Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Gord Perks, and I'm the Toronto city councillor for Parkdale--High Park Ward 14. I'm also the chair of the Toronto Drug Strategy Implementation Panel, which is an intersectoral group that provides oversight and strategic advice to help the City of Toronto implement its council-approved municipal drug strategy.
The Toronto drug strategy panel includes expertise from a broad range of sectors, including health promotion and prevention, education, harm reduction, addiction and mental health treatment, social development, and criminal justice, as well as youth and people who have experience with alcohol and other drugs. I should note that although the Toronto Police Service participates in our committee, they have not endorsed my submission here today.
Toronto is challenged with many issues associated with large urban areas, including drug crime. We know that reducing crime is a priority for the federal government, as it is for Toronto City Council and the Toronto drug strategy. However, the panel is concerned that Bill C-15 will not achieve the goal of reducing crime, and instead will create serious negative consequences for the City of Toronto, its residents, taxpayers, families, and neighbourhoods. We believe that comprehensive strategies are needed, which respond to the complex array of individual and systemic factors that influence an individual's decision to use drugs and their involvement in the drug trade and the communities in which they live.
The context within which people make decisions about using and dealing drugs is complex and directly relates to their experience of poverty, abuse, racism, discrimination, and social and cultural alienation, as well as to the dynamics of their own addiction. The stated objectives of this new legislation are to crack down on crime and to ensure the safety and security of our neighbourhoods and communities. I can tell you that this will not ensure the safety of the community I represent.
It is important to note that national crime rates have been steadily decreasing since the 1980s. Property crime rates have decreased by 46% since peak levels in 1991. Violent crime has decreased overall since 1992. This is a trend we also observe in Toronto. A report reviewing minimum mandatory penalties for Canada's Department of Justice found that mandatory minimums for drug offences are ineffective and costly. The report stated that severe mandatory minimum sentences are the least effective in relation to drug offences. Other jurisdictions, including some American jurisdictions that have minimum mandatory sentences, are now repealing these laws and replacing them with treatment and other initiatives. In a recent state address, New York Governor David Paterson said, “I can't think of a criminal justice strategy that has been more unsuccessful than the Rockefeller Drug Laws.” New York has found mandatory minimum sentencing provisions to be expensive and ineffective, dramatically increasing prison populations without reducing crime.
As Governor Paterson notes, other jurisdictions have found that imposing mandatory minimum sentencing dramatically increases the number of people in prison, which in turn increases criminal justice and correction costs, costs borne by the taxpayers you are here to represent.
Canada's prisons and criminal justice system do not have enough capacity at present. Prisons are overcrowded and courts are congested. In reality, it is the provinces and territories that will feel much of the financial impact of this legislation, as many of the mandatory sentence terms will be less than two years. However, there is only one taxpayer, and Canadians will pay the increased prison, court, and police costs resulting from Bill C-15. The average cost of incarcerating someone in Canada's federal system is $93,000 per year, or $255 per day. How I wish I had those kinds of resources to help members in my community who are struggling with addiction. It costs substantially less to maintain an offender in the community than in prison: $23,000 per year versus $93,000.
Further, research has shown that treatment-oriented approaches are much more cost-effective than lengthy prison terms in addressing crime related to substance use. A key limitation of Bill C-15 is that it doesn't consider a person's individual circumstances with respect to the drug crime with which they are charged. If someone is convicted of one of the designated offences and any of the aggravating factors are present, for example a previous conviction, they will go to prison, regardless of their individual circumstances.
This lack of capacity for judicial discretion as well as a systemic issues bias, a bias that already exists in the criminal justice system, means that the proposed legislation will have a disproportionate effect on several important groups. We are particularly concerned that youth over 18 will spend more time in prison. Even a short period of incarceration at this point in a young person's life will forever alter--forever--the opportunities afforded to that young person later in life. Under the proposed legislation, an 18-year-old caught dealing cocaine or ecstasy to a friend at a school, on a municipal basketball court, or in a recreation centre would be subject to a prison term automatically.
It is more likely that women will be sent to prison under this legislation. Mandatory sentences are linked to the quantity of drugs involved in an offence, not to the individual's involvement. Mandatory sentencing in the United States has resulted in long sentences for women charged as accomplices to crimes committed by their partners, even though they had little direct involvement in these crimes.
In Canada we already have a serious overrepresentation of aboriginal people in our prisons, and we're concerned about the compounding effect of Bill C-15. Aboriginal people represent 4% of our adult population, yet they represent 24% of the adults in provincial-territorial custody and 18% of the persons in federal custody.
Research has also found significant increases in the incarceration of ethnocultural communities when mandatory minimum sentencing is introduced. In the United States, drug arrests for African Americans rose at three times the rate for whites--225% compared to 70%.
The proposed legislation does not differentiate between high- and low-level drug dealing. Many low-level drug dealers are indeed simply supporting their own addiction. Imprisoning people with addictions can lead to even more problematic and dangerous drug use. It is estimated that four out of five offenders in the prison system have serious addictions. A recent review of our federal corrections system acknowledges the rampant presence of illicit drugs in prisons and the lack of treatment and other health services to help reduce the harms of substance use.
People in federal and provincial prisons have a much higher rate of both HIV and hepatitis C, as much as ten times higher than the general population. Some people enter prisons already infected, but the likelihood of the further spread of these diseases is high due to unsafe sex and drug-use practices while incarcerated. Once released from prisons these individuals will return to our communities; therefore, we should be concerned about these health issues generally in our communities.
The incarceration of one family member can have a tremendous detrimental social and economic consequence for the whole community and for the entire family, especially if that person is the parent or primary income earner in that family. Laura Sager, of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, says of Michigans's approach, “...the state's 'mass incarceration experiment' has achieved none of its stated objectives. The dividends were broken families and broken communities, not less crime.”
We do have some interest in drug treatment courts that are proposed in the legislation as a sentencing option. However, we must be very careful. Currently in Canada drug courts are not available in very many communities, nor do they have the capacity to meet the increased demand that will result from this legislation. Under Bill C-15, drug treatment courts are an option only for people not convicted with aggravating factors. That's a very important distinction to bear in mind. As a result, drug courts will be accessible to only a limited number of people. In addition it is important to recognize that drug courts do not work for everyone. They are a part of the solution, but not the whole answer.
The Toronto Drug Strategy Implementation Panel urges the federal government to abandon Bill C-15 and adopt a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to addressing drug crime. An alternative worth considering is justice reinvestment, whereby the funds are used to rebuild human resources and physical infrastructure--schools, health care facilities, and parks and public spaces in communities devastated by high levels of incarceration. This approach is being used in U.S. states, and it would be frustrated by the implementation of Bill C-15 here.
I want to speak for a moment about the community I represent. The community I represent, for a variety of historical reasons, between 1977 and--