METROPOLITAN TORONTO POLICE SERVICES BOARD
CONTENTS
Wednesday 2 December 1992
Agency review
Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board
Susan Eng, chair
Dennis Flynn, member
Subcommittee report
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
*Chair / Président: Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC)
*Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East/-Est PC)
*Bradley, James J. (St Catharines L)
*Carter, Jenny (Peterborough ND)
Cleary, John C. (Cornwall L)
Ferguson, Will, (Kitchener ND)
Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East/-Est ND)
*Grandmaître, Bernard (Ottawa East/-Est L)
*Marchese, Rosario (Fort York ND)
*Stockwell, Chris (Etobicoke West/-Ouest PC)
*Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay ND)
Wiseman, Jim (Durham West/-Ouest ND)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants présents:
Cooper, Mike (Kitchener-Wilmot ND) for Mr Ferguson
Haeck, Christel (St Catharines-Brock ND) for Mr Wiseman
Rizzo, Tony (Oakwood ND) for Mr Frankford
Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes: Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord L)
Clerk pro tem / Greffier par intérim: Decker, Todd
Staff / Personnel: Pond, David, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1007 in room 228.
AGENCY REVIEW
Consideration of the operations of certain agencies, boards and commissions.
METROPOLITAN TORONTO POLICE SERVICES BOARD
The Vice-Chair (Mr Allan K. McLean): I call the government agencies committee to order. Today we have further review with regard to the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board, and we have before us this morning Ms Eng and Mr Flynn. If the members would take their seats, we will proceed.
Do you have an opening statement this morning? You don't. Okay. Then we have all morning, so I would suggest we split our time. We can start off with the government members if they have any questions they would like to direct, and then we can rotate around. If they haven't, we could proceed.
Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): We'll let Bernard begin.
Mr Bernard Grandmaître (Ottawa East): Good morning. Good to see you, Dennis.
I want to ask you about the police commissions across the province of Ontario. Do you think they're fully effective, and what changes would you like to see if they're not effective?
Ms Susan Eng: Thank you for that question, Mr Grandmaître. I know that you know Dennis Flynn, but some of the others on the committee may or may not.
Mr Grandmaître: I've had my battles with him, yes.
Ms Eng: Dennis Flynn is ex-Metro chairman and also will be the vice-chair, likely, of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board come Thursday. He is here as a member of the municipal council, Metro council, on the board.
To answer your question about the police services boards across Ontario, I am a member of the board of directors of the Ontario Association of Police Services Boards. With a membership of over 117 boards, there is quite a wide variety of interests, resources and needs across Ontario.
The effectiveness is going to be dependent on the individual needs of each municipality. In some cases, like ours, the policing issues are very much in the public eye and very complex and quite often very heated. In some other communities, they are smaller and they know each other extremely well, and find that the concerns of the police services boards are not quite as significant, perhaps, or in large part needing as many resources as we might in Metro Toronto. Then you have everything in between.
The effectiveness depends really on a new era in policing, a recognition of responsibility of police services boards as distinct from the chief of police, as distinct from the members of the force, in terms of their different responsibilities, not in terms of their different goals. They have shared goals for effective policing. They have shared goals of involving the community in policing. Where they have different responsibilities is that the civilian board has a responsibility for governance. That responsibility requires an understanding of policing. It requires a recognition of how the community needs to be involved in policing. It requires a certain amount of research resources and an opportunity to get that community input. That requires a lot more time than a lot of the board members have around the province.
I'm the only full-time chairman of a police services board. The others are on a part-time basis. As we get into a much more complex environment in policing, I think there is a need to better resource those boards and to give them training and opportunities to share and understand the issues.
Mr Grandmaître: How about politics and the police services boards? It seems that politics -- or too much politics -- is getting involved with police services boards. Councils or municipalities are accusing the police services boards of not communicating with the rest of council and they don't have much of a say in their budget. It seems, especially in Toronto, that your police services board and this government, the Rae government, don't get along too well. Can you clarify this? Can you put a light on it?
Ms Eng: I think you've asked several questions in that question. First of all, I think the independence of the police services board from both the provincial government and Metro council is important in the sense that one of the reasons a police services board was established in the first place was to maintain some buffer between the political system and policing, while at the same time maintaining a level of accountability. It is not a direct line of accountability and we're certainly not a committee of council or a committee of the Legislature.
From the Metro standpoint, I would like to invite Councillor Flynn to respond.
Mr Dennis Flynn: As you know, Mr Grandmaitre, when you were a minister of the crown, you had received petitions in cabinet from Metro council to change the balance of power on the police board, or the commission, as it was called at that time. Metropolitan Toronto asked for a superior number of members so that there would be a balance in favour of the persons, and the government's always taken the position that whoever pays the shot should have the important say. Metropolitan council truly pays the shot. The government, regardless of whatever parties they were, always maintained a grant on the basis of households. That tends to be about 10% of the total amount of money that's required to run the police force. The position of Metro council at this moment remains the same.
Metro council would like to have the majority number of persons appointed by Metro council, rather than appointed by the provincial government. We felt that with respect to any of the governments which have been here in recent years, and have made that plea on many occasions and have done so recently.
Mr Grandmaître: Yes, I agree with you, because I was faced with the same problem when I was chairman of my own police commission. Politicians or council wanted a bigger say, especially at budget time, because every municipality is saying: "Look, all we have to do is rubber-stamp the police services board budget. We have very little to say and if we do object, well then, we can apply to the" -- what's it called now? Is it still the Ontario Police Commission?
Mr Flynn: Basically.
Mr Grandmaître: They change their name every weekend, I guess, not to be identified.
Mr Flynn: May I interject something? At this particular point -- and I think that the police services chair will speak to it more in depth -- Metropolitan council in fact does review the police services board very thoroughly. There's no two ways about that. They had a special group of council members last year as a task force which went through the budget almost line by line to determine where additional cuts were made, and made substantial suggestions so that we had to respond to that. You can't say that in this particular instance, the public through its council doesn't have a major say. The only unfortunate thing is that the metropolitan council has to produce most of the money, when the credit or power rests with the province.
Ms Eng: I'm going to address that point also. The last time I was before this committee, in January, as I recall, I did have to go on to defend our budget before Metro council at that time. As councillor Flynn has indicated, it was a very stiff battle for the budget we ultimately got.
I can also remind everybody here as well that as a result of the management controls that we put in, that we promised to put in, we were able to get the kind of savings and efficiencies that we promised. At the time of the budget debates, we were saying to Metro: "Give us the opportunity. Don't cut back the budget yet. Give us the opportunity to manage our affairs, to reorganize, to restructure, put in some technology that will allow us to control the budget, and we will produce for you, at the end of the day, longer-term efficiencies."
What we did was exceed even our own expectations, which were to give rise to nearly $3.3 million in savings in the court special pay category, which was a difficult category to deal with. A lot of that is entirely as a result of good management controls. When we dealt with the budget, we did have to defend the gross number, which was very large, the fact that it had to be above the flat line and so on, but we were able to convince council that we had the management efforts under control. That was a very significant success that we hope to be able to build on this year as we go into the budget process.
On the matter of the majority control and that sort of thing, I think what's also important to notice is that over the course of the last year and a half, decisions at the board have been made primarily by consensus. There have been very few, if any, decisions made where the Metro councillors lined up on one side and the provincial appointees lined up on the other side. I think that's significant, very important to recognize, that this board functions as an entity without necessarily a strict regard to who appointed it, that we have rarely divided on votes of any sort, but rather come to a consensus on issues. In that respect, I think it's a coming of age of special-purpose bodies that they can operate independently on the specifics, regardless of where their appointments come from.
The Vice-Chair: I think in order to share the time we will move on to Mr Runciman.
Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): Thanks, Mr Chairman. I'll direct a few questions initially to Ms Eng. Just for clarification, you were appointed to the board by the Liberal government, I guess.
Ms Eng: Yes.
Mr Runciman: What year was that?
Ms Eng: In 1989.
Mr Runciman: In 1989. I'm not sure how the process works, but certainly you were Premier Rae's choice to be the chair of the police services board, although I gather you get the endorsation of the Premier and the provincial appointees support you. How does that process work?
Ms Eng: Actually, what's interesting about the process is that probably it needs to be amended. Currently, for all police services boards across the province, you have the appointments as stated in the legislation, which is currently a majority appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council on the recommendation of the government and the minority appointed by municipal council. Then the members, by legislation, are to elect a chair among themselves.
In a lot of the municipalities where everybody is on a part-time basis, it works fairly well. They can rotate from year to year and make a separate appointment. In our case, because the chair is full-time, you would expect that the individual would have to clear away his or her personal circumstances before he or she could let his or her name stand to be full-time chair. In those circumstances, it is a process that could use some improvement in terms of making sure that either we choose that the Lieutenant Governor in Council directly appoints and makes that decision and doesn't ask for the election, or that everybody be prepared to stand on a full-time basis on the election day.
Mr Runciman: In terms of the chair election, so-called election, were you called by someone in the Premier's office or by the Premier personally to ask if you had an interest in that role? How did that work?
Ms Eng: Somebody in the Premier's office, the appointments secretariat, called me to ask for my interest, whether I'd be willing to let my name stand, whether or not I would be able to make that kind of career shift at this point. I agreed to let my name stand.
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Mr Runciman: Did you ever speak personally with the Premier?
Ms Eng: No, not on this point. No.
Mr Runciman: As you know by the presence of the cameras here today, you seem to generate an awful lot of interest. I'm not sure why that is. Would you have any view on why you seem to attract so much interest from the media?
Ms Eng: I was told a media release was sent out so that they would be invited to be here.
Mr Runciman: They're invited to be here every Wednesday, but they usually don't show up.
Ms Eng: They don't show up to our board meetings either. Maybe they might like to show up there as well.
Mr Runciman: I guess I'm curious in the sense that there is some speculation that you have political ambitions. Is that an accurate assessment?
Ms Eng: Are you asking me if I'm after your job?
Mr Runciman: Not mine. You're welcome to give it a shot, though.
Ms Eng: Well, I don't have any political ambitions, as such, at the present time. I have two and a half years left to run in my current appointment. I intend to focus all my energies on that.
Mr Runciman: I guess I'm raising that in the sense that you have done and said a number of things that have been construed, by perhaps not yourself but others, as being controversial: the oath to the Queen at the outset of your appointment to the board and a number of things since then. Certainly you've been in some controversies since you've been the chair with the perceived-to-be conflicts with Chief McCormack. Perhaps the cynical out there view that as a use of your position to gain prestige, name, recognition or what have you which could further your own career possibilities. That's why I felt it was important to raise the question of how you viewed your future in terms of political possibilities.
I'd like to know one thing before I ask you briefly -- and perhaps Mr Flynn would want to comment on this too -- the next question.
I was watching you on a CITY-TV interview some time ago. They were talking about the number of years you'd been on the police services board and asked you if you'd done a tour with active-duty front-line cops. At that point you had not done so. I'm just wondering if you've done so since that interview occurred.
Ms Eng: I can tell you that I have not yet. I'll tell you what I will be doing. What we have been trying to do --
Mr Runciman: Well, no, I appreciate that. Perhaps you'll have an opportunity -- we're somewhat limited in time and this flows in a couple of questions --
Ms Eng: What point do you want to make out of that question? If you want to allow me to explain it, then I shall, but the point is --
Mr Runciman: No, I'll give you an opportunity later on. I just want to put it in another context in the sense of --
Ms Eng: Okay, sure.
Mr Runciman: -- some of the criticism and tie it in with your views on the proposed regulation in terms of unholstering a weapon and withdrawing a weapon from a holster in public. I take it that the board is supportive of that regulatory change. I know that you've come in with some sort of recommended four-step process or something to try to appease the concerns of police officers.
I have some problems with the Solicitor General and with yourself being on the board since 1989 and other members of the board -- Mr Flynn may want to comment on this too -- who have not found the time, for whatever reason, to go out on the front lines with these officers and have a better appreciation of the kinds of challenges they face on a regular basis.
I know, talking to officers in 51 Division -- I think there's something like 50 officers in that division, and they're withdrawing their weapons from the holsters on an average of twice per shift per officer. The pressures on these kinds of individuals are enormous. At least that's what they're telling us. You and Mr Flynn and the Solicitor General are the people who are making the decisions that affect how they operate. I have some concern that there isn't that effort to have a better appreciation of the pressures they have to face.
Ms Eng: Let me explain how we came to develop that whole issue of use-of-force reporting, and the kind of work that we have done and the work -- and I'm sorry that they're not here today -- that the senior officers of this force have assisted us with in developing that process. I did not develop the four-level reporting process; they did. They did it with very good intentions and very good work and their combined years of experience on the police force.
The whole issue of use-of-force reporting has a very broad background. I think there is a lot lost in the current debate that we should be careful to take due notice of.
Police officers are the only organization in society that has authority to use lethal force. The public has an interest in seeing that that force is used in appropriate ways and is justified from time to time.
We as a police organization have an obligation to ensure that we set standards, that we train people to those standards, that we give them the appropriate level of equipment and that in order to monitor their performance there be a reporting mechanism. That's the large picture of why use-of-force reporting is important today and has always been important.
Now, in terms of the process itself, the regulation is in place and will be effective in January. I'm sure that all of you are aware of all the subtleties of that, but the critical point is: What can we do as an organization to come up with some process of responding and complying with that legislation in a manner that is useful to the force itself, that deals with the safety of the officers and ultimately is something that the organization can turn around and say, "Look, we know that our officers are using their force properly because we are monitoring, we are training, we have set standards"? That's what we're trying to do.
So the four-level reporting that you allude to is all part of that process. It is a method of reporting that was constructed by senior officers of our force called the use-of-force review committee. It consists of officers who are engaged in training in the Emergency Task Force, in professional standards and legal services. That group of people is in constant touch with front-line officers and there are a couple of constables who are also front-line officers themselves who are responsible for bringing in that input.
They constructed a process of reporting that divides the use of a firearm into four levels, the first level being one in which you pull the gun out in readiness for walking down a dark alley or entering a darkened warehouse. That is the level of preparedness, and the consensus is that no reporting is required in that circumstance whatsoever.
The second circumstance is the situation in which someone draws his firearm and there are members of the public present. In that circumstance the current regulation requires that a report be filed. What our force has recommended is that an internal report be filed, which will be useful in two circumstances. The unit commander or supervisor of the officer will have an opportunity to judge whether or not the use of force was appropriate in that circumstance, and secondly, the use-of-force committee will receive that information on an aggregate basis to see whether or not there is, as you've mentioned, in some divisions, a lot of gun calls, a lot of situations in which there have been guns drawn necessarily and justified.
In those circumstances, the use-of-force committee as a central committee can note the trends throughout the force and note that one particular area seems to have more than its share of gun calls and look at recommendations to do something about it, including additional resources, including determining whether or not there's a difference between one platoon and another. Maybe one group needs training but another group just needs more backup. Perhaps the procedures are not working very well. Perhaps they need to have greater access to the ETF or something like that. Those are the kinds of macro questions that the internal professional committee can make.
Then, having been able to use that information in that way, our position is that the province, having through its public statements indicated it's not interested in getting individual reports or the identification of individual officers, we're recommending that they receive from us only aggregate data about the number of officers, the occasions, the environmental conditions and so on.
At the same time we will also indicate that that internal use-of-force report will only be retained for six months. The reason for the six-month date is that currently when officers note that there may be a public complaint from whatever they have done, they will file a use-of-force report. They're doing that now. The reason they do that is that in case there is a public complaint, then they have a record of what they had done, and that way they have their side of the story available. They usually keep that for six months now in our public complaints office in order to ensure that that material is available when necessary. We're recommending the same six-month period for that report.
That is meant to address a number of things. It allows the internal committee to have access to the kind of data that will inform training and procedures. It will, we hope, through what the senior officers have told us, address the issue of safety by making sure that over the long-term basis the internal committee and senior management are able to make decisions that will ultimately improve on the backup and the training.
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Finally, the question of hesitation: What's happening with these reports? What use is going to be made of them? What we're seeing is that we're not going to give the officer identification information to the province in the first place. So a guarantee from the province as to what it's going to do with the information is just going to be a moot point because we're not giving that information to begin with.
The fact that the forms are retained for six months within the force are meant mostly to give some protection to the officer in the event that a public complaint is laid. That's level two.
Levels three and four are less contentious. Level four is a situation where the firearm is discharged and the usual process of a discharge-of-firearm report is filed, and they have no difficulty with that.
Level three is again something that officers and senior management have very little difficulty with, and that is, if you draw and point your firearm at somebody. Already they are now filing use-of-force reports when there is a gunpoint arrest and if their gun is pointed at somebody. If you point your gun as a civilian, that would be a criminal offence, so it's something that there isn't a problem with, but again we're going to be able to use the use-of-force reporting process, which will be a form that will be used province-wide, to again inform training, inform procedure and so on. Again, we are only recommending that we give aggregate data to the province.
This four-level reporting process is meant to address all of the concerns, and that's why we have it there.
Mr Runciman: Who has to approve this four-level process? Is it the province? And a brief answer, because we have a lot of questions we'd like to ask you.
Ms Eng: It was a long process. The province will have to tell us whether or not it believes that this process conforms with its legislation. They've written the legislation that just says --
Mr Runciman: If it doesn't, the board will not be supportive of this regulatory change; you'll tend to support your front-line officers in the concerns about the way this could be used or misused?
Ms Eng: This particular process hasn't been debated fully at the board yet. Tomorrow at the board we will be looking at this in detail. But I can assess from previous discussions that we will support very strongly what the force committee has come up with because we believe that it does serve the substance and the purposes of the regulation.
Mr Runciman: Do you have any feedback from the police association on this proposal?
Ms Eng: The police association was given an opportunity to review this structure. They have been given this information by the senior officers and they've had an opportunity to look at it. Their first instinct was that they'd rather have no reporting at all, but they do have the material and I'm hopeful that once they've had a chance to review it and look at the circumstances they'll see some value in it.
Mr Runciman: Have I got time for one more quick question?
The Vice-Chair: One quick question.
Mr Runciman: When you're talking about these sorts of statistics and being supportive, even with this amended way that you're proposing it, and you talked about one of the ways that this could be used just in terms of pinpointing additional resources to deal with a particular problem area.
I wonder how that jibes with the board's view on the compilation of crime statistics based on race. I know that Metro council has just taken a position that it believes these should be compiled; that they will be useful. I guess I'm curious as to how you can say, "Well, these kinds of statistics on police officers are fine and will be helpful," but when the other issue is raised -- and even Metro council now feels that they could be of assistance in focusing on problem areas and making sure that those problem areas are addressed adequately -- I understand you've taken a different position. I wonder how you could justify that.
Ms Eng: When I answered this question last time I was here in January, I made the very clear point that --
Mr Runciman: That was before Metro council took that position.
Ms Eng: Yes, that's true, but the point is that the substance still remains, and that is: What purpose do you use statistics for? That's what defines whether or not they're going to be useful, and this --
Mr Runciman: That's the basis of the police concern, isn't it, about these other statistics?
Ms Eng: Let's make it clear: The only basis for asking for statistics based on the race of the perpetrator is to start to define a group of people as being responsible for crime, based on their race. Are you trying to suggest that --
Mr Runciman: That's your view.
Ms Eng: That is my view. You asked for my view and I'm giving it to you.
Mr Runciman: The police have a view in terms of their regulation, that all you want to do is prosecute police officers.
Ms Eng: Well, I'm sorry --
Mr Runciman: I just want to say that you're being very defensive about this particular matter --
Ms Eng: No, I'm trying to give you an answer.
Mr Runciman: I'm just trying to get you to appreciate the position of the police with respect to the regulation. They're saying exactly the same thing you're saying about crime stats, based on race. Exactly the same.
Mr Eng: I don't see the connection, I'm sorry.
Mr Runciman: Well, I do. It's clear.
The Vice-Chair: Mr Runciman, give her a chance to answer.
Mr Flynn: In any event, this matter has not again been discussed by the board once it adopted its original position. The position of Metro has not been put in front of us to be debated. I'd just like to throw in another situation: You seem to imply that I also have never been in a police vehicle, and I just wanted to --
Mr Runciman: No, I wasn't implying at all. Your inference is wrong. I have no idea what your experience is.
The Vice-Chair: Okay, let's move along now to Mrs Carter.
Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. M. Grandmaître raised the question of relations between the Rae government and the police, and really this is an odd perception. First of all, it's very clear that the government does appreciate what the police do and the difficulties they have, and also, if you look at the facts, this government has actually treated the police pretty well.
I believe, for example, that we've given $45 million, over and above the regular budget, to the OPP to take care of shortfalls they had. There's been $6 million for training. In fact, more has gone to the OPP than under recent governments. I just wondered what your perception of that might be.
Ms Eng: Give me the question again; I'm sorry.
Ms Carter: Although there has been a tendency to see this government as opposed to the police, the facts don't show that. The OPP has been quite well treated under this government, in fact better than under some of the more recent previous governments.
Ms Eng: Well, actually, how well or not well the OPP has been treated is something that would be right outside my jurisdiction. The dollars that were given for their offices and how they were allocated and so on in response to the requests is something I wouldn't be able to comment on; that's for the record. Certainly, our board would like to have gotten some of that money for our offices. We have the same concerns. We do need additional personnel; we do need additional resources and technology.
One of the areas in which funding would be most appreciated and which we have put on the record as well is in the area of training. There have been a lot of promises in the last few months about moneys available for training of all sorts, and as the largest municipal police force, we would like to access some of that money. One of the things we find is that this money has to be spread across the province, and Metro's seen as an organization that is quite wealthy and doesn't need that additional assistance. Well, we do. We are also at 90% payroll. We don't have very much money to come up with the additional programs that are necessary.
I think that on the broader issue of what the government has done in terms of rights for police officers, political activity rights, that was one of the major things that did affect our officers more directly than, perhaps, the moneys to the OPP.
Ms Carter: Ms Eng, do you see that as a positive change?
Ms Eng: I think it is a very positive change. I think that's part of the concern that is at the bottom of how police officers feel about being part of the public process. In many respects, they feel that their rights are much circumscribed compared to others, and in the past, certainly in the area of political activity rights, that was quite so.
Along with other civil servants, their ability to involve themselves in the political process in legitimate ways was very circumscribed, and I think that again, a matter of coming of age, the new rights that were given to them were very welcome and necessary in a democratic environment. It starts to break the isolation between officers and everybody else.
What will also help that is another initiative the government has started, and I would like to see moving, the area of training. There's been a two-year-long study on training for police, and that has included a number of extremely important recommendations, including having police officers trained within the education system rather than segregated off into a police training stream; making sure that there's additional funding, that this be made a priority; that the level of educaton people already have when they enter the police force be upgraded and increased; that there be cooperative programs; that there be a real investment in training, because after all, when you're dealing with personnel, that's your only investment, that's in the training.
All of that has been recommended by a provincial task force. I understand that's not on the front burner and I think it's extremely significant that it move ahead. I think that officers and their training have lagged far behind what is necessary for the job they have to do.
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Ms Carter: To get back to the political activity thing, do you there's liable to be any problem with lines of demarcation as to what is legitimate for police officers to do, politically speaking, or what is not?
Ms Eng: I think that in a democratic society there's a fine line drawn. There's a sensitive balance that must be maintained when police officers in uniform seek to express their political positions.
Certainly, in opening up the political activity rights, they have to have rights like everybody else to state their opinion, but even in the legislation that came out and that's part of the common law, they're asked not use their position as police officers to exert the kind of undue influence that it can still have for people today. It's that balance that must be maintained in s democracy.
Ms Carter: Absolutely. You've partly answered my next question. Obviously, society's changing and the police forces have to change with it. How well positioned do you see the police as regards necessary change? You said that training is a big factor and obviously I would agree with you on that.
Ms Eng: I think that police officers, first of all, have to recognize that they're really at the vanguard of social change. They become a barometer of how society feels about itself and what its values are. They can take the lead in many ways where other people will not have the same kind of impact.
Certainly, training is a major issue, but also values, also the kinds of stands that people take. For example, something that's not well known is that police officers are very much involved in community fund-raising, donations and activities. We don't hear about that much any more. It's not held up in our schools as a valuable exercise to serve the community in that way. Police officers do that every day. We hardly ever hear tell of it, and that's the way in which they, as police officers, can start to set to some values.
In the current discussions over hate crimes, there's another role for police forces to take, and that is if we take a very strong, concerted and effective effort against hate crimes, then we start to set some values; we start to say unequivocally that we share the anti-racism, anti-bigotry values that most of society accepts today. What's more, we have, in our hands, the capability of actually putting into effect that kind of combat.
Ms Carter: I come from a smaller community, Peterborough, and I know that there the police are certainly seen as excellent citizens. They have a circus and disadvantaged children go to it and this kind of thing, so I certainly see that as being very important.
Mr Daniel Waters (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): Good morning, Ms Eng. I'd like to ask you or allow you the opportunity to make some remarks on what Mr Runciman wouldn't. I'm curious about that and I think that --
Mr Runciman: I disagree with that. I wouldn't allow her?
Mr Waters: You made it --
Mr Runciman: Come on. That's not correct. The chairman cut it off and moved on. Don't say that I said I wouldn't let her respond.
Mr Waters: At one point, Mr Runciman, you asked Ms Eng about had she been riding with the officers in the evening and that, and she said, "This is what I'd planned to do," and at that point, you cut her off and did not allow her to answer that.
Mr Runciman: I got on with the next question and she gave a 10- or 15-minute response and she had lots of opportunity.
Ms Eng: On that question, thank you for the question and the opportunity. That is something that is a concern to me. One of the things we're doing in the next little while is to go around to the different stations. I will be going down with one of the retiring deputies in the next couple of weeks to visit all the stations, as many as we can get to, to speak to officers and focus on some of the concerns they have.
I can tell you frankly that with the constant call of people saying, "Why don't you go into the back of the squad car?" to suddenly do that will seem to be awfully superficial and pandering. That's part of the reason. I have to tell you that I'm very sensitive to those particular demands. I find that to simply immediately, because all people are screaming about it, jump into the back of a squad car is not suddenly going to solve everything. I don't think it does. We've had an opportunity to move the board meetings around to the different jurisdictions, and on those occasions I have an opportunity to meet with the senior command in each of those districts. They are as frank and as blunt as you can get on the issues. I've had an opportunity to get directly from them their concerns as well.
You have to remember that the board's responsibility is in ensuring a number of things: management, and to ensure that the senior officers have an opportunity to tell us about what's needed on the front lines, what's needed in the patrol cars. They have been very forthcoming in that.
I suppose I have to have some faith in what they tell me. I'm in constant contact with them. They try to tell us what the concerns are, certainly the current issues with the use-of-force committee. They have certainly tried to reflect the front-line officers' concern as much as they can. I have to put some confidence in what they tell me, rather than simply going into the back of a squad car in spite of them and saying, "I'll find out for myself."
Mr Waters: One of the other things I've noticed when I looked at some of the stats is that the strength of the Toronto force has been increasing, even under the police services board. What I would ask is, other than the job action, taking that -- I know it's difficult at this point to set that aside. It's been almost a year since we talked, and I would like a comment from both you and Mr Flynn on this, actually, individually: How do you feel the police services board is working?
The process of having a police services board is a relatively new process compared to what we've had throughout the province before, where there's much more public input, I think, or higher profile than what we've traditionally had. I'd like both your comments on how you feel it's working and if there are different areas that we could look at improving.
Mr Flynn: I think it's very difficult to make a real determined expression about a change of name. I've been associated with the Metropolitan Toronto Police Commission and with the police services board for quite a few years, and nothing really seriously has changed. We have always been open to the public and had the public there. We've had many a meeting in which there was a very definite, clear attitude by the public that they didn't agree with what we were doing at times, and so on and so forth. They're still expressing that today. It hasn't changed very much.
The police services board, as it operates now, is not effectively much different except that we work harder, I would suggest. We put more time into it. You have to remember that in the makeup of the police services board, only the provincial members are paid. There's no special payment or additive to the salary of a member of council, because we consider that the member of council has a salary set which is supposed to take care of all his pay concerns or her pay concerns.
The fact is that there's always been a cooperative attitude. It was doubted that there would be a cooperative attitude when Chair Eng took over, and the other three appointees of the province. That has not worked that way at all. As a matter of fact, there has been a willingness to learn about each other, to understand our weaknesses and our strengths, and therefore we work as a very cohesive group.
It's entirely possible that this would not necessarily be true about other organizations that come up, but in this particular police board, as Ms Eng has said, it has been a cooperative situation in which very seldom is there an argument between the balance of the province and the balance of Metro council. As a matter of fact, it's good enough that we take consideration even of the opinions of persons who are not able to be there on a particular day. We give consideration to their general attitudes, as have been expressed over a period of time. We're very much aware of all that.
We're there to make the police services board work, to make it a cohesive management tool which oversees the general operations of the police force. We're not there as individuals who are there to upset whatever situation is going on, but to try to make it the most productive situation that we can. I'm sure even Mr Stockwell would agree with that. I can see he's getting all roared up over that.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you. Moving right along -- we'll catch you in the next round, Ms Haeck.
Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): I figured you would, Mr McLean.
The Vice-Chair: I have no choice.
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Mr Grandmaître: I'd like to follow up on the makeup or the composition and the balance on the police services boards, because this committee, the government agencies committee, appoints people to different police service boards throughout the province of Ontario with no qualifications whatsoever, no experience, very little background, and we have very little choice. These people are appointed on Wednesday -- they're appointed through an order in council -- two weeks or three weeks after they appear before this board and we simply rubber-stamp these OICs. We simply rubber-stamp them. We have no veto. We can't turn these people down. It's impossible. I've dared the opposition to vote against these OICs --
Mr Runciman: The government.
Mr Grandmaître: Yes, a government appointment. These people have never voted against it, never dared to vote against the OICs. We're a committee, we're a big rubber stamp.
Now let's go back this balance and this composition. Mr Flynn, you've been on both sides of this issue as an elected person and a member of the police services board. I want you to tell me, if you were the Premier or, let's say -- forget about being Premier, because it's not very popular right now. If you had a magic wand, tell me about the composition of your ideal police services board. I'm talking about municipal appointments or Metro appointments and provincial appointments. How would you do it?
Mr Flynn: Let's dispose of the Metro appointments, first of all, because those are selected by council and undoubtedly there's some popularity, either by choice or cause, whichever that might be. If a person wears himself out in the service, like Mr Gardner did, there's a grandfather clause which says, "You shall not come back."
So therefore we had a contest last Wednesday and, as a result of that contest, I was reappointed and a new member was appointed. Brian Ashton was appointed and he brings a different flavour, but it's still a political flavour, and the chairman of Metro's there ex officio and he brings his political flavour and his experience with him. The other members of the board who sit today are composed of a lawyer, a social worker, a priest-social worker responsible in the diocese for the social work content, and a teacher from Ryerson.
Now, if you were going to compose a board, you might shift one or two of those and place an active businessman, which has been the style previously. One of the things that we used to like to have before and is not permitted any more is to have a judge sitting with us, because we are in the appeal business and the judge's experience brings a great deal to us as a board when we're sitting in appeal. At the present moment we have a lawyer but we don't have a judge, and therefore we have some discussion about what the proper attitude should be in bringing down a decision on that.
Therefore, you would like to have the political sense, you'd like to have the legal attitude, you'd like to have the scholastic attitude as well and you'd like to have the business attitude. I don't know how you can say that any one of those persons is not experienced in community work, because each and every one of them has worked within their own specific community and the compilation of the community of Metropolitan Toronto.
So if I were selecting a board, aside from the person selected by metropolitan council, I might not want to have two people representing social services. I would like to have a person in there who is a pure businessman who's involved in the community from that point of view, as well as a scholastic and as well as the other persons. That would be the ideal board. Select four people through the province, if we're going to maintain that balance, to do it that way: business --
Mr Grandmaître: Business, yes.
Mr Flynn: -- legal attitude and social service and scholastics.
Mr Grandmaître: What about a commission or a board with no politician?
Mr Flynn: Oh, that harms me. That strikes right to the heart. I have to tell you, without any political attitude at all --
Mr Grandmaître: No. Let's say the Metro chair would be ex officio and forget about the --
Mr Flynn: Forget about the others.
Mr Grandmaître: Yes.
Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): That's you, Dennis.
Mr Flynn: Yes. I have to think about this very carefully, Chris.
Mr Stockwell: No, you don't.
Mr Grandmaître: I'm asking you this, Dennis --
Mr Flynn: I'll be honest with you. I've sacrificed a great deal of my life to sitting on the board. I have now served --
Mr Grandmaître: I realize that.
Mr Flynn: I now have served for 12 years --
Mr Grandmaître: Yes, I realize this and you're starving.
Mr Flynn: -- and I don't want to see the political attitude removed.
Mr Grandmaître: I realize this, yes.
Mr Flynn: Because we're closer to the people than you are.
Mr Grandmaître: Well, Dennis --
Mr Flynn: That was the same old argument.
Mr Grandmaître: You haven't answered my question, though, about a services board without politicians except the --
Mr Flynn: Excuse me. Could I ask you a question in return before I complete my answer? Would metropolitan council have to supply a budget for the police in that case?
Mr Grandmaître: Dennis, you're before us to answer questions, not to ask questions.
Mr Flynn: That's what I thought. In any event, what I would suggest to you is that if you were not going to put any politicians on, then you couldn't in fact ask Metropolitan Toronto, through its political budget, if you want to say that, to have any interest. It wouldn't work.
Mr Grandmaître: It wouldn't work.
Mr Flynn: Who would explain to the public that in excess of $500 million a year of their household taxes is going in fact to the police without a logical explanation? We're the only three people who can tell them.
Mr Grandmaître: What I'm getting at, Dennis -- Mr Flynn --
Mr Flynn: It's okay. My mother always called me Dennis.
Mr Grandmaître: I'm talking about the balance. I'm having a terrible time not only from you but from other appointed people to a police services board. I'm trying to find this balance because, let's be honest, there's a perception out there that your police board is something like this committee: It's a rubber stamp, because you have a boss and that boss is the main boss and she will make the final decisions. That's the perception out there, Dennis.
Mr Flynn: It's not true.
Mr Grandmaître: Talk about this perception or --
Mr Flynn: That's what I tried to explain to you. We're a working board that looks at every proposition that comes before us to its fullest degree, to examine it to determine what's best and what isn't best, and it doesn't matter whether or not the chair of the board has a relatively good idea that hasn't been, shall we say, blossomed out and thought out to its fullest. We examine that absolutely and determine for ourselves what is the best for the police force out of any of those questions.
I think that you would be remiss if you didn't have the political side available to participate in that, to bring what we would call the street answer into the field for the answering of those questions.
Mr Grandmaître: Mr Runciman a little while ago pointed to your high-profile chairperson attracting cameras wherever she goes. Do you think this is good for your police services board, that there are all kinds of watchdogs? You must be sick and tired of these people hanging around your door.
Mr Flynn: Yes, I guess that's true, that we're a little sick and tired of everybody examining us every time we leave for the washroom or something like that. "Where'd you go? Did you ever come back?" and stuff like that. The thing is, the chair of this board may not have any greater profile than the first chairman of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board. It was looked at in a different light.
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Mr Grandmaître: If I had a contest, I'd bet on the present chair.
Mr Flynn: To be more publicly favourable --
Mr Grandmaître: If there was a new lottery in the province of Ontario.
Mr Flynn: I have to tell you that she's only a member of the board. It happens to be that she's chair of the board, but you'll notice in the act, aside from sitting and chairing the board meetings, she has no authority as a result of that --
Mr Grandmaître: It's like the Metro chairman. He only has one vote.
Mr Flynn: That's right. And look at the mess you made of that.
Mr Grandmaître: That was my best accomplishment since I've been here, Dennis. I promise you that --
Mr Flynn: It may have been one of your best accomplishments, but you almost enlarged the unemployment rolls.
Mr Grandmaître: Next week I'll be sitting in your place and you can take my place and ask me questions about what I think of the new Metro. I'll pass to my colleague Chris.
Mr Stockwell: Let me start by saying there is a vast difference -- I have a disagreement with the councillor from Etobicoke with respect to the differences of this board and other boards. Never has a board been so mistrusted and disliked by the rank-and-file cop in the history of Metropolitan Toronto, and I don't think you'd get an argument from anyone about that.
I don't put that at the doorstep of yourself or Councillor Gardner or a few of the others who have come on board. It's clearly a mistrust and dislike of the chair -- there's no doubt about it -- Ms Eng.
I put this to the chair. Considering the fact that you have virtually no support among the rank-and-file police, none, so much so that they've called for your resignation, that among any citizenry I've spoken to or seen polls or phone-in shows about, your support is certainly dwindling, if marginalized, at this point in time -- I would say the majority of citizens in this Metropolitan area would prefer you step down -- how does this affect your job, and what constituency are you representing if you're not representing the majority of citizens and the rank-and-file cop? The question must be put to you. It seems to me that in a short two years you've alienated every cop, most of the citizens and the question is, why?
Ms Eng: Thank you for the question. It's certainly a good summation of unfounded statements and speculation on your part.
I think the point is that leadership is not a popularity contest. The kinds of changes that this board has stood behind and has focused on are the kinds of changes that are needed today. They are issues of accountability. The public is demanding that. People who understand the issues will see that this is necessary. If it was not me in this chair it would be somebody else, and that person would be the lightning rod as well.
I think the time has come that the page in history has turned. We're not going back. The issue of people saying, "Show me how you are using force; show me how you are using the public authority," that time has come and it's not going back.
If you want to personalize this and make it into some kind of personality cult or politics, that is your profession; that is your right to say so. But my profession as a lawyer and my responsibility as a public servant is to take a look at what's going on in the public mind, the issues that are important to us as a society, the need to ensure that there is truly effective policing, not just at rallies where people are shouting slogans, but every day on the job. We have to make sure that all of the public, including people who feel themselves disenfranchised, feel that they have equal access to public services.
That is my job and that is not a popularity contest. I don't know if I can make everybody like it, but what I hope, at the end of my term, is that people respect me for what I've done.
Mr Stockwell: Let me be blunter, if I can. If you think that's speculation, it just shows how out of touch you are. There's no speculation. The rank-and-file cops don't trust you or respect you. They've called for your resignation.
Ms Eng: Art Lymer has called for my resignation.
Mr Stockwell: Art Lymer represents the rank-and-file cops, and any rank-and-file cops I speak to agree with Art Lymer, and I've spoken to a number of them.
Ms Eng: Speak to some others.
Mr Stockwell: Give me a list of those who support you, because I can't find them.
Ms Eng: That's not the way leadership is done, Mr Stockwell. I hope you recognize that if you ever get into cabinet.
Mr Stockwell: Recognize what?
Ms Eng: That you don't take a popularity poll to make your decisions.
Mr Stockwell: I'm just putting the question that you have virtually no support among the rank-and-file cops. Of the citizenry I talked to, there is sincere mistrust of the way that you're directing the police force and the leadership that you're offering.
You say it's not a popularity contest. I agree. It's not a popularity contest. But if you're to take us in this new direction, if you're to take us down this new road, don't you think it's important to have some support among the police and citizens of this Metropolitan area, so you can lead them to wherever you think we should be going?
Ms Eng: You're right, Mr Stockwell. It's very important to have that and I have that. I have spoken to a wide variety of public groups, community groups. If you wish, you can have my speakers' list. I have spoken to a wide range of people -- educators, Kiwanis clubs, people in political processes, people who are just ordinary community groups -- and they indicate there is a real need for the kinds of things I'm talking about. They indicate that there is a real desire.
I have spoken to senior officers who realize that this is necessary. There are individual officers who speak to me on this basis. I'm listening to a different group than you are, it seems to me. It seems to me that if you come with me on those speaking tours that I have been engaged in -- they're not a limited group of people; they're quite a broad range of people -- and listen to what they have to say to me, they too are making a commitment to the kinds of changes that we have to have.
I think that when you take a good look at this and recognize the kinds of issues we're dealing with and the anger and the frustration that some parts of society feel, we have to do something. What we have been doing up until now is not enough. There has been a lot of goodwill, but right now we have to start managing that goodwill and bringing some kind of solution to this. It won't be simply standing up on some kind of podium and saying, "These people are perfect; they can do no wrong."
Mr Stockwell: Gee, I've not heard anyone suggest that these people are perfect; they can do no wrong. I don't know where you're getting that. I think there's always been a --
Ms Eng: Same place you're getting your stuff.
Mr Stockwell: No, they've always suggested that in the past the police have come under scrutiny at various points in time in the last 10 or 15 years, and certainly since my time on council there were a number of occasions where the police came under scrutiny. Whom am I speaking to? I'm just speaking to the folks. I'm just going out there and that's what they're telling me. I'm not speaking to service groups or organizations. I'm just speaking with the people I run into on a day-to-day basis. Now, we must be speaking to different people, because the answers that you're getting are clearly very different than the answers I'm getting.
With respect to the police themselves, let's talk about the police. There seems to be some rank-and-file disenchantment, widespread, I would suggest probably the majority, maybe the vast majority of the rank-and-file cops who are on the street facing down these problems on a day-to-day basis, with respect to your leadership.
Now, we may be talking to different citizens, but you can't tell me that you're talking to the cops and they're telling you they think you're doing a wonderful job, and to keep it up. Maybe we have some different people speaking to us from the citizens, but the cops have to be telling you that they're not enthralled with the job you're doing. They've called for your resignation, Art Lymer and the association representing the thousands of cops in Metropolitan Toronto. How is it that you think you can best represent these people as chair when you don't even have their trust?
Ms Eng: Well, let's put it this way: I don't run the police force. The board as a whole doesn't run the police force. The chief and the command officers run the police force. What is happening right now is a very important organization, a change that is very important, and the senior officers recognize this. What we have to do is recognize that the policies this board has engaged in -- as Councillor Flynn has mentioned, I'm not the person writing these policies and shoving them through. The board as a whole is adopting them. The chief and the command officers are implementing them.
They have bought into the processes. They are the ones, for example, in the use-of-force reporting who have worked very long and hard to construct a process that will work in accordance with the policy we have structured. In the hate crimes area, it was something they had been working on that the board was very much concerned with and gave them direction on. They have come up with the implementation process to make that happen. It's their job as a group of management to try to encourage the police officers to follow suit and to understand the principles behind the new processes. That's the way the system is supposed to work.
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Mr Stockwell: But it's not working.
Ms Eng: It is working, I'm sorry, and you should ask the chief and the command officers whether it indeed is working. Before you got into the room, I emphasized the fact that the budget, a very large budget, a budget that some said a year ago was out of control, is now under control. That is done not by me, not by the board, not just by the senior command officers, but by individual police officers recognizing that there's an organization they serve. They're willing to serve it and they're doing their job as professionals.
The things that you're talking about are over on top of that, but at the end of the day, this police force is functioning and functioning very well, with the solid support of the senior command and the individual officers. Whatever you want to make of that, go right ahead, for political purposes, but this force is working and working well.
Mr Stockwell: Let's move on. Political purposes or not, if you believe, if you have any thought in your mind that the rank-and-file cops support you, and specifically you, you are so out of touch it's unbelievable. They don't, and as long as you want to live in this fantasy land that you think they do and in this world where by implementing these programs senior cops are supportive, and the other cops are supportive and think this board is doing a great and a wonderful job, you couldn't be any further from the truth. If that's what you want to go ahead and think, that's probably why there's this widening gulf between you and the cops on a day-to-day basis.
To move on, on Chief McCormack, I heard you on radio not long ago and the question was put directly to you, "Do you want to get rid of Chief McCormack?" and you avoided the question maybe two or three times. My question is to you directly: Is the chief doing a good job? If he is doing a good job, do you support the chief and firmly believe he should be in that position?
Ms Eng: The chief is actually doing a wonderful job. This recent job action is proof of that. It was a very difficult position. He was put into that difficult position by your friend Mr Lymer, and the calls for my resignation over some kind of confusion they built in their own minds that I was trying to --
Mr Stockwell: No, I think he was put in that position by your friend Mr Rae.
Ms Eng: What did you say? I am sorry.
Mr Stockwell: I said I think he was put in that position by your friend Mr Rae.
Ms Eng: Well, I doubt it.
I think it's quite clear that if you look at the media, which you seem to read very carefully, Mr Lymer made a number of calls to arms among his officers, which ultimately made it very difficult for the chief to carry out his proper duties.
In this case, he felt that while he was sympathetic to the concerns, and we all were sympathetic to the concerns the officers raised about the new reporting regulations, none the less, it was his view, and the board supported him in it, that it was his responsibility to maintain internal discipline on the force, and that internal discipline included obeying his direct orders. Mr Lymer directed his officers, compelled his officers not to respect that direct order. He was put in a very difficult position.
When he ultimately decided that he had to go to get a court injunction to shore up his authority, we supported him in that, and I support him in taking a very difficult choice. I still support him today when he maintains that he must insist on hanging on to the documentation and not withdrawing, as Mr Lymer has asked that he do.
What we're dealing with right now is a chief who's been put in a very, very difficult position, and I can't think of a better person to do that job. He's very popular among the officers, he has a lot of personal esteem and he is the person who's going to hang on to that very important principle, that regardless of what your political protest is, first and foremost as police officers you obey the direct order of your chief, and we support him in doing that.
Mr Stockwell: So you support him in his job and see no reason to move him out.
Ms Eng: Not at this point, no.
Mr Stockwell: Not at this point in time.
Ms Eng: Well, no, because this is the time you're asking me the question.
Mr Stockwell: Okay, I'll pass the question.
The Vice-Chair: Two minutes left.
Mr Runciman: Two minutes left? I'll ask you a question related to weaponry. You had mentioned earlier that one of the roles of the board was to ensure that they had adequate equipment, I think, and you know that the view of most front-line officers and their associations is that they want to have semiautomatic weapons.
I've had a number of officers describe to me the problems with 38s, not just their fire-power element but getting out the revolver on a quick basis and getting an adjustment. They're very much supportive of doing what other forces in Canada and the United States have done, and that's making available that kind of weaponry. What's the board's position on semiautomatics?
Ms Eng: The board's position on making semiautomatics available has not been fully discussed, but the issues are as follows: The greatest issue for our force is the cost and the training. There is additional training that's necessary for each firearm. This is a difficult weapon and it needs additional care. Officers cannot just move from one gun to the other.
In our force, when we're talking about nearly 6,000 officers, that is a massive investment of time, resources and of course money to buy the weapons. Our command officers have looked at this intensively and they recognize that they may not be able to buy any more 38 revolvers, because manufacturers are starting to phase them out. They recognize that they're going to eventually have to change over to semiautomatic. What we're recommending -- what the senior command have recommended to me, rather -- is that we do this slowly, do it over time, and make sure that they test the different weapons to make sure that they've got the right one, to make sure that the different officers are comfortable using it and that we're able to provide the necessary safeguards.
Ms Haeck: I'm interested in some of the comments from the third party in particular, because I guess, having worked as a public servant myself, I was aware that a lot of the library board members who were looking after our library in fact didn't even use the library, so the kind of comments that are coming forward --
Interjection.
Ms Haeck: No, not at all.
Those people have the same responsibility for looking after an agency that the police services agencies do, and I would suggest to you that if you're going to make these analogies you'd better be damned careful.
Mr Stockwell: Can they read?
Ms Haeck: That's always a good question. The whole orientation question is one that interests me, because I would suspect that a lot of the people who have listened to the hysteria promoted by the third party probably don't understand the kind of orientation that you as board members undergo. Could you give me an idea of what kind of orientation that you as new board members participate in?
Ms Eng: There has been a lot recently and there could be lots more. The Ontario Association of Police Services Boards has raised this issue several times in the past few years to say: "We recognize that being a board member is a specialized function. There needs to be training. There needs to be orientation to issues and there needs to be a lot more time allocated."
We have to start looking at more full-time people on police services boards throughout the province. In our force, what we have done is that whenever there is a new board member, we ask the chief and command officers to assist that person in getting an idea of what we're doing. The new board members last year were given a tour, were given an opportunity to visit the different divisions and to spend time with the officers so that we'd get to know the organization itself.
In terms of the broader issues of labour relations or training and community input, that's something the Ontario Association of Police Services Boards engages in. They have some training programs. More money is needed; more time and resources are needed.
Ms Haeck: How many members of your board would be sitting on a labour relations or personnel committee?
Ms Eng: At the present time, I generally am the person appointed on the bargaining committee, and that's because of my full-time status and so on.
Ms Haeck: What kind of support would you be getting in that?
Ms Eng: I normally bring most positions back to the full board to get its direction. We also have, of course, a full-time labour relations director, which other forces don't have access to.
Ms Haeck: I've been meeting with some of the police in my own area, and I think you're probably aware that I represented St Catharines-Brock, which is part of the Niagara Peninsula and we've had the Colter commission going on there for over four years and we still haven't had our final report. Definitely, a number of the recommendations coming out of that commission will be making comments about education and training within the force. Do you have some sort of handle on the education that you would see as an initial requirement for officers coming into the force?
Ms Eng: That whole issue of training for police officers has been something that's been reviewed by a provincial task force. They've done quite a lot of research in it and they've focused on a number of issues, right from the types of skills officers should have, including problem-solving rather than the physical skills, to where they should have their education and when they should have it. I think the merging of the police training with the ordinary educational system is an important process --
Ms Haeck: I agree.
Ms Eng: -- not only in terms of efficiencies of scale, but also in terms of staying close to the community you're ultimately going to police and to break some of that isolation down. There is also a question of lifelong learning and training, that issue of not having your education or your learning stop after you finish school, but throughout the course of your career. And throughout the course of police officers' careers, which run for 25 years, there are a lot of changes.
Ms Haeck: I had the occasion to be at a community meeting not too long ago, and there was a comment made about a new officer getting training within our local force. The manual was on one side, and the officer doing the training said, "This is what the book says, but if I were in the position, I would be doing this," and basically they were worlds apart. Are you aware whether that is the situation you're facing in your force too?
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Ms Eng: Clearly, that is a function of the manuals not keeping up to date. It's also a function of the training not necessarily being in lock step with what's happening in the rest of society. That's the importance of merging the two streams.
At the same time, there has to be a recognition that officers tend to learn from each other more than they learn from manuals, and the type of training then has to shift from lecturing and book learning to experiential learning and in-service training, which is what is also being proposed.
Ms Haeck: Have you a handle on the kind of in-service? The in-service area is obviously one that is under some scrutiny at this point and what you are promoting.
Ms Eng: I'm very supportive of the recommendations that have been made by the task force on these issues, because there needs to be a much more effective training process, it has to be comprehensive, it has to reflect on how adults learn and how people learn while they're on the the job and so on. It's very important that these issues be introduced, especially in the police organizations.
Ms Haeck: I've just been made aware that a couple of my colleagues have some questions as well, so I will defer.
Mr Marchese: One of the usual questions I ask, and that would be directed to you, Ms Eng, is why on earth would you ever want to be the chair of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board? But I'm not going to ask you that question; I'm just going to acknowledge the courage you have in being the chair, and I think it's great that you're there.
My question is to Mr Flynn, to be a little fair to Ms Eng, because Chris Stockwell asked a number of questions that were difficult. He pointed out that she has no support from a number of police people. He didn't say why, but simply said that you have no support and that people say you should resign, and asked why that is. I thought it would be a little more fair if Mr Flynn answered that question. Why do you think some people in the police force might hold some views about Ms Eng in terms of the role she's playing as a chair?
Mr Flynn: I think you find that very evident in every walk of life, especially in unions. As almost any political legislature would be set up, there's the centre and there's the right and there's the left. Always, it seems -- and you'll forgive me for this, because you happen to be on my left -- that the left always seems to be more strident in its search for the truth.
Mr Marchese: The stridency is over there.
Mr Flynn: No, no, strident in their search for the truth. That's why I asked to be excused before I made such a statement. I'm not talking about him. I had to deal with him for a number of years, and it didn't make me a happy gentleman all the time.
Anyway, it happens -- and I believe this honestly -- that there's a group of police officers who would like to see a change in their conditions as far as leadership at the top is concerned and so on and so forth. That isn't to say that the man who's there isn't doing a good job on behalf of most of the police officers who are members of the association; they all have to be.
But as in any union, there's always a rump group that wants to unsettle the leadership, and it does that very well. At certain meetings, they'll be the people who turn out -- they'll be the people to get the vote turned out, in actual fact -- regardless of what the president of the association says.
It's quite true that there was a statement in the newspaper that somebody, through Mr Lymer, asked for the resignation of the chair of the police services board. We dealt with that as a board and we said no. Even if she had an intimation that she might like to do that because she was being put upon, as you saw today, in that way which I don't think is fair, in fact the board believes that over the two years, Ms Eng has grown from the person who was in opposition, previously, in her seat on the board, to a person who's now trying to guide the board in a direction which accepts the changes that are being made in society.
That's the situation out there. There will be people who criticize her, but there's nobody in the police force that I've ever heard of who criticizes her for the example she gave us in bringing forth the budget last year. It was a very trying and tiring thing for her and and for the staff of the police force, both civilian and uniformed, but every one of them had praise for her in bringing forth that budget, and so do I.
Mr Marchese: I have another question. You both alluded to a new era of policing in Ontario. I draw analogies with teaching and teachers -- that's my background -- that a number of teachers have also complained that their role is changing as educators, that they now have to be psychologists, psychotherapists, they have to be police officers and educators and so much else: mothers and fathers and so on. My answer to that has been that society's changing and therefore teachers have to change with that. They cannot any longer be a teacher who is simply taught to read and write.
The same example holds true of policing. Demographics are changing, new immigration patterns are happening. New pressures are brought to us as a society in terms of organizations and how we deal with those new pressures. That is why I think you made allusions to a new era in policing. It must be difficult for police people to deal with this change. How are we coping with that? Both of you might deal with that.
Mr Flynn: I see it differently from you in some sense. Yes, there's a big change coming in because there's been a big influx of immigrants. But I'm an immigrant: I came to this country and I lived at Bathurst and Queen and I moved out to College and Dufferin, and at College and Dufferin we had the psychologist on the police force. He was the guy who rode the bicycle up and down, he was the guy who was first in, in everything we did; it didn't matter what it was. He was the beat cop. We're getting back to that community police officer.
But we were a society at that time composed of all the same elements you see around us today. There were blacks on the streets, there were Jews on the street, Catholics, non-Catholics, there were Italians on the street. Everybody was there. There was no difference, just numbers. That's all it was. Orientals, whatever you want to ask for, they were all on the street on which I lived. They lived there, and the community police officer -- which we didn't call him; we just called him the beat cop -- had the bicycle and seemed to be everywhere we were; therefore, we were a relatively obedient group of people.
Society is moving faster. It's changing much more dramatically. It's better educated than the society I lived in as a child and it's more interested in what's going on. It wants a voice in what's going on. It wants an intrusion into government, the police, social services, hospitals and everything you have. It wants to be there.
The Vice-Chair: Mr Rizzo.
Mr Marchese: Mr Chair, I have another question. I wanted an answer from Ms Eng as well on this, but I want to ask the other question on keeping statistical information by ethnic groups.
I've always been concerned about the use of statistics. It's not so much keeping statistics as how people use them. That is my concern. You may have answered this before, but I wasn't here. I would like to hear from you, and if Mr Flynn has an answer to that, I'd appreciate an answer.
Ms Eng: I think the important thing to look at is that a group of experts was called together about this time last year to look at whether, as criminologists, as people in the criminal justice system, they could have some usefulness for crime statistics based on the race of the perpetrator.
They sat together in the room for two days, and at the end of the two days they issued a report to the federal Solicitor General and said: "We can collect whatever statistics you would like us to do, but first you have to tell us what you're going to use them for, because we don't know where to get the information unless you tell us the purpose of your inquiry. We will collect statistics in a certain way if you're going to use them for one purpose and in a different way if you're going to use them for a different purpose."
The only people I hear screaming for statistics are those who, I've said again and again, are seeking to rise up on their hind legs and point to this group or that group as being the cause of all our social ills. That's the danger of having statistics of that nature.
There is some usefulness to those statistics which has been raised in other forums; that is, give us statistics to show how there has been discrimination in the criminal justice system. This was done in the native justice inquiry in Manitoba. They showed unequivocally, using different kinds of data than are being spoken of at the police board, that native Canadians suffered in the criminal justice system on account of being native, because of a number of things: not just direct racism, but also their position in society, their level of poverty, their socialization, the lack of understanding of what the guilty plea means. All of that all added up to an overrepresentation in the jail population.
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In the recently announced review of the criminal justice system they're seeking to look for the same thing. In England, they've done those statistics and they've done that research and they've found, without a doubt, that blacks were treated more badly by the criminal justice system than whites.
If you want those answers, if you want that research done, the statistics are available to you. But if you're going to suggest that one race of people is more likely to commit a crime and therefore, after you have that answer -- supposing you get that answer -- what will you as legislators do with that information? Are you going to exclude those people? Are you going to put bands around their heads? Are you going to send them out of the country? Or, as one person said, should we screen those refugees more carefully? What are we going to do when we get that kind of information, if it were available?
That's where we have to be careful when we talk about statistics. They can do a lot of good but they can do lots of harm, and so far I haven't heard anybody running around saying, "I'd like to use these statistics for good."
The Vice-Chair: We'll let Mr Rizzo have one question.
Mr Tony Rizzo (Oakwood): It seems to me that when anyone talks about any police force there is a tendency to emphasize everything that's positive and gloss over the undeniable problems that still exist. Once in a while it makes the front pages in our printed press. My question to you is, what are the real problems with our police force and what can be done about them?
Ms Eng: First and foremost, we have to realize that there have been a lot of inquiries and reports and allegations, some of which have come to light, some of which have been admitted. And before I answer that question I want to focus on the fact that the vast majority of police officers carry out their duties in an exemplary way and not very much gets said about their work on a day-to-day basis, because when problems come to light we start zeroing in on the causes and the cures, so of necessity we're focusing on the negative.
We should recognize that when we focus on looking for solutions we're not meaning to cast a shadow over all the vast majority of officers who do their job with the utmost professionalism. They deserve a nobler image than they have gotten in recent times. It's not enough to simply say, "Well, they are perfect," because that's not selling. What you have to have is an organization that recognizes that there are problems: "We recognize them, we admit them and we will clean them up." Once you've done that the book is closed and you don't have to worry about it any more; it's absolution.
Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): I don't normally sit on this committee, but I heard both of you were hear. I know the tremendous contribution both of you have made to policing in this province, and I want to commend you for the standards you are taking and the kind of work both Mr Flynn and yourself are taking. It's a very difficult role.
I just want to maybe ask you two questions. You mentioned that statistics and information are so important to your job, and what we do with them. When this government came in, it immediately set up a task force under Stephen Lewis to look at things that had been said over and over again are happening in this society, and he brought his report out. I wasn't excited about it because I knew exactly what was going to come out of that.
Then we set up another one, and Clare Lewis continued to do the things he had said before. That came out about five weeks late. The government was so anxious to get its hands on it, because it wanted to proceed. It has been out. Do you feel, with the report of the Clare Lewis task force, that the government has been -- I don't want to say upfront -- unable to act on it? It's been out, but there's been no response. There are many things in there about training that should be proceeded with. Do you feel you get that cooperation from the government, to act upon reports that come out so you can do your job effectively?
Ms Eng: I think that the last month or two, a lot of governmental, ministry and political energy has been spent on something that could have been better spent in looking at the longer-term problems you're talking about. I have some problems with the multiplicity of reports as well. The philosophical way of looking at it is that the reports will keep coming until we solve the problems, so my focus for our board has been to start going after the workable solution.
In the area of race relations, rather than tacking on another task force or having another training session and so on, we've given the responsibility over to one of our senior deputies, a person who's the deputy of field, the central function in the organization, to say: "This is a day-to-day issue. It's not something for community programs. It's something for the core policing activities." He has that responsibility and I'm confident that he'll start making some real inroads into fundamentally changing the kinds of issues we're dealing with.
I think one of the things that's important about institutions like ours, and any institution, is that standing outside the walls of the institution and shouting at it will not make any change. What changes things is a cohesive process internally. We have the focus of the senior command now on that issue of focusing on the solutions. We've looked at the Younger-Whitehead directive and looked at the issues that were raised in that inquiry. We've looked at the race relations audit and the issues that were raised there.
In each case, the response has been to make sure it's a central focus at the senior command. That's the route to solutions over the longer term, not more task force reports.
Mr Curling: The second question I have is, do you think the government has given enough resources to the special investigations unit to do its job?
Ms Eng: I think they need more resources; even police officers say the same. Our senior command has indicated, the complaints of misalignment notwithstanding, that the special investigations unit can be one of the most important safeguards for police officers, who recognize that the public now demands independent organizations that will do investigations of serious injuries at the hands of police.
What that does is also create an independence that the police officers can point to and say, "Look, there's a unit that's done a valid investigation and has found us not to be culpable in the circumstances," and that has occurred as often as charges have been laid and that's an important record.
Now, whether or not they have the resources to do that, the answer is no. They haven't got enough to have the adequate forensic investigation team that they've asked for and that our senior officers have recommended.
Mr Curling: The police insist that all the members should be really sitting with investigative ability from the police force; maybe retired police officers should sit on the SIU. Do you agree with that? May I just add to that? There are people who are trained to investigate. There are people within the insurance industry and the private sector who can do just as good a job of investigating. Do you advocate that only police officers or retired police officers should be SIU members?
Ms Eng: Certainly, police officers and retired police officers have the best experience and capabilities to do the work, but that goes against the desire for independence from any police organization, and you have to recognize that police officers were civilians once before they got trained, so there has to be a proper mix. You have to assess the investigative capabilities objectively, rather than determining on account of what their profession was before they became investigators on the SIU.
Mr Curling: One last question: The public complain that there are concerns about that, that it's not working as effectively as it should. Do you have any concerns about that, that it is not working the way it should? I have had complaints to my office that people are not quite happy with how it is proceeding.
Ms Eng: It's been in place for 10 years. It's worked out a lot of problems over the years, including acceptability by both the public and police, and it is now being introduced across Ontario.
It has become a very important opportunity for people to make their complaints, have their complaints rationally dealt with, and then ultimately acted upon if there are some problems in trends. I think that in many ways it's gaining acceptability. No one will ever be perfectly happy with the system that's put in place, but it's a very important mechanism for independent investigation.
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Mr Curling: A last, quick question: There's a training recommendation set forth by Clare Lewis in his report. Do you agree with that? Part of it is saying: "I thought that the community colleges would be much more involved. It seems to me that the police want to have more control of their training and not as much involvement with the community colleges and all that." Do you agree with the concept? Maybe you've not had an opportunity to delve into it yet with them.
Ms Eng: I agree with the recommendation that has become quite current in many circles that police training should be much more integrated with the ordinary education system. There are certainly some types of training, investigations and intelligence work, that require segregated training, obviously, but aside from that, the social service aspects, the management aspects, the problem-solving, all of those issues, those kinds of skills can be easily developed as part of the broader community, and on balance it's also better, because they can remain in contact with the community that they will ultimately serve.
Mr Runciman: I wasn't going to raise this issue, but given Ms Eng's approach in terms of her response about crime statistics based on race, and she seemed to climb aboard a high horse there in a rather condemnatory response, I thought, which is pretty all-encompassing, people have expressed an interest in the beneficial use of these sorts of statistics, including Metro council, including the FBI, including NAACP in the United States.
I just wanted to know if perhaps you approach this question and approach a lot of these issues with total objectivity. Perhaps you have your own biases and perhaps even a chip on your shoulder in respect to these sorts of questions. I'm not trying to be nasty; I'm going to raise an issue here --
Mr Flynn: I'd like to qualify something for you, if I may. Metro council has not adopted what you think it has adopted. It's the city of Toronto council which did it. We have never discussed it in Metro. Although we have discussed it at the commission and have adopted some time ago a decision which Ms Eng is speaking to at this particular time, we have not brought that matter before us again.
Mr Runciman: Okay, fine. I appreciate that clarification; thanks very much.
Mr Flynn: It's pretty important.
Mr Runciman: Yes, it is. I think it's still important that the city of Toronto council feels that these are helpful and has expressed that view. Even though you haven't had the opportunity to debate it, you've certainly expressed your own personal view on it here today. I guess I raise the question about your having a particular bias in this area because of comments that were raised in a couple of columns by Christie Blatchford in the Toronto Sun which you will recall, and I'm sure perhaps you do not want raised, related to a gentlemen by the name of Dwight Anderson whom you interviewed.
He contends that you made some rather derogatory remarks about WASPs, suggestions that WASPs can take "cheap shots" because they're "running the institutions" and a number of other comments that Mr Anderson made, which I gather through Blatchford's column you declined to respond to specifically as to whether you did make those kinds of comments. I guess I'm going to give you the opportunity, rather than get into a lengthy dissertation, to indicate if you did make those comments, and how you explain them.
Ms Eng: That is such old news, and it was even longer ago that I ever met Mr Anderson. Frankly, as I said at the time, I don't recall whether I said that or not, and it was a private conversation and that was that. But I think that if you want to raise the issue of race crime statistics, perhaps you can tell me what you would use them for. That's what I'm trying to get the answers to. I've not gotten that from anybody.
Mr Runciman: I think you should perhaps talk to the FBI. I think you should talk to the NAACP.
Ms Eng: The FBI? I can think what they use it for.
Mr Runciman: They believe they're used for useful purposes, and my point again was that -- you don't want to draw a line between the two, but I see a very clear and distinct line here in terms of the police concerns, rank-and-file police, about misuse of compilation of statistics.
You were trying to address those with your four-step process -- you mentioned that -- so I think that to be supportive in a broad sense, and certainly the government is in initiating these, and to take an opposite position when it comes to other matters in terms of compilation of crime stats based on race which may indeed have some beneficial aspects to it -- I'm certain you can take a look at the negatives and preclude those, as you say you're attempting to do with the police concerns. That's my view. You've simply got blinkers on on this one, but you don't have when it comes to the other matters.
Ms Eng: I think I'm getting the line that you're trying to draw, but I think it also supports the point that we're trying to make, and that is that when we note that in some areas of the city there are heightened numbers of gun calls, or there seems to be a real need for officers to draw their weapons, we have to look at that to see if that area is one that needs resources and needs a different approach, perhaps a backup, perhaps additional personnel and different deployment and so on. That's the positive purpose to which we would use those statistics.
There isn't a negative to that, that I can see. In the area of race crime statistics, the ones that you've raised dealing with the race of the perpetrator, I haven't found anybody who can give me a good reason for policing purposes to have those statistics and how they would use them. None of our senior command officers have come up and told us what it is they would use such statistics for if they had them. I'd like to hear it from you, since you seem to know as well.
Mr Runciman: I don't profess to be an expert in this area --
Ms Eng: I'm still asking.
Mr Runciman: -- but we're going to be calling people before us who will have a view, and that's part of this process.
Ms Eng: Fine; good. I'm glad to see it.
Mr Runciman: We want to hear all the opinions. I'm just saying that there's another opinion out there, supported by some pretty strong agencies, and you seem to have, as I said, blinkers on. You've taken a position of great offence in terms of anyone who supports this, indeed, as I said, drawing into that tent people like the council and city of Toronto. I have some concern, especially if you made comments like that gentleman suggested you made or indicated you made in the Blatchford column.
Mr Stockwell talked about some of the perceptions of you with the public. I'm not going to get into that, but some of the things that you said initially -- you may say this is old news; it's only last year. This was a comment by June Rowlands and some quotes from June Rowlands about some of the things you said upon accepting your role as chair, that the force has "to know that someone who has the mandate to set the policy agenda actually will enforce it by insisting and directing the chief will do x and y." This was as you were going into the job. You said the board is about to emerge from a period of irrelevance and has been a captive of the force.
Perhaps Mr Flynn addressed those kinds of comments in saying that you have matured in the last year. I'm not sure; he may want to expand on that. But I think some could say that you perhaps had an attitude problem when you assumed that job, and I'm just wondering if your views have changed much over the course of a year's experience in the chair, versus the approach and the comments and the attitude that you came into that job with.
Ms Eng: I remember those comments. While they might have been stated in a more pleasing way, I still stand by the sentiments.
I think you have to recognize that the role of the board is and always should have been that of civilian governance of the police. What that means is that we do our best to make sure that we set our policies cooperatively to get all the necessary input and so on, but at the end of the day, the board has to take a position and take a stand. If we're at loggerheads, we're going to have to resolve that somehow, but ultimately that's the authority. That's why you have a civilian authority. I stand by those comments and the sentiments behind them. I hope to be able to express them better in the future.
The Vice-Chair: In order to equal the time out, the government party has eight minutes, and that will be equal time for all.
Ms Carter: One thing we haven't talked about is the effects of the job action that just took place. Obviously, you've just been through a period of tremendous stress, and it's still not entirely plain sailing. What do you feel will be the long-term effects of what has just happened as regards internal relations, relations between the chief and the police association, between the police and the public and so on?
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Ms Eng: I think that's an excellent question. We should never go through turmoil like this and not learn something from it. It was not a pleasant situation for anybody involved. No one won out of this process, but I think that once the dust settles, and it's starting to settle now, we'll see that there have been some important lessons for all of us. One of the most important, ultimately reinforced by the courts several times, is to say: "Look, people have legitimate avenues for voicing their political concerns. Use them with our blessing." But the spectre of a police force disobeying its police chief, whom they well regard and they have a great affection for, as the court was quick to add, is something that affects the public interest and drives a real stake in the heart of a democracy. It's something that we must be very careful about.
It's an important message. It was a legal precedent to have court injunctions in a police job action. I think that, regardless of what the general populace thinks about the regulation, about their government, about overregulation, about handcuffing police and so on and so on, at the end of the day they are still much more concerned with the visceral effects of a major police force disobeying its chief.
Ms Carter: Do you think there's been any damage to public trust of the police in the long term?
Ms Eng: It can't help.
Ms Carter: What about the financial side of it? Was that significant as far as Metro Toronto is concerned?
Ms Eng: There is an impact on Metro coffers from the lack of tickets and also on provincial coffers from the provincial offences tickets. The dollar amounts are hard to judge, because you don't have a necessary average. But there's definitely an impact.
Ms Carter: Yes. You can't name a figure to it.
Ms Eng: It would be in the hundreds of thousands.
Ms Carter: Just while I have the floor, I'd just like to say, I'm looking at a list of the expenditures of the police services board itself, and if all budgets had moved in the same kind of way in the last few years as those have, we'd be looking at an excellent situation. I notice that your budget for 1992 is below your budget for 1989 by $20,000, and that certainly looks like an excellent record. I congratulate you on that.
Mr Marchese: Ms Eng, you made reference to your feelings regarding the multiplicity of reports and task forces and training sessions. You said the way to deal with it is to get people in the field to actually do the delivery of the work that usually task forces identify. So you assign that task to the deputy in the field -- deputy, superintendent, I don't remember who that task was assigned to.
Ms Eng: It would be Deputy Clark.
Mr Marchese: Okay. What does that person do, however? What do we say to that person in terms of what his or her task is? What kind of training does that person go through and by whom?
Surely, we can't simply say: "Well, here are the task forces. This is what they've said. You know what it's all about." But how do we help that individual to make sure that he or she is equipped with all of the resources that one needs to be able to deal with very, very difficult and sensitive issues?
Ms Eng: In actual fact, the kind of training and sensitivity that has gone on throughout the force has been quite large. There's quite a lot of work that has been done, and the trainers are very much on top of things. Certainly, the senior officers that we selected as deputies have that kind of sophistication and sensitivity. We're very confident that they will pull in the resources and additional expertise that they need to get the job done.
What really needs to happen in a force our size is to coordinate all of those activities, build on the work that has been done. There has been a lot of good work that has been done. What needs to be done now is to organize it, bring it into core policing activities. That's the big switch. That's what's going to be done, and that's his primary responsibility as a senior officer on the force.
Mr Marchese: Part of the difficulty that someone like me would have, having been a trustee with the Toronto Board of Education for eight years and having lived through a great deal of concerns around race-related issues and how they should be dealt with -- a number of people were concerned about the fact that principals, superintendents, even trustees were not adequately trained to understand issues of race and racist stuff.
People were saying, "You need to get people inside from the outside to give you a lot of the information that is needed in order for you to be able to do this job," and so that is a concern that we think we address by having a race relations office with people who had the experience in the field to be able to pass on these resources.
Ms Eng: There's no question that that expertise is needed, because when you're talking about basic human nature and reactions, you need some sophistication to understand it or even to recognize it in yourself and so necessarily you have to bring in experts, but I think that there is a real opportunity here for the officers to be given the opportunity address the issue.
Even for example, as I mentioned earlier, the hate crimes area, it would seem to us that we sit around here and we would be able to figure out what is a hate crime and what isn't. Sometimes it's not so obvious and it takes some sophistication. If we take the lead in addressing those issues, I think that it starts to set some values as much as any kind of training can do.
The Vice-Chair: Any further questions?
Mr Stockwell: I have one --
The Vice-Chair: No, you're finished.
Mr Rizzo: I have one.
The Vice-Chair: Mr Rizzo.
Mr Stockwell: I just want to know how much extra it'll cost --
Mr Rizzo: Contrary to what was suggested before, I don't expect the police officers to support any board chairman or member, but I do expect them to enforce our laws and regulations as approved by the representatives who are democratically elected. In view of what happened lately, do you think that maybe some police organization leaders are a little confused, at least, about who is accountable to whom, or, as was suggested by some, we witnessed an exploitation of police officers for political aspirations?
Ms Eng: I have to reflect only from the standpoint of what it did in our force. Regardless of anything that went on in the past, what you had was the direct order of a police chief. He did more than just simply reissue it; he used the internal communications process to actually appeal personally to the officers: "Look. I understand your concerns, but obey this order and we'll deal with it."
The union, the association, made a point of telling its officers not to obey the direct order of its police chief and at the same time mouthing their support for him. It made his job impossible. That kind of behaviour and that kind of encouragement was a real problem. There were many officers on the force who wanted to keep their hats on, who wanted to keep their badge numbers on. They were harassed by union monitors to ask them to put on the baseball caps. That kind of peer pressure was unbearable for some officers who wanted to take time off in order to avoid this situation, except that the situation went on for so long.
There is a lot of disruption of the internal processes, and I think this job action had a lot of harm in terms of that kind of internal discipline.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you. That completes the questioning, but I would like a clarification on an issue that was raised earlier on.
Mr Flynn, you had indicated that, as council, you go through the police budget line by line because you raise 80%. The board of education also you raise the money for as council. Do you go through their budget?
Mr Flynn: No, we're not entitled to do that by the law of this province. We must simply accept that bill and collect the funds.
But, Mr Chairman, I have a question of you, and the question arises out of the summons. While in fact I'm not about to challenge the committee's, not qualifications but rather its jurisdiction and the ability to call anyone in front of it, your standing committee is called the standing committee on government agencies --
The Vice-Chair: Agencies, boards and commissions.
Mr Flynn: -- and that became a real surprise to us to determine among ourselves that we should send anybody here, because we don't consider ourselves one of your agencies. Interjection: You're a board.
Mr Flynn: We are a board --
The Vice-Chair: Agencies, boards and commissions.
Mr Flynn: We are a board that raises its life from the act and in fact we are not an agency appointed by the government of Ontario specifically. I say "specifically."
Mr Grandmaître: We appoint your members, your provincial members. This committee appoints your members.
Mr Stockwell: You're a creature of the province, Dennis.
Mr Flynn: I'm just asking.
Mr Runciman: This is a fair question. I just wanted to point out to Mr Flynn, Ms Eng and other members of the board that I think there was something like $48 million last year of provincial dollars that went into the operations of the Metro force, and again, as the other members point out, the majority of members are provincial appointees, order-in-council appointees. So we think we have an oversight responsibility and we will in the future be talking to others as part of this process and making a report which will deal with our views on the operations of the board and any recommendations we may have in respect to that.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you, Mr Runciman. I hope that clears up any concerns that you had.
Mr Flynn: I'm certainly happy that he brought up the amount of money provided by the government as against the taxpayers.
The Vice-Chair: I want to thank you, Ms Eng and Mr Flynn, for appearing before the committee this morning. Thank you very much.
SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT
The Vice-Chair: Committee, we have one more item of business to do and that is, the subcommittee met on Wednesday, November 25. There's a subcommittee report and we'd like a motion to adopt that report. If there are any concerns --
Mr Grandmaître: Moved.
The Vice-Chair: Carried? Carried. The committee is adjourned till next Wednesday. Next week we're dealing with Mr Strong for two hours.
The committee adjourned at 1201.