Okay, thank you; that's helpful.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
Dave Park is our economist emeritus at the Vancouver Board of Trade. He was our chief economist for many years. He has come back out of retirement to assist us with the public safety task force of the Vancouver Board of Trade.
This is a subject we've been pursuing for over 12 years. We have a problem in Canada with crime, and it's only now reaching the attention of the public with the intensity that we think it deserves, so we're delighted to appear before you.
First let me say that we're very supportive of Bill C-14. We think it should go through with all dispatch, and we encourage members of Parliament to ensure that happens as quickly as possible.
Organized crime and violent crime in Canada are related, of course, and related to our chronic offenders. In Vancouver much of our crime has to do with drugs, and of course we know that's controlled and run by organized crime. In Vancouver we are beset with the activities of chronic offenders, ranging the spectrum from beggars and thieves through to B and Es, car break-ins, violent crime and assaults, and now murder, with organized gangs using firearms. It is related in that continuum, and much of it has to do with drugs.
We've written to the Minister of Justice, we've had discussions with Statistics Canada, and the Board of Trade has put together a position. Our policy with respect to crime is a broad one. We think we have to look at root causes. For example, we are champions of early childhood development. We've got a task force with the YWCA, and we think that if we intervene between the ages of zero and six, we stand a good chance of ensuring that young people don't get involved in gangs and crime, and later, organized crime. It's part of that continuum, and we would encourage all parties to support those sorts of initiatives.
We support better treatment for addiction and mental illness for those incarcerated. We have a problem in Canada, and of course in British Columbia, in that most people are sentenced to two years less a day in provincial institutions, where those facilities simply aren't available to any extent. More treatment is available at the federal level, but more has to be done as well.
We're a business association with 6,000 members whose purpose is to ensure that Vancouver in Canada is the best place in the world to live, work, play, invest, and visit. That reputation is threatened because of the problem we have with crime.
There are 2.7 million Canadians who are victims of violent crime every year. That's according to the last Statistics Canada victimization survey. It's a bit dated now. A new one being undertaken as we speak will provide a much better measure of the actual levels of crime in our country, much better than what we see annually from Statistics Canada, which are crimes reported to police. We've been pressing Statistics Canada for well over 10 years to change the method of reporting crime to give a more accurate reflection of the actual levels of crime.
The current measure, crimes reported to police, only captures one-third of all crimes. The victim survey shows that 34% of crimes are reported to police and two-thirds aren't. For example, 88% of sexual assaults are not reported to police at all. We think that's a very bad proxy for crime rates.
In fact, until recently, Statistics Canada defined the national crime rate as crimes reported to police. We got their attention when we wrote an editorial that ended up in the Vancouver Sun and the National Post. It was in response to a headline that said, “Crime rate down based upon crimes reported to police”. We said we hoped that was true, but we won't know if it is until the 2009 victim survey is conducted. After a similar statement was made in 2005 that the crime rate had gone down based upon police-reported crimes, the 2004 victim survey showed that in fact the crime rate had not gone down at all, except in one category, B and E; all the other eight categories had either stayed the same or had gone up.
That provoked a response from Statistics Canada, and we entered into a dialogue with them. Up until that time we had just had an exchange of letters and we weren't making much progress.
We were very pleased with our meeting yesterday with Dr. Sheikh, the Chief Statistician of Canada. We were advised that they're backing away from the traditional definition of crime rates and they will refer to police-reported crimes. It's a valuable study on its own, as long as you know what it is. They will be referring to crimes reported to police.
They will also take pains to point out to readers that there's another study on victims, which gives you a different measure of the crime rate if you use that as a definition. They surveyed eight major categories. They did it as they do the census, with a scientifically tested study of 20,000 Canadians. We don't think that's enough. We asked them to expand on that as well.
They were asked what their recent experiences were. In The Globe and Mail today, a member of Parliament responded that he didn't think it was useful to use crime measures based on perception. Ladies and gentlemen, these are the perceptions of your constituents who have recently had an experience with crime. It's a far better measure than crimes reported to police, which take out of the equation any opportunity to ask probing questions. It's a scientific survey. It has its weaknesses. It doesn't cover all crimes, such as white-collar crimes. But it covers most of the crime in the country, certainly the kinds of violent crimes that your constituents are concerned with and our members are concerned with.
We've asked them to do it annually. We've asked them to expand the survey so that it includes the CMAs, the census metropolitan areas, so that major cities such as Vancouver can actually gauge the situation with crime. Is it getting better? Is it getting worse? Our public policy response can then be more appropriate than in the past, when it was based on crimes reported to police. We were pleased with that. They're all set and ready to go.
I suggested to Dr. Sheikh that it would be a wonderful stimulus measure for the government to announce annual funding for the report. His response was that Stats Canada is shovel-ready. I would like to encourage all parties to put aside your differences and to encourage the government to fund the study. As it's under way for 2009, it would start in 2010 and every year thereafter.
I should as well point out that Dr. Sheikh informed us that all the other OECD countries, or industrialized countries, as he expressed it, either do the reports annually or bi-annually. They do it more frequently than we do. We have not been holding our own with respect to asking our members who are victims and your constituents and citizens what their recent experiences with crime have been.
I want to leave you with one graph. We have a presentation before you that covers our position. On October 7, 1971, the Minister of Justice rose in the House and said that from now on the government is going to focus on “the rehabilitation of individuals rather than protecting” the public. He did not say “as well as” or “in addition to”. He said “rather than protecting” the public.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's what we've been doing for almost 40 years. It's been a very good policy. It's been a wonderful policy for criminals. It's been a very bad policy for victims. At the Vancouver Board of Trade, our view is that we should give victims a chance.
What's happening in Vancouver? This is from a Vancouver police report that was done last year on 379 chronic offenders. These are people who have had multiple convictions, some were minor and some were major, but they're chronic offenders. An average sentence for the first offence is 101 days. The average sentence for the 35th offence is 25 days. This makes no sense to us. In recent polls that were published, our members tell us this is far different from the public expectation of justice that is being administered.
Our plea to the committee and to members of Parliament is to please put aside political differences and personal differences. We certainly have a crisis in our country with organized crime on the west coast and with violent crime and chronic crime. If we do the correct surveys and test those levels of crime properly, you will see that it's unacceptable for 650,000 Canadians to be injured during the commission of violent crimes every year, for there to be 2.7 million violent crimes in the country every year, and for one Canadian in four to be the victim of a crime in the past year.
We don't think it's acceptable and we hope you don't either.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.