March 7, 2025
Science and technology developed and funded through the Canadian Safety and Security Program (CSSP) is helping Canada anticipate, prevent, mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural disasters, serious accidents, crime, and terrorism.
The CSSP has prepared a series of project summaries and their impact on the Canadian safety and security landscape which are available in PDF format. Each of these documents gives an overview of the science and technology challenge, the work conducted under the project, and the results.
The following is a list of available content:
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Simulation and virtual reality technologies: Impact on Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) training
Unlike most professions, police officers cannot rely on “on-the-job” training for dangerous aspects of their job such as apprehending armed suspects, responding to active shooters or operating emergency vehicles. RCMP and law enforcement organizations around the world are prioritizing training recruits and ensuring qualifications are maintained. A CSSP project was initiated “to measure the efficacy of skill acquisition and retention in a synthetic environment.”
Reproducing high-stress situations in a training environment can be difficult, expensive, and dangerous. Virtual simulation provides high-stress training in a safe environment by staging mock scenarios such as driving in dangerous conditions or using firearms in low-light situations. This allows trainees to learn the skills needed to respond appropriately when under stress. This training heavily relies upon drill practice wherein members repeat movements and processes to memorize the correct course of action. This can be a problem as many of the drills that are practiced are costly, time consuming, and can be affected by external variables such as weather, time of day, seasons, etc. The challenge faced by most law enforcement organizations is to continue running effective mandatory training sessions that improve on past training without costing more. To that effect, the RCMP and DRDC have experimented with the use of technology to address the training issue.
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Operational explosive community of practice support project
The bomb technician community in Canada must remain vigilant of new materials and techniques used to fabricate improvised explosive devices, in addition to identifying new ways to share information with other first responders to address the evolving challenges concerning explosives threats. The operational explosives community of practice support project brought together more than 20 partners under the leadership of the Canadian Explosives Technician Association to collaborate on solutions that effectively respond to specific gaps in operational readiness such as incident notification, training, and standards. The results of this project helped identify core elements for both development and evaluation of basic programs for explosive technicians. This project demonstrated the benefits of developing partnerships with key stakeholders to provide increased efficiency and cost-effective results.
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Secure data sharing platform
The increased digitization of personally identifiable information (PII) has created the potential for criminal exploitation of that information by making it easier for hackers to steal, access, and misuse this data that often lacks strong security protections. The Government of Canada needs innovative science and technology solutions that reduce the risks to privacy while enhancing the management of personal information. With CSSP funding and sponsored by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Lorica Cyber, an innovative privacy-enhancing artificial intelligence and data analytics company, built a secure data sharing solution called SecureEnvelope based on a technology called Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). FHE was a breakthrough technology that provided security and privacy for enterprise data by allowing users to both search and compute directly on encrypted data while the data remained encrypted. The result of this project was the demonstration of an application that was used as an FHE platform suitable to support the lawful and responsible sharing of Canadians’ PII that could one day be used by government departments and agencies. The application demonstrated that it could enable government employees to encrypt sensitive databases to be queried by their authorized government colleagues while the data remained encrypted.
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Research and development for public safety use of drones and for mitigating drone threats
First responders are increasingly using drones (aka uncrewed aerial systems – UAS, or remotely-piloted aerial systems – RPAS) for a wide range of tasks, such as search and rescue, crime scene management, and traffic collision reconstruction. Concurrently, drones pose inadvertent or malicious public safety threats, for example, delivery of contraband to prisons, flights over crowds, privacy intrusion, or collision with crewed aircraft. There exists an ongoing requirement to invest in research to explore new applications of drone technology for public safety purposes, as well as to develop innovative solutions for mitigating risks associated with drones. This includes monitoring developments in drone capabilities, such as payload capacity, flight range, and autonomy features.
For detailed descriptions of these projects and their impact for Canadians in PDF format, please email CSSinfo@forces.gc.ca.