Public Safety Committee on Oct. 16th, 2018

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

With your proximity to community partners, what kinds of challenges do you face where in some cases everyone knows everyone by their first name? Sometimes it's hard to enforce something when the partner or collaborator is a brother or a cousin. When a situation has been submitted to you, it creates some issues when enforcement is at stake and you have to act upon someone. Obviously, no one knows everyone....

[Supt Peter Tewfik]

Certainly, as one of the things, I'll address one aspect of your question, which is awareness. More and more now, people living in rural environments, particularly people who are moving from urban to rural areas, don't know their neighbours. They don't know the people who surround them, even on acreages, or people in the area. It's important from a community safety perspective to have that understanding. I encourage people to join citizen-led groups like the rural crime watch groups and Citizens on Patrol in order to have that community engagement and to understand the situation where they're living.

We've also put online recently—and we have about 50% compliance so far—public crime maps. This is mapping information that people can access about their area to see what kind of crime is occurring and where it is occurring around them over about a two-week snapshot. This helps to increase vigilance and helps people to have a good understanding about what crime is occurring in their area and what challenges they face.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have five seconds left.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

No—15, 14...?

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Go ahead, Mr. Motz.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, gentlemen, for being here with us today.

I want to go back very quickly to the crime stats that Ms. Dabrusin reported. That same crime report suggests that Canadian rural crime rates are significantly higher in populations in comparison to urban areas. Seventeen per cent of the population of Canada lives in rural areas, yet 25% of the violent crime, 18% of the property crime and 24% of all other Criminal Code crime is committed in rural areas, as reported by rural police there. There is a significant issue, and we know that.

I have a couple of things. I've been travelling across the country speaking to law enforcement leaders, including many RCMP commanders who have suggested that the current contract policing model—and I'll use the term they used—is broken and in need of an overhaul in order for the RCMP to adequately address the current and evolving demands in rural crime.

Again, I only have five minutes in total and I have another couple of questions. Do you have any thoughts on how we might fix the current model so that we can be more responsive to the needs of the rural communities?

[A/Commr Byron Boucher]

I can comment on the funding model. The contracts are between the Government of Canada and each province, territory and, in some cases, municipality. That funding agreement is broken down as a seventy-thirty split, with 70% for the province and 30% for the federal government, as agreed to.

The RCMP is a service provider. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, resourcing is left to the province, territory or municipality. They decide the resource levels. Once they come to us and tell us that they want new members, that they want to grow, we have a year to produce that individual, that new member for the force.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

I'll go back. I know those numbers. I'm just curious to know whether there's any movement within the RCMP to consider.... I'm not talking money; I'm talking about the deployment of people. Is there any movement within the RCMP? If there isn't, maybe there needs to be an opportunity to do that.

I want to applaud the two gentlemen, Assistant Commissioner Ferguson and the crime reduction officer. I applaud the efforts that are being made in Alberta. It's a response to a growing issue. As you've said, it has been growing over the last five years or so. We know, and it's not anecdotal—I think there's clear evidence to suggest this—that many of the crimes committed in rural Canada, certainly in rural Alberta, have been due to urban criminals moving out to the country because of their thought that there will be fewer enforcement opportunities and therefore less opportunity to get caught.

I applaud the efforts. I specifically want to point out that the trial run for your crime reduction strategy that you implemented in Alberta—which is fledgling, but you need to be complimented on it—came out of the Red Deer rural detachment and some of the surrounding detachments. I want to applaud both of you for leading that charge. It is having a significant impact on the crime rates that were reported there.

I'm curious to know, in your thoughts, whether there are plans to roll that out to other jurisdictions within Alberta that you're responsible for. Are there any thoughts with your colleagues from other western provinces and eastern provinces that also have the same issue in terms of the same sort of strategy in dealing with their issues?

[A/Commr John Ferguson]

I can say yes. For me personally, I've only been in this role since January of this year. Peter has been in the other role for about four months.

I came here from Nova Scotia a few years ago. Our former commanding officer, Todd Shean, came from Ottawa, but prior to that—many years ago—was in Codiac, New Brunswick.

The strategies we're employing here are the exact same strategies that he employed when he was in Codiac and that were being employed in Nova Scotia at the time I was there. When I came to the province, I went to Grande Prairie—which in 2015, according to Maclean's magazine, had the highest crime rate in the country—and it was the same strategy.

I guess my point is that we're always collaborating with our counterparts across the country. We meet twice a year [Technical difficulty--Editor].

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

So much for collaboration.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

And I was just going to ask the collaboration question.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

I guess there wasn't enough money in the budget.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Yes.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

If we get him back, I have.... Hopefully we get them back.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Okay, here we are. I think we're back.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

There you go.

I just have one more quick comment or question.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Make it a very quick comment.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

You have to give me some latitude for this.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I gave you 13 seconds.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

No, that doesn't work. We were down for 45.

Anyway, we said that many of the criminals are coming from urban areas into rural areas to do do their crimes, and municipal agencies have been targeting serious habitual offenders through the SHOCAP program and other things like that, with the majority of those cases being prolific offenders.

Can you elaborate on your co-operation and integrated work with the municipal agencies? I know it's key in Alberta, not only with ALERT, but with others as well. With this project specifically, is it something you will target with other jurisdictions in the south and in the north?

[Supt Peter Tewfik]

Yes, absolutely.

With regard to the dashboards I mentioned earlier, we needed to get our data in order to create an intelligence dashboard that would give a good snapshot of both the people of interest and the crime trends in each area. We've already had the discussions with the peace officers in the province of Alberta in terms of how to distribute that, and I'm going to be meeting with our other provincial law enforcement partners to discuss that. I already have the commitment from both citizen-led groups in Alberta on a distribution mechanism for that information.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

As long as you're sharing that data back and forth between the municipal and the RCMP—

[Supt Peter Tewfik]

That's right. That's the key, yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Motz.

Mr. Motz, when you were much closer to being a police officer, you were much more concise.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Yes, I probably was.