At the Canadian Association of Police Boards 2008 Annual Conference

Remarks by the
Honourable Stockwell Day
Minister of Public Safety

Toronto, Ontario
August 15, 2008
As Delivered

Thank you Greg (Greg Dionne, President, Canadian Association of Police Boards). Thank you all for allowing things to start a little bit later. I just attended the funeral of Chief Robert Leek, the firefighter who lost his life in the incredible fires and explosions that took place here in Toronto just last weekend. It was a horrendous event and we are thankful it did not result in more loss of life. Today we are grieving with fellow firefighters and the family of Chief Leek, who has paid the ultimate price to serve in the line of duty.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Canadian Association of Police Boards is an important organization – but I do not have to tell you that. You do not wear the badge or a uniform, but you support policing and you are concerned with how police officers do their work and what they do to further the goal of safer communities. It is our belief that the first responsibility of any government is the safety and security of its citizens. You play a vital role in achieving that mandate and I appreciate that very much. The work you do helps to shine important light on this very critical area of safety and security.

Today I would like to talk about some of the things we have done, as the Government, in the two and a half years since we were elected. I will go through the areas where we have increased our resources and highlight the legislative and regulatory initiatives we have taken.

We have increased resources to our policing and security agencies and we are trying to reduce any impediments to the work they do.

But I want to preface that by saying that we firmly believe in a democratic society where every individual has rights – I do not think anybody would debate that here. That means offenders have rights. Those who break the law have rights. And part of the job of Government in a democratic society is to defend their rights.

There has been a sense among many that there has not been enough focus on the rights of victims and law-abiding citizens. I do not think this is a surprise to you as many of you in this room have provided advice on this issue. There has been a perceptible shift in focus to paying more attention to the rights of the law-abiding people, which thankfully make up the vast majority of our society in this beautiful country. You can see this shift in focus played out in what we have done on the resourcing side and on the legislative and regulatory side.

On the resource side, you are aware that one of the first things that we did was make a commitment to fund the hiring of more RCMP officers across the country. This is in addition to the projected hiring and recruiting that had been laid out to that point. We believe that there needs to be an increased presence of police officers in our communities. Therefore, in our first budget we committed $161 million to begin that initiative. We also invested $37 million to renovate and expand the RCMP training facility in Regina, the Depot. If any of you have the opportunity to visit the facility, you will see some very significant and exciting changes that have taken place.

We also wanted to make sure that there are resources in place for an increased police presence in municipalities. That is why, in the last budget, we set aside $400 million for the establishment of a Police Officers Recruitment Fund. This fund is per capita based, and is available to provinces and territories to distribute to their municipalities as they see fit. Ontario has already acted on that program. We have worked with various Ministers from our provinces and territories. Each province can draw from the fund as required to meet its particular needs. It can draw the whole amount in the first year or it can spread it out over several years. That initiative is working very well, and all provinces and territories have signed on.

We have increased resources not just in the area of recruitment and hiring, but in virtually every area of federal policing for which we are responsible. Whether it is our DNA banks, our efforts related to identity theft, cyber crime and child exploitation, combating drug crimes, or our Integrated Border Enforcement Teams – which are comprised of RCMP officers working together with officers from the United States –, the focus has been on greater resources. It is encouraging to see our increased funding result in enhanced activity and capabilities in these crucial areas.

Along with this financing that we are providing, we have taken a number of other initiatives to help ensure that safety and security can move ahead. That is why we have made some legislative changes.

We made some significant gains in various areas. We wanted to make sure that police officers have the ability to detect and deal with impaired driving involving drugs rather than just alcohol. And on the alcohol impairment side, we have significantly raised the penalties for driving while under the influence.

We have also passed the Tackling Violent Crime Act, which comprises many crucial aspects designed to help keep Canadians safe. It will enable us to ensure that dangerous repeat offenders will not receive shorter jail sentences. The Act also dictates mandatory jail time for crimes committed with firearms. Furthermore, for serious repeat and violent offenders who are seeking bail, the onus will now be on them to show why they should be free pending their court time.

We also had police agencies telling us that if we could get the age of consent raised to 16, they could really make some headway in fighting the exploitation of young people by predators on the internet. We took that into consideration and were successful in raising the age of consent from minors to adults from 14 to 16.

We are therefore very pleased to have passed the Tackling Violent Crime Act. There were a number of you who were instrumental in advocating for these types of changes. I appreciate that, and I want to thank you for your support.

This fall we plan to make various advancements in the areas of justice reform, safety and security. You have probably heard the comments this week from my colleague, the Minister of Justice, Rob Nicholson, on the work he is doing through the summer. He has gone to consultations across the country to plan for changes that will help us deal with youth crime. There is a sense among Canadians that in too many instances young people are not being held accountable for their actions, particularly in terms of property crime and aggravated assault. We want to make some changes and address that.

I hope you are picking up a theme here – what we are talking about is an increased sense of accountability and responsibility in all areas related to safety and security and criminal justice.

We have to strike a careful balance in dealing with youth crime. There have to be consequences for actions, we understand that. But resources must also be available to reach out to individuals – especially youth at risk of making wrong choices, getting involved in gang activity, gun activity, and drug activity. Therefore, we are taking a two-pronged approach.

Evidently, we believe in enforcement – the long arm of the law. But the other side of that has to be the open arms of the community. That is why we have programs through the National Crime Prevention Centre and under our National Anti-Drug Strategy that deal with treatment and prevention. These programs are operated in communities by local groups with the proven ability to be able to reach out to individuals, especially young people at risk, in a manner that has a visible impact.

We don't develop these programs in Ottawa and then try to sell them across the country saying “one size fits all”, because it simply doesn't. It has been very exciting and encouraging for me to travel from community to community, city to city and look at the programs that have been developed at the local level. I have been pleased to see local groups who have demonstrated their ability to make a difference in their own neighbourhoods. We provide funding for these types of groups and then do the follow-up and the audits. By funding a considerable array of these groups we are able to look at a matrix of the outreach programs and start to quantify which programs have the best rates of success. We build on that knowledge and I believe we will continue to see very effective community-based groups that are getting federal funding, hopefully in addition to provincial and municipal funding. We want to do what we can to make sure that prevention is a key aspect of our efforts to deal with youth at risk.

That is on the open arms of the community side, and in the fall you'll also see more items move ahead on the enforcement side.

The other aspect that we are looking at relates to reform within our corrections system. I know that many of you are familiar with the work of the Independent Corrections Review Panel and its report which came out in December. It contained several recommendations, and it all comes back to responsibility, accountability, prevention and offering the hope of opportunities to those who are within our corrections facilities.

Many Canadians were unaware that individuals in our federal corrections facilities were exempt from no-smoking laws which apply to all departments in the federal government. That seemed to be a bit of an aberration. We now have an official no-smoking policy in our federal facilities. We were concerned quite rightly about people working, let's say in restaurant establishments or entertainment establishments, being exposed to second-hand smoke but there did not seem to be concern for our corrections officers. Well, that had to change and we have made those changes.

We now also have a zero-tolerance policy for drugs in our federal facilities. Some people may be surprised to hear that and ask “wasn't there always?” The answer is both yes and no. When we formed government we actually found a number of limitations in place that make it difficult to enforce what most Canadians would view as a common sense policy. I was always saddened to hear about somebody entering the corrections system with a history of substance abuse, and us not doing everything we could to make sure that this individual would be able to break free from the grip of drug addiction. Well, it is beginning to happen. There will have to be some regulatory changes so that we can enforce that and we are proceeding to move ahead with that. In the fall you are going to see some of these changes coming forward related to our corrections system.

Keeping in mind the theme of responsibility, one of the significant recommendations in the report was that parole should be earned. It must not be given haphazardly without consideration of the offender's state of mind. And the worst case is that a violent offender can automatically be out after serving two-thirds of their time except for some very rare circumstances. So we are looking at the implications of changing that. How would that affect the infrastructure of our corrections facilities?

We want to have a society that is safe and secure. We want to protect our citizens. We also want an offender within the system to have access to occupational programs, such as an apprenticeship program leading to journeyman status, under parole or otherwise, so that they have a fighting chance of acquiring skills they can use. But the overriding factor is going to be the safety and security of our citizens.

We think that rehabilitation and security can coexist, but safety has to be paramount. There is a perceptible shift and we are not just declaring it – we are going to look at ways to make the resources available for that to happen.

That is what guided an announcement I made here on Monday regarding a pilot project that we are launching to use electronic monitoring of federal offenders. That particular program puts the safety and security of the public first. We are selecting for a one year pilot project, 30 individuals who will wear the electronic bracelet.

This project makes sense. For instance, somebody who has been released on parole and has a record of a sexual offence, may have as a condition of their release the requirement to remain a certain distance from schools or playgrounds. Now that can be monitored precisely with a global positioning system on the ankle bracelet. If an offender is late getting back to his or her place of dwelling, sometimes that can be an honest mistake. They may have missed the last bus home from work and were five or 10 minutes late. But, as you know, in situations when somebody is missing or has breached a condition of their parole, police officers must be called in. Having police officers go out and try to track somebody down not knowing where they might be can be a dangerous process. The electronic monitoring device has the potential of helping to solve that type of problem. We are going to evaluate that over the year ahead. Some people have argued that offenders can just cut the device off and throw it away. That is not the case – as soon as the device is tampered with, a signal is automatically sent so the situation can be attended to.

We believe that all of these initiatives added together – increased resources, funding for programs at the community level, regulatory and legislative change –will have a profound and a positive effect, especially on the areas where we are seeing crime increase. As you know, crime is not increasing across the board, but there has been an increase in areas that are most concerning. These are the areas where I believe we can see some progress being made.

That should give you a sense of what we are doing and where we are going. You have provided input and given us advice over the last couple of years which I greatly appreciate. Together we will make a difference, for I believe that we are committed to the same objective: a safer and more secure Canada.

Thank you for being a part of that.