Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
I'm pleased to be here with my colleagues. I have the support of Len Garis, and Superintendent Armstrong from the RCMP is on her way. She's caught in traffic, but she will be here shortly.
You will have copies of these notes in the background paper, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on some of the facts. I'm going to talk about marijuana grow operations and their impact on the crime scene, not only in this region but right across the country.
As you're probably aware, in British Columbia the estimated business related to marijuana is $6 billion to $7 billion. From 1993 to 2007 the growth of marijuana across the country has seen a sevenfold to eightfold increase. That's a huge increase when you start to think of the impact that has on organized crime and otherwise. We're also seeing a real shift in marijuana grow operations moving to rural communities. That shifts a significant burden onto those communities to deal with these operations as far as policing and other protective services go. The RCMP tell us that most of the crime groups in our country are involved in some form of activity related to marijuana and that they profit greatly from it. Other drug aspects that are attached to that are significant as well.
What we really need to do is to look at what we can do and what kinds of positive changes can be made. I'm going to give you four specifics that we would like to refer to today.
The first deterrent involves simply making use, believe it or not, of our existing tax laws. It's no surprise that criminals don't willingly pay taxes on their huge drug profits. However, in Canada the revenue agency has a special enforcement program, the job of which is to collect tax from people suspected of earning income from illegal activity. They just need to know who to investigate.
To show how significant a source of tax income this could be, let's look at the city of Surrey alone, where 277 grow operations were found in 2008. The written presentation includes the detailed calculation, but we estimate that a single site can produce $350,000 a year in revenue. Multiply that by 277 sites, and that's almost $97 million in Surrey alone. What would that mean in taxes? Probably, doing a quick calculation, that would mean more than $42 million in federal and provincial taxes. Based on 2008 rates, taking it a step further, the RCMP has estimated that B.C. has 20,000 grow operations. If that's true, that would equal $7 billion in revenue and add $3 billion in lost taxes alone. The second thing that is really important is that the tax crackdown could make producing marijuana and other drugs much less lucrative for those crime groups and would ensure that there would be some kind of action attached to it.
The next deterrent we would like to talk about relates to hydroponics equipment, which is used by criminals to grow marijuana as well as by hobby gardeners to grow things like orchids and tomatoes. Regardless of how it's used, this equipment has extremely high wattage. As an example, it uses 1,000-watt bulbs. For this equipment to be used safely, it is absolutely critical that it be installed properly in a legal and approved fashion; otherwise it brings tremendous risk of fire and electrocution, not only to that location but to surrounding areas as well. Studies show that the likelihood of a grow operation catching fire is one in 22. That is 24 times more likely than a typical house. The problem is that marijuana growers typically install and use this equipment in a dangerous and illegal fashion. It's also worth mentioning that there is no permitting process or regulation of hydroponics equipment, even for legal non-commercial users. It's likely they too are at risk.
We've already established the link between marijuana and organized crime. Our thinking is that regulations would make it much harder for criminals to obtain hydroponics equipment. At the same time, buying this equipment off the Internet and in stores with no regulations or restrictions creates the issue. The other benefit of regulation, of course, is public safety, which I've talked about already.
The next deterrent addresses medical marijuana grow operations. More than 2,000 Canadians have licenses to legally grow marijuana through the marijuana medical access regulations that are administered by Health Canada. They are told they must observe all the laws, bylaws, and safety regulations, but there's no enforcement. Health Canada does not verify the safety of each production site, and it does not tell cities where these sites are so that they can do it.
Across Canada more and more of these medical grow sites are being caught by municipal safety inspections, because they share many of the same characteristics and safety issues as the illegal sites. Inspectors are finding hydroponic equipment that is illegally and incorrectly installed as well as mould and dangerous structural changes. This is happening across the country, while the number of medical grow licences rises every year. On the surface it may look like a public safety issue; however, by regulating medical grow sites, we're also reducing the chance they will be used for illegal purposes.
The last deterrent we'd like to talk about is the need for research. Research will provide us the opportunity to detect drug production sites and collect evidence to take them down. The problem is that funding for research is not easy to obtain. The City of Surrey is self-funding research into a device that can detect hydroponics equipment from a moving vehicle. The work shows tremendous promise, but there is a limit to how much Surrey can do. Another potential project would research a device that can detect clandestine drug labs. And if you read the Vancouver papers, you will have seen we had an explosion in Vancouver that is suspected of being caused by a meth lab.
In closing, they are just four of many possibilities. What we're saying is we need attention to these items, and we need it now. We need legislative changes to ensure we can move ahead on all these areas.
Thank you very much.