Justice Committee on March 25th, 2010

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

Certainly the comment I heard from him suggested that had Canada had a more strict criminal justice system, he might have chosen some other place to carry on his operations. We want people to come to Canada for a lot of reasons, maybe not that one.

[Graeme Norton]

I want to be clear that we're not suggesting this committee should recommend that we take a hands-off, nothing to be worried about, approach to organized crime. We acknowledge it's a significant issue and steps need to be taken. They need to be the right steps.

I think some of the ideas that have been suggested here in terms of collaboration between communities and the police service can be very helpful. I think when you're dealing with very entrenched criminal organizations there can be very specific ways to get at them, and it may require a very specific policing task force, but I don't think talking about the comment from one individual is necessarily indicative of the approach that needs to be taken.

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

I thought it was an interesting comment. Thank you for that. I have a question for Mr. Henry.

Mr. Henry, I want to thank you for your organization and the programs you operate. I'd love to hear more specifics about that. You mentioned drugs, and it's a way for people to earn a living where they maybe don't feel they have other opportunities. In my region of Mississauga and Peel Region there are many marijuana grow ops that actually exist in communities where people live. The Peel police have told me these operations are generally well financed by international organizations. Commonly, they have someone purchase a $400,000 home on behalf of the organization and equip it with tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, run several crops of marijuana through there, generate $1 million or more in profit, and then leave the house and move on to another one.

My question to you is, where do the drugs come from that the young people may sell in Scarborough and other places? How do we penalize and target the people who supply the drugs? My region of Peel has about 1.3 million people; it's very fast-growing and diverse. It also includes the Toronto airport, which is a major entry point for a lot of these drugs. Should we not be focusing on those international organizations? Are they international organizations, in your view? How do we stop them from supplying the drugs to the people in Scarborough and other places?

[Brian Henry]

I'd like to say first off that it also applies to the guns. The dissemination of firearms in my neighbourhood and community is a major problem also.

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

They come from outside of Canada.

[Brian Henry]

Absolutely. For the most part, so do the drugs. It's quite simple, especially when you consider that it's the young people within the neighbourhoods who are responsible for disseminating the stuff out there, whether it be drugs or guns. Police quite frequently make rightful arrests within my neighbourhood and community for drugs and guns. I think those are the two main things that young people are arrested for.

I think there needs to be a greater emphasis placed on intelligence gathering when the police officers do make these arrests. It would be helpful if we could return to some level of community policing, where the police officers within our community--who for the most part are excellent, who are young people themselves and are people you would want to hang out with and talk to, and they have a fairly good sense of humour and can be pretty funny people--would be able to come into the community, especially in the summer months, and form relationships with the young people and members of that community, but specifically the young people.

Again, there is desperation in these neighbourhoods. There is a perception there that money can be made through drugs and guns.

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

How do we target the international organizations that supply the drugs to them?

[Brian Henry]

I think you just follow the chain. If you are able to have a relationship with a young person--

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

Should we have tougher penalties for those kinds of criminals?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

We're already over time, so answer quickly, please.

[Brian Henry]

The young people who are arrested have information as to where they get their product from. You just follow the chain. But I think it's critical that whoever the arresting officer is doesn't appear to be hawkish or doesn't appear to be looking to just sink that young person, that that young person does feel at some level that the officer or the agency has their best interests at heart. I think they will be willing to turn over information to that officer--just as they are willing to turn over information to me--and then it's just up to the police department to follow the chain to see where that comes from. I think you have to start at the grassroots level and work your way up in terms of making that arrest.

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

When we find those people, the international drug suppliers, should we put them in jail for a long time?

[Brian Henry]

The longest time, yes, sir.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

Mr. Petit, for four minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a question for you, Mr. Trudell. We see each other regularly in committee. I particularly appreciate what you said about cooperation and collaboration among the various groups. When we study organized crime, very often I have to listen to the witnesses or refer to statistics to see exactly whether these laws we are going to pass or we intend to introduce are going to have the intended effects or are going to make the public safer.

I have obtained some information. I would like to ask you a question about an odd thing, relating to Statistics Canada. When an accused is convicted of fraud, Statistics Canada counts it as a crime. If a person commits fraud and has 9,200 victims, as happened in Quebec, without naming names, Statistics Canada counts it as a single offence. There are 9,200 victims, but there is one offence. That means that if, over a year, 10 people committed frauds and each of them had one victim, there would be 10 cases recorded. If, over the next year, eight people committed frauds and a ninth had 9,200 victims, Statistics Canada would say there had been a drop in the number of frauds.

Second, there is the question of organized crime. The most serious question is murder. Most of the time, when the body is found, one case is counted. If a murderer commits two murders, that will be two cases. In all cases of people who have disappeared, 41% of those people are found and 59% are not found. There are cases of murders by the underworld, the Mafia, etc.

I am very pleased when you appear, because you tell us about what is happening on the ground, which I am not really familiar with. I am trying to find out whether organized crime activities have increased or not and whether we should pass new laws, but when I look at what I am given, I'm working in a vacuum.

I'm asking Mr. Henry now. In the case of young offenders, in Quebec, as in Ontario, a lot of judges do not have all the relevant information, because a lot of young people are diverted. They have reports. Nothing appears outside the judicial system. I don't want to know the names, but I want to know what crimes are committed, to know whether certain laws have to be amended. I am somewhat in the dark, as you can see.

Mr. Trudell, I would like to know whether you have observed the same thing I have. When I look at the statistics, there are a lot of things missing that could help me. I like it when you come and testify, because you work on the ground.

[William Trudell]

And yet when I read some of the testimony previously, and as I've appeared here over the years, the statistics are only as good as the information and the statisticians. So we're never going to solve this problem unless we're all on the same song sheet regarding the questions we want to find out.

For instance, take your fraud example, where it's a global fraud but there are ten victims. To reflect that there are many victims of one particular offence, you have to frame your statistical question in that regard.

So statisticians who are looking for information often--and I'm not being critical--don't know what the question is. Where are these statistics going to end up? Are they going to end up in the House of Commons to try to interpret a bigger picture, or are they in response to a narrow question?

So I think before we can rely on statistics, we have to almost give a mandate to the person we want to get the information to tell them what we want to know. I often feel that statistics are rolled out to suggest that crime is increasing when the evidence may very well be that crime is decreasing--some crimes. What crimes are we talking about?

I think we need to have specific information so that the statistics are reliable. I'm not sure--and I don't think you are satisfied--that the statistics you're getting give you the answer. That's because of what the question is and what the mandate is of the statistician. They may be looking for information on one thing and we're using it for another.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

I'm just going to make a comment and ask one question, and then I propose that we give each one of our three witnesses three minutes to wrap up for themselves, maybe share something that you wanted to get out on the table but haven't been able to. Is that fair? All right.

Just one comment. My fear is that when we're talking about mandatory minimum sentences, we're spending all of our time talking about deterrents and not the prophylactic effect of mandatory minimum penalties.

I would commend to the two of you gentlemen the work that's being done by the criminology department at the University of the Fraser Valley. I don't know if you know John Martin. Certainly you would be familiar with Darryl Plecas. Their work seems to indicate that we do have a problem with the most prolific offenders.

Mr. Trudell, the comment you made was that courts are equipped to deal with repeat offenders. Their research seems to contradict that. So they are strong proponents of mandatory minimum sentences, but only in a very focused way against the most prolific and recidivist offenders that we have to deal with in our system.

Mr. Henry, I really enjoyed your testimony, because I think you're dealing with the challenges that most of us face in our communities. You're dealing with ground-level crime, which isn't necessarily part of organized crime, although our study has expanded to the point where it's encompassing those kinds of challenges as well.

You referred to single-parent families as survival units. Of those survival units, how many of them are headed by mothers?

[Brian Henry]

Next to all--I'm only aware of one single-parent unit in the Scarborough community that's headed by a man.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

I was afraid you were going to say that. My fear again is that if we don't focus on that and the men who are shirking their responsibilities, all the other solutions we're talking about will be band-aid solutions.

I know you don't have a whole lot of time, but how do we get those fathers to assume the responsibility they should have assumed for their children?

[Brian Henry]

There's a perception that they're mostly young couples and these young men are not taking their responsibilities as fathers.

There was a time not too long ago that as a young father I felt I was a burden to my family. Employment wasn't available to me, and educational opportunities were not available to me. I felt that being in the house would use up resources--food, heat, water--and that my presence within the home would be a burden to my family. That's one reason why young men aren't there.

Another reason why young men aren't there again is simply the cycle. They didn't grow up with a father in the home. They don't have an understanding of what it takes to be a man or to be a responsible man. I think that's something again that needs to be tackled at an early age and addressed as that person grows up, in order for them to see the relevance of it and the relevance of a father figure within the home.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

I'll give you each three minutes to wrap up.

[Graeme Norton]

I would like to conclude by saying, as I mentioned in response to Mr. Dechert's questions, we certainly don't ignore or not acknowledge the problem of organized crime. You have a very difficult task ahead of you here. Somebody is saying, “Fix organized crime. How do we do that?” That's not a very easy question to answer.

I'm not sure, and our organization is not sure, that ramping up the law is the way to do that. If you create new laws that are aimed at targeting organized crime but do more than that, you're going to divert system resources away from organized crime to people who are maybe less serious criminals. There may be places to tweak the law. There may be places where the law can be adjusted--maybe toughened up in certain places, maybe not toughened up in certain places. That's your task, and it's a very big task to figure out where exactly those places are.

But I think an over-response from the criminal justice system would not necessarily be the right answer. I think you need a collaborative approach, as has been suggested here, that involves communities working with police and members of communities to find ways to prevent members of communities from getting involved in criminal activities and organized crime.

The analogy can be drawn to changes in the medical system where there is a new approach to preventative medicine. Rather than waiting until somebody is sick to deal with the problem, deal with the problem before somebody gets sick. I think dealing with the criminal justice system can be compared to dealing with things in the hospital when somebody is already in triage and you're trying to figure out what to do with them. It might be better to focus police resources and community resources on preventing people from getting there in the first place.

Once they're there, it may be time to focus more targeted police resources on the most serious criminals, rather than focusing on drug crime. Let's see who the real kingpins are and try to get to those people, rather than addressing a situation more broadly that may require a more narrow response. So I would close with saying that.

Thank you again for inviting us to be here. I wish you the best of luck with your ongoing review.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

Mr. Henry.

[Brian Henry]

Thank you.

The summer of 2005 was labelled as “the summer of the gun”, here in the city of Toronto, and I think in response to that, there has been a mobilization of a lot of resources behind prevention and bringing programs into our community.

Since then, a number of years have passed and a lot of the resources that were offered then in terms of preventive measures within our community are now drying up. As a grassroots organization working in the Scarborough area of Toronto, I think our major focus and the challenges we face moving forward are the sustainability of the work that has started.

I think people are starting to become complacent again. We've seen so many changes within our community that people are starting to forget exactly what brought us to this point. As a result, we're reverting to a lot of the conditions that created the mess we're in, in terms of our neighbourhoods today. I would hope to see, even at the federal and provincial levels, greater attention paid to the work that started in the last few years in our community, in terms of working to prevent youth crime and youth violence, and resources geared toward these organizations for us to work to sustain it.

Thank you.