Justice Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2009

[David Aggett]

Superintendent Brennan would be better able to answer that. We deal with the border and the courts. They deal with the organizations and the interrelationships.

[Supt Brian Brennan]

The organized crime groups that use areas such as the ports or the coastline are, for lack of a better term, paying somebody to either expedite the drug or the contraband through the port or—

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I think I'm going to run out of time, so let me just ask you to address this specifically. Do they get paid in drugs, in cash, or in guns? Do you know how, or does it vary?

[Supt Brian Brennan]

It varies, but commonly it's a payment of money.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

It's money.

[David Aggett]

I can add a little bit to that. We're beginning to see a number of different commodities as currency. We're seeing marijuana from Canada being traded for cocaine in the States or traded for firearms that come into Canada. We're seeing pills, OxyContin and these kinds of things, going to the States and then cash coming back from the States or weapons coming back from the States. We're starting to see those kinds of things, which also touches on your earlier question about connections between these organizations across the border. I think it's evolving. It's likely to come, but right now we're just seeing the commodities move between separate organizations in the two countries.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Mr. Moore for seven minutes.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of you for being here.

I have a couple of things. Chief Beazley, you appeared before our committee on Bill C-14, which dealt with organized crime. It was a bill that our government brought forward. I'm sure you're all aware that the bill has passed into law. We have several other initiatives now.

It dealt with drive-by shootings, reckless discharge of a firearm in a public place, and the use of firearms for intimidation by criminals. It was targeted at organized gang violence, street-level gang violence--some of the typical scenarios we're hearing about in some large centres in Canada. You mentioned them in your remarks, even with regard to Halifax.

At the time, you mentioned the need for us to improve the intercept tools police have because of the complexity of criminal investigations. I know that our Minister of Justice has been asked whether we are trying to get ahead of the criminals, and he says, no, we're just trying to catch up to where they are when it comes to technology.

You were there in April. Then in June of this year, we introduced two pieces of legislation. One deals with investigative powers for the 21st century. That's Bill C-46. The other is Bill C-47, technical assistance for law enforcement in the 21st century. Without going into all the details of both bills, they deal with the interception capabilities of police when dealing with organized crime.

I'd like, maybe, Chief, or Superintendent Brennan, your comments on where you think things are going next. Do you think it's important that we constantly be monitoring these things to try to at least keep up if not get ahead of where these guys are, because technology seems to be changing so quickly?

What are some of the limitations you see in your ability when it comes specifically to organized crime? That's what we're studying today. What are some of the techniques you see them using that are causing you difficulty?

[Supt Brian Brennan]

To answer your question, generally, yes, we need to be in parallel with organized crime or ahead of the curve in terms of technology.

The problem for law enforcement is that the process we have to go through to get the court's authorization to actually intercept the technology is a long process. Organized crime is moving very rapidly; they're changing technology quickly, and, as I said in my opening comments, they're changing phones, etc. If an organized crime group changes all of its phones in one day, it takes us weeks and weeks to rewrite the part VI application to catch up. We need to look at simple things like maybe adding amendments to our original part VI application to do that.

I think it's important that we partner and have the ability to partner with private industry so that they share the new technologies coming out, and for us to examine it so we can say in terms of that new piece of equipment, here's what we need to do so we're one step ahead of the criminals. It's very important for law enforcement to be ahead of the curve.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

We're travelling across the country. We did go to Vancouver. We were in Montreal yesterday. Part of the reason we're not meeting in one spot but hearing from people across the country is to get a bit of a unique perspective from one area of the country or another.

Is there anything you feel is unique to Nova Scotia, to Halifax, or maybe to communities situated in a port environment, that creates any special challenges? Again, Superintendent, or Chief, or any of you on the panel, are there any unique challenges for communities situated at ports?

[Chief Frank A. Beazley]

I'm not sure there's anything unique. As Superintendent Brennan was saying, the technology changes so quickly that trying to intercept it is a huge issue for us. We're really just trying to keep pace still. If you take a smaller department like mine of fewer than 1,000 people, every time the technology changes and the criminals get into PIN messaging, Twitter, and text messaging, you find that although you've just put $500,000 or $600,000 into an intercept system, within months you have to upgrade it. For a municipal department, that's difficult to do when you're trying to keep ahead.

In one of our recent investigations, they were throwing phones away almost daily, and to replace them and get back up again is about $800. Every time these guys just throw a card or a phone away, or change their technology on a daily or weekly basis, you're always chasing. Then, of course, as the superintendent was saying, you're back into affidavit writing. These affidavits, as I'm sure you've heard, go into the thousands of pages in some cases.

What the Canadian chiefs have asked for is that when these companies create the latest technology to communicate with, they should also have to put a fix in place to help law enforcement continue to do their job. They need to be good corporate partners. These are the types of things we've been talking about over the last couple of years in the policing community: work with us, have industry work with us, so that we can have access to information that's ground down, the stuff that was in the two bills you talked about and getting those types of things passed to help us. It's not a case of making it overly easy for us to do our job, but of getting us back to a level playing field, so we can at least get in there and keep pace with some of these people whom we're dealing with.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

That's definitely the goal of the legislation, to provide that capability.

Am I out of time, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

You are.

We'll move on to Ms. Jennings again, for five minutes.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Thank you for the reminder!

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

I'll keep reminding you.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

I appreciate that, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

There's a story there, eh?

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

There is a story there, and I have the transcript.

Coming back to the issue of the legislation on lawful access, the Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act is all very well and good because once it's adopted it will alleviate some of the challenges all of our law enforcement people have been facing in criminal intelligence investigations and being able to gain access to information, etc.

However, what I'm also hearing is that there's a financial challenge with being able to keep pace with the new technologies, to actually have the finances to upgrade on an ongoing basis. I remember when computers first came out.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

That long?

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Yes, you're right. I look extraordinarily young for my age, don't I?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

I'm actually 110 years old.

When personal computers first came out, they were literally usable for 10 years. It's only been in the last 10 years that we've seen this major leap in the rapidity of new innovations, etc.

So do you believe the federal government has a role to play in providing some kind of funding on an ongoing, stable basis that law enforcement, whether it's the border agency or the regional and municipal police forces, could access in order to be able to know that every two years, if they need to upgrade their system because there's some new technology that's come out and their systems are suddenly obsolete, they can do so? That's the first thing.

Secondly, given all of these new technological changes, do you believe there's a role for the federal government in helping to bring all of the different actors together, including the private sector that innovates all of this, so that there's an ongoing dialogue whereby if you in criminal intelligence see new activities involving technologies being used in ways not seen before, you can automatically push that up to this task force or advisory group and they could begin looking at what needs to be changed to make sure it doesn't create a blockage for you?

Is that clear?

[Supt Brian Brennan]

Absolutely. As I mentioned in my opening comments, it's not just a matter for law enforcement, but for governments at all levels. We need to have representation there to understand the complexities of technology.

On your question about funding, I would say that we would best leave that to the government to decide how much to go with.

The other thing with technology is that we need to remember that it's not just the technology; it's also a case of the subject matter experts, the people who are going to be employed by police services to actually use the equipment and understand its processes. And sometimes it not the front-line police officer we move in. We need to be recruiting specialized people to come into our organizations as civilian members to give us the expertise we need so that the front-line investigators can do that.

There's such a learning curve with new technology and innovation that not all of the resources coming into police agencies need to be on the front line. Some of them need to be very, very specialized and focused on those areas.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Do I have any time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Yes, you do. You have one minute--a very short minute.