your perspective on. For instance, the argument is often made that about 80% of the costs in policing are labour costs and that it's the salaries of the officers that account for most of this. We have heard a lot of evidence to the contrary. For my part, I don't believe that police officers are paid too much for what we ask them to do. Since those arguments were made while you weren't here, I thought it would be fair to have you back and give you a chance to talk about the relationship between policing costs and police salaries.

[Tom Stamatakis]

What's driving the costs of policing, more broadly, is the demand for police services, and I would attribute that increased demand to a couple of things.

First of all, there has been a significant impact on police forces across the country because of government policy changes, some of which occur at the provincial level and others at the federal level. Frankly, whenever there's a decision to reduce service in one area, whether health, education, or social services, ultimately that ends up having an impact on policing because we've now become one of the few agencies available 24/7, 365 days a year.

In fact, what has happened even since I started in policing is that we're no longer the agency of last resort; we're the agency of first resort. People can phone us and they know somebody is going to show up and do something, whereas when they make the call to other agencies, they might get a recording or get deferred to someone else. That's one issue.

Secondly, in terms of the salaries themselves, the fact is that policing has become much more complex. I talked earlier about accountability. There's more accountability now than ever. We have higher recruiting standards, a greater obligation on training. We see more and more provincially-mandated training—training for crisis intervention and de-escalation; more training in how to deal with people suffering from mental health issues, people who are dual-diagnosed; and on how to avoid some of the tragedies that have occurred in this country over many years, where we have had inquest after inquest—all of which has resulted in greater expectations of police officers, higher standards.

Most of our police officers now have some kind of university-level education. Most have degrees. We have a lot more diversity in policing, more language skills. Policing in the 21st century is far different, I would argue, than it has been historically, and that in turn drives costs. If you want to attract the kind of people the public have said they want to see involved in policing—and Chief Phillips alluded to that in his remarks—then there will be a cost that goes along with it.

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

Thank you very much.

When we as a committee—some of us who are still here—visited Prince Albert and Calgary, we looked at some new models of policing that attacked the problem of demand by setting up tables of cooperation with other social service agencies to move some of that demand back to where it belongs.

I want to know your—

[Tom Stamatakis]

In my remarks, I talked about efficiencies. I think the way to deal with or manage policing costs is not by just throwing a bunch more money at it. This is about finding those kinds of efficiencies. How do we partner with other government services, which are also expensive and consume a lot of tax dollars, to deliver a better product, a more holistic approach to dealing with quality-of-life issues in the community, which includes policing issues and law enforcement?

How do we deal with those issues early on, to prevent that young person from becoming involved in gang activity? We find out who is struggling with a mental health issue and make sure that we collaboratively approach that situation, so it's not the police officer showing up at three o'clock in the morning when that person's in crisis, trying to deal with that issue.

Those are where the opportunities are. In my response to Ms. James' question, I think other opportunities are around: making sure you have police officers doing what fully-trained police officers ought to be doing, and then looking at other alternatives for those other tasks or duties that don't necessarily require a fully-trained police officer to perform.

Examples of that include the cadet program in Winnipeg, where they have hired cadets to do certain things, with some training, at a much lower cost. In Vancouver, we're piloting a community safety program, using civilians with some training who are hired to deal with specific issues that a fully-trained police officer doesn't need to deal with. I think that's the way to approach this going forward.