Justice Committee on March 11th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

I call this meeting to order.

This is the ninth meeting of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Today is Wednesday, March 11, 2009.

Before we proceed I want to actually recognize some students from Quebec representing the National School for Public Administration in Quebec. There are about 30 here present, but a total of 60 on the Hill.

Monsieur Lemay, I believe they are your constituents, so if you wanted to give a greeting as well, go ahead, but make it very short.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I would like to make a very quick comment, Mr. Chairman.

No, there is no one here from my riding. These are students from the École nationale d'administration publique who are doing a masters program, which is close to a PhD. They are from all parts of Quebec and from many different countries. They are students at the École nationale d'administration publique in Montreal. I would like to welcome them here. There are 30 students here and 30 more at the foreign affairs committee, and perhaps a few at the Senate.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Welcome, again, to all of you. I hope what you experience here on the Hill will actually inspire you to public service, providing public service across Canada.

Today, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are starting our study on organized crime in Canada. We have broken up the afternoon into two portions. The first half of the meeting is dedicated to hearing representatives from the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada. In the second half we will have three individuals from British Columbia as witnesses before us.

We'll begin with the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, represented by Donald Dixon, who is the director general, as well as Bud Garrick, who's the deputy director general. Gentlemen, welcome here.

We have a point of order.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Chairman, since we are just starting our study, I would like to state clearly that particularly when we hear from government witnesses, I will expect to receive the briefs in both languages, because we get a much fuller understanding in that way. I would like the clerk to make the situation very clear when she speaks to the witnesses. They have the resources to present briefs in English and French so that members can understand them easily.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Gentlemen, he is correct in stating that anything submitted to the committee has to be in both official languages. However, what you can do is provide to the clerk a document that is only in one official language, the clerk will have it translated and will then distribute it to the other members of the committee.

The common practice here is that we give you 10 minutes to present to the committee and then we open up the floor to questions from members of the committee. So please proceed.

[Donald R. Dixon, Director General, Criminal Intelligence Service Canada]

Thank you, sir.

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.

As presented, my name is Don Dixon, and I'm the director general of Criminal Intelligence Service Canada. Today I am joined by our deputy director general, who is responsible for operations within the Criminal Intelligence Service community. His name is William Garrick.

Our comments today are intended to give you some situational awareness about Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, commonly referred to as CISC.

We comprise nearly 400 law enforcement agencies from across Canada. Since our inception in 1970, CISC has clearly been a leader in the development of an integrated and intelligence-led approach to tackling organized crime in our country. Our fundamental purpose is to facilitate the timely production and exchange of criminal intelligence within the Canadian law enforcement community.

CISC, specifically the central bureau, which is represented here today by William and me, is based here in Ottawa. We are administered under the stewardship of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and we take our direction from a national executive committee that is chaired today by the Commissioner of the RCMP and co-chaired by the director general of the Sûreté du Québec. This national executive committee is represented by 22 senior Canadian law enforcement executives, including police chiefs.

Our agency is responsible for the delivery of strategic intelligence products and services to the national law enforcement community and government. We serve as a national centre of excellence, I believe, in support of the effort to combat organized crime in our country. Our bureau in Ottawa also provides leadership, strategic direction, and administrative support to the national CISC program for families.

We are complemented by 10 provincial bureaus that operate independently while maintaining a national service delivery standard. By that, I mean that as we receive our direction from the national executive committee, they, in turn, receive direction from their provincial executive committees. They focus specifically on criminal intelligence activities within their respective provinces and provide leadership and guidance in the collection, analysis, and production of strategic intelligence products and services, specifically at the provincial level.

The intelligence collected and analysed through the provincial bureaus is instrumental in the creation of the national intelligence products and services delivered by the CISC central bureau. We produce approximately 12 products throughout the year.

Embedded in the central bureau is a strategic analytical service that is responsible specifically for the production of various strategic intelligence products, including the annual release of the national threat assessment, the national criminal intelligence estimate, and the report on organized crime in Canada each year.

The strategic analytical service also develops and implements a strategic early warning methodology, used by all the bureaus, which is a system that enhances current law enforcement practices with a proactive approach to crime. Its aim is to control, if that's possible, or prevent it.

The CISC criminal intelligence service report on organized crime, which I referred to, provides the public with important information regarding organized crime. It highlights some of the ways criminal groups can victimize Canadians. CISC believes that an informed public is better able to protect itself from the threat posed by organized crime. The report also includes information regarding the dynamics of criminal intelligence groups, or criminal groups, their methods, their modus operandi, and the criminal markets within which they operate.

I would like to give you a sense of the status of organized crime in Canada and speak to the foundation of the organized crime marketplace.

In developing the national threat assessment, which I spoke to earlier, CISC builds upon developing integrated threat assessment methodologies and assesses organized crime in Canada, specifically from a criminal market perspective. Each market is examined thoroughly with regard to its scope and magnitude and in terms of the dynamics of organized crime groups and their specific involvement.

The main criminal markets assessed by us are illicit drugs, contraband tobacco, illegal gambling, illicit firearms, cyber crime, intellectual property rights, humans as a commodity, financial crime, and vehicle-related offences such as theft.

While the criminal marketplace is evolving, several key findings remain consistent over time. The following observations, which have been made over seven years, are considered to be the mainstays of the Canadian organized crime marketplace. For example, the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, southern Ontario, and greater Montreal regions are considered to be the primary criminal hubs, with both the largest concentration of criminal groups as well as the most active and dynamic criminal markets.

The illicit drug market remains the largest criminal market in terms of extent, scope, and degree of involvement by the majority of the organized crime groups--more than 80%. Where law enforcement successes have disrupted or dismantled specific crime groups, regrettably this impact tends to be short term. It creates a temporary void into which market expansion occurs, or creates opportunities for well-situated organized criminal groups to exploit. In general, criminal markets are highly resistant to long-term disruption, as they continue to exist in direct response to meeting consumer demands in this country.

Many organized crime groups have the capability and capacity to exploit international borders. International linkages, maintained by several groups, ensure that the supply and distribution chains for a number of commodities remain strong and vibrant. In addition, strategically located areas on the Canadian and the United States border provide significant opportunities for the movement of illegal commodities and people, without requiring large or sophisticated operations.

Exploitation and infiltration of legitimate businesses by organized crime groups play a critical role in undermining public confidence in a number of legitimate markets while contributing to the resilience of many organized crime groups. In some cases, legitimate businesses enable groups to launder money and funds; facilitate criminal activity, for instance, through the use of import and export companies; comingle licit and illicit goods; as well as further insulate many groups from law enforcement action.

For our 2008 national threat assessment, more than 900 organized crime groups were identified as operating in Canada. For analytical purposes within the CISC family, we have categorized them into four levels of threat.

Category one groups, or the upper echelon, as we've referred to it, pose the most significant level of threat based on their role, scope, and criminal activities, which are primarily national and international. Further, there is the category one watch list that we maintain, and these are the groups that demonstrate an emergent, significant threat level. There are no less than 16 groups within the upper echelon.

Category two groups, which we keep track of, are those groups that operate with international or interprovincial scope. In Canada today there are more than 300 such groups.

Category three groups are confined to a single province, but they encompass more than one area, meaning more than one city or region. There are more than 100 such groups operating in Canada.

Our category four, which we'd probably be most familiar with, are the groups that are confined to a single area, such as a town or a city. There are more than 430 of these groups operating in Canada.

In the year 2008, 78% of the organized crime groups were active in the illicit drug trade. This is consistent with the previous year and down somewhat from 2006, when 81% were involved in such activity. The financial crime market is the second most significant market, with the involvement of 12% of the total organized crime groups in Canada, meaning 12% of more than 970 organized crime groups.

The integrated provincial threat assessments, which we receive at the national level from all 10 of our bureaus, are utilized specifically by local and provincial law enforcement agencies to determine their exact priorities in combatting organized crime.

As well, the national threat assessment is used by a new committee, which was set up more than a year and a half ago through CACP, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. This group is called the Canadian Integrated Response to Organized Crime. This committee is made up of senior law enforcement officials from each of the provinces and territories across this country and is currently chaired by a deputy commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police and the senior deputy commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

This group is there to assist in determining the strategic law enforcement priorities to combat organized crime. Both William and I are an integral part of this group to ensure that priorities being discussed within this milieu are available to us so that we have an understanding of the scope and span of activities that are going on across this country.

The overall impact of organized crime, I must say, is not easily measured, but is significant due to the spectrum of criminal markets operating in Canada. Some forms of criminal activity are highly visible and affect individuals and communities on a daily basis, such as street-level drug-trafficking, assaults, violence, and, most certainly, intimidation. Conversely, more covert operations, such as mortgage fraud, vehicle theft, and identity fraud, pose long-term threats to Canadian institutions and consumers.

Our annual report on organized crime is a product of a coordinated law enforcement community effort that provides Canadians with situational awareness, an overview of organized crime activities across this country, and the scope of these operations within Canadian communities. The report on organized crime is produced by Criminal Intelligence Service Canada with the aim of informing all Canadians of the socio-economic effect organized crime has on our communities, and it encourages the public to continue to collaborate and work cooperatively with law enforcement to combat organized crime.

Mr. Chairman, those are our opening comments. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you so much.

Before we turn to questions, I want to let members of the committee know that I've had discussions with Messieurs Garrick and Dixon. There may be some information they would share with us, but only in camera, so if there's a need for us to do that--and there's a distinct possibility there is--we'll bring them back closer to the end of the study. We have the opportunity to receive that information as well.

There's a second question I have for members of the committee. Given the fact that we've divided the witnesses up into two panels today, are you willing to reduce the speaking time in the first go-round to five minutes so we can get more questions in? Is that acceptable? All right.

We'll now go to Mr. Dosanjh for five minutes.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Dixon and Mr. Garrick, for being here.

I have some general questions. I'm not going to ask you anything specific. You obviously gather information from all jurisdictions, the reports from each province, and then you knit them together into a national report. Let me be a bit parochial: it seems that in British Columbia the police authorities were not able to foretell what is happening today on the streets, in greater Vancouver in particular. If they had been able to, they would have tried to disrupt or do something to mitigate what is happening.

I'm sensing that the intelligence gathering at that level and putting it together is not as effective as it could be, and it obviously doesn't do as much good when it comes into your report nationally. I would like you to direct your mind to what it is that you believe policing agencies and intelligence-gathering activities on the ground need more of or different from what they have today so that what you present to Canadians is able to tell Canadians that the policing community has the ability to predict and to disrupt, pre-emptively if possible, some of what's happening today.

[Donald R. Dixon]

As you indicated, our community is large and we bring the information or, to use your words, knit the information together. I think it's important for all of us to also understand and appreciate that to do this we have a national database designed specifically for organized crime activity. As you heard in my opening comment, there are approximately 400 law enforcement agencies across this country, and 264 of those law enforcement agencies are plugged into our national database. Each time an operation is initiated, for the most part it is their responsibility to put that information on the national database so that all parties can see the initiation of an investigation and can feed off that.

To go more directly to your point as it pertains to police entities in a specific province, and I just speak in generic terms, in a number of the meetings that I've been at with the provincial executive committees, which are represented by the senior law enforcement executive in that province, they sit down and talk about the specific groups of interest, the groups that are posing the most significant threat that would be applicable to them. They also speak of very detailed operational activity, and I would assume that in the province of British Columbia, certainly the last meeting that I was at, they were actively involved in such discussions.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

So from what you've said, you're not able to tell me what might be needed more on the ground to assist them.

I'm not being critical of them. Obviously they have not been very successful in either predicting or preparing for what's happening and haven't been able to disrupt this very well. And I'm not being critical; I just want to get a sense as a committee from you what tools or resources are required so that they are better equipped or fully equipped to deal with this more effectively.

[W.H., Bud) Garrick (Deputy Director General, Intelligence Analysis and Knowledge Development, Criminal Intelligence Service Canada]

I could certainly speak to that, sir.

There are a number of issues that factor into this. Certainly there is the nature of crime to begin with, the fluidity of it, and some of the market issues that we spoke about. But to get directly to the point of your question as a resource issue, one of the initiatives that the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada has taken on as a result of a tasking from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police is the development of a made-in-Canada criminal intelligence model. We currently don't have such a model in Canada that really has the true processes, capabilities, and technology that we need across the Canadian spectrum to gather the intelligence correctly and in a timely fashion. As you said, it's a piecemeal approach oftentimes.

We currently have the project ongoing, and certainly as your committee goes along we can provide detailed information on that if you wish.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Will it--

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you, Mr. Dosanjh, we're at the end of your five minutes.

Monsieur Ménard, five minutes.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I find your testimony somewhat disappointing, and I hope we will be able to clarify things, Mr. Chairman. I must tell you, with all due respect, that hearing there are thieves and drug dealers in Canada is not all that helpful.

With the support of all parties, the Bloc Québécois tabled a motion to find out what legislative tools you require. I expect a greater level of detail than what you provided. Your reports are public, and I have been reading them for years.

I was in Parliament in 1995 when the motorcycle gang wars began. It started in my riding, with the killing of Daniel Desrochers. I remember very well the discussions I had with the senior officials at the time, they thought that we were going to destroy organized crime with the provisions on conspiracies. At the time, there was a war between the Rockers and the Hells Angels. The police understood that we needed new legislative provisions. I was involved, and my constituents actually went door to door and the result was the establishment of a new offence—gangsterism.

Do you think sections 467.11, 467.12 and 467.13 have produced any results? It would be useful for the committee to know that.

I would now like to talk about street gangs. When I started to take an interest in organized crime—from the outside, needless to say—there was no talk of street gangs. I actually have the impression that we are now seeing the second generation of street gangs.

Are street gangs becoming more professional? Are they less ethnic-based and more part of a network with the important figures in organized crime? Please be a little more specific about street gangs and the legislation you require. Do not tell me that thieves are selling drugs. That I know.

[Donald R. Dixon]

Specifically to your question as it pertains to street gangs, your commentary specific to that is exactly right. We certainly agree with you, and that is the perception of local law enforcement.

As it pertains to where we are from a Criminal Intelligence Service Canada perspective, I would take a somewhat different view from what you articulated in that--

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

My specific question is this: are we correct in thinking that street gangs are becoming more professional and have more arms in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver? What is the situation regarding street gangs? Are they the main players involved in organized crime at the moment?

[Donald R. Dixon]

I would not suggest that they are the main stakeholders as it pertains to organized crime. In fact, they are reflected in numbers of about 300 street gangs.

But to be fair to your question, the people who could answer that in absolute detail would be our provincial bureaus, because they are far more tactically oriented than I am at the strategic level. To get into detail as it pertains to day-to-day activities of street gangs, I would not be--

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

If you don't have an answer, I will ask the second question.

Are the Hells Angels still playing a leadership role in organized crime? Is it true that at one time they met without wearing their crests, because that can now be used as evidence in court? Is it true that we are starting to see the Hells Angels wearing their crests again in the major cities?

Very strong arguments were made to the committee to add a specific offence in the Criminal Code to ban the wearing of symbols linking criminals to criminal organizations. I would like to hear about the Hells Angels specifically.

[W.H. (Bud) Garrick]

I could speak specifically about the Hells Angels--I've dealt with a lot of motorcycle gangs in general--and yes, certainly they're still in the top tier of organized crime groups across Canada. Certainly the Hells Angels have not gone away and in fact are the premier outlaw motorcycle gang group in Canada.

There have been some outstanding initiatives by local law enforcement, such as Operation Axe, which recently took place throughout Quebec, which has really thrown them into an area of disruption. They have not stopped; for sure they have not stopped. They are an area of priority for law enforcement. They're involved in that activity for sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Mr. Comartin.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here.

I have just a couple of quick things. I didn't catch how many gangs or organized crime units are in the national/international level, the top level. How many are there?

[Donald R. Dixon]

At the higher echelon there are no fewer than 16 organized crime groups at the category one level.

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

I'm assuming that at the category one level they have active or extensive interaction with organized crime units elsewhere in the world.

[Donald R. Dixon]

That's correct.

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

Would those units primarily be in the United States or are they all over the globe?