Canadian Heritage committee  It is very volatile and very dangerous. In Quebec, the climate is becoming increasingly acrimonious because the identity-based right has been able to gain a certain legitimacy. The ideas that are repeated and very cheerfully covered by the media readily reach the ears of the average person.

Canadian Heritage committee  It is insecurity. As I touched on in my presentation, the element of insecurity is probably at the crux of the analysis. For many years, Canada has welcomed immigrants. Canada has been very generous in welcoming many people. Unfortunately, certain critics of the role of immigrants and the impact of immigrants on Canadian society were not appropriate.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Ms. Fry. Distinguished members of the committee, my introduction will be mainly in French for the sake of functioning a little bit faster. As you can see, I have a sexy French accent. It will probably be a little faster this way. I would like to take this opportunity today to talk specifically about one aspect of the topic under consideration: the rise of the right in Canada and the social damage it could cause to our society.

Public Safety committee  I saw that you had a photocopy of the report...

Public Safety committee  We mention these incidents in the report. The problem, however, is that we are not authorized to systematically collect data. However, we have catalogued a number of major incidents and these are mentioned in the report.

Public Safety committee  In that case, we would need to draw up another report ...

Public Safety committee  ...so to speak, because data was not systematically catalogued. The report contained statistics, figures on the number of persons injured, and so forth.

Public Safety committee  In our study, out of 383 people who were directly interviewed, we had exactly 86% who said they wanted to be armed; 12% who said they needed to be armed, but they didn't feel qualified to carry arms; and 2% who said no, they should not have arms. So the flat no was at 2%. If you add the 12% who said yes, they should be armed, but they didn't feel comfortable carrying a weapon, you could go up to 14%, but not above that.

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much. I had the pleasure of working with customs officers for over 21 years in my official function as an RCMP and a CSIS officer. In my last position at CSIS, as a matter of fact, I was the national coordinator for the point-of-entry interdiction program for counterterrorism.

Public Safety committee  You're right; police departments have various policies about this, but in the vast majority of police departments in Canada--the extreme vast majority--police officers keep their guns. I would strongly recommend that customs officers should keep their guns and go home and be responsible for them.

Public Safety committee  We can supply you with the names of people who have been killed, of the officer who lost his life, of people who were either hospitalized, required stitches or were treated for various problems. These are real cases involving real people. Getting back to what you said, with all due respect, there may be some confusion here.

Public Safety committee  The length of the studies were quite different, one to the other. The report from ModuSpec was mandated by the government, by CBSA at that time, and they received full cooperation. By contrast, despite the invitation from the union directly to Ms. McLellan and to Mr. Jolicoeur to embark on this initiative, they refused to get on board.

Public Safety committee  Yes, this is just the last portion. With regard to differences in terms of what we did, ModuSpec visited 21 sites, we visited 40. They interviewed 200 people, we interviewed 383 people. What is also important to mention--and this will be my last comment--is that we're not only talking about border service officers, or what are commonly called customs officers, at the border point.

Public Safety committee  I don't have one with me, but I can send a copy to the committee.

Public Safety committee  Thank you for that excellent question. We did indeed focus considerably on this problem area. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find any data, but as we discovered over time, the Agency did not have the proper tools for collecting data. However, as I noted in my opening remarks, we interviewed 383 people, all of whom related to us incidents in which they had been involved.