Public Safety committee  Thank you. One of the things the members may not be aware of is that correctional officers are not peace officers when they're off the penitentiary reserve and do not have immediate custody of an inmate. What that means is that, literally, the officer who was pursuing the vehicle did the right thing, which was to stop at our penitentiary reserve.

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. From a personal perspective, as security intelligence officers we had a training program in place that was really an amalgamation of other agencies' training philosophies. One of the things I'm very excited about in the security intelligence department is that we have a brand-new training program for all of our security intelligence officers that was actually developed and is being facilitated by experienced security intelligence officers in the Correctional Service of Canada.

Public Safety committee  First, it's speaking from Stony Mountain Institution's perspective. The tools we have, including our drug-detector dogs, the increase in our security intelligence staff, and things of that nature, have resulted in an increase in the number of interceptions we're making. As an example, this year the drugs we've intercepted have an institutional value of around $201,000, compared to their value in the same amount of time in our last fiscal year, which was approximately $104,000.

Public Safety committee  I don't have the IT schematic in front of me, but that was just one example of how a sophisticated network can do a drug transaction. One of the duties of the security intelligence officer is to deal with drug interdiction. Each item that I deal with can be unique. In some cases, it's as simple as an inmate knowing that he has violated his parole and putting a small amount of drugs into his rectum, so that when he's returned to the institution, he'll have something for his personal use.

Public Safety committee  Certainly. As a security intelligence officer, one of my primary roles is to provide advice and recommendations to decision-makers, including my senior management team. My advice is both valued and utilized by them because I see decisions being made based on those recommendations.

Public Safety committee  I would agree with Commissioner Head in regard to the fact that the presence of an underground economy and the associated muscling makes all programming difficult. But in addition, I would specify that when we have drugs present in the institution, any type of substance abuse programming is compromised by that.

Public Safety committee  I'm sure we can arrange something.

Public Safety committee  You're looking at several different aspects. You'll have a drug leader who won't necessarily involve himself directly in bringing the drugs into the institution, although he will involve his community contacts. He might be talking to his wife to make arrangements for things to be dropped off.

Public Safety committee  Certainly. Obviously when people are attempting to introduce drugs into the institution or to conceal drugs within the institution, they're going to use any means available to them to prevent us from finding those drugs. They're very rarely going to have the drugs just sitting in their pocket where a frisk search is going to find them.

Public Safety committee  Absolutely. We have individuals who come to us because they're already in trouble and they're looking for our assistance in dealing with that, whether they've already brought drugs into the institution or they're being pressured to do so. We deal with that from our security intelligence standpoint.