Justice Committee on April 20th, 2010

[Prof. John Martin]

The point is that there is no reason Washington state and B.C. should be different in that capacity. Their crime rates are quite similar for almost everything else, but in grow ops it's day and night. The only difference that I can attribute it to is sentencing, five years versus forfeiture of your light bulbs.

The only problem with that in Washington state is people growing on crown land and in forests where they don't have to worry about their homes being seized. We have more and more people from Washington state buying recreational property in the interior so they can come up, and the response from them is, “We're not allowed to do this back home.”

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll go on to Mr. Woodworth for five minutes.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I'd like to go back to a question similar to what Mr. Norlock was asking you, Dr. Martin, about the source of information, because I think what you have to say is valuable. There was some evidence earlier that some of the statistical crime reporting didn't begin until the 1990s. If we wanted to know what the crime rate was in 1962, where would we find that, or where would you find it, I should say, and can you just elaborate on that a little?

[Prof. John Martin]

It's my understanding that 1962 was the first year that a crime rate was established and made public. The problem is that the measure of what goes into the crime rate has changed over the years, so it does become difficult to make comparisons from one decade to the previous. But it's really the best we do have.

In terms of the victimization studies, which have been done for almost as long, we see the same thing. We see an increased number of people purporting victimization as time goes on, compared to the 1960s.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[Prof. John Martin]

But we are limited by what's there.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

If I could ask the statistical people, I thought I heard something earlier about adult crime statistics not being gathered until 1991. Can you tell me what was the practice in 1962, and did I misunderstand the evidence about statistical gathering?

[Mia Dauvergne]

What Dr. Martin said is correct. We do have information on the crime rate beginning in 1962. What began in 1991 was the collection of information specific to gang-related homicide.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I see. Thank you. That's a good clarification.

Is there anywhere a compendium of the history of reporting changes that have occurred? We've spoken about a number of reporting changes, including different versions of the uniform survey, which I thought was an interesting turn of phrase, but also various things, the crime severity index, of course, being recent, and now, of course, we know gang reporting in 1991. I wonder if that is collated anywhere and set down where one could sit and read a few pages of what the various changes in reporting have been since 1962.

[Mia Dauvergne]

We could certainly provide some information to the committee on that. I'm not sure it would be only a few pages, but--

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I don't want to put you to too much homework, but in the comparison of statistics from one decade to the next, it would be useful to know what was reported then and what is reported now.

[Mia Dauvergne]

Absolutely.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I was a bit curious about that phrase, “different versions of the uniform crime reporting survey”, because if it's uniform, I suppose it's all the same. Did you mean to say that it evolved over time, or is it used differently in different parts of Canada today?

[Mia Dauvergne]

The analogy I like to give people is that it's like a version of Microsoft Windows. The earlier versions had limited capacity, and as newer versions came out they still had the same capabilities as the old version, plus additional ones. The newest version of the uniform crime reporting survey can do what the older versions did, plus more. So the level of information we collect has become more detailed.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

And is that used to collect data not only on Criminal Code non-driving offences, but also on Criminal Code driving offences and other federal statutes?

[Mia Dauvergne]

That is correct.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

All right. So all that data is out there.

Do you publish an actual crime rate that shows in fact not just Criminal Code non-driving offences but all criminal or quasi-criminal offences?

[Mia Dauvergne]

We don't typically publish it as a rate, but we certainly can provide the number of total violations that have occurred for each year.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Is there a reason you don't publish a comprehensive crime rate?

[Mia Dauvergne]

It's the way the crime rate has been defined, going back years and years.

[Craig Grimes]

I know one of the considerations is that over the years, impaired driving offences, as well as drug offences, have been particularly susceptible to enforcement practices, so there can be a lot of variability in those rates from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I don't know if Mr. Petit has any additional questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

No, you're out of time.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Oh, I'm out of time. All right.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

And we're actually at the end of our time here.

I will say I'm still troubled by the fact that drug offences are not included when we calculate the crime rate. In every single city we visited, when we talked about organized crime and met with the different stakeholders, drugs were the number one focus of discussion, wherever we went. And from personal experience--I can only speak for my community of Abbotsford, but it has been called the crime capital of Canada, at least last year, thanks to Statistics Canada--my concern is if we really want a true picture and we want to communicate that true picture to Canadians, we need to find a way of incorporating drug statistics in the overall crime rate. Otherwise, I think we're going to continue to mislead Canadians.

Are there any plans to provide a more consistent treatment of how we deal with drug offences?