Public Safety committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is an honour to be able to assist and to present today. Before I begin, I would like to point out that I am here to speak mainly about the methodology and about the study we conducted. I was getting ready to do just that a few moments ag

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 re

Public Safety committee  We have indeed obtained a copy of this document.

Public Safety committee  Yes.

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

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

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

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 resp

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

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 yo

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 coun

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.