Justice Committee on April 13th, 2010

[Insp Don Perron]

Good question.

First of all, the provisions we have available to what we call preserve the asset so we can seek forfeiture are the special search warrants and the restraint orders. They are applications by the prosecutor based on the affidavit we provide.

The complexity of those will vary. For example, a proceeds of crime application usually is more complex because you have to demonstrate that the property or the assets were acquired with the profits derived from a criminal activity. Offence-related property is a little less onerous because we only have to demonstrate that the asset or property we are seeking to seize or restrain facilitated a crime. For example, you can have a grow house that was purchased with legitimate money but it facilitated a grow house; therefore, we can go after that.

The application for forfeiture only comes after a finding of guilt has been registered. So usually a forfeiture application will be submitted at sentencing. Then what would normally happen is we may get an agreement with the forfeiture application uncontested, or a forfeiture trial will be set, where we have to again reintroduce evidence to demonstrate. But it can only proceed after a conviction has been registered.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

In the course of your investigations, do you track the investigation and disclosure of evidence of the crime and the investigation and disclosure of evidence of proceeds at the same time? Are you doing one thing first and the other thing second?

[Insp Don Perron]

We usually work hand in hand with what we call substantive investigators. For example, a typical asset forfeiture investigator will work with a drug investigator or a firearms investigator from the provincial weapons unit. They are responsible for putting the case together to put in place the evidence to support a conviction on the substantive offence, the drug trafficking. We work on tracing the assets, identifying the assets, and linking them to the substantive criminal activity. It's a joint effort.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you. Unfortunately, you're out of time already.

We'll move to Monsieur LeBlanc for five minutes.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I share my colleagues' opinions and I believe that we have learned a great deal from you this morning.

I first want to ask a question of Inspector Perron. Perhaps the RCMP would then elaborate on the witness protection program, which I found very interesting.

Inspector, you talked about better coordination between federal prosecutors and provincial prosecutors, or at least a type of one-stop shop for colleagues who can be given conflicting advice in an investigation, which I'm sure can be anything but helpful. Other than the prosecutorial coordination or legal advice to investigating officers, which I think has a lot of merit and is very worthwhile, whether or not it's joint operations, are there are other ways to support forfeiture and seizures federally or provincially?

Are there ways that you can be more coordinated perhaps legislatively or at least in a police operation context? In other words, it's to avoid duplication. Your investigations are hugely expensive and complicated. I appreciate that. What can be done to in fact simplify or better coordinate and share resources?

[Insp Don Perron]

It's a very good question. As I indicated in my opening remarks, I think there are some opportunities to look at the Seized Property Management Act to possibly provide some amendments.

One of the issues we are facing right now is that seized property management will not manage an asset until a management order has been obtained by the courts. There is a gap that can be anywhere from one week to six months where the police inherit the responsibility and the cost of managing the asset until turning it over to seized property management.

First of all, the police are not management. We're not experts at managing assets. Secondly, we don't have the resources to manage those assets. Thirdly, we don't have the ability to get funding from the forfeitures to help us in that cause, whereas SPMD does. It's an area where we would like to see some improvement.

We talked about federal prosecution matters and provincial prosecution matters. If we have a federal matter, we're again dealing with SPMD. If we have a provincial matter, we're dealing with the province. We're again dealing with two different entities. It becomes complicated and convoluted. If we had a one-time, one-stop shop, or whatever you want to call it, it would be a lot easier for us.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Thank you.

Chief Superintendent, you really have an Acadian name. It's actually Boucher, isn't it? Brian Murphy and I recognize an Acadian name when we see one.

[C/Supt Thomas Bucher]

It's not. It's actually Austrian.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

I apologize. I thought everybody was an Acadian.

I found you and your colleague Inspector Bowen interesting in how you operationalize the witness protection program. I mean, there's a kind of public interest; the media, television, have these great examples of people going into witness protection, which is a myth in a lot of law enforcement.

This is the first time I've heard senior officers describe how a program like that operates. I'm interested that you've had 800 people accepted into the program since its inception. Yet $7 million doesn't seem like a lot of money to be an annual budget for 15 new inductees as well as the 785 ongoing responsibilities you have.

I'm not sure you can answer this, but during the life of somebody in the witness protection program, do the taxpayers spend $100,000 on that individual, $1,000,000? I know it varies in different circumstances, but what's the range? What's the cheapest you've had somebody in and out of that program, and what's the most gruesome example?

What jarred me was your comment about how we look at the lifestyle. Some of these guys have a lifestyle that certainly exceeds anyone around this table. I appreciate that you didn't mean to say you're going to keep them in the lifestyle they were accustomed to when they were involved in a criminal enterprise, but how do you decide on an envelope of money? It's so open-ended. I'm curious.

My impression is that you're not adequately funded. When you make a request to the Treasury Board, how would you explain your request for more money?

[C/Supt Thomas Bucher]

First of all, I should state that the witness protection program is entirely funded from the RCMP. It has never received outside funding. It comes directly from operations.

In terms of the variance of funding for any particular case, you can only imagine the range. I guess if we were to put a typical case of two adults and two children, a ballpark figure would be approximately $60,000.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Annually, or is that the total cost?

[C/Supt Thomas Bucher]

That's for the relocation.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Is annual or ongoing support not included in the $60,000 relocation?

[C/Supt Thomas Bucher]

It depends on any given case.

To your comment earlier, I should also clarify that when I made the comment on lifestyle, it's a lifestyle free of crime.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you for the clarification.

We'll move on to Monsieur Petit.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank the witnesses for being here today.

My question is mainly to Mr. Froese, as he caught my attention with the forensic accounting investigations dealing with white collar criminals, the new criminals.

We are carrying out a study on organized crime. We know this involves drugs. Over the last four, five or ten years, there has been a significant new movement that has emerged, that is the issue of white collar criminals. In Quebec, there were the Vincent Lacroix and Earl Jones cases. In Alberta, various companies are also involved in this kind of story. You are the expert we are consulting.

Currently, all governments, through different structures, are working with bigger and bigger pension funds. We can take as an example the teachers' fund and the Caisse de dépôt et de placement du Québec. There is a lot of money floating around and many people, like Vincent Lacroix for example, manipulate those funds. Today, we realize that if you were not there, we would not be in a position to find them. What would you suggest to us?

We are carrying out a study on organized crime and we must try to find some solution. We are well aware of past crimes, which were quite ordinary. In your case, you are facing a new kind of crime.

In your opinion, what should we change in order to help people protect their money? What is currently happening with white collar criminals is more and more serious. What do you suggest?

[Ken Froese]

There are really two aspects. One would be through policing and public policy, and the other is what individuals or companies should do.

Just from the policing and public policy side, we've talked a little bit about that, but forensic accountants right now, I would say, are normally used by police forces for two things. One is if they need specific expertise they'll bring someone in, but most of the time they're trying to hire people who are given tasks to do. You are given a task to do for the police force, and it's quite often a low-level person who comes in on a secondment or as a government employee working as a forensic accountant. There's not a lot of strategic involvement of forensic accountants in policing, and if you look at the structure and the culture of policing, it is one of “we are the police force and you are a civilian”, and it's not really as strong a team as it could be.

I've had some discussions with people in fraud units and what not, and it's tough from a finance perspective to get senior-level forensic accountants in to assist in that area. It is an area that I think could be improved, if there were more brainstorming and strategic involvement of the financial people as well as the police, because we each do our jobs very well, but it's hard to get us to always work together. So that would be one area you could look at, to see if there is a way to have more forensic accountant involvement at a higher level in the police area.

On the individual side, that's a broad question. How do we defend ourselves against this? We've done investigations with the union, for example, where surveillance was taken of a senior person meeting with three different organized crime families. The set-up internally was not designed to investigate that. If you're a local union, you're breaching the constitution to investigate it. If you're a member of the union, it's very hard to figure out a way to deal with that. I'm not sure how you interest policing in something like a union or areas outside of the norm, like drugs, smuggling, or white collar crime, where potentially organized crime is getting an influence. It depends on the area.

I'll stop there. That's probably a good place to stop.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Mr. Dechert.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen, for the information you have provided this morning.

I want to start with Superintendent Bucher. You mentioned that the House of Commons public safety committee had done a study and a report on the witness protection program, and I thank you for letting me know that.

Mr. Chair, perhaps the analyst could provide that to the members of the committee. That might be very helpful in the deliberation of our report.

You also mentioned that the RCMP has some recommendations coming. We've heard from a lot of witnesses in the last few weeks about problems with the witness protection program, the inability to secure convictions of especially gang-related criminals because of the problems, and in many cases unspecified problems, with the witness protection program.

Can you give us a flavour of what some of those recommendations might be that you anticipate in that report?

[C/Supt Thomas Bucher]

We've done a series of consultations with numerous partners, both internal and external, right across the country. My belief is that we have a strong federal witness protection program. I believe it works well. I believe also that we should always be looking at enhancing it and making sure that it is current, especially with the criminal environment in Canada. So based on those consultations we have done a draft document with the goal of improving the program. We're looking at things such as providing psychological assessments of protectees entering the program, increasing training for our members in the field--areas along those lines. Apart from that, legislative areas are also going to be explored, on which Public Safety is taking the lead.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

It sounds like it is substantially more than just extra resources.

[C/Supt Thomas Bucher]

Yes.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

There are some real refinements.

We look forward to that report.

Inspector Perron, on a slightly different topic than the one you've been speaking about this morning, as you know, last October, Bill S-4 on identity theft was given royal assent. Can you comment on how that might have an impact on combatting organized crime in Canada?

[Insp Don Perron]

I am vaguely familiar with Bill S-4, but I can tell you that the new provisions in there that allow us to charge people who are in possession of identity documents are going to be extremely helpful. As a matter of fact, we took down a project two weeks ago where we were able to utilize the new provisions and lay those new charges. So that will be extremely useful for us.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

In addition, our government has announced that it's going to reintroduce Bill C-51, having to do with white collar crime. One of the provisions of that bill gives the judge the opportunity to order restitution to victims of white collar crime.

What impact do you think that might have in the fight against white collar crime, which often is related to other forms of organized crime?