Public Safety committee  Mr. Chair, I'm here as an accounting officer, as per the new legislation, Bill C-2. Basically, my responsibility is to account before a parliamentary committee for the way I'm implementing the government's decisions. Basically we are faithfully doing it, there's no question about it.

Public Safety committee  Mr. Chair, in the context of labour relations, any civil servant has to implement government decisions and support government positions. In that context—

Public Safety committee  There is no question, as I said, that we will use many facilities across the country for the re-certification process that our employees will have to go through every year. Even for the basic training, it's something we are looking at; I am opening the door to see if it's efficient to use other facilities.

Public Safety committee  Yes. We have reviewed that. It's also one important criterion in the deployment plan. Pretty soon we'll be in a position to indicate exactly where the first armed officer will be deployed. Quite a few criteria need to be looked at, and that will be one of them. Barbara, I don't know if you want to add something.

Public Safety committee  Large numbers of our employees are big centres. We are all familiar, for instance, with the employment and labour shortages in some parts of the country, in the west in particular. A lot of our employees quit for different jobs. Sometimes it's related to the market and the salaries that are offered.

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Chair. Essentially, the arrangement we've come to is the one described by Mr. Bourduas. Mr. Ménard, I apologize, I switched to English without realizing it.

Public Safety committee  That is not to say that in the years to come we will not take advantage of the services and facilities of other police schools in Canada. Our present initiative involves using the expertise of the RCMP to prepare a course specifically for us. Moreover, to complete Mr. Borduas' answer, the situations that will be used, in the context of the three-week course, are situations that are specific to the environment our customs officers face.

Public Safety committee  Mr. Chair, there's no question that when it comes to re-certification, we will not be able to use just two or three facilities. We will be using facilities across the country to allow our officers to be re-certified, and there will be many opportunities similar to the one you describe.

Public Safety committee  That is correct.

Public Safety committee  Precisely. That is what I was alluding to in my opening remarks.

Public Safety committee  Our cost evaluation for this initiative over 10 years, including the infrastructure required, the training, the administration required, and also the re-certification every year of all of our officers, plus the training of all of the new officers—because our turnover is fairly high in CBSA, about 12%—our estimated cost for all of that over 10 years is $781 million.

Public Safety committee  No, it has nothing to do with that. CBSA is changing its classification structure to have its own. It's going to be implemented in the next round of bargaining. There are no classification costs that are related to the arming initiative. The discussion in terms of salary, of course, as in any bargaining round, will occur between the Treasury Board and the union representing our officers.

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning. Since I have already provided the committee with my opening remarks, I guess I'll just say a few words of introduction and allow more time for questions. I am here today to discuss the arming of border services officers. It is a government policy and, clearly, a major initiative for our agency.

Public Safety committee  If I may, Mr. Minister, there is one issue that started a long time ago in my organization, which was the question of the safety of officers, specifically at the land border, and the arming question. I could report—and my colleagues from the union would probably say the same thing—that at the moment, there are better labour relations in our organization because of the decision on arming.

Public Safety committee  There is absolutely no relationship at all. The work stoppage situation was related to employees feeling vulnerable because there was information that somebody dangerous might come in at a border point, and as you say, not being armed, our officers felt vulnerable. We've had situations like that, and we might have more of those situations, because we will not be able to have completely deployed armed operations for many years.