Justice Committee on Oct. 26th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

I call to order meeting number 31 of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Today is Tuesday, October 26, 2010.

You have before you the agenda for today to review Bill S-9, an act to amend the Criminal Code for auto theft and trafficking in property obtained by crime.

To assist us with our review we have a number of witnesses. First of all, we have, representing the Canada Border Services Agency, Ms. Caroline Xavier. We also have the Department of Justice, represented by Robert Borland, counsel. Welcome.

Then we have Statistics Canada. Some of you have been here before, so welcome back. We have Julie McAuley, director; Mia Dauvergne, senior analyst; and also Craig Grimes, chief and advisor. Welcome to all of you.

You know the routine. You have ten minutes to present, if you wish, and then we'll open the floor to questions.

Why don't we start with Statistics Canada.

[Julie McAuley, Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada]

Thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity to present to the committee regarding Bill S-9.

Statistics Canada does not take a position on the proposed amendments in the bill. The presentation we have prepared contains our most recent data on motor vehicle thefts. All data sources used are clearly indicated on the slides, as are any pertinent data sources.

We have included supplemental information at the end of the presentation for the consideration of the committee and have distributed a copy of a Juristat article on motor vehicle theft that was released in December 2008 using 2007 data. That is the most recent Juristat article on this subject.

My colleagues Ms. Mia Dauvergne and Mr. Craig Grimes will help answer any questions.

Please turn to the first slide in the deck.

Police-reported motor vehicle thefts in Canada have generally been declining since 1996. The rate of motor vehicle theft declined 15% between 2008 and 2009, continuing a downward trend that began in 2003.

Police-reported motor vehicle thefts are incidents in which a land-based motorized vehicle is taken or attempted to be taken without the owner's authorization. It includes incidents in which the perpetrator has the intent to steal a vehicle but is unsuccessful.

In 2009 police reported about 108,000 motor vehicle thefts, averaging about 300 stolen vehicles per day. This figure includes both completed and attempted incidents. This is down slightly from 2008, when police reported about 125,000 motor vehicle thefts.

A little over one-third of motor vehicle thefts in 2009 involved cars, and another one-third were of trucks.

Motor vehicle theft is one of the most common types of police-reported crime in Canada. In 2009 such thefts accounted for 5% of all Criminal Code offences and 6% of all non-violent offences.

The next slide shows that the highest rates of motor vehicle theft tend to be in the western provinces and northern Canada. In 2009, for the first time in 13 years, Manitoba did not have the highest reported motor vehicle theft rate in the country; Nunavut had the highest rate, with 593 motor vehicle thefts per 100,000 population. Vehicle theft rates in Manitoba have declined in four of the past five years, including a 39% drop in 2008 and a 28% drop in 2009.

The next slide indicates that in general the same geographical pattern is seen for Canada's census metropolitan areas. In 2009, while the highest rate of motor vehicle theft was in Brantford, Ontario, generally motor vehicle theft rates are higher in western Canada's CMAs.

Winnipeg's rate has been among the highest in Canada for the past 17 years. However, the rate of motor vehicle thefts in Winnipeg decreased from 956 per 100,000 population in 2008 to 629 per 100,000 population in 2009. This has driven the decrease in Manitoba's overall motor vehicle theft rate. In 2009, Winnipeg accounted for 74% of Manitoba's motor vehicle thefts, down slightly from 2008, when it accounted for 81%.

Motor vehicle theft is one of the least likely crimes to be solved by police. Of all vehicle thefts in 2009, 11% resulted in an accused person being identified, compared with 33% of all other non-violent offences.

Slide 5 shows that, similar to other non-violent offences, police-reported theft is a crime often associated with youth. In 2009, police-reported motor vehicle theft rates were highest among 15-to-18-year-olds. Youth 12 to 17 years old accounted for approximately three in ten persons accused of motor vehicle theft in 2009, slightly higher than the proportion of youth accused of other non-violent offences.

About 82% of all persons accused of motor vehicle theft in 2009 were male; this compares with 75% of those accused of other non-violent offences.

Drawing from analysis done in 2007, the next slide looks at police-reported motor vehicle thefts and organized crime. We do not yet have a reliable, direct way of measuring organized crime involvement, but vehicle recovery status has been used as a proxy measure.

As you can see, about four in ten stolen vehicles were not recovered by police, suggesting that these may have been related to organized crime. In 2007 vehicle recovery rates were lowest in the province of Quebec and among the highest in Winnipeg.

In the next slide, we turn to the question of court outcomes for charges of motor vehicle theft. It is not possible to identify motor vehicle theft using court administrative records alone, as motor vehicle thefts are currently recorded together with other thefts under section 334 of the Criminal Code. However, we can link court records, which contain criminal court outcomes, with police records, which contain offence characteristics, in order to identify this subset of theft in Canada.

The question of whether or not motor vehicle theft is treated differently from thefts in general by the courts is often asked, and we recently linked these administrative files to answer this question for another project. An unrepresentative sample of court records did show differences in the way in which theft in general and motor vehicle theft were treated by the courts. Incarceration was used more frequently for guilty charges of motor vehicle theft, and there were significant differences in the length of custody imposed by the courts for motor vehicle theft compared to other theft.

The Criminal Code under section 335 describes taking a motor vehicle without consent as an offence resembling theft. In slide 8 we see that several thousand of these theft-like charges are completed in Canadian criminal courts each year. The number of these charges against youth has been declining since the introduction of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, while the number of these charges against adults has changed very little since 2000-01. The proportion of guilty findings for adults and youth tends to be higher for this charge than for charges generally, but almost identical to the proportion found guilty for theft in general.

Next we turn our attention to data available from criminal courts on the possession of property obtained by crime. Because trafficking in such property is a new offence proposed under Bill S-9, it is not possible to provide data on the extent to which these cases also include trafficking of that property. However, it is possible to provide data on the number of cases that contain the underlying offence of possession of property obtained by crime. Since 2000-01, approximately 10% of all criminal court cases, or roughly 40,000 cases each year, contained at least one charge for property obtained by crime. In 2008-09, the proportion of these cases completed in youth criminal courts was higher than in adult criminal courts.

In summary, motor vehicle theft continues to be a high-volume offence in Canada, but Canada's police-reported motor vehicle theft rate has generally been declining since 1996. Motor vehicle theft rates are particularly high in the west. Vehicle recovery rates can serve as a proxy for organized crime involvement, and we have seen that the recovery rates vary across the country. Stolen vehicles are recovered less often in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada, while in Winnipeg the recovery rate was among the highest.

Thank you. That ends my presentation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We move now to Caroline Xavier, representing the Canada Border Services Agency.

[Caroline Xavier, Director General, Corporate Secretariat Directorate, Canada Border Services Agency]

Thank you.

I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss CBSA's role in relation to Bill S-9.

Before I talk about the bill, I would like to take a moment to talk about CBSA's role in managing the border as well as the services we provide.

The CBSA is mandated to provide integrated border services that support national security and public safety priorities and facilitate the free flow of legitimate persons and goods, while meeting all requirements under program legislation.

This responsibility extends to enforcing immigration and refugee policy and to border inspection of food, plants and animals. It also aims to provide information and enforcement support that enable us to fulfill our legislative obligations in security and safety matters.

Overall, CBSA administers some 90 acts and regulations that govern the eligibility of people and acceptability of goods entering or leaving Canada.

The CBSA uses a risk-based intelligence approach to border management, whereby the agency focuses its efforts on the people and goods that are considered high risk, while facilitating the border clearance of low-risk travellers and goods.

The risk-based approach allows the agency to ensure that the costs and delays imposed by the clearance processes on legitimate people and shipments crossing the border are minimized, while at the same time identifying and interdicting diverse security threats as early as possible in the travel and supply chain continuum. Ultimately, this approach allows the agency to allocate its resources in the most effective manner possible by assessing risk as far away from the border as possible.

In June 2009 amendments to the Customs Act were made to strengthen the CBSA's ability to interdict contraband and other illegal items in customs-controlled areas, such as airport tarmacs and seaport docks. The primary purpose of these amendments was to give the CBSA greater scope and flexibility in its management of risk.

The key amendments allowed the CBSA to fully implement what we call the advance commercial information program, also known as eManifest, and to put in place changes at customs-controlled areas. Ultimately, this allows the agency to bring greater security within the trade supply chain through the receipt of advance commercial information via the eManifest initiative.

As mentioned, the CBSA enforces the Customs Act and other federal statutes and regulations. However, none of these acts or regulations includes a provision to specifically address the export of stolen vehicles and, in particular, suspected stolen vehicles.

Under current legislation, the CBSA may receive and act upon intelligence information, but the information must relate to the administration and/or enforcement of the Customs Act. The CBSA may only conduct an administrative check of outbound cargo to ensure its compliance with the Customs Act, the reporting of goods regulation, or any other act of Parliament the agency administers and enforces.

Currently, if a CBSA officer happens to discover what they suspect is a stolen vehicle during the course of an export examination, the officer does not have the legal authority to investigate whether or not the vehicle has been reported as stolen. Rather, the officer only has the authority to inform the local police jurisdiction of his or her suspicion. The police will then run checks on the vehicle through various databases to determine whether it's stolen.

Included in the Criminal Code amendments being considered by this committee is a provision that prohibits the importation and exportation of property obtained by crime, such as stolen vehicles. This prohibition will enhance the CBSA's ability to manage the border by triggering existing authorities in the Customs Act, which will allow the agency to undertake examinations to determine whether vehicles have been reported as stolen.

Under the proposed legislation, an officer who suspects that a vehicle has been stolen will also have the authority to run database checks to determine whether the vehicle has been stolen. In doing so, the CBSA will refer vehicles to the police that the agency believes to be stolen rather than just suspected of being stolen.

Therefore, the proposed amendments to the Criminal Code would provide the CBSA officers the lawful authority to assist police by examining and using various law enforcement databases for the purpose of detaining stolen vehicles. Such detained vehicles will then be turned over to the enforcement partners for further investigation, thus enhancing our information sharing capabilities with our law enforcement partners.

Bill S-9 will empower the CBSA to examine vehicles, determine theft through database checks, and detain stolen vehicles until the police can investigate the offence and take possession of them as part of their ongoing enforcement activities. Essentially, this bill will put the CBSA in a better position to work in a more effective manner with its national and international law enforcement partners to deter the cross-border trafficking of stolen goods.

Bill S-9 will also create specific offences: the offence of auto theft; the offence of tampering with a vehicle identification number; and the offences of trafficking in property obtained by crime and possession of property obtained by crime for the purpose of trafficking.

This bill will have a direct and positive impact on the CBSA in that it will allow the agency to play a more direct and meaningful role in preventing the exportation of stolen goods.

Currently the CBSA has a strategic export control program as part of our Customs Act authorities. Bill S-9 will provide CBSA further authority to assist our law enforcement partners by actively targeting those shipments that are reported for export before they reach the port, for the purpose of detecting stolen goods—in particular, vehicles.

These authorities will allow us to look at the export information we are receiving in advance so that we may work with our law enforcement partners to determine whether or not there could be an infraction or prohibited goods, such as a stolen vehicle.

Within its current legislative framework the CBSA works diligently on its own enforcement priorities that support police efforts to identify and investigate suspected stolen vehicles destined for export. The CBSA will continue to utilize a risk-management approach to do advance analysis, using intelligence from our law enforcement partners and our tools to focus our attention on suspicious containers.

In 2008 the CBSA participated in a six-month export vehicle verification probe led by the RCMP. During this probe, the CBSA used established export verification techniques, tools, and resources to look for indications of suspected contraventions of the Customs Act, the reporting of exported goods regulations, or any other act administered or enforced by the CBSA.

During the probe, the CBSA officers assisted the RCMP and examined 281 containers at the ports of Montreal and Halifax and intercepted 258 stolen vehicles. The results of the probe provided law enforcement agencies with a glimpse of the current situation regarding stolen vehicles.

With the passage of Bill S-9, the CBSA will have the legislative authority it needs to take a more effective role in law enforcement efforts to intercept stolen vehicles.

As part of our ongoing enforcement activities, the CBSA will be able to use the authorities provided by this bill to do our job more effectively within the parameters of our available resources.

Thank you for inviting me to contribute our perspective for your consideration of this legislative proposal.

I am now ready to answer questions. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Borland, do you have an introductory statement, or are you just here as a resource?

[Robert Borland, Counsel, Canada Border Services Agency]

I'm just here to support Caroline.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you very much.

We'll move to questions from our members.

First we'll move to Mr. Lee. You have seven minutes.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you to the witnesses for attending today.

Turning to StatsCan first, this is a general kind of approach, but in all of the statistical data you referred to there appeared to be, happily, a downward trend in auto thefts, depending on when you start counting.

Was there any upward trend visible in any of the data you've gone through? I didn't hear any, but could you indicate whether there were any upward trends we should take note of here?

[Julie McAuley]

Do you mean in terms of the time series of auto theft?

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Yes, since 1993 or 1997—whenever you—

[Julie McAuley]

The second slide, which looks at the police-reported motor vehicle thefts in Canada, covers the time period from 1977 through to 2009, during which you can see that there has been fluctuation. If you look at that graph, you can see that there was a period, starting about 1982, through to 1995 or 1996, when we saw an increase. But essentially the trend has been decreasing since 1996.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

I see. Then you might have an individual year when there's an uptick, but the trend line is down?

[Julie McAuley]

Exactly. In the supplementary information that we gave you there is a series of data tables, and the exact numbers are included in those tables.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you very much.

Now turning to CBSA, when you were describing CBSA's roles, I heard you mention the immigration role and the food inspection role, but I didn't hear the tax collector role. Do you still collect taxes, customs due?

[Caroline Xavier]

We collect duties on importation of goods, yes.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

You still have that role? And you didn't include it. It's okay that you didn't, but I didn't hear it in your description.

[Caroline Xavier]

It's implied in terms of our management of the border. I didn't explicitly state it, but it's part of our mandate.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

You also mentioned your intelligence-gathering role. I know that you do that, and Canadians are happy that you prepare with intelligence. But is your intelligence-gathering role based on some statutory authority, or is it something you simply found necessary to do in your work?

[Caroline Xavier]

We don't actually gather intelligence. We use intelligence that we get from those who are better equipped to gather it. We work in partnership with our law enforcement partners, such as CSIS and the RCMP, who are the main intelligence gatherers, if you want. We use that type of intelligence to make informed decisions in order to better manage the border.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Okay, so you don't actually go out and gather your own raw intelligence, but you make use of other partners to provide information, which you then analyze for your purposes.

[Caroline Xavier]

That's correct.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Okay.

You also referred to “our law enforcement powers”.

[Caroline Xavier]

“Law enforcement partners”, sorry.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

No, you used the words—

[Caroline Xavier]

I used “powers”?