Justice Committee on April 30th, 2009

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Okay. I'll go back to Dr. Boyd for my last 45 seconds.

We talk about deterrents. I've heard many times from many witnesses that mandatory minimum sentences allegedly do not provide deterrents. Why do criminologists define deterrents as general deterrents as opposed to the other part, which is specific deterrents?

[Prof. Neil Boyd]

We look at both specific and general deterrents. I think the reason we might focus on general deterrents from the point of the public or from the point of society more generally is that it's going to tell us going forward what to expect. What we're finding is that we can do this, we can spend a lot of money locking people up, and we're still going to get just as many.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Certainly you agree with me that mandatory minimum sentences promote specific deterrents.

[Prof. Neil Boyd]

Yes. Sure.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Mr. Murphy. You have five minutes.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses.

This has all been very interesting. My colleague Dominic and I are from the east coast. We have a different set of problems there. We're very cognizant that on the west coast, particularly here in the Lower Mainland, you have some deepening issues.

I just want to get an understanding, perhaps from the local flavour, of how pervasive organized crime is in this area. On the beach this year, I read this book about organized crime. The story is that in B.C. you can find a home on a river, get your lawn landscaped, go to an Italian restaurant, call your date on a cell phone, and book tickets, all through businesses run by the Hells Angels, an organized crime group particularly predominant in the east end of Vancouver, according to this book. It is just a book, and I'm just a politician, but if it's that prevalent....

Recently the police were asking to have tools, through the Attorney General, to fight organized crime. We spend a lot of time talking about drugs. I know they're the currency of organized crime. I realize that, but I don't think we've spent enough time getting the flavour of organized crime here and figuring out what can be done about it.

You mentioned CLEU. Is it time to reinstitute an investigation unit like that?

Give us some hard deliverables that we can take back to the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and say what we can do nationally to get on this problem.

Professor Gordon, maybe you could start on that.

[Prof. Robert Gordon]

There are a number of national entities that are obviously very useful. In terms of the problem of British Columbia, you're right about the scope of it and the extent to which it has permeated most aspects of individuals' lives, because the money that is made from organized crime has to be processed in certain ways.

The Government of British Columbia has done a number of things that are useful, such as introducing civil forfeiture legislation. Even though that may be controversial, that has been a very useful tool. Still, we face this problem of a lack of organization at the law enforcement level. “Concentration” is probably a better way of describing it.

I'm a great believer that while harsher sentences are quite useful in dealing with organized crime groups, what really counts is increasing the likelihood of being caught. If you don't increase the likelihood of being caught and being successfully prosecuted, that is not what happens at the other end. It is not that process. It doesn't matter how long a person is in—

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

I don't mean to interrupt you, but on the time end of it and the hard deliverables, we could say “resources”, and that's not a finite enough message. You have to talk about the tools, tweaking the rules on disclosure, giving the police more specific resources for drug detection programs, the radiation aspects, and so on.

What are the specific deliverables? I have only about one minute left here.

[Prof. Robert Gordon]

I would just advocate for a single organized crime agency that's run by the province and that cooperates with other organized crime agencies in related regions in the United States and the prairie provinces. We should focus all of our resources and activity in creating that and making sure that over the long term it's going to be able to do its job.

It requires more than four years of resourcing. It requires several years of planned operations. Organized crime has taken hold in this province in a very spectacular way. It has taken 10 or 15 years, virtually without interruption, and it's going to take as much time to break it apart.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Exactly like CLEU or better?

[Prof. Robert Gordon]

Not exactly like CLEU, better. CLEU had problems, one of which was infiltration. And that continues to be an issue for any organized crime agency. There's also a lot of denial around that, around the corruption dimension, but there is a significant problem with that in almost any organization of that kind.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

We'll move on to Monsieur Ménard. And I'm going to use my discretion to extend this session by five minutes so that each party still gets one more question.

Monsieur Ménard.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you.

I would like to return to the list of criminal organizations. Next, I would like to talk about prostitution.

In my view, there would have to be a process. For example, if you have a judicial finding, if parliamentarians are associated with the setting up of the list... Obviously, we cannot use the Order in Council route where a minister would wake up one morning and decide that 15 groups are criminal organizations without any further validation.

I do not believe the Hells Angels will change their name. In order to be effective, they need to use a strategy of intimidation, and intimidation is part of their trademark. If ever they changed their name, then the Crown attorney would have to prosecute them anew.

These are my views. My colleagues know it, I will push hard to have this recommendation included in our report.

I would like to go back for a moment to the issue of prostitution. I sat , with Libby Davies of the NDP and Ms. Fry of the Liberal Party, on the parliamentary committee that studied this matter. I am quite in favour of a model that criminalizes johns. However, this model also has some negative aspects. We are told that even in Sweden it is extremely difficult to control johns and that this model caused people to migrate.

When the Fraser report was made public, the idea was raised to provide... There are two main types of prostitution: addiction prostitution and subsistence prostitution. In my neighbourhood, in the eastern part of Montreal, girls prostitute themselves to make a living. In an ideal world, I wish this would not exist. If we allowed prostitution out of one's home, in a controlled environment like the Fraser report recommended, would this not be better for society?

I make this recommendation realizing that we must stop prostitution by addicts that is controlled by pimps and marked by violence. Should we not be more nuanced when we talk about prostitution?

[Michelle Miller]

Yes, I understand what you're saying about being nuanced. The bottom line is that prostitution is always violent, and there's almost always a pimp involved, at least in the beginning, who's making some of money.

I might not have gotten this across at the beginning. We're not saying we need to have absolute prohibition and that's our only goal. We also think there need to be support systems in place for women--raising minimum wage, which I realize is provincial, and increasing core funding to women's organizations. And also, addressing the demand is a huge piece.

I realize that in Sweden it didn't work perfectly. If there was a silver bullet, believe me, I would deliver it to you today, and it would be over. But we did see a dramatic decrease there, and it's still happening in organized crime and street prostitution. So in some ways, there are two kinds. One is called survival prostitution and the other is more pimp controlled. But they're both fed by the buyer. They're both fed by the same system. And both of them exploit vulnerable women. That's really the bottom line.

Other places have tried to do a kinder, gentler model, like they're doing in New Zealand and Australia, and it's just not working. In Amsterdam they're rapidly closing down their red light district. They're now down to having closed two thirds of their red light district because of the organized crime and the trafficking.

One of my colleagues there says that about 85% of the women there are not Dutch-born. Many of them are brought from poorer countries, places like Nigeria. And the women are also quite racialized in their sexuality.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Could I hear the views of Mr. Boyd on the prostitution question? You know that reporters are listening and you are part of the local elite, but I do not want to intimidate you.

[Prof. Neil Boyd]

I think it's right what Michelle said about the Netherlands, in that it was active promotion of the sex trade. On the other hand, I don't favour legalization, and I don't think most of the opponents favour legalization. I favour decriminalization. I think it's the more nuanced approach that you're describing. That's particularly true in terms of women on the downtown east side. Mr. Comartin's colleague Libby Davies has been quite instrumental in advocating decriminalization as an appropriate response in terms of saving the lives of these women.

I agree with many of the comments made, but I don't agree with the solution. I don't think that zero tolerance is going to save the lives of vulnerable women. I agree that demand is a major issue, and I also agree that it doesn't have to be something that's just going to continue forever, in perpetuity. Having said that, I don't think that a criminal law framework is productive in terms of dealing with the problems we're presented with.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Mr. Weston.

Mr. Weston, you have five minutes.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

First, I thank you, colleagues, for coming to Vancouver. If I could move a motion in the House of Commons, I would move that most of our committee hearings should be in Vancouver.

Second, to our witnesses, I salute all of you. You have a common goal of reducing gang violence and helping victims. Particularly, Ms. Young, Ms. Humphreys, and Ms. Miller, you live it, you breathed it. I salute you. You have many stories to tell that we haven't heard today.

I have three questions. I want to focus on some of the laws before the House because my time is so limited.

Ms. Miller, I'm going to come to you with a very specific, a less specific, and a more general question: one, a date rape drug that will be more serious in sentencing; two, generally the question of organized crime and how that affects the victims of human trafficking; and three, the Olympics and what that's going to mean.

The first question is on one aspect of Bill C-15 that we haven't heard much about, which is the movement of a drug called GHB from schedule 3 to schedule 1. That's the date rape drug and many drugs like it. The effect will make it a more serious penalty for people using these drugs. The primary use of it is not for an individual looking for a high, but generally to aid an attacker who can somehow subdue a victim, and it's usually a male subduing a female in that way. My question is whether that is going to help in your campaign.

Second, on organized crime, this movement to target gang violence and other serious crime, if we succeed in disrupting organized crime, will that help victims of human trafficking?

Third, you mentioned the Olympics. How is the Lower Mainland going to be more susceptible to gang violence and human trafficking in the context of the Olympics?

[Michelle Miller]

First, on Rohypnol, I absolutely support that as being part of the bill. I think that will help women, because some women, girls, and boys will be less likely to be drugged and raped.

I'm sorry, what was the second question?

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

On the general trend in these bills to target gang violence, if we're successful in disrupting gangs with this trend, how does that translate to helping the victims of human trafficking?

[Michelle Miller]

It translates to helping the victims because there would be fewer people recruiting them and making money off their bodies. I realize we're talking a lot about drugs today, but I'm telling you that organized crime groups are moving gangs all across this province and across our borders internationally every day. They are. It's happening. And they're making tonnes of money, because you can sell a woman over and over again. You do a line of cocaine and it's gone, but a woman you can sell over and over again until she's too sick, she's too old to be sold again, or she's dead. I think that definitely interrupting this money-maker for them would be important for women and for many of my friends who have been pimped by gangs. I would love for that person not to have had any access to her and any access to networks that could move her and sell her across provinces.

Finally, with the Olympics, we've seen in other countries a rise in demand. We saw that with the World Cup in Germany and we saw that in Athens. For whatever reason, when men are away from their social networks and they're travelling anonymously and also around large sporting events, they're more likely to buy sex. We see that with the Super Bowl games in the United States as well. REED is starting a grassroots campaign called “buying sex is not a sport”, where we're just raising the issue about that demand link in the trafficking chain.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Do I have some time left, Mr. Chairman?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

You have one minute left.