:
Good afternoon, everyone. This is meeting number 29 of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. It is Thursday, March 8, 2012.
This afternoon we're continuing our study on the use of electronic monitoring in both the corrections and conditional release settings and in the immigration enforcement setting with a view to determining effectiveness, cost efficiency, and implementation readiness.
I want to remind our committee that towards the end of today's meeting we will have time to consider some committee business. Each hour is going to be cut back a little bit. We will end the first one between 4:15 and 4:20. The second one will begin at 4:20 and will end at 5:10. That will give us enough time for committee business.
In our first hour we have, from the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Claudette Deschênes, assistant deputy minister for operations, and Caroline Melis, director general of operational management and coordination.
I understand there is an opening statement. We look forward to hearing from you. Then we'll have a few questions for you.
Welcome to our committee.
Good afternoon. If you want to keep us for less time, we'll be happy too.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Claudette Deschênes, and l am the assistant deputy minister of operations at Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
Joining me today is Caroline Melis, who is the director general of operational management and coordination for CIC.
[Translation]
I am pleased to be speaking before this committee for the first time, and I hope that my remarks will be helpful to you as part of your study on electronic monitoring.
In order to discuss this issue in the context of Canada's immigration system, it is important that I give you a bit of historical background. I won't go back over ancient history, mind you, just one decade.
[English]
In 2002, Parliament passed the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, also known as IRPA. This legislation replaced the old Immigration Act as the main federal law governing Canada's immigration system.
Canada's immigration system, of course, is large and complex. It encompasses many different operations, policies, and activities. IRPA, the legislation governing that system, is equally complex, with many different parts and sections covering every aspect of immigration to Canada.
For the purposes of this discussion on electronic monitoring, l would like to focus on only two sections of IRPA.
First is section 4, which is “Enabling Authority”. Before IRPA came into effect, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration had a number of intelligence, interdiction, enforcement, and border security roles in the immigration system. But under section 4 of IRPA, these particular roles became the responsibility of the Minister of Public Safety.
[Translation]
About 18 months after the passage of IRPA, the government of the day created the Canada Border Services Agency, which reports to the Minister of Public Safety, and is now responsible for many of these enforcement and security roles within the immigration system.
Another section of IRPA, specifically section 56, pertains to the release of individuals from detention. It states that an “officer may order the release from detention of a permanent resident or a foreign national”, while also specifying that the “officer may impose any conditions [...] that the officer considers necessary”.
It is section 56 of IRPA that would govern the use of electronic monitoring within the immigration system. According to the act, this section clearly falls under the responsibility of the Department of Public Safety, not under Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
[English]
I would like to be clear that in the years since the CBSA was created, CIC and CBSA have developed a very good, effective working relationship, and we are all very proud of this relationship. As a matter of fact, both Caroline and I worked at CBSA for a period of time when it was created. We cooperate every day in many ways on countless different aspects of the immigration system.
What is critical to understand here, though, is that this cooperative relationship is made possible because of complementarity. We play different but strictly defined roles in the immigration system.
If l may, Mr. Chair, I would like to quote some of the language in the CIC-CBSA memorandum of understanding, because I think it clarifies those roles in very succinct ways.
[Translation]
The memorandum states that Citizenship and Immigration Canada is “responsible for attracting and welcoming people from all parts of the world, enriching the economic, social and cultural development of Canada while contributing to the health, safety and security of Canadians, protecting those in need of Canada's protection and providing for the granting of citizenship, through the administration of both the IRPA and the Citizenship Act.”
[English]
As for CBSA, the memorandum says it was created by order in council on December 12, 2003, and immigration enforcement and intelligence responsibility under the IRPA were transferred from CIC to the CBSA. CBSA is responsible for providing integrated border services that support national security, public safety, and trade, which is achieved through the administration and enforcement of various acts, including the IRPA, to facilitate the free flow of persons and goods to and from Canada.
This underlines the fact that when it comes to any issue of immigration enforcement, including electronic surveillance, the mandate for such enforcement falls within the purview of CBSA and the Minister of Public Safety, and not within the Department of Citizenship and Immigration.
Mr. Chair, I thank you for inviting us to appear today. I hope that my opening remarks have been helpful to the committee. My colleague and I will be happy to answer any further questions you may have.
To the witnesses, thank you for attending today.
On this day of recognition of women in government, I'd like to inform the committee that we had three witnesses before the defence committee this morning. They were senior assistant deputy ministers from National Defence and Canada's foreign service, and they were all women. Today we have two women. So those people who think there aren't a good number of very able women contributing to the well being of our country would be mistaken.
Thank you for being here today.
My first question is based on some of the information you gave us, and there's a rhyme and reason to how I go down the questions. It's for either one or both of you.
Are you familiar with the statistics on the total number of people removed from Canada each year? If you don't know the exact number, perhaps give us an estimate.
:
If they are refugee claimants, for example, when they have begun the process we would have written up a report on them. That report would remain dormant while they go through the process. They would go through the IRB a number of months later—or many months or years later, but that's going to be resolved—they would make their case, and then the IRB would decide if they are refugees or not.
If they are refugees, then of course they would be given information about how to apply for permanent residence and that would work its way through.
If they were refused refugee status, at that point the removal order becomes executable, so at that point directly CBSA would be notified, not necessarily by CIC but with the records through IRB, and then it would go into a backlog to start processing towards removal.
While they're doing that, the client might apply for status within Canada. If we became aware of it, we would likely advise CBSA that this person is not entitled to stay in Canada.
If they made a refugee claim or something like that and at that moment we became aware that they have a criminal record in the United States or somewhere, we would likely call either the police or CBSA at that point for them to come and interview the person early in the process.
:
We'll call this meeting back to order.
In our second panel this afternoon, appearing by video conference from Edmonton, Alberta, from the Edmonton Police Service, we have James Clover, the project manager of electronic operations in the behavioural assessment unit. As well, we have from SafeTracks GPS Solutions Inc., Robert Aloisio, director of business development.
Our committee wants to take this opportunity, first of all, to thank you for taking the time and making the effort to share your information with us. As you know, in our study we have been looking at electronic monitoring in both a corrections and conditional release setting as well as an immigration enforcement setting, with a view to determine the effectiveness, the cost-efficiency, and the implementation readiness of such technology.
Welcome from the committee to all the way there in Edmonton, and thank you. Perhaps you have an opening statement or some comments to make. We would certainly also appreciate it if you would take some questions from our committee.
:
Absolutely. This is Robert Aloisio, as you mentioned. I am the director of business development with SafeTracks GPS.
I would like to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to discuss electronic monitoring. I've been working with GPS, telematics, ABL equipment, and cellular devices for over a decade. So I have quite a vast background when it comes to the technology.
We started SafeTracks GPS over three years ago, and basically our mandate, with SafeTracks GPS, was to bring a true electronic monitoring product to Canada. What we were able to do was basically elevate things on a few different levels. I'm going to touch base on these briefly and then we can address these during the question and answer period.
The big thing that we wanted to do was hardware. I'm just going to hold up a couple of different devices. This is a traditional device that we still do use. This has been used for about three or four years, basically worldwide. We are fortunate enough to take another device—it might be a little hard for you to see here—
:
Sure. It's not a problem.
You can see this is our premiere device that we use for electronic monitoring in Canada. I'm going to briefly touch on some of the technical aspects that make this beneficial.
The first thing you're going to notice is that we have a built-in, two-way voice speaker. So we can actually contact the offender. This is perfect for breach, battery recharge, whatever it is. We can actually three-way conference in a monitoring centre as well as a supervising officer directly to the device. We've also integrated a 95-decibel audio alert. This is a handy feature if you have an offender going into a no-go zone, an exclusion zone. We can actually initiate the siren.
The big thing with this is something I like to call the secure cuff. I'm sure it's a little hard for you to see, but the secure cuff is a titanium reinforced band that actually attaches to the offender's leg. Inside there's a piece of what's called fibre optics, and if the offender does attempt to tamper or remove this, of course, we're going to get an alarm instantaneously at our monitoring centre. The thing with the titanium reinforced cuff is that it's very difficult to get off. I'm not going to say it's not removable, but it does basically obstruct the removal by the offender. So one big part is the hardware.
The other thing I wanted to actually mention to you is the software. Of course, there's another portion of electronic monitoring: the software is actually what the device reports to. We went out and we sourced out the best software we could find. Just so the committee is aware, we've actually moved it into Canada. So we have complete servers, data storage, and everything, 100%, in Canada. It is a completely self-contained system. So we're operating specifically for Canada here.
We also did incorporate a monitoring centre. Now, with this technology you're going to realize there are breaches, there are battery recharges, there are alerts that are going to come through. We've secured a 100% Canadian 911 response centre to deal with these types of alarms. So when you bulk up our solution, it's completely end to end built for Canada.
That's essentially what SafeTracks has come to discuss today.
:
I am a detective with the Edmonton Police Service and have been for almost 15 years. My current assignment is with the behavioural assessment unit. Our primary task is monitoring and assessing high-risk offenders who live in the city of Edmonton. The bulk of the offenders whom my team supervises are what we call 810 recognizance offenders. These are generally offenders who have served a federal sentence, weren't provided parole as a result of the risk they posed to the community, served their entire sentence, and weren't afforded a gradual and protected release into the community. My unit gets involved by appearing in front of a court and getting conditions to supervise.
We were successful in obtaining funds through the Alberta Ministry of Justice and Attorney General for a three-year pilot project to leverage this technology to help complement our supervision. I would encourage the committee, if they haven't done so already, to research what Alberta is doing regarding that research through the University of Calgary, the Calgary Police Service, the RCMP through Red Deer, and the Edmonton Police Service.
Since approximately September of 2010 we've had an opportunity to use this technology only ten times. This is a police perspective on providing the committee...the user group is policing. Generally, my offenders whom I've been using this technology on are sexual-based offenders. We operate in the context that EM provides a proactive monitoring compliance of offenders on judicial conditions. We can assess risk through lifestyle patterns. It's a motivator and a stimulant for offenders to comply with and follow the conditions and lifestyles we're trying to encourage. We are trying to prove and disprove offenders' involvement in current investigations. We're trying to show that the Edmonton Police Service and law enforcement in general is making the best effort we can to help supervise an offender, assist him in transitioning to the community, and maintain public safety.
When I consider when to use these devices, I think it's important to look at things like the index offence—what has the offender been convicted of—and geographical restrictions. We look at victimology, stranger versus familiar victims. We look at curfew conditions. Are the conditions of a curfew present? We look at residency conditions. Is the behaviour we are trying to monitor or manage predatory in nature? Is there a history of recidivism? Is there a history of flight risk? Does this offender wilfully distance himself from supervision from, let's say, CSC or the Edmonton Police Service? Does the offender face jeopardy on their next offence, maybe a long-term supervision or a dangerous offender? What's the history of the offender's management? What have we done in the past and what do we need to do now? Are we doing the same thing again and again, or do we need to change the way we're working with this offender to make this supervision work, both for the offender and the community?
The last thing I would like to share really quickly is the tenets that come out of this. I've developed a series of principles that my project has adopted, and I share these as often as I can, but again I want to highlight that these are perspectives from police, maybe not necessarily from immigration or from corrections, that EM GPS is not a replacement or substitute for incarceration, that electronic monitoring is a deprivation of a person's liberties, and as such we should be using it when it's lawful, appropriate, and in the most humane way possible.
Electronic monitoring is not a punitive measure but a complementary tool to provide the offender encouragement and compliance with supervisory conditions and to provide the case management team with a means of improved offender accountability. Electronic monitoring data should not be used as a sole source of evidence, if possible. Data should be used in collaboration with other conditions, management strategies, and investigatory techniques.
Electronic monitoring is not a replacement for traditional offender management and community supports. Electronic monitoring has limitations like all technologies and should be used to complement the supervision strategy specific to that offender. Reliance on electronic monitoring needs to be monitored closely.
Finally, electronic monitoring should not be considered a measure to reduce the workload of the case management team. EM GPS operations are an additional task that require additional capacity. EM operations can be structured in a manner, such as the use of third-party monitoring, to reduce the resources required to manage an offender on GPS, but the use of electronic monitoring is an additional responsibility for both the offender and the case management team.
I welcome any questions.
:
I'm glad you asked that question. I'd like to address the committee and let you know that there are limitations to this technology, as there are with any....
Fortunately, what we've been able to do is see patterns. For instance, to be quite honest, no, we have not had a lot of issues with offenders trying to obstruct the signal, whether it's cellular or GPS. The nice thing is that our monitoring centre is trained to look for that. So if for some reason we're not getting a GPS position or something like that for an hour, we can set off an alarm, and then we basically have somebody do a diagnostic on it and come to a conclusion at that time.
I would like you to know that SafeTracks has done its due diligence, as much as possible, to provide a device that is going to be as hard to tamper with as possible. So although the offender may be able to obstruct one form of communication, we have built-in redundancies that are still going to be able to transfer the information.
:
That's a good question, and I'd like to address that as well.
Just so everybody is aware, this uses GPS, which is a global positioning system, and it uses a cellular network to transfer the information, just like your cellphone. The device will literally send off an alarm to our monitoring centre within five seconds.
You mentioned procedures, etc. One of the strong points of our software, and the way our architecture is set up, is that the actual, let's say, supervising officer—I'm going to use Detective Clover as an example—can go online and select what he wants done for each specific alarm. Let's say, for instance, he has an offender who is going to an exclusion zone, which is a no-go zone. He can instruct that maybe he wants the siren to go off, that an e-mail come to him, and that members one through four be contacted. The way we can build these responses is completely modular.
All I can say is that the technology is going to alert the supervising officer as soon as technologically possible. Then, of course, it would be in their area to go out to respond.
:
Right, a scale of benefiting cost.
Regarding the workload, you're absolutely right, having two patrol members check does reduce workload for patrol. But there's the cost of looking at the monitoring, the installation, the being attached to that device, and having the response. So I do agree that there is some workload that benefits, but I also think we need to be aware that there's a workload demand.
Regarding bail supervision, I concur with you as well, sir, that police will, let's say, investigate breaches of recognizance. But it's the supervision per se. Which agency is responsible for monitoring a defender prior to trial? My concern is that we could have—and we had on our program—an individual on a bracelet prior to trial, and this is a non-convicted person, who has not spoken in court. The courts could take two or three years, so that gentleman—or that person—could be on a bracelet for, conceivably, two to three years. Who's paying for it, and who's watching that data? From a policing perspective, from a three-man unit, I have some significant concerns that it would fall onto me.
To your ultimate question, do I feel it has a benefit or not and would I use it, absolutely, I believe there's a benefit. In the policing world, I think it's very, very specific. Those cases, such as the detained offenders, where the police have now adopted the responsibility, the sole and primary responsibility, of monitoring this high-risk offender...I also concur that this use of technology is a very appropriate tool for Corrections. Whether that's provincial or federal, it suits their mandate, it suits their needs, and it's appropriate to the mission that we expect them to do.
It has a benefit from a policing perspective, absolutely, but in very, very specific cases, probably not something I would roll out en masse.
:
Right. I was conscious of that when we started this program. One of the things we're sensitive to is the workload. I didn't want to have my team responding to lots and lots of false alarms.
What needs to happen is the conditions have to complement the technology and the technology has to complement the conditions. For example, I believe the committee's heard of something called drift. There's a satellite drift. If you think of it as a map and the dots are populated on an offender's house, the dots will sway back and forth. You need to make sure that when you're building, let's say, exclusion zones, you're doing it in such a way that you're capturing drift. You are anticipating drift when you set those up to reduce the number of false alarms.
Third-party monitoring is another way we layer this. For example, another alert we get is called a strap tamper. If an offender knocks the device really hard, maybe he's tripped and fallen down the stairs, the device will momentarily believe he's trying to take the bracelet off. Protocols need to be established for this. So now you have to build in a layer of monitoring. Do we respond right away? Or do we allow the device to reconnect, re-establish, say the device is fine, and then move along? That's an important question.