Thank you very much.
My name is Randall Richmond. I have been a lawyer and a prosecutor since 1983, and prosecutor for the Province of Quebec since 1988.
I began pleading organized crime cases in the 1990s and I worked in the Proceeds of Crime Bureau (BLPC) from its inception in 1996. In 2000, when the Quebec Ministry of Justice created the Organized Crime Prosecutions Bureau (BLACO), I was named deputy chief of this office, a position that I still hold today.
In addition to my administrative and supervisory responsibilities, I personally pleaded the cases borne from the shooting for journalist Michel Auger. I also pleaded the trial borne of Operations Springtime 2001 and implicating the Hells Angels Nomad Donald Stockford and his associate, the former Hells Angels national president, Walter Stadnick.
The minutes of proceedings of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights indicate that the committee wishes “to examine the overall effect on gangsterism of Bills C-94 and C-24, adopted in 1997 and 2001”.
As a practitioner specialized in organized crime cases, I can say without any hesitation that the legislative changes brought about by Bills C-95 and C-24 have been extremely helpful and have had a significant impact on our fight against organized crime in Quebec. We have used the tools provided to us by these two bills on a regular basis and continue to do so.
The changes that have been most useful to us can be summarized as follows: wire taps are available more easily and for longer periods of time; infiltration of criminal organizations is easier; pre-trial custody is easier to secure; sentences are longer; and convicts have to serve more time in jail before being released on parole.
Quebec was the first province to apply these new measures and remains the one that has applied them the most. In the Organized Crime Prosecutions Bureau alone, we have charged over 1,000 people since 2001, due in great part to the tools provided by C-95 and C-24 which facilitated the investigations. The acquittal rate in these cases is less than two percent.
Among these people, many were charged with gangsterism, either in its original form as provided by C-95 or in the form modified by C-24.
Since the creation of the Organized Crime Prosecutions Bureau, its prosecutors have secured the convictions of 286 people for criminal organization charges.
Consequently, we have met the following objectives.
First, end the biker gang war that caused 174 deaths and 150 attempted murders.
Second, break up and put an end to the Quebec Nomads chapter of the Hells Angels as well as the puppet club, the Rockers, by securing sentences of 20 years in prison for the Nomads and 15 years for the Rockers, on average.
Third, suppress crime by the Hells Angels across Quebec. Consequently, as of 2005, half of the Hells Angels in Quebec had been neutralized because they were either in jail, on parole, or on the run.
Fourth, break up and put an end to the Bandidos biker club all across Quebec.
Other beneficial effects of our work are worth mentioning: putting an end to biker impunity, putting an end to the climate of fear, and exposing the true nature of the criminal biker gangs. Obviously these results cannot be explained exclusively by the new anti-gang provisions of Bill C-95 and Bill C-24. They must be attributed to the combined effect of the legislative changes with other measures, such as the creation of specialized police task forces, with the participation of different police agencies; lengthy police investigations that targeted whole criminal organizations; the use of civil infiltration agents; the creation of specialized teams of prosecutors, such as the Proceeds of Crime Bureau in 1996 and the Organized Crime Bureau in 2000; the construction of the Grouin Judicial Services Centre; and the renovation of several courtrooms around Quebec, which allowed for the instruction of several mega-trials in different places at the same time.
The results obtained demonstrate that it is possible to prove gangsterism, but one should not conclude that it is easy to do so. On the contrary, it can be arduous. In almost all of the cases where we have charged gangsterism, this came after lengthy investigations of 12 to 24 months, during which wiretapping and physical surveillance were carried out and prosecutors were involved as legal advisers during the investigations.
In addition, in 90% of the cases, the prosecution had at its disposition a special witness, that is, an informant witness or a civil infiltration agent. The special witness facilitates the proof of gangsterism, because he has been a member of that organization and has participated in its activities. He can, therefore, testify to the existence of the organization, its structure, its hierarchy, the identity of its members, and its criminal activities.
A notable exception to this is the recent case of R. v. Aurélius, where 15 people were convicted, including five for charges of gangsterism, without the help of a special witness. In this groundbreaking case, the first to convict a street gang of gangsterism, the prosecution had to rely on evidence from wiretaps, physical surveillance, and about 40 drug purchases made by police undercover officers. It goes without saying that all of these investigative techniques can be expensive.
In conclusion, proving gangsterism with the present legislation is indeed possible, but the necessary resources must be available for investigation and prosecution.
With regard to Bill C-10, it is likely that for most prosecutions of a crime committed with a firearm, proving the use of a restricted or prohibited firearm will be easier than proving a connection with a criminal organization. However, there are cases where long-barrelled guns are used by criminal organizations; for example, see the case of R. v. Rodrigue at the Supreme Court of Canada in 2005. There are other cases where firearms are used in crime, but never found by the police, which can make it more difficult to prove the use of a restricted or prohibitive firearm than to prove the connection to a criminal organization.
So there are indeed circumstances where the connection to a criminal organization can be seriously considered as an aggravating factor in sentencing for a crime committed with the use of a firearm.
Thank you.