Police-Encounters-With-People-In-Crisis

Reports 40 —as they relate to the mandate of this Review. However, many of the other
reports provided the Review with helpful information and conclusions. 41
(a) The Goudge Report
29. In 2013, Defence Research and Development Canada requested that the Council
of Canadian Academies and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences conduct an
independent, evidence-based assessment of current scientific knowledge regarding the
medical effects of CEWs. The assessment was conducted by a panel of 14 experts,
chaired by the Honourable Stephen T. Goudge, then of the Court of Appeal for
Ontario. 42
30. The Goudge Report noted that CEWs are typically used to facilitate arrests of
uncooperative individuals. The loss of muscle control from a CEW causes the individual
to fall to the ground, permitting the police to take the subdued person into custody.
Although CEWs are intended to be safe and to reduce injury compared with other force
options, the Goudge Report found that they are not necessarily risk free.
31. The Goudge Report concluded that the most common injuries from CEWs, such
as puncture wounds from the projectile probes, are unlikely to pose serious medical
risks. Although the expert panel could not reach any evidence-based conclusions on the
effects of the weapon on a person’s neuroendocrine, respiratory or cardiac systems, it
found that the potential for death from CEW use is extremely small.
32. The Goudge Report found that CEWs are used by law enforcement agencies in all
federal, provincial and territorial jurisdictions in Canada. As of 2013, there were over
9,000 CEWs in use in Canada. At least 33 deaths in Canada have been “proximal” to the
use of a CEW, but the Goudge Report found that, to date, there have been no findings in
Canada of death caused by a police-deployed CEW. However, there have been some
coroners’ reports in Canada that identified excessive exposure to CEWs as the primary
cause of death while a person was in custody. Despite its extensive review of research,
the Report noted the lack of a “synthesized body of evidence documenting the number of
deaths related to all other use-of-force encounters to confirm or compare with this
number.” 43
33. The Report noted that the medical studies completed to date on the health effects
of CEWs involved healthy individuals. Studies involving CEW deployment on more
heterogeneous groups (including members of vulnerable groups such as people in
40
Braidwood Commission on Conducted Energy Weapon Use, Restoring Public Confidence: Restricting the Use of Conducted
Energy Weapons (British Columbia: The Braidwood Commission of Inquiry on Conducted Energy Weapon Use, 2009)
[Restricting Use]; Braidwood Commission on the Death of Robert Dziekanski, Why The Robert Dziekanski Tragedy, (British
Columbia: The Braidwood Commission on the Death of Robert Dziekanski, 2010) [Dziekanski Tragedy].
41
For example, the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security urged the RCMP “to implement preventive methods
designed to diminish the use of Taser guns during police interventions, in particular by enhancing accountability at the RCMP and
improving officer training on intervention involving persons suffering from various problems, including bipolar disorder, autism
and autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia and drug addiction”. See Report of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and
National Security, Study of the Conductive Energy Weapon-Taser®, (39th Parliament, 2nd Session, June 2008).
42
Health Effects, supra note 18.
43
Id. at vii.
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