Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Members of the committee, thank you for giving us an opportunity to offer our comments on this legislation that is very important to our organization, as it is to you and to the government. The police boards and commissions that make up our members are res

Public Safety committee  I think those are the—[Technical Difficulty—Editor] It is important for the commission to be able to identify a pattern and then initiate an investigation. I don't think those reviews should be subject to availability of resources or other investigations. I can give you an e

Public Safety committee  Thank you for that. Actually, I'm in agreement with what Mr. Stamatakis said. There has to be a balance and a distinction made between criminal investigations and other types of conduct with investigations. My concern is that quite often these conduct matters, which to my mind

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. As has been said, my name is Alok Mukherjee, and I appear before you on behalf of the Canadian Association of Police Boards, of which I am the president. Thank you for giving us an opportuni

Public Safety committee  Sure. As I said, we support an integrated framework that includes all of these different functions, but we do face some challenges. Just yesterday I was in a place called LaSalle, near Windsor. I was talking to a board member from Windsor, and he said there's a small river, the

Public Safety committee  Well, your first question about police contracts is an important question, as you mentioned and Mr. Stamatakis mentioned. Over 88% of our budget goes into policing costs and compensation, and in Ontario, for example, the difference between the highest-paid and the lowest-paid jur

Public Safety committee  In 30 seconds.... An integrated approach takes different forms, depending on what we are talking about. I agree with Dale and the explanation he gave. Within the service, there can be an integrated approach as well. A question was asked earlier about using a police officer

Public Safety committee  Thank you for that question. We had to look at a range of approaches or strategies. Last year when we started talking about achieving this 10% target, I wrote a discussion paper for our board, essentially saying we need to approach what we do differently. There are functions tha

Public Safety committee  I don't mean to be facetious, but I sometimes refer to it as a growth industry, because for policing, dealing with mental illness has become a major piece of business. It's an unfortunate reality, but often if a person who needs help doesn't call the police, he or she may not get

Public Safety committee  That is correct.

Public Safety committee  Certainly. As a principle we have been saying that we shouldn't make laws that add to the costs of municipal policing. If we do, then we should make sure they're properly funded. That principle applies just as well to this legislation. As my colleague said, we support the princi

Public Safety committee  They're being made at the police service level by the chief of police.

Public Safety committee  I think it's the same issue that Professor Dandurand mentioned: there has not been a full evaluation. Understanding the extent of the limitation is difficult, but I know it has been brought to the board's attention that this is an issue for us.

Public Safety committee  We don't have numbers, but our association has been advised that there are areas where the municipalities are required to fund programs. We don't do that in Toronto because we have a provincial program. It has been brought to our attention that the ability of municipalities to fu

Public Safety committee  —and I was pleased, because way back in 2007 I had spoken to the then minister and the then standing committee about the need for some of the provisions that are in this bill, so that's good. What we are talking about are criminal situations that our local police municipal servic