Public Safety Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2024

[Jérome Laliberté, Chief Financial Officer and Deputy Director of Administration, Canadian Security Intelligence Service]

Yes, it's a great question.

When our employees or visitors park on our HQ campus, they pay to do so. When we collect that funding, we give it back to the Receiver General, or the consolidated revenue fund. This is a mechanism for being transparent with Parliament. It comes back to us to pay for things like snow cleanup on the parking lot, maintenance of the parking lot and so on. It is those parking fees.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

I just wanted some clarity. It's not something you usually see with CSIS. Thanks for that.

I'd like to next turn to Ms. Kelly and the Correctional Service of Canada.

I met with the union that represents your correctional officers. I'm sure you're very well aware of their concerns. In the detailed breakdown of the asks you have in the supplementary estimates, I do see $58 million for “changes in offender population and price fluctuations”, and also $29.7 million for “operations related to workplace injuries”.

Ms. Kelly, I'd just like to know, through this funding that you're asking for from us, how you are specifically addressing the union's very real concerns about workplace safety.

Last month, I actually tried out their virtual reality simulator, which puts you directly into the environment. Workplace injuries are quite high in that line of work, and so are the mental health demands. I'd like to know how this funding is being used to tackle the union's very real concerns.

[Anne Kelly, Commissioner, Correctional Service of Canada]

In terms of the funding, the $29.7 million is really an increase in costs for workers' compensation benefits. That's what it's for.

In terms of your question about staff safety, I too put on the goggles and saw the environment in which they work, which is extremely challenging.

At our national labour management meetings, staff safety is something that we discuss regularly. For our officers, we provide training, we provide them with equipment and we do threat risk assessments.

One issue that's been a real challenge for the service, though, is drones. Drones have increased in the last few years by 271%, which is huge. Sometimes, when they are successful in dropping items, the items that are seized are, unfortunately, drugs and sometimes weapons. This increases the violence in our institutions.

In terms of drones, we're investing a lot and we have a layered approach.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

I have only a minute left and I want to get one question to Ms. Geddes from the Department of Public Safety.

I noticed that the $800 million that you are requesting for “Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements” is on top of the $550 million that I believe was already allocated. That's more than 100% of what's already been allocated, which is going to bring our total financial commitments to $1.3 billion.

It's obvious that the costs related to climate change are going up and up. I would just like to know if the department is doing any kind of forecasts.

Is this $800 million next year going to turn into $1 billion and $2 billion the year after that?

I think taxpayers really need to have a clear picture of how the department is forecasting what future demands are going to be like.

[Tricia Geddes]

Thank you very much for the question.

Some of the complexity around our DFAA legislation is that we're reliant on the provinces and territories to submit their resourcing asks. Sometimes this can happen years after an event. It's actually retrospective as opposed to prospective. We're operating within an envelope.

In terms of our ability to determine when the provinces and territories will be able to align their funding requirements to our ability to apportion it, we do our best to keep in constant contact with the provinces and territories in that regard, but it is a little difficult sometimes to predict, because we are certainly in receive mode.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqwinder Gaheer]

Thank you.

That concludes the first round. Naturally, the second round commences.

Ms. Dancho, you have five minutes.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This is for the RCMP commissioner.

You mentioned to my colleague from the Bloc that to pull any RCMP resources to redeploy to the border, the primary wave would be from federal resourcing rather than the contract policing or the community policing, so to speak.

How many officers are you preparing to redeploy to the border from federal resources?

[Commr Michael Duheme]

Right now, if there's going to be a surge, we don't have any intelligence to indicate where the surge is going to be, so we'll have to wait for announcements. The organization has to be nimble enough to identify where these hot spots are.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I'm so sorry. I was not clear.

It's regarding the threat from President-elect Trump about the 25% tariffs because of the more than 20,000 individuals who crossed from Canada into the United States and the 12,000 kilograms of various illicit substances. That seems to be their focus and their threat of, really, an economic recession in Canada.

My question is, what is the RCMP going to do to redeploy its efforts to the border? As they've outlined, the CBSA does not have jurisdiction between the ports of entry. The issue is in your jurisdiction, between the ports of entry.

Are you saying that there's no commitment and there's no plan right now to redeploy those federal resources?

[Commr Michael Duheme]

There are contingency plans being built as to what units are impacted if we need that surge capacity. Depending on the situation, we could even look at redeploying cadets out of training, just like we did on Parliament Hill in 2014, temporarily, depending on the surge we're facing.

Throughout the country, Deputy Commissioner Mark Flynn, who's in charge of federal policing, is in lockstep with all the commanding officers. There's a contingency plan set for surge capacities.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you. Again, I'm not necessarily focused on the.... Of course, we are concerned very much about the surge that may come in from the United States, but for the purposes of what the Trump administration is threatening and the economic recession that they're threatening, they're saying that right now this is happening. Their concern is around the people and the drugs coming from Canada to the U.S. It's my understanding that right now, with the status quo right now, which the Americans have the issue with, there's no plan, if things remain as they are now, to redeploy RCMP resources between the ports of entry.

[Commr Michael Duheme]

The challenging part with it, Mr. Chair, is that the offence is only committed once they cross the border. That is challenging.

Again, it's going to be with collaboration. An incident happened on just the 29th, when six individuals crossed in Manitoba, near Emerson. The USBP called us right away. We were able to locate the six individuals and whatnot, so there is collaboration, Mr. Chair, but I think it will be really important to identify those hot areas based on the position that the U.S. will take.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I see. What you're saying is that you're not concerned about the individuals who are approaching the border, and when they do cross the border, that problem is for the border patrol in the U.S.

[Commr Michael Duheme]

Well, if you go back to Roxham Road, it was the other way around.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Right.

[Commr Michael Duheme]

People were actually lined up in the United States to come through to Canada. The offence actually happens once they cross the border, sadly enough, but again, it's more important than ever to have the right technology and the right partnership south of the border. The partnership with the USBP is very strong.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you.

I'll turn now to the CBSA.

Ms. O'Gorman, we're hearing concerns raised from Mr. Weber, the union president for our border agents, that the issue of the crossing, whether northward or southward, is between the ports of entry. You are limited in your jurisdiction to do that. The RCMP has outlined that there's not any immediate plan to redeploy RCMP resources between the ports of entry to stop the influx into the U.S. from Canada, which is the primary concern of the incoming American administration.

What discussions have you had with the RCMP, if any, to expand your jurisdiction and expand the mandate of the CBSA to fill some of those gaps between ports of entry? Has there been any discussion?

I'll point out that it's been 20 days since the new border czar, Tom Homan, flagged this as a major issue that he's going to have with Canada and indicated that this was going to be a problem.

Over a week ago, President-elect Trump announced tariffs that will do very frightening things to our economy. I'm just not getting a sense that there's any immediate action to deploy any new resources from the RCMP or the CBSA between the ports of entry, which is the issue with the Americans right now. I'm concerned about that.

Can you comment?

[Erin O'Gorman]

There are a few things here. We work with the RCMP every day in executing our respective mandates. At my level and all the way down to the front line, our officers know each other. They talk to each other.

Irregular migration has been steadily decreasing. That's not to say that it's not happening; the CBSA processes people who come and seek asylum through the air mode and the land mode every day. I say that just to say that we are implementing the STCA every day. That is to say, people come from the U.S. and seek asylum into Canada. We determine whether they meet an exception to the STCA. If they don't, we return them. The U.S. does the same thing. I think it's important to note that at the ports of entry, we are applying the STCA, and it's working.

In terms of the situation between the ports, we share targeting information and we share intelligence. We work in integrated border enforcement teams that include the U.S. There are also border enforcement task forces on the U.S. side with embedded RCMP and CBSA officers.

Whether we're stepping out to do patrols that we don't have the authority to do...but I'm satisfied that from an intelligence and information-sharing perspective, we're doing it every day, all the time, across the country.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you both.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqwinder Gaheer]

Thank you, Ms. Dancho.

Ms. Damoff, you have five minutes.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you to all the officials for being here.

I just want to make a comment before I start.

When I first started on the public safety committee back in 2016, I and my assistant Ellen were the only two women in the room. Every member and every official, and everyone sitting out there, was a man. It's quite something to see elected officials and representatives of the department being far more diverse than it was when I first sat on this committee. That was just an observation I made when we all sat down.

Commissioner, I saw on social media a post from a Conservative candidate talking about cuts to the RCMP. It was in response to an email that I guess you had sent to members. Can you confirm that regular uniformed members of the RCMP have been excluded from the responsible government spending initiative?

[Commr Michael Duheme]

The purpose of that email.... It was well known within the government that there would be cuts in several departments, and people within the organization were questioning how we would be affected. It was more to provide an awareness for them that we're working closely with Sam and the senior executive committee to look at areas that could be impacted.

That being said, there's still an ongoing conversation with the minister with regard to what those cuts may look like, if any.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Is it going to impact the members themselves? Are you going to be laying off any RCMP members? Everything we've heard so far today is the opposite.

[Commr Michael Duheme]

The conversation initially was that the frontline members—the uniformed members, police officers, sworn-in officers—would not be affected, but then you create this imbalance because you have a critical infrastructure that's supporting everything we do on the front line. We have scientists in the labs. We have analysts. To say that we're going to cut just in this area is going to be an imbalance, and the right support for the people on the front line may just not be there.

There's an ongoing conversation with the minister on that.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

My next question is for Director Rogers.

We've had a number of conversations at this committee about foreign interference, as you know. In fact, you appeared at the committee on that. As we know, the Leader of the Opposition has refused to get a top secret security clearance.

My question is this: Could you let us know, in this committee, the difference between a threat reduction measure and a top secret security clearance?