Justice Committee on Feb. 1st, 2007

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

You're going to look for the information that could...

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Ms. Freeman.

Quickly, Chief Graham.

[Chief Jamie Graham]

Mr. Chairman, if I found out that members of my organization weren't sharing appropriate information with other agencies, heads would roll. People would be out of a job. So it's just not an issue where we are.

The RCMP have taken over a program that was started in B.C., where a street cop can be in his car with a computer and run a name, query a name, birthdate, and address, and through what's called LEIP, the Law Enforcement Information Portal, it will check databases from records management at a wide variety of Ontario police agencies. So that is records management. On an officer's screen, it will say, you know, he was the subject of inquiries or of a case in Ontario, or Quebec, or whatever it is.

The information flow and exchange is hampered only by the information technology, which we're moving ahead, and as you know, that can be very costly.

But I just want to emphasize that there's no reluctance on sharing information at all, and the RCMP has been very open. On national security levels, we are even at a stage of final agreement with some further information sharing. So it's very productive.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Mr. Breitkreuz.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Thank you very much.

I really appreciate you coming before the committee today. I think this has been very helpful.

I just want to emphasize a few things. I have three major questions here.

Mr. Graham, you talked about non-returnable warrants. I'd like you to emphasize that a little more. I was not aware of this. It seems absurd that that can happen here in Canada, and it seems like it's something that could be easily fixed. Would you mind commenting on that?

[Chief Jamie Graham]

Sure. There are provincial and federal ministers, I know, who are looking at the issue. It's a jurisdictional, territorial issue.

A warrant is a warrant anywhere in Canada. So if you're wanted on a criminal matter, in theory you can be arrested.

Say you commit a crime in Vancouver and you're hiding out in Ottawa and they find you here. I send officers to Ottawa and you are detained. They take a copy of the original warrant, it's backed by a justice, and you're on the plane and you are escorted back.

The reluctance is on the part of many governments to pay for the escort costs. That's all it is. So if you're wanted on causing a disturbance—not you, but if there was a bar fight or something and there were warrants issued for you, would it be cost-prohibitive for us to return you to Vancouver to appear on that? Well, as soon as we say that, the whole administration of justice is called into disrepute, because you're never held accountable. So we've proposed “con air”; we've proposed going by train. At the RCMP, we even looked at regular scheduled runs of aircraft across Canada. Then we thought, with the video hookup programs, there has to be a way that, if you're arrested in Winnipeg, you don't get a choice; you appear in court on video and witnesses can come before you. It's really hard to get traction for this issue.

I have reports I could share with you. We did research the first three months of 2005. Then, in March 2006, I think there were four large urban police departments and we did research to see just the volume and how bad the problem is. It's absolutely staggering.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

We've got to fix that. Let that be on the record.

You've also made the comment, several of you, that the biggest deterrent to crime is the fear of getting caught, but then you said somebody gets a sentence for five years and is out in eight months. There's a real disconnect here. Do we have a problem with our courts? How do we fix this?

[Chief Jamie Graham]

These are statutory issues dealing with parole and mandatory releases. You can--

[Garry Breitkreuz, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Is that legislative? Mandatory minimums but--

[Chief Jamie Graham]

There's very little you can do, and you'll get a mixed view from police officers about this. I know many inmates, and a lot of these fellows go to jail, and they're going to try to turn themselves around. If you remove any hope at all of perhaps some good time when you're in jail, it's a problem. But I'll tell you it's staggering to see someone with a five-year sentence be out in six to eight months. That's a little unusual. It happens.

[D/Commr Pierre-Yves Bourduas]

May I add to this? It's the new legislation. However, what you have to bear in mind is if you're involved in criminal activities and you're proven guilty under 467.11, 12, or 13, then you have to serve half your term, which is a deterrent. At one point it's also being used by the criminal elements and some prosecutors as a negotiating tool to secure a guilty plea on a lesser charge, and that's something to bear in mind.

[Chief Jamie Graham]

The bail provisions need strengthening. In Canada there are only two grounds to detain an offender, and that's if you are a danger to the public--and that's a very high bar, and you have to prove that danger--or if you have a record for failing to appear. Many jurisdictions don't pursue failing-to-appear charges. If you don't appear in court either on an appearance notice or for fingerprinting, they just let it go. It's not pursued separately. It's just capacity.

[Sgt Larry Butler]

I think the chief covered it all. In the case of the person who was out after eight months of a 55-month sentence, we provided a ton of documents and federal corrections system supported it all and recommended the same thing, no bail, and then it came under the control of the National Parole Board, which did a 180 on what we recommended. They didn't believe what we had provided, and everyone--

[Garry Breitkreuz, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

That has to be fixed.

Last question. We're politicians and we deal a lot with the big picture. You introduced this by saying that organized crime affects all Canadians. How do we explain that, that we have to fix some of these problems? We have to convince most Canadians. How does it affect them? How can you make that blanket statement that it affects all Canadians?

[D/Commr Pierre-Yves Bourduas]

It does, and we're talking both from experience and also from looking at its impact on our society. And we've seen symptoms over the last 20 years. If you recall, we're talking about organized crime and prime examples, because I've lived through it in the province of Quebec, innocent people, an 11-year-old kid dying in the streets of Montreal, culminated in this ongoing war. And that has affected Quebec society and then Canadians as a whole. We've reacted with pieces of legislation.

You look at the evolution of society and do the parallel with organized crime. If you look at major conglomerates doing mergers and associations and using the world as their staging ground, organized crime is doing exactly the same things.

The reason we're here--and we're pleased you're taking the time to hear our concerns--is we simply want to reinforce the legislative tools. But also keep in mind what Professor Gordon has indicated. There's the education piece, the awareness piece, and the public has to be sensitized, but most of the public are reactive and they're saying it doesn't concern my immediate family, therefore it's not a problem. We have to educate the public and we also even have to educate our own police officers who are working the streets.

[Prof. Robert Gordon]

Canadians are the consumers of the goods and services provided by organized crime. A lot of people don't make the connection between the joint they buy or the drugs they buy or the other illegal services they acquire and the supplier. There simply is a disconnect. No one has so far been terribly successful in persuading the population they should think about that.

On the issue of the non-returnable warrants, the consequences issue, this is possibly one of the reasons why crime rates are higher in British Columbia than in other parts of Canada, why there was this drift westward and certainly probably why crime rates are higher in B.C. than they are in Ontario. It's because their population of offenders tends to drift to the west, knowing they're not going to be returned to Ontario.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Mr. Gordon.

I know there's a desire to respond further to Mr. Breitkreuz's question, but I do have two other people, and our time is running short.

Mr. Lee, would you like to pose your question, please?

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

I always wondered where all these bad guys go once they get to Vancouver. Is it Hawaii or Hong Kong...?

Anyway, in fairness to all the parties, I also note that there seems to be lack of precision or some confusion among these different terms of release. You've got bail release, conditional sentence, probation, conditional release, statutory release, and you've got other terms as well. It's not helpful to the conversation to have all of these terms mixed and misapplied.

In any event, I want to address a macro issue.

Our American friends realized over 40 years ago that organized crime was such. It crossed state boundaries. There was a federal interest in it and a federal constitutional jurisdiction to take steps to criminalize organized crime and the associated activity.

In Canada, I think we're still siloed. I know that police forces at all levels share information, share all manner of police intelligence, and that's been reasonably well done for 20 or 30 years. Vancouver actually appeared to lead the way back in the 1960s or 1970s with what I think was called a coordinated law enforcement unit, CLEU. I don't think that still exists, but--

[Chief Jamie Graham]

It does; it's just that we've renamed it three times.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

That's great--but what if organized crime crosses provincial boundaries, which it does? I direct the question to the RCMP.

To help our friends in the municipal police forces who find themselves prosecuting organized crime, which reaches right across the country and across the continent and around the world, is there not an argument that there should be some more robust structural federal inputs, investments, including the kind of money that's needed to tackle organized crime?

There is no federal jurisdictional thumbprint on this. If there's an organized crime prosecution, it happens because a municipal police force or a provincial force undertakes an investigation prosecution.

Is the RCMP even close to recommending that the force itself have access to funds that allow it to go in and partner and fund and macro-investigate and macro-prosecute, even with federal prosecutors, organized crime operations that cross interprovincial boundaries?

[D/Commr Pierre-Yves Bourduas]

The RCMP recognizes the importance of partnerships, and I agree wholeheartedly with your statement that organized crime permeates different areas of our country.

What's important to realize is that we've put together infrastructures with our partners at both the municipal and provincial levels to create these CFSEUs, these combined force special enforcement units, and IROC in Alberta. We've looked at the top layers of criminal organizations and we've targeted them, but there's a price tag to this.

What you have to bear in mind is instances like Projet Colisée. The Rizzuto family syndicate has been operating in Canada since the 1950s and has implications in all parts of the world; when you tackle these types of organizations, there's a price tag, and if I quoted the price for Colisée, it would be in the millions of dollars. It's staggering, but it's a price we all have to pay.

As Inspector Aubin indicated, we have partners sitting around the table and we're all focused in the same direction. What's important is to prioritize at the appropriate level and ensure that we stay focused on these criminal organizations.

The problem, though, is that we need additional funding, and of course the latest report from CISC spoke of 792 criminal organizations operating in our midst, in our country. We just can't tackle all of them, but we have initiatives taking place at the municipal, provincial, and federal levels, and it's by combining all our resources, having a structured format like the Canadian law enforcement strategy to combat organized crime, addressing the gaps, and working with our partners that we'll able to tackle this.

You've talked about the Americans and the model they've adopted and the RICO Act that was enacted. What you have to bear in mind, though, is that our charter is different from the charter south of the border, and that has an impact on the way we proceed. We have to work within the Canadian charter.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

What about the money? You have partners out there who may not have money. Does that impede your ability to put together a packaged cross-provincial boundary investigation? Are we bringing more than manpower to these investigations? Are we also bringing money?

[D/Commr Pierre-Yves Bourduas]

As I indicated earlier, we have received additional funding in relation to our core program within the RCMP, but we would need additional resources, of course. Working hand-in-glove with our partners at the municipal level, we all had to prioritize, knowing full well that we can go only so often to the trough to get additional funding. Therefore we also have to have a certain accountability framework.

As Professor Gordon indicated, we can't just spend money; we have to be accountable for the amount of money that we receive and what we're doing. If you are asking—and I'm sure that Chief Graham would have something to say about money—the fact of the matter is yes, we would need more money, but for the time being we have the money that we have, and we're trying to prioritize and target at the appropriate level.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you very much, sir.

[D/Commr Pierre-Yves Bourduas]

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, but I have another committee to attend at eleven, if you'd allow me.