Justice Committee on April 20th, 2010

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

And that person would belong to a gang?

[Mia Dauvergne]

The police would have determined that the incident was either associated with organized crime and/or street gang activity.

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

Do you have the figures from 1998 to 2008? You're just talking about homicides. I know that, for the moment, you don't have the figures for 2008. You'll have them in July. Can we have the figures for the other major crimes committed by young offenders, accused youths 12 to 17 years of age? We're talking about involvement in a gang, assaults, and so on. We have the figures on murders, but can we have the other figures, particularly on attempted murders?

[Mia Dauvergne]

We can definitely get those statistics for other serious types of crimes--however, not gang-related.

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

Pardon me. I have nothing against translation, quite the contrary, but I really didn't understand. What did you say? Can you repeat that?

[Mia Dauvergne]

I think I mentioned earlier that we have two surveys that are collecting information on crime in Canada. One is the uniform crime reporting survey and one is the homicide survey. We have information on the homicide survey that is related to gang activity or organized crime dating back to 1991. For the uniform crime reporting survey, we don't have that information historically.

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

Perfect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Dechert.

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

We'll start with Mr. Petit and then we're going to share.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm going to share the time allotted to me.

I have two final questions to ask the Statistics Canada representatives.

Is it true that you introduced a crime severity index in 2006?

[Mia Dauvergne]

We introduced it in our 2007 data. In 2006, yes, we had a report that pertained to 2006 data; however, it was officially launched as part of our standard report for our 2007 data.

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

Is it true that you assign a numerical value to crimes whereas, in the old system, which is still in existence, all crimes have the same value? Everyone is a victim, so all crimes have the same value. Is it true that you currently assign a numerical value to crimes? For example, there are three points for a homicide, two points for a rape and one point for a fraud.

[Craig Grimes]

There is a numerical value, but it's based on sentencing data. The method is to take all of the convictions for the various offences under the UCR2 violation codes—there are about 130 different violations—to track all of the convictions for those violations, identify how many were sentenced to custody, and use the average sentence, excluding outliers, to come up with a weight for that violation. That weight becomes a numerical value for the offence.

[Mia Dauvergne]

The basic idea is that a more serious offence would be allotted a higher weight.

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

Is it true that the number of crimes reported by police is higher in the west and north of the country than in the east and central region of the country, even today? Is it true that there are more reports in the west and north of the country than in the east and central region, according to a document issued by Statistics Canada?

[Mia Dauvergne]

It is generally true, yes, that crime rates tend to be higher in the western part of Canada and in the north compared with the eastern part of the country.

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

Are you talking about the report made by police?

[Mia Dauvergne]

Yes.

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

I have one final question.

Is it true that the Uniform Crime Reporting Program does not take all cases into account? I'm going to give you a very specific example. There are 11,000 victims of sexual assault in Canada whom the Catholic Church has compensated. If there was compensation, there was an admission of criminal acts. Is it true that those cases are not included in your statistics? The settlement occurred in 2006-2007. Is it true that the 11,000 victims of sexual assault are not included in your statistics?

[Mia Dauvergne]

I can't speak specifically to particular incidents. What I can tell you is that any incident that comes to the attention of police and is substantiated through police investigation is then reported to Statistics Canada and counted within our data.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Mr. Dechert.

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

I don't have much time left, but I'd like to ask a question of Professor Martin.

The question is this. If sentences for certain serious and violent offences are increased by approximately 20% to 30%, what impact would you expect those longer sentences to have on crime statistics in the future? What would you expect to see?

[Prof. John Martin]

It would depend whether we're talking about the actual sentence being enhanced legislatively or about judges imposing it.

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

Let's say judges actually imposing it, so that criminals are staying in prison longer by, say, 20% to 30%. What impact would you see?

[Prof. John Martin]

The impact would be that this is additional time during which those individual offenders cannot accumulate more victims. That would mean less crime. It doesn't mean they're not going to reoffend when they get out, but at least we would have had a holiday from them.