Justice Committee on April 30th, 2009

[Insp Gary Shinkaruk]

I'm sorry about that.

What that allows the police to do is to be exempt from prosecution in certain instances. So if we wish to partake in infiltrating a criminal gang and we have to, say, for instance, break into a car to place a bug or a device in it, it gives us the ability to do that without being prosecuted. There's a stringent way of doing it. For other things, if we're going for high-level drug dealers, there's an ability for us to perhaps middle drugs in order to get the evidence we require to bring down high-level drug dealers.

It's very closely guarded by all police forces, and certainly by the RCMP, through Ottawa. You have to justify everything you do. We had it 72 times. There were probably as many times that we weren't allowed to do it, and I think that's very good.

As big as the challenge is of catching organized crime groups for the police—and I don't envisage that ever changing in the future—equal or probably greater is pushing it through the court system. A two-year investigation will probably end up being five years to seven years in court, and that is in court every day.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Inspector Shinkaruk, you're at the end of the time. Could you wrap up?

[Insp Gary Shinkaruk]

Sure. I was only going to say two other things.

I think that part 6 of the legislation, which is on the wiretap, has to be looked at. There are some very easy things I think we can do that would make that a lot better process.

On section 467, which is on criminal organization, I think that has to be revisited to be modernized a little bit more.

Thank you very much for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Superintendent Fraser MacRae.

[Chief Superintendent Fraser MacRae, Officer in Charge, Surrey Detachment, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My name is Fraser MacRae. I'm a police officer and a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for over 32 years. Currently I'm the officer in charge at the Surrey RCMP detachment.

I acknowledge and recognize two MPs here from the city of Surrey, Ms. Grewal and Ms. Cadman.

I will be brief. As a chief of police for a city of half a million people, I'd like to talk about some of the downstream impacts of organized crime in our community.

While organized crime groups are becoming more diversified in their criminal activities, it is clear that their primary source of income and power comes from trafficking in illicit drugs. In British Columbia, cannabis has been the currency of organized crime. The production and cultivation of cannabis is occurring throughout the province in small and large communities and in urban and rural areas. This cannabis is primarily cultivated for export into the United States, where it is converted into cash, firearms, and/or cocaine, and imported back to Canada and the province.

Once the cocaine and firearms arrive in the country, it sets up the dynamic and atmosphere of violence and misery. The street drug of choice is crack cocaine. This cocaine is accessed primarily in three ways. There is the hand-to-hand drug transaction on the street, or the street buy. There is the dial-a-dope operation, where addicts access dealers--known and unknown to them--through cellphones, and the dealers attend with the product. Then there are the crack shack operations, where addicts attend to the latest location where crack cocaine is being held and sold.

There is a significant amount of money that can be made at this level of organization through these operations. For example, some dial-a-dope operations can realize $5,000 a day. These large profits and potential incomes result in significant competition for these drug lines, whether they be for the reloads for the crack shacks or the dial-a-dope line or the turf itself.

We have seen over the past several months that this competition is aggressive, often supported by firearms. Some statistics from 2008 will help to illustrate this situation.

In 2008, 33 people were shot in the city of Surrey, ten of them fatally. Surrey RCMP responded to 98 incidents of confirmed shots fired. This represents a 20% increase in shots-fired incidents over 2007.

In 2008, Surrey RCMP seized 222 shotguns and rifles, and another 120 handguns, for a total of 324 firearms that were seized by police.

I previously referenced the dynamics of violence and misery. The statistical information I've provided regarding firearms speaks to the violence. The misery resides with those who are addicted to the cocaine, many of them street-level addicts. They can be seen in any city in Canada.

Most of these addicts will do anything to get their drug, whether it be begging, prostitution, thefts, break and enters, robbery, and sometimes murder. Most are in constant crime mode, moving from one crime to another to get enough money for their next drug purchase. It is these persons who most impact on society's feelings of safety and are responsible for the vast majority of property crime that occurs.

As the committee well knows, this is a very complex subject, one without an easy answer, quick fix, or a single-facet solution. I offer the following as suggestion for attention. This is a dynamic that goes beyond those involved in high-level international organized crime and, in my view, requires strategies in the following areas.

Certainly there is a need to address issues that present impediments to police as they investigate sophisticated organized crime groups. Disclosure and lawful access are two examples of this. Not only will this provide police with opportunities to successfully impact these organizations, but there will be a net effect in the freeing up of police resources that can be otherwise applied.

For all those who are involved in enterprise crime, or crime for profit, especially when that criminal endeavour is premised upon drug trafficking, there needs to be significant custodial consequence upon conviction. Not only will this more appropriately balance the risk versus reward equation, it has potential to interrupt the continuing involvement of lower levels of criminal organizations.

It is commonplace for those who are involved as either shooters and/or victims in these firearms incidents to have had considerable police and criminal justice history. If these criminals are removed from the scene earlier and for non-violent offences, then this inevitable path of violence and competition is interrupted.

In my opinion, there needs to be significant consequence for someone who is in possession of firearms. There should be a reverse onus on those charged with simple possession of a firearm that they are not involved in criminal activity.

There's a requirement for the criminal justice system to better respond to the issues surrounding those who commit crimes because of addiction, especially for those offenders who are prolific and who have a long history of criminal conviction. This would require the cooperation of provincial and municipal governments. It would include a mandated program of detoxification, rehabilitation, and forward planning for the subject. For those who have demonstrated an unwillingness, through action and record, to avail themselves of these opportunities, there needs to be a consequence of substantial custodial sentence that will both provide opportunity for rehabilitation and training and protect the Canadian public from these individuals' criminal activity.

Finally, there's a need to develop education and prevention strategies that are directed at youth, both in the area of drug use and in gang awareness and avoidance. Without this piece of the strategy, there will continue to be persons destined for the type of overpowering addiction that drives the majority of crime, and there will continue to be the market that is in place for those who would prey upon the addicted.

I would like to thank the committee for inviting me here today.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

Inspector Stewart.

[Inspector Bob Stewart, Inspector in Charge, Criminal Intelligence Section, Vancouver Police Department]

Thank you.

I'm Bob Stewart. I've been with the Vancouver Police Department for the last 32 years. I'm presently in charge of our criminal intelligence section.

The VPD, through its own efforts and those of the provincial criminal intelligence network, has identified a number of organized gangs and crime groups operating within the region, including the city of Vancouver. Many of these groups have recently become high profile in the media and, due to the level of violence they are currently demonstrating on our streets, present a threat to the safety of our communities.

The financial rewards associated with the prolific illegal drug trade are currently the catalyst for the formation of these organized crime groups. The subsequent violence is typically the result of drug turf wars, drug rip-offs, and unpaid drug debts. However, many of these individuals are involved in other aspects of criminal activity. These activities include, but are not limited to, gun smuggling, extortion, robbery, credit card fraud, identity theft, mortgage fraud, money laundering, counterfeit goods, and vehicle crimes such as VIN-swapping.

Some groups have demonstrated a high level of sophistication with the use of encrypted communication technology to develop and maintain their criminal networks and to transmit information nationally and internationally. As this activity continues to proceed unchecked, the groups become more organized and entrenched, presenting an even bigger challenge to law enforcement.

In support of enforcement efforts to dismantle, disarm, and deter these groups from their criminal and violent activity, the VPD has seconded officers to many of the integrated police units you've heard about today.

In fulfilling our local mandate to provide safety for the citizens of Vancouver, being funded mainly at the municipal level, the VPD focuses its organized crime enforcement efforts on those individuals or groups that have demonstrated the highest propensity for violence and pose a serious drain on our local policing resources due to their violent street-level activity.

The VPD is committed to investigating all aspects of group criminality. To this end, we endeavour to use creative enforcement techniques and all the tools provided by the Criminal Code and other statutes to sustain enforcement actions on key members of organizations to stem the wave of violence and create instability within the groups.

As a result of a recent project that targeted one of the most violent crime groups operating in Vancouver, the VPD has laid more than 175 charges against 25 people. In addition to offences related to drug enforcement, the charges resulted from incidents ranging from causing a disturbance to violence, assaults, and murder. Of the charges, 75% were directly related to weapons offences and resulted in the seizure of 25 to 30 firearms. A direct positive impact on public safety as a result of this project is the significant decline in shootings over the last six months in the southeast area of Vancouver, where the group carried out its criminal enterprise.

A practice that has proven to work well with criminal gang prosecutions is access to the regional gang prosecutor. Although the potential of this highly effective close working relationship with crown counsel has yet to be fully appreciated in relation to gang crime, the investigative and prosecutorial efficiencies realized by the assignment of a dedicated prosecutor cannot be overstated. Investigations tend to remain focused, while appropriate charges are laid and warrants are executed in a timely manner.

Police and crown counsel, both federal and provincial, need to be encouraged to continue to develop strategies to increase their joint effectiveness. Furthermore, federal and provincial prosecutors need to continue to develop working relationships that aim to address jurisdictional issues and consolidate prosecutions so that judges at trial can fully appreciate an offender's scope of criminality and the subsequent negative effect of that activity on the overall community.

In addition, employing a dedicated prosecutor who is completely familiar with a particular file facilitates an appropriate and compelling disclosure of information at bail hearings. This should be considered as a best practice, so that violent individual offenders of a crime group may be arrested and charged in a timely fashion and held in custody at bail without potentially revealing information that may jeopardize an ongoing larger investigation.

Persons who are in a heightened state of violent criminal activity need to be arrested, charged, incarcerated, and then held in custody in order to provide a sense of relief to the community and increase public safety. An example of this successful model as it relates to property crime is the Vancouver Police Department's chronic offender program and the identity theft task force. Dedicated provincial crown prosecutors come on board early in the investigative stage and help set an efficient agenda and direction to bring the file to an early conclusion. In the course of the charge approval process, the same prosecutor consolidates charges on the accused from throughout the region and then presents at the bail hearing and sentencing. We have realized detention orders and guilty pleas in over 90% of the cases as a result, and the community gets a break from the negative impact of a prolific property offender.

I have one last point. There's another area of the criminal justice system that I believe requires some further review, and that's parole. One could argue that the public would agree in many cases that sentences handed down by the courts are deemed appropriate. But what is often of greater concern is the application of the parole process. Offenders may serve only one sixth to one third of their sentence time in an institution, while the remainder of their sentence is served in the community.

This may not be the right forum to discuss parole. I appreciate that the issue is very complex. However, one could argue that as a result of the parole policy, there is not significant enough deterrence to the commission of crime.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

Inspector Desmarais, please.

[Inspector Brad Desmarais, Inspector in Charge, Gangs and Drugs Section, Vancouver Police Department]

Thank you.

My name is Brad Desmarais. I've been a police officer for over 30 years. I'm currently the inspector in charge of the gangs and drugs unit in the Vancouver Police Department.

I'm going to talk a little bit about the business of organized crime. I'm going to raise the bar a little bit in terms of the more sophisticated levels of organized crime that we're seeing. I'm going to build on the comments of Inspector Shinkaruk in terms of how organized crime deals with issues above street level.

Organized crimes, like most crimes, are commerce-oriented. Except for crimes of passion and a few other categories of offences, most people commit crimes to accrue a benefit. Organizations that commit crimes or have others commit crimes on their behest generally do so to satisfy a profit motive.

Like legitimate business, criminals in criminal organizations, whether they know it or not, conduct a risk-benefit analysis prior to committing an offence. They balance risk against profit. For the most part, this concept is consistent, whether an individual is casing a house to commit break and enter or whether it's the highly organized group considering a complex criminal enterprise. Generally, it's all about the money.

Arguably, the illicit drug trade is a major driving force behind the North American criminal economy. However, significant profit lines exist in other areas of criminal activity as well.

I've been a police officer for over 30 years. I have been investigating organized crime money laundering for the bulk of the last 15 years. During that time, there has been, in my view, a dramatic shift in how sophisticated organized crime groups do business. Like many successful legitimate businesses, those persons managing or advising organized crime groups have learned the value of diversification.

Diversification of criminal business lines is often the key to the longevity and profitability of a criminal organization. Their reliance on outside subject matter experts in the areas of law, accounting, financial planning, and the like also contributes to a healthy and robust criminal organization.

Criminals whose historic area of criminal expertise is drug trafficking are now exploring and engaging in other areas of criminal enterprise as a means of spreading risk and exploiting profitability. Fraud, extortion, counterfeiting, pimping, human trafficking, theft, and dozens of other offences comprise a plethora of opportunities to turn a criminal profit. Even a relatively crude fraud can reap massive rewards. In my experience, these crimes are often being run simultaneously with drug trafficking enterprises rather than being excluded.

The fallacy that drugs are the sole drivers of organized crime and, as some would have you believe, that the removal of drugs from the criminal economy would bring an end to organized crime and all that goes with it is naive in the extreme. Organized and individual criminal activity committed for profit will remain.

As I mentioned earlier, the primary motivator for committing most criminal offences is to create a benefit, pure and simple. The thugs and traffickers of today are not simply going to go away if one or another criminal business line is removed.

Similarly, violence will always be a fixture in the business of organized crime, regardless of crime type. The courts and other means of legitimately settling disputes are not typically available to criminals. Mediation does occur between groups, but when that fails, violence is often used to settle disputes, decrease liability, or eliminate competition. In most cases, the application of violence against competitors or persons who hold some liability to the organization is done discreetly and away from the public eye. Often the target of the violence simply disappears.

Violence is a way of life in much of the criminal world. There is no argument, however, that the most egregious violence is attributed to street and mid-level traffickers who are defending their drug lines from competition or takeovers. Crime is a source of untaxed, easy money, and not something that criminals will voluntarily walk away from.

In short, we need ways to address root causes and substantially improve the ability of the state to attack the profit motive through criminal asset removal.

The courts also need the ability to impose significant penalties resulting from provable offences against persons who provide services that enable criminal acts. In the Lower Mainland, we are reacting to what has accurately been described by our chief constable as a brutal gang war. We are directing a massive amount of resources toward dealing with this immediate threat to public safety. I think we're winning.

There's no question that the deployment of these resources is appropriate. It is what the public expects of us. Nothing less will do. What we can't be blind to, however, is the absolute certainty that organized crime and the human misery that accompanies it will remain long after the current regional gang violence abates. We need to look to the future and try to get ahead of the curve in countering criminal threats before they become egregious public safety issues.

We need to have better tools to undertake complex criminal investigations. Enhanced or new legislation in a variety of areas is an important part of the solution. No doubt you have heard of police frustrations in dealing with lawful access to information disclosure and the like. There are other areas of the law that should also undergo significant revision. The Canada Evidence Act, for instance, has not undergone a substantial major revision since 1923, despite changes in information technology, banking and business practices, international conventions, mutual legal assistance treaties, and so on. That is just one example; there are numerous other examples.

We were relieved to see that civil forfeiture legislation survived a constitutional challenge in the Supreme Court of Canada a few weeks ago. Quite frankly, utilizing the civil process to remove criminal assets has been a wild success, at least in British Columbia. Exploring other forms of civil law is something that should be considered as a means of disrupting organized crime.

We also need to work on improving the viability of proceeds of crime law. These are complex investigations that are typically onerous and lengthy to undertake, and they then take years to wind their way through the court.

Finally, the most important part of countering present and future threats from organized crime is to continue support of law enforcement by government at all levels, even when the current spate of violence is over. Sophisticated organized crime groups will continue to operate. The damage they wreak is not measured in body counts; it's far more subtle.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Sergeant Wallis.

[Sergeant Roland Wallis, Court Certified Drug Expert and Clandestine Lab Instructor, General Duty Police Officer and Senior Patrol Non-Commissioned Officer, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

My name is Roland Wallis. I'm with the RCMP and presently stationed in the Surrey detachment. Fraser is my boss. I have to be careful what I say--not really.

I have approximately 20 years of experience as a police officer. Prior to that, I had my own plumbing and heating business and I received a plumbing gas certificate for British Columbia as well as a plumbing ticket. The reason I say that is because it has helped me in my career as a police officer to provide expert evidence in court on marijuana growers as well as tented meth labs.

I spent some time in the GI section, the plain clothes section. I went over to the drug section for approximately a year and a half in Mission. In 1996 I was exposed to one of Canada's largest mobile meth labs, with my partner. We were out in the bush at the far end of Mission and we didn't quite know what we had at the time and what we were even exposed to. It was all new to us. I think this was the start of these meth labs coming to our area.

As a result of that, and having our police officers not knowing what went on, I took it upon myself to go and get as much education, as a general duty police officer, on marijuana labs and meth labs as I could. I have taken quite a few courses all through North America, while working as a street police officer, to learn about these types of meth labs and their dangers.

I have attended approximately 35 meth labs in my career and well over 300 marijuana labs. In some cases the people are not aware of the dangers that even a marijuana lab can have. The reason I say that is, as a gas fitter, I've attended a marijuana lab where rubber hoses were used to connect to a gas line in the house to run a CO₂ generator, which provides CO₂ to the marijuana plants. There's a chemical in the gas that eats rubber and it could dissolve over a period of time, and that's where we get our explosions from.

So this is just a marijuana lab.

As police officers we get exposed to the pesticides and the herbicides in these marijuana grow ops. I attended one where this person tied into the main gas line on the street and had 40 pounds of gas blowing 500 feet away from the road into a huge generator. It was like a 747 jet going on. That's a lot of gas to be exposed to.

I have attended, as I've stated, several meth labs and MDMA labs. All these types of chemicals that are used there--the solvents, ether, that type of chemical, sulphuric acid--are extremely explosive. An example of that is in the paper. A house or apartment in east Vancouver was blown out, and this is the cause of some of these labs that I have attended.

These people have absolutely no regard for any safety when they conduct their business with manufacturing or producing these drugs. It's all about money and who's going to be on the top. We try as best we can as police officers. We do have some other agencies that do help us. Sometimes I think it would be nice to have Revenue Canada sitting right next door to us in some of these places to knock on the door right after we're done and really take a close look at where all this money is coming from from these people.

It's all related to gangs as well. They all want to be on the top and have their turf and their areas and produce the most money. I think these drug labs are one of the areas where most of the money for even our motorcycle gangs and our other street gangs is coming from.

I'd like to see a change in our judicial system with search warrants. If they could make it so that we could make it an exigent circumstance to enter any one of these meth labs and marijuana labs...because public safety is a first concern for us as well as our members. We need to take these labs down. In a lot of cases, I know our members know where some of these places are, but we don't have quite enough evidence to go and take some of these down. We could, based on our expertise and some of the information that we do have, under an exigent circumstance, enter into any one of these labs and at least take them down and deal with the aftermath later.

It's also expensive for these chemicals to be destroyed. It costs thousands and thousands of dollars. This truck in Mission at the time cost $32,000 to be destroyed, and that's quite a bit of money.

Just to sum up, once again our public safety is the major concern. A prime example is what happened last night in east Vancouver. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you, Sergeant.

Finally, we have Dr. Matt Logan.

[Dr. Matt Logan, Retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police Operational Psychologist, Behavioural Science Group in Major Crime, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Matt Logan. I've been a member of the RCMP for twenty-eight and a half years, and I'm happily retired. For the last six years, I've been the operational psychologist in major crime.

I just want to say, to wrap this up, that my take on it is certainly in keeping with everything you've heard, but I want to go one step further and talk a little bit about the makeup of the individuals in the gangs.

First of all, what we have in gang membership is a combination of anti-social personality disorders and psychopathy. Now, psychopathy is a much more constricted group, probably 15% to 20% of offender population, whereas anti-social personality is about 85% of offender population.

What we're saying here is that the psychopaths have no conscience. They could care less who is hurt by any action they take. Their entire life is need gratification. I believe that the courts should actually look at these people at sentencing, with that psychological perspective, understanding that rehabilitation is probably not likely to happen with that particular group. Also, with the anti-social personality disorder, not as a means of...this is an excuse for what this person is doing, but to say that this person is not likely to be rehabilitated, and the sentencing should follow.

The most important thing I want to say today is in keeping with my belief about fishing upstream. We have an opportunity and a mandate to protect society and certainly to protect our children. One of the things that I think we really need to be aware of is that we're pouring a lot of money into the salmon that's belly-up in the federal system.

We need to start early. We could start at age four. The diagnosis of conduct disorder and oppositional defiance disorder can be made at four. Certainly by the third grade of elementary school, there is an opportunity to really take a look at which of our children are going to be life-course persistent offenders and which are going to be merely adolescent-limited offenders.

Probably one of the largest bodies of research on the child studies that have gone on over 40 years, longitudinal studies...the main two areas being Pittsburgh and Dunedin. This vast amount of research is telling us that about 5% to 6% of our criminals have been that way since childhood. We have another approximately 43% of criminals who are adolescent-limited. They are pulled over to the anti-social side between the ages of 12 and 21.

Now, one thing the research doesn't talk a lot about--and I think we really need to stress the importance of it--is that the 5% to 6% of life-course, persistent offenders--people who will continue right through their lifetime--are also influencers over a very susceptible group of adolescent-limited offenders. By paying more attention to the 5% to 6%, we not only look at those who are committing over 50% of violent crimes, but we also look at the influence they have over our pro-social children during certain ages.

Another thing we have to be aware of is that the influence process is most apparent in the early ages. So by grades seven and eight, these children need to have better role models. Now, some of the role models they're getting, unfortunately, are the people my colleagues are talking about.

What we have to do, even to the media, is call these people what they are, not have them referred to as heroes, people who should be emulated. As we move together in a multi-agency approach, with the police being involved with other agencies, we need to really focus on what we can do to build on the needs and strengths of our children and to fish upstream to prevent a catastrophe from happening.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you so much.

Well, we've heard a lot from you, so we're going to open up the floor to questions. Could I suggest that we go with five-minute questions so more of us have a chance to ask questions?

Mr. Dosanjh, you have five minutes.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you.

We have covered a whole host of issues, obviously, from rehabilitative approaches to easier access to labs, as well as sentencing, evidentiary roles, lawful access, disclosure, and parole, to name a few. I've also heard the words “teams”, “task forces”, and “regional problem”.

It's obviously not something that you can do, but here's a question. You're the experts, and the question is about regional policing. I know you're not to give political answers or deal with political issues, but it is a policing issue. I would ask all of you to tell me whether or not you agree that a regional police force, at least in the Greater Vancouver area--or GVRD, or metro, or whatever name you currently use--is an appropriate instrument, in addition to all the other things you're seeking.

You have the IHIT, you have the firearms unit, you have the integrated gang task force, and you have the combined forces special enforcement unit. Then you have the outlaw motorcycle gang unit and the regional gang prosecutor. You already have the infrastructure, yet you don't have the overall umbrella that deals with all of these issues in an integrated fashion.

I'd like to ask you to express your opinions, if you can do so, today.

Thank you.

[A/Commr Al MacIntyre]

With the exception of IHIT, which has a separate funding model and was created for a different reason, all the units you just spoke of, which include some 350 organized crime investigators, are in fact under one manager, together with a board of governance reflecting all police departments. This will be in effect very quickly here, on June 1. That is the model for organized crime.

Things like emergency response teams are already integrated and serving a very wide area across the metro area, so in fact we have a regional policing model.

We've heard from the communities we police--from the mayors of Burnaby, Langley, and Surrey, to name just a few--that the model of policing locally but doing the expensive and complicated stuff on a regional basis is the model for them, so we've tailored our service in that way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Go ahead, Inspector Stewart.

[Insp Bob Stewart]

That's a very delicate subject in the policing world. Notwithstanding the officers here today, my personal opinion and the opinion of my department is that we support a regional police force, but it's not because of a lack of effort, a lack of desire, or a lack of professionalism among the officers throughout the region. It's more from a perspective that.... I suppose the best way to sum it up is to say that if you were to fly in tomorrow and had to create a police force for this region, how would it look? You'd have to define some boundaries, of course, for the region, but it would look like one force under one police board. It would be locally managed and locally directed, and resources could be shared in a timely fashion across the region.

To debate that subject would probably take many hours and many opinions, because there are a lot of pros and cons to it, but in a simple sense, I support it personally and our department supports it. I think it makes for a better policing model for sharing information and for deploying resources rapidly and flexibly throughout the region when issues come up. From that perspective, I'd certainly support it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Go ahead, Superintendent MacRae.

[C/Supt Fraser MacRae]

As my colleague from Vancouver has indicated, it's a very delicate subject, and one for which I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. There are pros for it and cons for it, and I know that there is, outside of Vancouver itself, considerable political support for the status quo.

I would point out, sir, that as you well know, there will never, ever be one, because different layers of policing--national and provincial policing--also have to feed into the strategies to address organized crime, for example, or other cross-mandate issues. I would just offer that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Monsieur Ménard.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

I will be speaking French. I am not going to get involved in the local organization of the police. Being a Montrealer, I obviously know nothing about your internal debates.

I have three questions to which I would appreciate short responses. Mr. Shinkaruk, you talked about the need to amend section 467. In Quebec there have been decisions to the effect that section 467, in its definition, includes street gangs. This happened in Quebec and involved the Pelletier gang, and this decision came down two years ago.

What amendments would you like to see made to section 467, with regard to criminal organizations?

[Insp Gary Shinkaruk]

I believe I got most of the question. I think it's about section 467 and the successes that have happened in Quebec. Did I capture the spirit?

[Supt Doug Kiloh]

It's also the changes to section 467, the definition, and if you have any thoughts for changes.

[Insp Gary Shinkaruk]

Sure. There are a couple of things.

As a police officer, I look at what's happening in Quebec with a lot of admiration. I just got back from Quebec, where they successfully arrested 155 members of the Hells Angels on one indictment. We would be hard pressed here in British Columbia to have an indictment with more than about five or six people. There are totally different rules within the court, and that issue needs to be addressed provincially at this level, without a doubt.

There have been several positive rulings on section 467, both in Quebec and in Ontario. In Ontario, on three occasions they successfully had the Hells Angels recognized at a Supreme Court level as a criminal organization in Canada.

What we need to do with section 467 is expand it. What is there is a good start, but we really have to look at getting down and putting it--