Public Safety committee  I don't want to bore you with technical details, but the theory behind GPS technology is basically that you have the series of orbiting satellites, which transmit signals to a receiver. If you know where the satellites are, and if the satellites all have synchronized time clocks and the signals all arrive at your GPS receiver without being distorted or modified in any form, then your GPS receiver has a computer inside it that uses those signals to determine your location.

Public Safety committee  That's correct. Most GPS signals will not penetrate into deep underground areas.

Public Safety committee  That's likely correct. Now, I must admit that I'm not sure about some of the high-quality military receivers, but certainly for conventional, lower-cost receivers, that would be the case, I believe.

Public Safety committee  We haven't really discussed that operational requirement at all yet. The only discussions we have really had are around our ability to provide them technical support. I think we're at the point where they believe this is a possibility, and if they agree that we want go ahead with some sort of activity, then we'll get into these other issues.

Public Safety committee  Again, we haven't looked at the cost, so I don't really know. The total cost has to take into account all sorts of factors. It's not just the GPS receivers themselves.

Public Safety committee  Well, they're issues associated with monitoring the data. Someone has to monitor the data so that the GPS receiver, if you want to call it that, transmits the data back to some sort of monitoring site. But what do you do with it? Someone has to sit there and analyze it and make a decision as to what to do.

Public Safety committee  I'm just going to say that we haven't really looked into the details, but I would assess, based upon my previous background as an electrical engineer, that there are much fewer difficulties than with the GPS situation.

Public Safety committee  We've looked at a few of the product catalogues, but that's about it. Part of a comprehensive program to look for these devices would be to translate the operational requirement into a technical requirement and then look at the devices available that meet that technical requirement in principle and according to the manufacturer.

Public Safety committee  Based upon some of the reading I've done, which again is very preliminary, the GPS-enabled devices are likely to be the more expensive. One of the problems with GPS systems is they can range from very simple to extremely complex. GPS isn't just GPS; it's a hugely complex field. You have to try to understand what actual GPS technology is being used by the individual manufacturers, because the overall performance can vary markedly, depending on what their implementation looks like.

Public Safety committee  We've had some initial discussions with Public Safety and Corrections Canada about our potential involvement in this activity. We're still awaiting a more formal task. My centre tends to take on tasks that are written down and agreed to. We haven't agreed to any specific activity yet, so we're spending a little bit of our time trying to understand some of the initial aspects of this—waiting to decide on what official task we might get.

Public Safety committee  We made initial contact with some Public Safety folks a number of months ago for a very initial discussion.

Public Safety committee  They haven't asked us to do anything specific yet. We could engage with the end-users or the policy-makers to understand how they think they want to use these devices and characterize the operational model. Then we could say, “If that's the capability you need, you need to have devices that have this type of technical performance”.

Public Safety committee  A GPS system gives you, in theory, the opportunity to have real-time tracking of individuals, as long as you're in a situation where you get reasonable GPS coverage from the satellite system. The RF technology is generally used, to the best of my understanding at this time, to determine whether an individual has moved away from a specified location.

Public Safety committee  I have to say that our involvement in this activity with Public Safety Canada and Corrections Canada is really very much at the beginning stages. We've had a number of meetings to outline what we might be able to bring to the table, so we're actually just getting started looking at these sorts of things.

Public Safety committee  We can only make a technical recommendation against operational requirements. It's not proper just to examine the technology, itself. There is a range of issues, such as what is the interrogation interval for the device. Do you need to know where the individuals are every two hours, every three hours, or every five minutes?