Public Accounts committee  I'm going to refer that question to Mr. Watters.

Public Accounts committee  I think you were right when you said it really is about officer safety. If somebody delays their qualification by a month, they're not vulnerable. The risk is not high that they will not be able to shoot their assailant.

Public Accounts committee  Absolutely. It's not that we don't welcome any criticism of our systems, but everything that's looked at is a snapshot in time. When we say that 13% of firearms have not been maintained, that's a snapshot in time. If a member gets advised that their pistol needs to be maintained,

Public Accounts committee  It's not always linked to the number of instructors. It's location and the availability of ranges. Carbine is very specific in terms of what kind of range we can use, and we're very limited in that area. It's also geography. For instance, detachment members in Nunavut need to com

Public Accounts committee  I can assure you that they get the equipment and training they need. When you speak about justification, it's more about the realities that we're dealing with, and it's about when we roll out new equipment. There is the reality of not being able to roll out 20,000 items at one gi

Public Accounts committee  I would say yes and no. Obviously in a marked vehicle, yes. For unmarked vehicles, the ratio might not be one per vehicle. In the unmarked, plainclothes world, when they need the carbines, they work as a group, and they go and do what they need to do. They will take the carbine

Public Accounts committee  No.

Public Accounts committee  Separate body armour.

Public Accounts committee  Right now, that's where it is. Our plan is to individually assign.

Public Accounts committee  That's 13% of operational members, I believe.

Public Accounts committee  We obviously don't control the standards of the municipal agencies. However, they often come to us when we are rolling out new equipment. When we hear of new technology they are using, we are sharing that technology. I know that in some of the provinces, they're looking at provi

Public Accounts committee  I will comment that sometimes it's not a question of having the equipment or the uniform; sometimes it's a personal preference on what type of uniform they have. In the Lower Mainland, in particular, many of the individuals buy their own pants, because they don't like the issued

Public Accounts committee  We took the steps that we felt were needed, first of all, to procure and deploy the carbines as per our risk assessment. Obviously, referring to the case of Moncton, there were gaps in that. We admit that there were gaps in that and are trying to figure out how to do that better,

Public Accounts committee  As Deputy Commissioner Brennan referred to earlier, we have improved on our tracking for the equipment. It's a little more problematic with hard body armour versus a carbine because it's not serial numbered, but we are ensuring that the numbers are tracked on the system.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for that question. We're always looking at technology. One thing I can say is that part of vision 150 is getting better business intelligence within the RCMP. We have a lot of databases, but often we can't do the analytics. We need to get better at that. With equipmen