Public Safety Committee on April 19th, 2007

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

I'd like to understand how the program works. How do you go about determining that a witness is under RCMP jurisdiction and not under the jurisdiction of another police force? I'm not sure what happens in the case of the Service de police de la ville de Montréal or with the SQ.

In Quebec, for instance, do witnesses tend to come more often under the jurisdiction of the SQ, the Montreal police or other police forces in addition to the RCMP? How do you decide whether or not the witness is under the RCMP's jurisdiction?

[A/Commr Raf Souccar]

It depends on the investigation. Any law enforcement body can have jurisdiction. Investigations into organized crime are generally assigned to larger law enforcement agencies, such as the Toronto police force, the Ontario Provincial Police , the Vancouver Police, the Montreal Police, the Sûreté du Québec, and so forth. It all depends on the police force in charge of the investigation, on the human resources working on the investigation and on the individuals scheduled to testify.

If the witness is under the jurisdiction of a police force other than the RCMP, the police force must contact us for assistance in getting a person into the Witness Protection Program. A police force requires our helps because the RCMP manages the Program. Under our program, witnesses obtain a federal identity, a passport, a social security number, and so forth.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Financially speaking, do you pay for the witnesses, or are the costs covered by the police force?

[A/Commr Raf Souccar]

The police force covers the costs. All we do is provide a service.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

You're saying then that all you do is provide the witness with a new federal identity.

[A/Commr Raf Souccar]

We provide them with a new federal identity. That's all.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

I see.

Earlier, you testified that you would like to see a national program in place, a program managed by the RCMP, where provincial police forces would be branch offices of sorts. That is in fact what you said, is it not?

[A/Commr Raf Souccar]

We're not exactly asking for a new program. Our current Witness Protection Program works very well for the RCMP.

We have no difficulty with the program as it works for the RCMP. The difficulty exists with some other police forces—not all. Some have absolutely no difficulty with the way the Witness Protection Program Act operates and with having to go through us to obtain documentation.

The legal opinion we've received is that obtaining documentation—a new identity, federal documents—for a witness is in and of itself admission to the program. If a police force other than the RCMP has an individual who has helped them in a case and they would like to relocate that person and therefore would require new identity for that individual, of course, in addition to a provincial driver's licence and so on, they require a passport, social insurance card, and the federal documents. So they have to come through us. For them to come through us and be given the right documentation, we have to accept them into the program. In order to accept them into the program, we have to look at the case itself and determine whether or not that individual is suitable for the witness protection program under the criteria in section 7.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

I'm sorry, we're going to have to come back to you maybe later.

We have to now go over to the government side. Mr. Brown, you have five minutes, please.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses for coming.

The brief said: “Witnesses entering the Witness Protection Program are deemed to be in the Program for life. They are encouraged to become self-sufficient and to integrate themselves into society as soon as possible.”

What happens when they don't become self-sufficient and don't integrate themselves? Can they be in the program for life?

[A/Commr Raf Souccar]

If they don't integrate themselves into their community, into their society, and if they can't get along in the witness protection program, there is one option; that is leaving the program. They can leave the program either in a voluntary termination or in a termination that I would impose. Of course, they'd have an opportunity to respond to this termination if I'm the one who imposes it.

We help them as much as we can in terms of training for jobs, in terms of psychological counselling, and so on. We have an individual who is available to them 24/7 to allow them to try to integrate themselves into this new life.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Do most people actually leave the program because they've become self-sufficient and integrated into their new community? Is that the usual—?

[A/Commr Raf Souccar]

If they integrate themselves and everything's fine, they remain in the program. They come out of the program if they decide that they miss the place from where they came, miss their friends, and want to go back, and now are going back to the risk area, the threat area. That's a no-go zone.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Okay. Well, I'm going to guess that the overwhelming majority of the people in the program were once informants, which to me suggests a whole range of challenges and issues, quite apart from the whole relocation and their new identities. Can you comment on that?

Could I also ask whether any of our witnesses today have personally been the handler of an informant, or the prosecutor in a case involving an informant?

[A/Commr Raf Souccar]

I'll answer for myself. Yes, I've handled several informants and several agents. As a handler, I've worked with them in an undercover capacity. I have dealt with relocated witnesses.

You're right, they're not individuals of good character. If they were, they would likely not be any good to us. They're individuals who have immersed themselves, over a lifetime sometimes, with a criminal element. That's where they become useful to us, because when we try to infiltrate a criminal organization, sometimes members of that criminal organization will not trust anybody they haven't known since childhood. Telephone intercepts are not always beneficial, because they guard themselves very much on the phone. Surveillance is sometimes not very effective, because they're very surveillance conscious. They don't trust anybody; they only talk to their circle.

Using these people sometimes becomes a necessary evil, and I say “evil” to the extent that we're having to deal with people who have a criminal past.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Maybe some of our other witnesses want to comment on that.

[C/Supt Derek R. Ogden]

In terms of experience, I've worked for about 20 years in British Columbia. I've worked on a number of drug units around the province, in a couple of different major crime sections, and I have used informants extensively.

The information you receive from them is very valuable. When you start to work with an informant, it's sort of a step-by-step process. So you may get a bit of information, you may be able to corroborate that information, and you may get a bit more. You may end up having a seizure. Usually you can weed out the ones who are less reliable than the others.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Okay.

[William Bartlett]

I've never been involved in police duties or prosecutions.

[David Bird]

That goes for me as well.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Okay, so it's not likely that the people going into the program include the local pastor. They probably have some unsavoury characteristics. I guess that has to be recognized.

[C/Supt Derek R. Ogden]

There is one point we should make, so we're clear. Not all of the people who become our agents have a long history of being informants. There may be times when they find themselves in circumstances and come forward to say, now's the right time. Then they come in, especially if they're in criminal organizations where it's usually a fairly stressful lifestyle, because they never know what's going to happen. At some point they reach out and say, this may be my one chance to start a new lifestyle. They'll come in and have a lot of information for us.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

I really find this quite fascinating. I have a lot more questions, but I think I'm out of time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

If you have a brief question, go ahead.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

No, I have a lot more. All right, thank you.