Public Safety Committee on Nov. 20th, 2025

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

I started as a parole officer as a student. I was mentored, and eventually I was hired permanently.

I am flabbergasted that somebody who probably has literally two weeks of training is making decisions on what could be potential national security questions, as in, is this person a threat to security?

Is that a concern generally, that somebody with so little experience is making fairly consequential decisions?

[Mark Weber]

Yes, it is a very common concern I hear from our members.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

Has the government ever responded to that concern?

[Mark Weber]

To my knowledge, no. We've brought it forward with our employer, to no avail.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

You said “cheap labour”. Is that your belief as to the motivation behind the government's doing it?

[Mark Weber]

I cannot see any other reason you would want to have, in some cases, more students working at ports of entry than you have full-time border services officers.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

I beg your pardon.

[Mark Weber]

Yes. It's very typical during the summer at larger airports—Pearson and Vancouver airports, for example—that you will have more students on than you have BSOs.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

We're going to hire 1,000 new agents when we can't even staff our airports with agents now, without help from students. Again, I'm not disparaging students for what they do, but there's a very big difference between being a fully trained officer and a student. Students have a role, but that role isn't on the front line of security.

[Mark Weber]

I believe the role is one that should be supervised, that the program should return to its original intent, as it was under FSWEP, when the program started.

It's very difficult for me to denigrate students, because they work hard—

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

They do.

[Mark Weber]

—they try hard, and some of our best officers started as students. As it's currently run, though, they are put in very difficult positions, where they have to make decisions and do things that I'm not sure they necessarily have the skills and experience to do well.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

You have to learn to crawl before you learn to walk, and I think that's the analogy here. There's no disrespect to students. They do work hard, and they gain valuable experience, but I am deeply troubled by the fact that at times there are more students on the front line than there are fully trained officers.

We juxtapose that with this promise to train 1,000 officers, when those officers will be eaten up by attrition and we don't have training facilities. All in all, this is a bleak situation for CBSA officers.

Would you agree?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

I'm sorry, but this is all the time we have. There will be other opportunities to come back to this topic or others.

Let me turn to MP Dandurand.

[Marianne Dandurand, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank both witnesses for being with us today to give us their perspective on this extremely important topic.

Mr. Sauvé, you talked about three pillars, if I can put it that way, to ensure the success of our initiatives. First, there is the legislative route. We're talking about it, and I'll have more questions for you about it afterwards. For now, I'd like to talk to you about the other two pillars you talked about, resources and tools. I understand your caution or reservation in this regard, but do you think that the government's joint initiatives, if everything is put in place to carry them out, will meet a large part of the needs?

[Brian Sauvé]

I did preface a lot in my opening remarks that Bill C-12 is a good start. We appreciate a good start. We have to start somewhere. If we don't start somewhere, we will never get anywhere.

The addition of 1,000 human resources for the RCMP, again, is a good start. It is not where we need to be, but it's a good start. The good thing is that we have the capacity, actually, to build those 1,000 resources in fairly short order.

The other piece is, obviously, the equipment and the technologies to be able to do the job. One of the challenges that the RCMP faces is a slow and bureaucratic procurement process with regard to the ability to get operational, life-saving and effective tools to be able to complete its mission to keep Canadians safe. Sometimes those procurement processes can take years, and sometimes they're over multiple governments.

It's a good start. There needs to be a continued push to carry on, to work through the mandate.

[Marianne Dandurand, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you.

I'm sorry. I was trying to put my headset on so that I could hear you better, but I still got it.

You were talking about the slow procurement process. Do you think that what the government is doing with all the procurement initiatives to reduce red tape and to make it faster is also a step in a good direction to help you out with those issues?

[Brian Sauvé]

Yes, certainly. We've even made two recommendations to the minister responsible on this issue. There are clear examples of problems with the government procurement system affecting the RCMP's ability to ensure the health and safety of Canadians.

It's a step in the right direction—another one—let's hope.

[Marianne Dandurand, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you for this.

My position—obviously, being part of the government—is that many of the things that you're talking about, the three pillars, are addressed in the commitments of the government. I believe that it's going to move forward. Hopefully, it's going to go well.

Do you have any recommendations? When you see how it's going, do you have any recommendations on how we can make it happen fast and well, from what you see from outside?

[Brian Sauvé]

Yes, and we've been studying this.

Actually, one of the recommendations we made to Minister Lightbound, I believe, who's responsible for that particular portfolio, was that if we are looking at this as border security, national security—one of the RCMP's mandates from that perspective—then there are exemptions that the government can provide to bypass the procurement process for drones, helicopters and those types of things. I think that serious consideration given to those exemptions, in certain circumstances where warranted, would be appreciated.

[Marianne Dandurand, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you.

You recommend more sustained engagement and awareness efforts to strengthen public understanding of privacy and digital evidence reforms.

What kind of message would you like to send to Canadians regarding the use of data, or regarding the powers that Bill C‑2 initially planned to give to Canada Post, Canada Border Services Agency officers, and other government officials?

[Brian Sauvé]

Lawful access and Canada Post are fascinating things, and I think, if you heard from any police witnesses, they were disappointed to see the removal of lawful access from Bill C-12. However, I understand it's still being considered from different perspectives, and it might come down again.

One challenge we see is that, obviously, as social media and artificial intelligence have exploded at a meteoric rate over the past three to five years, the capacity and abilities to modernize and be nimble, as a law enforcement agency dealing with deepfakes, cyber-fakes and just some of the crimes that happen in that world, have been hampered.

I was a BlackBerry person. There was a very public case in which BlackBerry was refusing lawful access to the FBI in the United States. Similarly, with cell phone providers, cell phones, Apple Wallet, Google Wallet, etc., I suspect it will be a challenge in the future to enforce cryptocurrency and those money-laundering things.

We had a file not that long ago, in “C” Division in Quebec, where our market enforcement team seized $56 million of cryptocurrency. The challenge is trying to find out who the owner of that is.

Lawful access is something that's relatively important, and I think it will be a step in the right direction.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you very much. That's all the time we have for this segment.

Mrs. DeBellefeuille, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank both witnesses for being here today.

My question is also about the RCMP.

A study published in 2010 estimated that it would take nearly 5,000 RCMP officers to meet its needs and enable it to properly carry out its current mandate.

You're not against Bill C‑12. It wouldn't give you more work. In fact, it would allow for better collaboration between the Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP, which is important.

Many witnesses told us that they couldn't be against virtue, because Bill C‑12 did contain some good measures to provide security for Quebeckers and Canadians. However, they expressed their concerns and a lack of confidence about how it would happen and how quickly the bill would be implemented. Those were the things they were concerned about.

As for you, your concerns are about the slowness of the process for you to be able to make new acquisitions, whether it be equipment or technological tools, for example.

Can you give us a very specific example of a tool you use every day that hasn't yet been replaced? I want you to give me a very concrete example. I think we were talking about guns.

[Brian Sauvé]

For example, if we talk about the Swanton sector, which is where I live—it's within your riding, Madame DeBellefeuille—mobile command posts with the ability to have infrared and thermal radar, to deploy drones and have drone operators within that, if we want to expand the use of mobile command posts across the border, in particular in that sector, to be able to receive, deploy....

The drones that we use do not have an extensive flying time. They have to recharge their batteries, etc. Purchasing those goes through the procurement process, which can take a considerable amount of time. The Black Hawk helicopters, for example, that we're using on a lease, temporarily, from a company, have not been purchased by the RCMP. They are leased, because we will have to go through the procurement process should we choose to use that particular vendor or platform permanently.

The sidearm that the RCMP is using right now is a prime example. It has been in use since 1998. It's 27 years old—well past its life cycle. It has been going through a replacement procurement process for nine years, and we still don't have a selection on that particular replacement sidearm.

These are simple, little examples of things that hamper our operational effectiveness.