Justice Committee on April 13th, 2010

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

In the sense that the person wouldn't be threatened any more if he or she went back to their normal life.

[C/Supt Thomas Bucher]

Once an individual enters the program and is relocated, it's—

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

It's forever?

[C/Supt Thomas Bucher]

Well, it's forever if the individual does not make a request to leave, but voluntary termination is always an option.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Okay, so the person can request leaving the program, but you won't make an assessment in terms of the risks of doing that.

[C/Supt Thomas Bucher]

We would never tell them they had to leave the program, no.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Okay.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Monsieur Ménard for five minutes.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

I will continue following what Ms. Mendes said.

How do you assess the potential risks for a person who has indeed cooperated with the police? Are you well enough informed, for example, of the fact that that person might be named during a wiretap concerning other people? Are the other police aware of the fact that a witness is protected so that, if they hear of a conspiracy against that person, they will warn you or take some other steps?

[C/Supt Thomas Bucher]

An initial comprehensive threat assessment is made for everybody who enters the program. That's one of the factors taken into consideration when an admission into the program is made.

Once an individual is relocated, their identity is not disclosed to anybody. Every individual in the program is entered into an observer type of system where if that person were verified by a local police department, we would be aware of that.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

That is not quite what I was asking. In any case, I will move on to something else.

You seize houses, and you attempt to sell them in order to recoup the money, I imagine. Do you have trouble selling houses that belonged to members of organized crime groups?

[Insp Don Perron]

I think that would be a question best placed to the seized property management directorate and the provincial asset management entity. We, the police, are not responsible for managing the assets or disposing of the assets. That question would be best answered by them.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

In Quebec, we had several examples of houses that were seized that were then burnt. I am quite certain that personally I would never buy such house.

[Some voices]

Oh, oh!

[Insp Don Perron]

I do not believe you should buy one.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Obviously, when we designed these systems that did not used to exist, criminals were not very careful in hiding their assets. Since we have had these systems—it must be 15 years now since we started seizing their assets—I imagine that their habits have changed and that they rent much more than they buy.

Have you noticed that they lease their motorcycles and cars, rent houses, in short that they rent rather than buy?

[Insp Don Perron]

Yes, you make a very interesting observation that they are tending to lease more of their cars and rent more of their facilities. However, they would still have this large amount of money or profits that they somehow need to make available so they can benefit from the profits. Very often a lot of these profits are reinvested in other criminal activity where funding is required for that activity.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Apparently they can also rent from some businesses... On the one hand, I imagine that you follow the companies who rent to these people, and on the other hand, I imagine you try to see whether it is only occasional—such as with Tilden—or if is always the same small company that leases motorcycles to these groups. I imagine those kinds of cross references are done.

[Insp Don Perron]

Yes.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Some buy struggling companies in order to be able to declare profits. Once again, this happened in Quebec: one of them bought a ski resort. God knows that operating a ski resort requires some kind of expertise, and not all ski hills are profitable, sometimes even excellent ski resorts may not turn a profit in a given year.

What do you do in such cases? It happened in Quebec that a ski resort was seized. Do you continue to seize them and is it worth seizing money-losing operations?

[Insp Don Perron]

With some of these operations that we're seizing, obviously we do it in consultation with the prosecutor. We're getting much better at structuring the restraint order so that perhaps we would not take possession of property, where we force them to continue to operate the operation but they can't sell. There's a lot of flexibility in the actual restraining orders on how you can freeze title so they have to maintain operation yet they can't dispose of it.

I know the ski hill you're referring to because I was doing proceeds of crime back then in the mid-90s, Projet Avalanche.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

All right. We'll move on to Mr. Woodworth for five minutes.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the witnesses for coming. It's been an extremely interesting and informative session so far.

I just want to pick up on a couple of points. One I hope is fairly simple, from Superintendent Bucher. In your remarks you mentioned there was a request from some provinces that changes be made to the federal Witness Protection Program Act to facilitate their ability to obtain federal identification documentation without their witnesses having to enter into the federal program. What I am discerning from that is that the act does allow for the issuance of new—if I can put it this way—false identification for protected witnesses who are in the federal program, but it does not currently allow for the issuance of such identification for persons who are in provincial protection programs. The provinces would like that to change and the RCMP seems to be supporting that change. Am I on the right track with that?

[C/Supt Thomas Bucher]

That would be accurate, yes.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

Then I will address some questions to Inspector Perron. Some of the evidence we've heard has been about how complicated and protracted organized crime trials can be. I haven't had the chance to ask anyone yet, but in the back of my mind I'm thinking that maybe it's because of the issues around forfeiture that require such different kinds of disclosure than would ordinarily be made in a criminal case—among other things. I wondered if you could just paint a picture for me of the timeline for a forfeiture application under both the two federal streams and the provincial one.

I notice that clearly to make an application you have to prove that it's proceeds of crime, and technically you can do that as soon as the information is laid, but you haven't even proved yet that there's been a crime; just the allegation has been made. Typically, do applications for forfeiture get made at the outset of a criminal prosecution of organized crime, or are they made after some finding of guilt, or is there no typical stream? I'm thinking it may be different between the federal streams and the provincial streams. If you could just kind of elaborate on that for me, I would appreciate it.