Justice Committee on March 25th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Monsieur Ménard. You have seven minutes.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you very much. I do not have enough time to express the high regard I have for these presentations. However, I would like to highlight the most interesting ones.

Mr. Shadgett, I really appreciated your presentation. You explained very well the position you occupy, how your organization fits into the system and I am convinced that you have the answers we are looking for. However, you spent very little time giving those answers. I agree with the last of the announced goals of your operation, which is to provide a coordinating mechanism for the police community and the government to work together to address organized crime problems. So you are well positioned to know these answers but you did not provide them.

I will discuss later with my colleagues to determine if it would be worthwhile to invite you to come back at some point to make a presentation on those.

I listened to the presentation of Mr. Davis and found it very credible also. Obviously, you could have provided a great amount of detail, but in view of the limited time available you stuck to the substantive points. But you still allowed us to get a better grasp of organized crime and of its huge diversity.

Among what other witnesses said, I took note of the fact that no longer is Toronto in the clutches of a handful of powerful families that control organized crime but that in fact there is a large number of organizations that are also very powerful in their own area of activity. There are obviously organizations active in many areas.

There is one aspect that others mentioned and that you did not raise, which is the existence of ethnic organizations, Russians, for example. Could you confirm or deny the information we have been given about the existence nowadays of many organizations that are structured based on national origin and therefore language?

[Supt Robert W. Davis]

I guess my comment is that there are very clearly ethnic organized crime groups, but my understanding is that today's organized crime environment is not hampered by ethnic boundaries. It's more about who we need to bring in, in order to achieve our criminal objectives. If it happens to be Russians because they are particularly good at armed robberies, or it happens to be Indians because they are particularly good at counterfeit documents, or Chinese, well that's what happens. It is not unlike what a normal business enterprise would do in terms of outsourcing for specific types of skill sets.

I am going to defer to Rick here, because he runs probably the largest drug unit in the country from the RCMP's perspective, and deals a lot with those types of criminal enterprises.

[Detective Inspector J. Richard Penney, Operations Officer, Greater Toronto Area Drug Section, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

I have 31 years of service in the RCMP, of which about 25 years have been dedicated to drug enforcement, and all within the GTA.

Organized crime has greatly changed over the last number of years. Canada's no longer an end-based user of drugs that come into the country. For the third year in a row, the United Nations has identified Canada as the largest producer of ecstasy. We are the largest producer of methamphetamine to Japan. Eighty-three percent of all of the ecstasy seized in Australia comes from Canada. We had one project, OSPA, which has gone to court here and convictions are registered, in which we shipped from an unknown group of individuals over $110 million worth of ecstasy, methamphetamine, and cocaine from Toronto to Australia.

Criminal enterprise is broken across levels. You don't see any more the traditional organized crime. It's sidelined. We have the Indo-Canadian trucking industry—

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Allow me to interrupt. My time is short and I would like to deal with another issue. Maybe you could provide additional information in writing. As I said, I really believe you are the most reliable source.

There is an issue I want to raise with Mr. Shadgett in the short time that I still have available. Unless I am mistaken, you cooperate with other provinces on the exchange of criminal intelligence.

How does this work with Quebec? I know that Quebec has a criminal intelligence bureau that I created myself when I was there. Do you work with this bureau? How does the communication work going from French to English and English to French?

[Supt Peter Shadgett]

I have a very good working relationship with the director of CISQ. Forgive me, I don't have actually the name of the ministry, but their public security ministry has been in contact with me and they want to come and have CISO demonstrate the differences between CISO and CISQ, and we'll be doing that in the very near future.

In terms of operationally, we share everything. There are no issues at all. The director of CISQ's English is better than my French.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Mr. Comartin for seven minutes.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you for being here.

I want to touch on another point. Mr. Shadgett, you referenced it and we've had some discussion in the committee before about corruption of officials, including politicians, police, prosecutors, I guess corrections officials, border officials.

Can anybody on the panel tell me if we've had one case of a conviction of a judge as a result of taking bribes or in some other fashion being corrupted by organized crime?

[Supt Peter Shadgett]

I'm not aware of one in Ontario, sir, not a judge.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

It is not the judges. It is in...

[Supt Peter Shadgett]

There are numerous cases of police and civil servants.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I want to go to that next. In fact, I was going to take a bit of an issue with that, Mr. Shadgett. I don't know if you prepared this brief that was given out to us, but you only identified corrupt government and the judiciary. I think our judges would be a bit upset with you for isolating them.

[Supt Peter Shadgett]

I was invited the day before yesterday, so I put it together pretty quickly.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I heard you say that.

I am aware of some cases where there's been a suggestion of prosecutors, a couple in particular, and then police officers who may have had involvement with organized crime.

I suppose what I'm trying to get at from you is a sense of how much penetration there has been. We look at Mexico and it's just so widespread, all the way up to the highest levels, from what we're hearing. I guess what I'm trying to do is get some assurances of if there are any, how much it is and whether we should be looking at that particularly.

[Supt Peter Shadgett]

In the police profession, as I'm sure you've heard, there are all kinds of competing resources and issues that come forward.

When CISO started 45 years ago, it was as a result of a royal inquiry into what everybody will understand as and call today “traditional” organized crime, which used very specific methodologies. If violence was used, for example, it would be strategic violence as opposed to impulsive violence.

What's occurring today, in my view, when I look at the greater Toronto area and the prevalence of street gangs—and I'll let my Toronto friend counteract what I say if he wishes to—is that the violence is sometimes strategic and often it's impulsive. Then you have retribution after that, and it follows back and forth.

Our focus in law enforcement is on the street-level violence that is occurring in Canada or other major crimes that are occurring.

I forgot to mention earlier that I am a superintendent with the OPP. In my previous job, I was responsible for the OPP anti-rackets branch and major crime, crimes against the government, and we set up a corruption investigation unit.

There is lots and lots of work to be done, lots of investigations to be done, even just for transparency's sake alone if people make allegations. The problem is maintaining the resources dedicated to those investigations when all the other competing resources are happening in major crime.

In the OPP's context, responding to province-wide requests for assistance in homicides, some very famous ones that have occurred in the last few months in outlying communities in Ontario that are not OPP jurisdiction but the OPP has funded and supported those investigators, those investigators came from the corruption and anti-racket side of the house. A number of them came from there.

So it's a constant juggling act where we deal with the organized crime that we can deal with, when we have the time for it. I don't think we really have as good a look at the potential for corruption that has occurred over time in the government.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Are there any instances of investigations being thwarted or substantially interfered with because of leaks? I know we had some in Quebec, in going after the bikers, but are there any in Ontario?

[Supt Peter Shadgett]

I can't speak to any in Ontario. There are a couple of cases before the courts now, though, that I really can't speak to at all that aren't dealing with leaks but actually with police and other civil servants engaging in corrupt activities outside of their work or utilizing their position to gain access to criminal opportunity.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I'm aware of some of those charges as well, but all the ones that I can think of don't seem to involve an organized crime group. They tend to be more individual criminality on the part of the official or the police officer.

[Supt Peter Shadgett]

Well, there are some like that and there are some that do involve organized crime groups, and we have to let the courts do what they do best in that regard.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

Mr. Norlock, you have seven minutes.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, witnesses, for coming today.

I have a few questions based on some previous witnesses. I won't go into their philosophic views on law enforcement and the legalization of drugs and things like that. I'm of the assumption that, having been a police officer, we share the same view on that. However, feel free to interject and correct me if I'm wrong.

The legalization of marijuana and every single drug on the list, which is what one of the witnesses said, is not on our dinner plate. That said, though, one of the witnesses, Mr. Antonio Nicaso, who has studied organized crime both in Canada and internationally—specifically Italy—was of the opinion that we are not serious about investigating organized crime, because we have so few resources spent on it.

Without going into the numbers of personnel or the exact amount of money, or things like that, I'd just like to have your collective opinion on, first, whether you feel that we are serious enough about organized crime. We never have enough resources—no one in government ever has enough resources—but do you see within your purview an ability to readjust funding so that we are serious about organized crime?

That would be the first question. I'd like just a short response, without the numbers of personnel but at least the percentage of your budget, or a rough estimate, and then I'll go on with a couple of other questions.

Perhaps we can begin with CBSA.

[Bonnie Glancy]

Obviously, one of CBSA's intelligence priorities is organized crime. In conjunction with our police partners, we're doing everything we can to help eliminate it--we'd love to see it eliminated--or to try to dismantle some of the organizations. I feel we're doing a pretty good job with what we have, and we will continue to support each other.

[Insp Bryan Martin]

We're very serious in Ontario. Sitting with my colleagues here, I can give an example, which was the creation in 1998 of the biker enforcement unit. I mention it in my notes. The biker enforcement unit had over 100 members. That has varied from time to time over the years, but it had 100 members from police agencies across the province. It was the model, not only across Canada but around the world, for investigating outlaw motorcycle gangs and organized crime. The successes from the biker enforcement unit speak for themselves. There were some massive projects, including the Hells Angels.

With reference to Mr. Ménard's earlier question about working with our partners in Quebec and sharing intelligence in relation the Hells Angels, we take it very seriously. Yes, we want more. We always want more.

From an Ontario Provincial Police standpoint, we have designated four main centres in the province, a lot of officers, and a lot of funding. Our investigations into organized crime run into the millions of dollars. It's continuing at this time.

[Insp Randy Franks]

From a municipal Toronto police perspective, our core policing functions deal with things other than organized crime. Yes, we do become involved in organized crime investigations through drug investigations, gun and gang investigations, and partnerships with our federal, municipal, and provincial partners; we engage in those organized crime investigations, but our core responsibility to the citizens of Toronto is our core policing function, which is to make sure they feel safe in their communities. It's by partnering with our partner agencies that we're able to reach and participate in those higher-level criminal organization investigations.