Sure, there are a couple of points. Larry covered most of the material I was working on.
As you address the specifics of Bill C-10, I think this was a specific interest that I was asked to bring to this by some of my colleagues. We fully support the minimum and maximum sentence provisions. I think it's three...as it advances. I couldn't tell you how much we support that, as does certainly every police officer who I talk to nationally.
I'm not a lawyer, so I won't try to craft the words that go into legislation, but any time you craft legislation dealing with firearms, we would simply ask you to consider the words “imitation” and “replica” in your dialogue. It means that any time you make an order or there's a prohibition order or a sanction against a firearm, you always have to add the words “imitation or replica” afterwards.
The reason is the huge numbers. We seized, I think, 250 firearms off offenders in Vancouver last year. Ten times that were seized in terms of pellet guns and imitation replica guns. You cannot tell the difference. You've seen it all on TV.
Many times the prohibition orders that are given by the courts will ban an individual for ten years from having firearms or ammunition or explosives, but they leave that replica and imitation.... It's a huge advantage to the police to have that ban in there. We try to seek those at the local level, but to have it enshrined as part of the sanction instead of in a probation order would be very helpful.
The imitation law.... I don't want to harp too much on the imitation replica. In Canada it's an offence to be in possession of an imitation weapon for a purpose dangerous to the public peace. The trouble is that's a very high threshold and it's very hard to prove. So we would like to see almost the reverse onus. If you are in suspicious circumstances and in possession of a replica gun, in the reverse onus you have to explain why you have that gun. This would allow us to deal with the innocent high school kids who have a pellet pistol in their car and mean no harm...to the drug dealers in Vancouver who pull up their shirt to threaten purchasers by flashing an imitation gun.
In Vancouver we lead the country--I'm not proud of this--in armed bank robberies. I think we have three times as many in Vancouver as they do in Toronto, and the majority of them are lone bandits producing an imitation weapon.
In Bill C-10, under clauses 17 to 24, there's a list of offences that are outlined in there, a series of offences. I would simply ask, in addition to the offences that are already articulated, that you consider break and enter and commit.... It sounds like the old break and enter, B and E, of a dwelling house. That's not the case. It's break and enter and commit an indictable offence that would allow us to deal with home invasion. Also conspiracy--anyone charged with conspiracy would fall under the same....
These are just add-on sections that we think would be somewhat helpful to us. I'm sure the lawyers on the committee would help you work that through.
There's a provision in there of transferring gun licences. We would ask that there be a provision in there for an individual to have a thumbprint on a gun licence. It allows an officer on the street to quickly look at an individual's thumbprint and compare it to a licence. You can tell even with the naked eye whether it's the same person. There's an IT solution to how that can be done on these plasticized cards.
I read with interest the Canadian Bar Association...and there were a couple of religious groups, I think, that presented to the committee. Excellent presentations. I disagree with some of the things they said. They had their statistics wrong in a couple of areas. Violent crime in Vancouver is up 6%; it's not down. We are, as I said, the bank robbery capital. We seize hundreds of loaded firearms a year.
I'm very proud that next year will be 40 years in policing for me. I've worked many years with the RCMP, and my colleagues and P.Y. and I are on a couple of committees together at the national level. The support from this committee, at least what I've heard so far, is very positive.
I'll just end this on a more global level. We accept the fact that the best deterrent in the world to offenders is to sow the seed in the mind of the offender that there's a likelihood they'll be caught. That's our biggest deterrent. That's the number-one prevention strategy we have. If two offenders are planning a crime and they know there's a chance they'll get caught, they will not do the crime. They just won't. They'll go elsewhere. The fear of going to jail is not a large deterrent, but I'll tell you, it sure is helpful.
We don't particularly like sending more and more individuals to jail for long sentences, but as Larry pointed out, when they're in jail they do not hurt anyone else for the time they're in jail, and that cannot be overstated.
We have 1,200 officers in Vancouver, and I've got six full-time surveillance teams—full-time. Four of them are strike force teams and two are patrol based. Now, instead of doing global investigations, we track what are called “chronic offender programs”. We identify through various means who the chronic offenders are.
Our definition of a chronic offender is if you commit 12 or more crimes you are arrested for in a year—that's chronic. We have about 80 such offenders now, and we target them; we pick them up one at a time. Once we get to the bottom of the list, we go back to the top and keep getting them. We started off with five indictable offences a year for a chronic offender, and we had 800 such offenders in Vancouver. The pool was too big, so we just moved the goalposts and raised the numbers. That gives you an idea of the level of offenders we deal with and the violence.
Anyway, thank you very much for the opportunity to say a few words. I'd love to be able to answer your questions.
The support is really appreciated.