Public Safety committee  When Mr. Townsend, the staff relations representative, was here, he pointed to proposed section 36.2. We think that's a fairly significant advancement because it's stating the principles that will apply to sanctioning misconduct in the RCMP. That doesn't exist. Other jurisdictions will have statements about what is aggravating or mitigating.

Public Safety committee  I don't anticipate mandatory minimums, but I could be wrong because it is a consultative process. We will look at things like that. I think you do naturally, as in DND or the FBI where you can start looking at sanctions. We do it slightly differently. We don't have a fixed table but we informally do because we know, for example, that impaired driving is going to get you seven to 10 days but with aggravating and mitigating factors you can build in those things and create them so your managers know that in this circumstance—

Public Safety committee  Right now it's enshrined in the act. If you want to give informal discipline, it's in the act and you can't change that. If you want to give formal discipline it's in the act. What this permits, through a commissioner's standing order, is to have measures set out that are more flexible and adaptable.

Public Safety committee  Do you mean the future code of conduct?

Public Safety committee  There's an ability to create a code of conduct under a regulation. Its approach would be to ensure that conduct is being dealt with at the appropriate level, but it won't say that in the code of conduct. It's going to set out the standards of behaviour. We would propose and in consultations with the stakeholders that....

Public Safety committee  I wouldn't say that I necessarily agreed with the findings of Mr. Plecas. I don't know the details of the cases he talked about, and he used some very strong descriptions of what he had found. I'm not going to disagree with what he said.

Public Safety committee  Twenty-six years.

Public Safety committee  It evolved. Initially there wasn't an inclination to advise what the result was. It's moved to where now we say that measures or discipline have been imposed. If it's a formal hearing that will be publicly known because it's a public process. If it's an informal measure, right now we will say something has been imposed but we won't say specifically what.

Public Safety committee  It was a contest between private and personal information and the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act. The view was that you couldn't disclose that, but now we would be permitted to do that under the bill.

Public Safety committee  I definitely agree it's too cumbersome, but we're in that catch-22 where we want to have any serious integrity issue dealt with formally. When you start talking that language in our current process, it would just come to a halt. It's not moving that fast right now, but if you're saying every integrity issue has to go into a formal hearing....

Public Safety committee  There are factors to be taken into account in the individual case but it's not necessarily automatic termination. It was when I started on the job, but medical evidence has become more and more predominant in the processes and in what happens. We recently had a case of a senior NCO who was dismissed as a result of a shoplifting case.

Public Safety committee  I will answer your question in two parts. There is some sensitivity around the role of adjudicator. As it's set up under the current act, it's a quasi-judicial role. Rolling in and saying that they have it all wrong, that they have to do everything differently from now on, and this is how they're going to judge those cases isn't quite how it unfolds.

Public Safety committee  I will start with the first part of your question, which is on the CRCC. It may be a point of clarification, but the authority or the ability of the commissioner to request that public complaint review investigations be suspended where it would compromise a criminal investigation is clearly to understand it's not a request that terminates the public complaint process.

Public Safety committee  There is no opening statement for me, Mr. Chair.

Public Safety committee  I'm the director general of the adjudicative services branch, which is comprised of four directorates. The first is the discipline adjudicators directorate where we have four full-time adjudicators who deal with discipline cases and they have a support staff in the form of a registrar and some clerical assistance and editing.