:
I'd like to call this meeting to order.
This is the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, meeting 28. We're dealing today with the arming of the Canada Border Services Agency officers.
We would like to welcome our witnesses this morning. We look forward to the testimony that you have for us.
I think we'll begin with the Canada Border Services Agency. Maybe you could introduce yourself, Mr. Jolicoeur, and take it from there. Perhaps you could give us any presentation you have.
Then we'll move, as we have in our agenda here, to the Department of Human Resources and Social Development and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
We have started a little late. With the committee's permission, I think we'll run a little over time.
Is everybody agreed? Okay.
Mr. Jolicoeur, you may begin.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning.
Since I have already provided the committee with my opening remarks, I guess I'll just say a few words of introduction and allow more time for questions.
[Translation]
I am here today to discuss the arming of border services officers. It is a government policy and, clearly, a major initiative for our agency.
[English]
The CBSA is fully engaged at all levels to implement the arming initiative safely, professionally, transparently, and without undue delay.
I know that you have many questions. While we're still in the early planning stage of this initiative, we are here today to respond to your questions to the best of our ability and to provide the most comprehensive information possible.
I'm joined by the CBSA vice-president of operations, Madame Barbara Hébert, who is also responsible for overseeing the implementation of the arming initiative in CBSA.
[Translation]
We are eager to report on the progress that we have made to date and to talk about the work that will be done in the months and years ahead.
[English]
We'll be happy to take your questions.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a pleasure to be here with you all today.
I'm the director general of national labour operations at the labour program at HRSD. The labour program is responsible for the administration and enforcement of part II of the Canada Labour Code. The code applies to federal jurisdiction workplaces, including the federal public service and most federal crown corporations.
Part II of the Canada Labour Code deals with occupational health and safety and its purpose is to prevent accidents and injuries to health in the workplace.
I'd like to highlight at this point in time that the labour program does not concern itself with issues of national security. The labour program's concerns relative to the CBSA and other workplaces under federal jurisdiction pertain strictly to employee health and safety.
Prior to discussing specific issues that have arisen with respect to the CBSA, I think it may be helpful for the committee if I briefly provide an overview of part II of the Canada Labour Code. Part II of the code grants employees three fundamental rights when it comes to their health and safety: the right to know about workplace hazards; the right to participate in health and safety matters; and the right to refuse dangerous work.
In recognizing these rights, part II also takes care not to unduly infringe on the employer's right to manage the workplace.
[Translation]
The Code also establishes specific duties for employers as well as for employees and provides that workplace parties play an active role in health and safety through participation on workplace health and safety committees.
The Code is very much focused on prevention. The Internal Responsibility System provided for in the Code is aimed at having workplace parties play a key role in achieving and maintaining a high level of workplace health and safety.
This being said, the Code and the Canada Occupational Health and Safety Regulations place the primary responsibility for health and safety on employers and require them to take measures to protect the health and safety of employees.
The recent addition of Part XIX of the Regulations dealing with Hazard Prevention Programs makes it explicit that employers must, in consultation with, and with the participation of the health and safety committees or representatives, develop, implement and monitor a program for the prevention of hazards in the workplace.
Should an employee have a concern relative to health or safety in the workplace, the Code provides for this to be dealt with through the Internal Complaint Resolution Process. The employee is required to bring health and safety concerns to the attention of his or her supervisor for resolution.
Any unresolved complaint may be referred to the health and safety committee or the health and safety representative, investigated and a solution implemented by the employer.
[English]
If the workplace parties can't resolve the issue, at that point in time one of our health and safety officers is notified, and the labour program becomes involved to investigate the situation.
Part II of the Canada Labour Code also grants employees the right to refuse to work if the employee “has reasonable cause to believe” that a condition exists in the workplace that constitutes a danger, unless the condition is a normal condition of employment or the refusal would put the life, health, and safety of another person in danger.
Part II of the code provides a specific process that must be followed when employees invoke this right. The employee must first report the situation to the employer without delay. The employer must then immediately investigate the matter in the presence of the employee and at least one member of the health and safety committee who does not exercise management functions, or a health and safety representative, and if neither of these are available, at least one person from the workplace who was selected by the employee.
If the employer agrees that a danger exists, the employer must take immediate action to protect the employee from danger and then must inform the workplace health and safety committee or the representative of the action that's been taken to resolve the matter.
If the employer disputes the matter reported by the employee, or if the employer takes steps to protect the employee but the employee believes a danger continues to exist, the employee can continue to refuse to work. At that point in time, the labour program is notified, and one of our health and safety officers investigates the matter.
A health and safety officer then investigates the refusal, as I've mentioned, and the employee continues to refuse to work after the established internal process has been followed. In cases where there's a finding of no danger, he so advises the workplace parties. The employee who initiated the refusal to work must then go back to his job.
On the other hand, if the HSO finds that the danger does exist, the HSO issues a direction to the employer to correct the hazard or condition or to alter the activity, basically to protect the person from the danger that was complained against. The employer or the employee may appeal the decision of the health and safety officer to the appeals office on occupational health and safety.
As director general, I'm aware that the employees of the CBSA have exercised the right to refuse, under part II of the Canada Labour Code, on a number of occasions. Since May 2005, our health and safety officers have been asked to investigate 44 refusals to work by customs inspectors of the CBSA at various ports of entry across the country.
Among the 44 refusals, 38 were group refusals and two were individual refusals. The vast majority of these refusals to work were initiated following the release of a CBSA lookout bulletin warning of possible armed and dangerous individuals who might attempt to cross into Canada.
In all but two of the refusals that I've referred to, the labour program has rendered a decision of no danger. In the two cases where danger was found, the CBSA had not correctly followed its established internal practice aimed at reducing the risks faced by the officers.
That's it for my presentation. I'd be happy to also answer any questions that the committee may have.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for inviting me here today. I am accompanied by Deputy Commissioner Barbara George, who is responsible for training at the RCMP. After a brief statement, I would be happy to answer any questions you might have.
Meanwhile, I want to focus my opening remarks on the RCMP's commitment to work with the Canadian Border Services Agency in providing top-quality firearm training for maximum long-term benefit for the RCMP or, ultimately, for the Canada Border Services Agency.
[English]
Following the Government of Canada’s May 2006 federal budget, in which funding to arm CBSA officers was announced, CBSA requested RCMP assistance in the development and implementation of a national arming initiative.
The RCMP agreed to provide that service. Indeed, in response to the aggressive timelines, we are already working with our CBSA partners to move forward on the first stage of the training program, such as the selection and training of CBSA trainers, also known as the “train the trainer” program. I'll speak to that in a moment.
The training MOU we've signed with CBSA is a two-year commitment that will be re-evaluated on an ongoing basis.
Currently we have seconded two senior RCMP members to CBSA to assist on the training project. Also, we are working with CBSA to develop a national arming policy and the RCMP will provide additional secondments or temporary assignments of specialized members to CBSA for training purposes as resources and other circumstances permit. The salary and O and M relating to the secondment training delivery costs are being absorbed by CBSA.
As well, the RCMP and CBSA are in the early stages of developing a new training syllabus to incorporate the user-level firearm training, defensive tactics, and tactical intervention strategies into the CBSA cadet basic training.
As I've already mentioned, one of the key components of the firearm training is the concept of training the trainer. We are providing assistance in the selection of CBSA officers who will be trained in firearm proficiency and teaching techniques so that they will become the trainers themselves. These future CBSA trainers are being selected from a pool of candidates whose applications have been validated through a CBSA-authored process. This is intended to allow CBSA to develop and deliver its own training program for long-term self-sufficiency. Preparing CBSA in this way is essential for not only that organization but for the RCMP, which does not have the capacity to train all of CBSA's 4,800 officers.
Simply put, as more CBSA personnel are trained to carry a firearm, the demands on the agency will increase because of ongoing obligations such as requalification and re-certification. Faced with this situation, the RCMP would not be able to maintain the training project without the train-the-trainer concept.
Furthermore, it is critical that Canadian law enforcement officers, whether regular police officers or CBSA peace officers, receive a level of training that allows them to safely and proficiently handle their firearm. This is key for public safety and the safety of CBSA employees and officers from other agencies who often work together on the investigations and other situations.
As you might expect with the aggressive timelines, the target date for the RCMP to begin training CBSA trainers is March 2007. The intent is to conduct two train-the-trainer courses back to back, in order to have approximately 30 CBSA trainers trained by the end of June of this year.
By March 2008, less than a year later, it is expected that 300 CBSA officers will have received the three-week duty firearm training course from the CBSA instructors. Although the CBSA trainers will be responsible for rolling out the user-level firearm training, the RCMP will continue to monitor and assist the rollout over the next two years.
As noted, along with the ability to carry a firearm comes increased responsibility, and this is particularly true when it comes to potentially violent situations. One of the key ways the RCMP trains members on handling such situations is our incident management intervention model. This model teaches appropriate responses to levels of resistance based on individual perception. The preference is always weighted towards the least intrusive intervention to control the threat and to ensure the safety of the public and the police.
There is no question that the RCMP has earned an international reputation for policing excellence that results in a large number of requests from other law enforcement agencies and government departments for specific types of training. More specifically, we are a leading expert in training in the use of weapons. We provide basic firearm and instructor-level training, for example, to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and we welcome this latest opportunity to support our confreres from CBSA.
Although the RCMP has been providing training to CBSA in controlled defensive tactics for a number of years, we see the addition of the firearms training as simply adding another component to this partnership.
[Translation]
In closing, Mr. Chairman, the RCMP and CBSA have a great working relationship which will continue through the firearm training program.
We are committed to our partnership with CBSA and other law enforcement agencies to secure the border and ensure its integrity. We and our partners are also interested in high standards of training to ensure both public and officer safety.
I would like to thank you for your time, and now I would be pleased to answer your questions.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I would also like to thank Mr. Jolicoeur, Ms. Hébert, Mr. Bourduas, Ms. George and Mr. Fracassi for their comments.
[English]
I have concerns about why we need to arm border guards. I think our Liberal government consistently argued against it. As agencies, your mission now is to implement the decision that was made politically by the new government, the Conservative government. But I think there are much less costly solutions and much safer solutions.
Let me ask a couple of more targeted questions.
First, Mr. Bourduas, as a public safety officer, do you think this is going to create more violence? It seems to me it has the potential to create more violence or greater risk of violence at our borders. I know that you're going to be training individuals and training the trainers to be prepared. If most, or 80% to 90%, of our trade and commerce and the passage of individuals goes through seven or eight of our border operations--borders like Detroit-Windsor, like Fort Erie-Buffalo, etc.--wouldn't another option be to provide 24/7 response by the RCMP, to call them in as required, rather than going through this billion-dollar border gate? That's the number I've heard. It's going to cost a billion dollars over 10 years to train and equip these people. Isn't there a less costly solution and one that would actually make our borders more safe?
:
The former Commissioner Zaccardelli always maintained the position that it was ultimately a Government of Canada decision. We of course are committed to work with our CBSA partners on this particular initiative.
The crux of the problem is to provide firearms to protect the people who are committed to protect the public at the border points. That is the reason we're going to focus our attention on this training aspect with our CBSA partners, to ensure that if we get called to the border.... If there's an incident of running the ports, for instance, my suggestion to you is that the firearms will not prevent people from running the ports. I think we all agree with this.
The fact of the matter is that the RCMP is committed to providing support to CBSA in other forms, through the tactical deployment of people along the border, or, if need be, if there's a request for assistance from the local detachment of the RCMP or the local municipalities or provincial police. That will also be factored into this initiative.
The centre of the problem is that we've committed to the government and to CBSA to train these people, and we'll do so accordingly.
:
I agree with you that it's not going to really deter people who are trying to run guns or bring drugs through our borders, and we need to deal with that. But if there is an alert, surely the response would be to advise law enforcement people, people who have....
I have great confidence in the officers in the Canada Border Services Agency and that if, over time and at great expense, they are trained...but let's face it, training is one thing, experience is another. The RCMP and other law enforcement agencies have many years of experience in how to interdict at the proper time and to minimize the risk to innocent bystanders.
A border crossing is a place where there are many people. It seems to me the best place to interdict would be based on some reasonable and intelligent choices, which law enforcement people with great experience could make, in a place where innocent bystanders wouldn't be at risk.
To Mr. Fracassi, how can it be, sir, that in so many of the incidents, or in the vast majority of cases where there was an assessment done by your department when the union chose to leave their post, you concluded--in an objective way, I presume--that there really wasn't a risk to the officer's safety; whereas this study by Northgate, which was commissioned by the union...? If one were cynical, one could say that it lacked, perhaps, objectivity. But even taking away the cynicism, how can you explain how different groups could arrive at such different conclusions?
Essentially, the arrangement we've come to is the one described by Mr. Bourduas.
[Translation]
Mr. Ménard, I apologize, I switched to English without realizing it.
: That happens to me too.
Mr. Alain Jolicoeur: That is not to say that in the years to come we will not take advantage of the services and facilities of other police schools in Canada. Our present initiative involves using the expertise of the RCMP to prepare a course specifically for us.
Moreover, to complete Mr. Borduas' answer, the situations that will be used, in the context of the three-week course, are situations that are specific to the environment our customs officers face.
After two years, the vast majority of the training, especially training for our new employees, will be provided over a much longer period of time, at our training institute in Rigaud, which is a national institute.
It is important for us to have a training program that is consistent, that is the same across the country. We did not want to end up with employees working with different procedures and different methods. Therefore it was important to have a single course.
Having said that, once the course is in place, once we have a sufficient number of trainers, we have not excluded the possibility—this is something that we are considering—of obtaining the support of other organizations, in the future, to enable us to train our employees a little more quickly.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for appearing today.
The first thing I'm going to touch on, Mr. Jolicoeur, is you were talking about the lack of, it seems, this urgency, in my opinion, in getting border guards armed right now.
Representing Windsor, Ontario, where 40% of the trade goes through my corridor, I've seen a lot of different incidents, and not just smuggling. We've had American police forces actually come through onto our plaza and draw their weapons. We've had American police officers try to hide their weapons and discharge them in their own vehicle accidentally. From my knowledge of those incidents, I believe it's the local police that always respond, because they're the quickest there.
In terms of training, what is being done with regard to the facilities? I know you say you aren't going outside house, but in Windsor, for example, we actually have a Department of National Defence facility that has indoor and outdoor firing ranges. It's a joint facility with the Windsor Police Service that has meeting rooms and all kinds of training accommodations for our national defence.
Why not use that as a potential site for training, given that Windsor, Fort Erie, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, and Sarnia are very close to that area? As you noted, there is a high turnover rate in your department, and often officers move to the other professions. Why not use a facility like that to help move things along?
:
Mr. Chair, there's no question that when it comes to re-certification, we will not be able to use just two or three facilities. We will be using facilities across the country to allow our officers to be re-certified, and there will be many opportunities similar to the one you describe.
In terms of the initial part of this important initiative, it was important to us to ensure we would have training that is exactly the same everywhere, and to go through the process with the RCMP, because in this organization we don't have that kind of experience. What we have been focusing on as one of our many parallel initiatives to make sure we can rapidly deploy our officers at the border has been obtaining and developing trainers. Many of our officers across the country are interested in obtaining that expertise through the RCMP.
These people have been tested. There is a series of tests related to training and ability. There are psychological tests, etc., because some of our employees would not be able to do that. That process is going on, and rapidly. As was described by my colleague, we will have the first group of trained, armed employees deployed next summer.
After that, and once we are comfortable with our process, we will look inside. We will ask for expressions of interest from other organizations that might be able to help us give exactly the same training that was developed initially. This is what is being done at the moment.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to thank our witnesses for coming today.
I personally have a great deal of interest in the border situation. I represent a riding that has two border crossings: the Thousand Islands bridge and the Johnstown-Ogdensburg bridge.
I have read the altered ModuSpec report. I've also read the Northgate report, and I know a lot of the front line officers. These are people I grew up with and play hockey with. Their children are at school with my child. So I do know what's going on on the front lines.
I am concerned that the Canadian Border Services Agency seems to be taking too long and is not necessarily committed to moving this as quickly as it might. We heard, not that long ago, that it was going to take 10 full years and $1 billion to do this, as well. Mr. Jolicoeur said it was $781 million to date.
Mr. Jolicoeur, are you personally committed to carrying out the government policy on arming the border guards?
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the panel.
Obviously there's a bit of a philosophical difference between my colleagues on that side and this side. Our belief is that we need to secure the border to protect the border guards and protect Canadians. Part of that is the RCMP would know that they don't send their people out unarmed, because you don't know what's coming across the border, and I think that's a fair assessment.
But what we do want to make sure is that we get good value for the cost. Mr. Jolicoeur and Ms. Hébert will know that this is and has been one of my concerns.
Yesterday, just as a matter of interest, I checked the Ontario Police Commission website on the Internet. I found that their basic officer training, which brings their police officers in Ontario to the standard required in the province of Ontario--which is probably similar to everywhere across the country, because there is that concern from the citizens' point of view--is a 12-week course and it costs $7,500 to provide that training. That may be subsidized somewhat, but it's a 12-week course. And we're talking about a three-week course.
I know we've talked about the need to backfill in salaries in that time, but if we took the number that you provided us with here, that looks like about $100,000 per border guard to arm them and train them. Have we looked at other agencies to provide that? As well, would we look at partnering with other agencies, like the Ontario police commission, the police facility in Quebec...and across the country?
The cost estimates and projections that we have developed are the best we think we could have developed. They've been tested inside and outside. They've been tested by Treasury Board, who basically had to do the due diligence before they released the money. They're also been tested by private sector experts now.
The number here--the size, the period--always surprises everybody. We're talking about a big organization. When we're talking about training 4,800 people, it's a lot more because of the turnover; it is probably around 7,000 or something. I don't remember the exact number, but it's a large number of people. And in the project we're also talking about transforming an organization. It's not like a police force already established with its procedures, with its firearms and process to manage that with oversight and everything. We have to build from zero, so this explains some of that cost. That $100,000 that you referred to is $10,000 per year per head including re-certification and all the overhead.
Having said that, and I'm confident it's the best number we have right now, we have, certainly for some elements of that package, to basically see what's outside, to open the door, as I indicated earlier, to expressions of interest from any organization that could do better. And if there is any way to reduce any one of those numbers, we'll definitely do that.
:
Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
This is really a question that should be directed to , but I'm going to throw it out to the witnesses if you have any answers.
Mr. Bourduas, you said--and I think we'd all agree--that arming the border guards won't reduce the number of people who want to run guns or drugs across our borders. The deterrent effect will be minimal, at best, and I think these are serious problems. As Mr. Jolicoeur and others well know, the government did have different options apart from arming the border guards; this government chose to go with this particular option, but if the deterrence effect is minimal or zero and the people at the border, as Mr. Jolicoeur has said, will not be asked to interdict, apart from the border people having guns and being reclassified--I think Mr. Jolicoeur said he was going to put them in with his own scheme--there's an implicit cost somewhere within that classification scheme, because if you're carrying a gun, you're going to be entitled to more pay. Whether it's a new scheme or otherwise, there is an actual cost to that.
I don't know what the benefit is whatsoever of arming the guards. If it's going to result in the border people not withdrawing their services less, and if that seems to be the only benefit coming out of this, it's a very high cost to pay for that kind of benefit. I don't know; has any cost-benefit study been done on this?
Second, I'd like to come back to my colleague's question about summer students. Will they be armed as well?