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Good afternoon, everyone. This is meeting number 35 of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on Monday, October 25, 2010.
I would remind everyone that today we are being televised, so please take your cellphone or BlackBerry and put it on mute mode or at least silence the ring tone so that it doesn't disrupt the meeting.
Today we're commencing a study on the issues surrounding security at the G-8 and G-20 summits. In our first hour we welcome the Honourable Vic Toews, Minister of Public Safety.
Thank you, Mr. Minister, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to appear on this issue.
We also have as witnesses, from the Privy Council Office, Mr. Ward Elcock, the special advisor, and Marie-Lucie Morin, the national security advisor to the and associate secretary to the cabinet.
From the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, we have Chief Superintendent Alphonse MacNeil, division operation commander to the 2010 G-8 and G-20 integrated security unit.
I understand, Mr. Minister, you have an opening statement that you will share. You have appeared before the committee on many occasions. We thank you for that. You know the process as far as the questions go. We welcome your comments.
I want to congratulate you on taking the chair of this committee; it certainly indicates the faith that committee members have in your qualifications and abilities. I don't believe I've had the opportunity to appear in front of you as chair of this committee.
In any event, it's a pleasure to appear before the committee to discuss security costs for the G-8 and G-20 summits.
As you indicated, I am joined here today by very qualified individuals, who will be able to provide the committee with the details for many of the questions they may ask. They are senior officials who were involved with the preparation and provision of the G-8 and G-20 security, and I'm confident they'll be able to answer any questions you might have on the operational details of these summits, including the specific costs.
The Public Safety portfolio had a number of partners that were involved in the security for the G-8 and G-20 summits. Altogether, the Public Safety portfolio received $790.1 million, which is approximately 85% of the security budget of $930 million.
Funding to the agencies was as follows: $507.5 million for the RCMP to conduct planning and operations related to policing and security at the two summits; $278.3 million for Public Safety to administer the security cost framework policy and reimburse security partners for the incremental and extraordinary security-related costs they incurred; $3.1 million for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to provide intelligence support related to threats to the national security of Canada, including the G-8 and G-20 summits; $1.2 million for the Canada Border Services Agency to support activities associated with the provision of incremental border services and critical program support for the G-8 and G-20 summits.
These important investments were necessary given the scope and magnitude of security operations associated with hosting two major summits back to back, which was unprecedented. I believe all of us can be proud of what we accomplished at the summits themselves.
A wide range of global challenges was addressed at the G-8 summit, including international peace and security, environmental sustainability and green recovery, as well as the global economic recovery. It also resulted in member nations agreeing to the Muskoka initiative, which will result in an increase in spending of $7.3 billion on maternal, newborn, and child health.
In Toronto, Canada hosted the first summit of the G-20 in its new capacity as the premier forum for international economic cooperation. Some of the many areas of advancement of this summit included taking steps to safeguard and strengthen the economic recovery; laying the foundation for strong, sustainable, and balanced growth globally; financial sector reform; as well as promoting trade and investment. This represents significant steps to support the implementation of a common vision at the international level through the alignment of economic actions and decisions by G-20 countries.
Member nations accomplished a great deal at both summits. I think it goes without saying that Canada can be proud of hosting such a massive undertaking when the eyes of the world were upon us.
In order for these summits to unfold in an orderly fashion, an enormous and complex logistic and security operation was required. While this cost was higher than any of us would have liked, it was necessary.
Leading the design and delivery of the security was the RCMP-led Integrated Security Unit. The security plan involved 10 federal government agencies and departments, including the RCMP, Public Safety Canada, the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces, Health Canada, Transport Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, Industry Canada, as well as several provincial and municipal police forces.
In order to put the magnitude of the summits and the related security operation into perspective, I would like to share some numbers with the committee. An integrated security unit led by the RCMP was struck and established to coordinate the provision of security. Included in the ISU were representatives from the Ontario Provincial Police, the Toronto Police Service, Peel Regional Police, and the Department of National Defence. There were more than 20,000 police officers and military personnel deployed to the unified command centres as well as in and around the two summit sites to ensure security for the internationally protected persons and their delegations. It is important to note that there were more delegates at these summits than there were athletes at the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver.
Such a large security operation comes at a cost. Not only are large numbers of personnel required, but they must also have accommodations and the equipment necessary to perform their duties as well as manage logistics during the time of their deployment. This was confirmed by the Auditor General, who noted the following:
Obviously $1 billion is a lot of money, but I think we have to recognize that security is expensive. There are a lot of people involved over a long period of time. We may think that the meetings only last for a few days, but all the preparations involve extensive planning, extensive coordination for months before, and I think we have to be really, really careful.
Security is an expensive but non-negotiable endeavour. The responsibility for hosting these events includes the provision of the appropriate level of security. Not only does Canada have a moral obligation to protect the participants in these summits, but we also have an international obligation to do so under a United Nations convention adopted in 1973 to protect internationally protected persons. Further to this, the Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act and the Criminal Code of Canada require that security be provided for internationally protected persons.
As a government, we also have a responsibility to be open and transparent about the cost, which is what we are doing. The government has been transparent about the total security budget from the onset. This observation has been confirmed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer in his assessment of the planned security costs for the G-8 and G-20 summits released in June. He indicated in his report that compared to other countries, Canada has been more transparent on the cost of security related to the summits. As you may be aware, the Auditor General is presently examining the security costs for the summits and is receiving full cooperation in the review. This, Mr. Chair, certainly has been my intent from the beginning. I've stated from the beginning that our books are open to the Auditor General for her review.
At this time, members of the Public Safety portfolio as well as security partners involved with the security for the summits are currently in the process of compiling and reconciling all security expenses incurred as a result of the summits. Due to the audit and financial control mechanisms and the security cost framework policy, the final security costs may not be known for a number of months. This is the case because the policy reimburses security partners for reasonable and justifiable incremental costs incurred. Once the security partners submit their final financial claims for reimbursement, an independent audit will be conducted to ensure that only eligible costs are reimbursed. All claims for reimbursement are to be submitted to Public Safety by December 1, 2010. Once these claims are received, the final audits will commence, with the intent to have the process completed by March 31 of next year.
Mr. Chair, I have committed to providing full disclosure of the G-8 and G-20 summits security costs in the past, and I am reaffirming this statement today. The government is accountable to the Canadian public and is committed to managing financial resources in a fiscally responsible manner. I can assure the committee that the government will respond to all questions posed on the security budget and costs, and it will deliver a full financial report on actual costs incurred once it is available.
Thank you. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have or else defer those questions to members of this panel who are more qualified to answer these specifics than I may be.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the minister for appearing before committee today, and to the other witnesses.
Minister, you don't get to the most expensive weekend of meetings in history without a lot of bad management. I want to go through an anatomy of how things got so bad with you.
First, when the initial decision was made to try to shoehorn this into the riding of , a cabinet minister in your government, and you tried to shoehorn it in there and it wouldn't fit, the decision was then made to split it into two venues, even after Minister Clement talked about how much money would be saved by having it in one venue. It was dumped into Toronto at the last minute.
Then, instead of listening to most of the advice at the time to put it on the CNE grounds or in an area that was easy to secure and much less costly, it was put in downtown Toronto, in the financial district.
Minister, when you made the decision to shove the rest of this into downtown Toronto, on whose advice did you do it? Who did you talk to? Did you incorporate any of that advice into what you did, and if you did, can you be specific in terms of who you spoke to and what advice they were giving?
Mr. Mark Holland: Mr. Chair, I'm just asking--
Hon. Vic Toews: I want to appeal to you, Mr. Chair, that the question that has been put will be answered by the individual who's most competent to answer it, in the sense that this individual has all of the facts.
I'm not going to get into a discussion with Mr. Holland, who simply wants to fight and make baseless accusations. He obviously doesn't want to hear the truth in this matter. This is typical of Mr. Holland's approach.
I would suggest that if Mr. Holland is truly interested in hearing from the experts on why the decision was made, Mr. Elcock is here.
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I'll come back to Mr. Elcock in the second hour on that question.
Minister, let me go to the issue of cost. You said in the House that “we...wait for the bills to come in before we determine what the costs are”.
It's now been four months--four months--and we don't know the details of all this spending. We know about $200 million; we had to pry it out with an order paper question. We know about glow sticks and in-suite snacks and millions and millions of dollars on a wide array of things that seemed dubious, including lake creation and lake elimination. But what we don't have now, even four months later, are those bills.
I'm sorry, I don't accept this rationale you're giving me--unless you're telling me that you hand out blank cheques. How could you not know what the bills are? I mean, if you're telling me that you wait for contractors to come and tell you what reasonable costs are four months after the fact, how long do you wait, Minister, before you get the details on how much this thing cost? Why is it now four months and we still don't have about $1 billion in specific details?
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Minister, ladies and gentlemen, good day.
I would like to start by addressing an issue other than costs, that of human rights. I would like to give you a quick picture of the situation, Minister. Over 1,000 people, approximately, were arrested during protests related to the G20 Summit. According to estimates 800 of them were released without charges. The majority of those that were charged were cleared of their charges. On October 14, 2010, the Civil Liberties Union issued a report indicating that approximately 6 people were convicted and 40 to 100 people are still waiting for a court decision.
I should also say that I have met with people. Some sent me their statements by email. The following facts were reported to me. The police used insulting, racist, heinous, homophobic and sexist comments. They referred to protesters as terrorists, criminals come to destroy the city and “French shits.” There are also allegations according to which the following was said to homosexuals: “You're fucking disgusting.”
Journalists were singled out. Some were incarcerated, others beaten. There have been reports of strip-searching, intimidation, humiliation, hunger, fear, cold, of people being treated like rats and of women having their pills taken away from them. People with diabetes were not given access to their drugs and men were vaccinated without their consent, not knowing what was being injected into them. There was the issue of sanitary napkins. Women who had their pills taken away from them were all getting their period. Sanitary napkins and toilet paper were being rationed, people were sleeping in the cold, crammed into cages. There were between 15 and 30 people there.
There were reports of people who had to wait close to 24 hours before having the right to counsel and access to a phone. These people experienced fear and were traumatized. Many young people between the ages of 20 and 25, even one minor, ended up in one of your famous cages. There are reports of naked strip-searches, sometimes four times on the same person. These searches were done before an open doorway. Men could therefore see everything. Apparently, there are also chemical toilets in the famous cells were people were relieving themselves in front of everyone. Sexist comments were made against women, which I found absolutely unacceptable.
I will close by mentioning Ms. Amy Miller, a journalist I had a discussion with this morning. She told me that she was off on her bike heading towards the interim detention centre, where there was going to be a small protest calling for all of these people to be freed. She was arrested on the way because she was filming a group of young people being stopped by the police. She had her media badge on, identified herself and she was told that when they were “done with her”, she would no longer even want to work as a journalist. She was told that they would have a lot of “fun with her” and that she would never want to come to Toronto again. She was told “We are going to have fun with you”. And that they knew what Montreal women were like. One of the women she met in the famous cage she was in for several hours told her that while she was strip-searched, a finger had been introduced into her vagina.
That said, Minister, given that you are responsible, as Minister for Public Safety, I would like to know whether you are going to apologize to all of these people who experienced such abuses of their fundamental human rights, here, on Canadian territory, in Toronto.
It would also be reasonable to say that some of those operational costs, if they have to do with labour, would be recouped by the government through income tax payments. You don't have to comment. I can tell you that I think it's all reasonable that if you receive a paycheque, this occurs.
The other significant portion is...the police also have a responsibility not only to protect the lives, safety, and property of citizens, but they also have a duty to protect the lives, safety, and property of people who are acting as either lawful demonstrators or, quite frankly, even as hooligans, and you're responsible for the safety of the people you arrest.
Let me get this straight, because I always ask my questions in a way so that the person sitting at home can understand what's occurring here at committee, and I try not to get into the politics, as some people want to politicize this.
What you're saying is that for those people who were protesting the week before, in other words, surrounding the G-20, etc., for those people who wanted to lawfully protest, there were meetings between the police and them, and those protests went off fairly well, without any significant incidents, and the police and the protesters were cooperating.
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I thank you for being here as well and for getting into some of the details, now that the minister is gone.
As we watched the G-20 unfold, the one thing Canadians did realize is that free speech is a principle of our democracy, and I think when the violent mob that was made up of the thugs, hooligans, and anarchists who set fire to the police cars and damaged property during the G-20...in no way, shape or form does it represent the democracy or our way of life.
I'm interested in delving into how the police, under some extremely difficult situations, were tasked and how they conducted themselves. Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair was quoted as saying that the police were there to facilitate peaceful protests. He even went as far as saying the police responsibility in a democracy is the right to protect peaceful protests.
My question, really, is for Chief Superintendent MacNeil. During an interview last week on TV Ontario, Toronto Chief of Police, Bill Blair, said there was excellent communication among the security partners and a very clear command structure. First, do you agree with Chief Blair's assessment? Second, in order to give Canadians an idea of the kind of preplanning, the amount of planning that goes into these things--because I'd like to know a little more in-depth about how far in advance security arrangements were being worked on--how much effort went into that, as well as the costs associated with that?
Could you comment on that?
First, I agree with the chief that there was excellent cooperation between all of the security forces involved in the operation. As an example of the length of time of planning, I took my role to start planning the G-8 in August of 2008, so it was two years in advance of the G-8 and G-20.
We started our team in the Barrie area. We had set up in Huntsville originally but couldn't find a place large enough to set up a command centre and everything for the G-8, so we moved to the first location we could find that had the facilities and had places for the people to stay. That was Barrie, so we built our command centre in Barrie.
I should probably explain the structure of the command so it's very clear to everyone, because I hear the question asked, who was in charge? The command structure is such that if we start at the ground level first, every site, whether it be a hotel or a conference centre where the leaders were staying, was called a site, and in that site there was a person in charge. So we have a site command to start with, and that's the lowest level of command. It's the ground level. It's where people, we hope, will take most of the decisions and deal with the issues at that level.
The next level of command above that is called an area command, and we had an area command in Huntsville and an area command in Toronto. The Toronto area command oversaw all the sites in Toronto and the area command in Huntsville all the sites in Huntsville. If a site commander had an issue that he was uncomfortable with, he would raise that to the area command level and they would help him in that decision. He also briefed up constantly to the area command.
On the top of that, there was the strategic command that was based in Barrie, and that's what we called the unified command centre that we referred to earlier. That unified command centre had representatives from all of the police agencies that were involved on the ground, so they were monitoring all of the activity. The UCC was also responsible for the movement of the internationally protected persons, the air support that you saw, and things of that nature. But the UCC's control over the ground or the site would not be hands-on. It would be at more of a strategic level. For example, if they needed assistance, if a site commander called to the area command and said there were not enough police officers at the Royal York Hotel and there were not enough in all of Toronto to support that, they would call us at the UCC and the UCC commander would move some people from Huntsville. It had that oversight strategic ability to move people.
That's the command layer. So when you talk about a particular arrest on the street in Toronto, it wouldn't be someone in Barrie making that decision. It wouldn't even be someone at the area command level making that decision. It would be someone on the street in Toronto making that decision.
As I said earlier, the best method for policing is to have the decision at the lowest level, and that's what would happen. It would be impossible for someone in Barrie to make a decision on a particular arrest.
If that explains the command structure to you, I think it's something that may clear up any misconceptions.
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In the minister's words, he didn't have the competence to answer many of the questions that I posed to him, so I'm going to turn back to some of the questions I was going at before.
Just today, Korea, which will be hosting the G-20, announced what their security price tag is going to be. They peg it at $24.9 million Canadian. Now, that's not a little off our figure; that's a world off our figure. If you look at Kananaskis, in Canada, if you want to take a domestic example—now admittedly that was the G-8—we're talking about a security tab that was around $200 million, which was significantly cheaper again.
I'm just trying to understand. What I heard in the statement earlier was that for the G-20 there was nowhere but downtown Toronto. Nowhere else could host. This was the only option. It was the best option, the most secure option, the cheapest option. Frankly, what I'm hearing is that you'd do it all over again. That's what really worries me about all of this.
So let me pose this to Madam Morin and to Mr. Elcock: looking at the rest of the world and best practices out there, is downtown Toronto the best place to put the G-20, and would you do it again?
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Thank you very much, that will be adequate.
If I understand correctly, neither you, nor the lady, nor the minister were responsible. In your opinion, who would be responsible? You said that each police officer was responsible. When everyone is responsible, no one is. I cannot comprehend the Minister of Public Safety telling me that he is not responsible for anything. If that were true, we would no longer need a minister.
A little earlier, the minister stated that the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was responsible. The problem is that we don't see him. You are all saying that you were not responsible, but who is responsible for what? Are we going to get an answer some day? Four months have elapsed. I hope that the police officers from Montreal who went to work in Toronto have now gone back to Montreal. I cannot understand how, after four months, you have not yet submitted an invoice.
I do not know if there are still police officers on site in Toronto to verify was is going on, but your system has some major problems. Indeed, your system is very poorly organized, and this is what we call our public safety system! For example, we have only to look at the RCMP inquiries into the Air India affair, in 1988, for which we have yet to have an answer after three investigations. We really have a major problem. We should do as the Auditor General of Canada has done and ask for a government response and not a response from a minister. Earlier, the minister told me that he was not aware of anything.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to continue on that. We're talking about the G-8 and G-20 summits. This was a federal exercise, and there are no federal inquiries going on, save what's happening at this committee. Every other board that's looking into this is either provincial or municipal.
We have before this committee the Minister of Public Safety. We have the special advisor, Mr. Elcock. We have the national security advisor to the Prime Minister. We have the commander of the Integrated Security Unit. And all I hear is that someone else has the answers.
I'm going to try to be focused here.
Mr. Elcock, the question that Mr. Kania was asking you about asking the minister was about the choice of two sites. My understanding of the minister's evidence was quite clear. He was very clearly saying that this was your advice to him, to have two sites.
Is that correct, or not? Was that your advice?
We're not getting any answers on accountability. There seem to be a lot of fingers pointing in other directions. Let me try on costs.
If I could, Mr. MacNeil, there are huge cost figures there, and the reason we're told why we can't get at specific details is that bills are still coming in. The frustrating thing here is that the things for which we do have bills...it doesn't seem like the bills are coming in; it's just that the details are not forthcoming. One example was the glow sticks. You have provided some information saying they were used by the Canadian Forces, and yet the minister said, and even Mr. Elcock said, it was inappropriate--those were the exact words--to use the Canadian Forces for these sorts of things.
Let me continue down the list. We're talking about high-end furniture, $315,000; rooms and food at Yorkville's Park Hyatt Hotel, $85,000. One bill alone for snacks at the Pickle Barrel was $17,275.
What are the reasons we can't get the breakdown of this? Can you understand when more than $1 billion was spent that Canadians would want additional information?
I can answer the question, actually. The RCMP cost in this particular summit was $507 million. I will just explain as quickly as I can how we come to that cost.
If you picture, as I said earlier, all the sites, there are 40 sites involved in the G-8 and the G-20. What we do is send an operational team out to each site. They go to the site, they assess the site, and they do what's called a vulnerability risk assessment on the site. They come back to me and to our planning team and they say, this is what it's going to take to secure that site: x number of police officers, x amount of equipment. We take that amount and scrutinize it. We go over it and ask if it can be done for less, because we are, obviously, concerned with costs, but we're also concerned that--