Justice Committee on March 29th, 2010

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here today.

I'm going to be challenging to you. I'm going to make some statements that you'll get at the local Tim Hortons with regard to our seriousness when it comes to crime. Then I'm going to talk about one of our previous witnesses in Toronto and what he had to say about the seriousness with which our society, particularly our governments and police, investigates organized crime.

I'm referring to the evidence of Mr. Antonio Nicaso, who is an investigative journalist specializing in organized crime. He says we're not really serious about investigating organized crime because we devote so little attention to it. If I could paraphrase--and he'd probably get a little angry--we're basically going after the low-hanging fruit, the minor drug dealers. We're not really working on the big guys. He was referring in particular to the Mafia, to that high level, to the guys who are buying legitimate companies, money laundering, etc. He says if you go after them, the rest falls.

I want you to address your comments to this. Are you doing anything about it? We're shy of time and I need some quick answers.

Then I'm going to go to the CBSA. I'm going to give you time to think about this. Some of the people say that CBSA is mostly interested in getting some duty from the people who go down to the States for shopping, because you're not really serious about getting the drugs and the other things coming across the border. You've heard that before, I know you have, so I want you to address that.

Mr. Gibson and the others can follow up, but this is particularly for the chiefs of police. Are you really that interested in getting the big guys? Or are you just interested in taking down the low-hanging fruit?

[Chief Rick Hanson]

I don't know who this guy is you're talking about, but let me say that you can't focus on one level or the other. The reality is that they're organized like any other organization.

I can tell you this. I'm at the top of my organization, but if I can get taken out tomorrow, you don't miss a beat. There are a half a dozen guys who can take my job. If you think it's any different in organized crime, you're just wrong. The next guy is ready to step in there.

You have to attack all levels of the organization at the same time. It's as simple as that. If I have a half a dozen cops who don't show up for work on night shift, the organization suffers. If you take out six street-level drug traffickers, you're going to have a significant impact. You cannot be simplistic and say that you focus up here and take the organization down. You won't. They have a whole system--it's like any business--so you have to focus on all of them.

Are we targeting the top? Absolutely, but I'll tell you something. It takes a lot of time and a lot of resources.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Chief Boyd.

[Chief Michael Boyd]

I agree with Chief Hanson.

The other thing that I think is important to recognize is that it's all about having enough resources to tackle organized crime. We get bogged down on redoing and working and working and expending resources and that takes away from our efforts to focus more on organized crime. I think that's why we all want to see the system working more effectively.

[Mike Skappak]

In relation to duty collection, we do have a responsibility to collect duties and taxes to make business even across the board for everyone, but I'd be remiss if I said we are not concerned about organized crime and criminal activity. Our major mandate is the security of this country. I'll make that very clear.

In relation to our other partners in law enforcement, we work tightly with them. We're seeing increases across the board in all types of seizures and criminal activity. So for somebody to say that we're just tax collectors, while I think that may have been a good term in the sixties and seventies, that has changed dramatically.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much.

There's one other statement this witness made. A statement was made as a result of a conversation that was overheard by a lawful police wiretap. I think the speaker was a Mr. Alfonso Caruana, who I think is spending 21 years in a jail in Italy. He basically said that the reason a lot of organized criminals, particularly the Italian Mafioso and others, come to Canada, is that they don't go to jail for very long here, that we're a soft touch when it comes to our sentencing regime, compared to other nations.

But we've had numbers and numbers of witnesses who have come here to tell us that's not true, that we're becoming like the United States, that we're putting too many people away in our jails, that mandatory minimum sentences don't work, and that what we need more is crime prevention, more socio-economic policies, etc.--

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Mr. Norlock, let them answer. You're out of time.

A very quick answer, please.

[Chief Rick Hanson]

You're right. We're filling our jails, all right, but we're filling them with the mentally ill, and the criminals are now running rampant. The frustration we have is that we would like to see some kind of sentencing regime that takes serious criminals who hurt and victimize people and sends them to jail, and then let's find an alternative, which we're currently trying to do, for the mentally ill and the addicted and get them into treatment programs.

Because that's how we're filling the jails. The number one component in our jails today, both federal and provincial, is the mentally ill. We've turned them into the insane asylums of 40 years ago and we're just ignoring that as a country. Those are the people who are filling up the spots in our jails. Let's try putting criminals in there and see what happens.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

Ms. Mendes, you have five minutes.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here.

I was a bit curious about your mention of the witness protection program. Could you elaborate on what would need to be done to make it more effective and to protect the witnesses who are helping to solve these crimes? Can we do more, federally, to help with that?

[Chief Michael Boyd]

I'll begin. Certainly, within the system, our ability as a country to deal with organized crime, violent street gang crime, etc., relies on our justice system. Our justice system won't work unless we have people who are willing to testify against offenders.

We all know of cases across the country where people have been reluctant to testify because they fear for their safety. We need the capability to protect witnesses who come forward to testify in order for us to gain convictions against dangerous offenders who need to be kept off the street. Our system isn't going to work without it.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

What would that capability be? What suggestions do you have?

[Chief Michael Boyd]

Well, it would certainly be to have the resources in place where you need to provide a range of different protections, depending on the type of case. I wouldn't say that every witness necessarily needs to be uprooted and relocated, but we need to have a range of alternatives that would address the different types of cases we face as police officers.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you very much.

Do I still have some time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Yes.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

I think it was Chief Hanson who mentioned the large increase in the white-collar crime type of fraud--both the mortgage fraud and the credit card and banking card fraud. What kind of federal legislation would be needed to address that question?

[Chief Rick Hanson]

One of the things I alluded to was that banks began doing something recently that actually facilitated organized crime. Somebody buys a $500,000 house. It used to be that somebody would come around and do an appraisal on the house to make sure it actually was of that value, but the banks switched to something that can be done at your desk.

What happened was that the switch facilitated the ability of organized crime groups to take advantage of a big gaping hole: they over-finance a house, reap the benefit, and make a significant amount of money. It was a simple change in the way that banks operated that contributed significantly to the proceeds of crime for organized crime groups.

When it comes to the ability.... No, you know what? I'm going to sit back and let other people have a chance.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

So bank laws would be one measure that could be taken to cover that...?

[Chief Rick Hanson]

I think that's definitely one. As for the complexity of investigating serious commercial crimes, to get back to the sentencing and the sentences in the U.S., compared to the that, the sentences in Canada are pathetic.

We have a lot of cross-border interaction with our partners in the U.S. For possession of a significant amount of drugs, for instance.... I realize this isn't the fraud question you are asking about, but sentences relate to this, as they relate to fraud as well; that is, you can make big money in Canada committing a fraud, and the sentence you get is a joke. You don't have to look farther than Earl Jones in the east. He's going to be walking away in 20 months, he's going to be a rich man, and he's going to leave a trail of victims behind him.

We forget in sentencing that a person in Canada generally has to serve only one third or one sixth of their sentence. When it comes to sentences for drugs, it's the same thing. A person will get a 25-year sentence in the U.S. for a crime that in Canada would mean three and a half years. It happens all the time. Unfortunately, people still say we're filling up our jails. We are--with the wrong people.

When it comes to white-collar crime especially, it's viewed as victimless. It's not. If you're an old person who has just spent your entire income on fixing your house, and renovations were never completed or were done shoddily because they were done by a company that defrauded the homeowner, you're a victim. Yet the risk to the person committing that crime is minor; he probably won't even get time in jail, and if he does, it's insignificant.

Again, it's balancing off the level of victimization versus this idea that some crimes are victimless crimes because there isn't a dead body in the street.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Monsieur Petit, for five minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, gentlemen. First of all, thank you for being here today. We will carefully note all the suggestions you have made. Some of them are certainly very interesting.

Mr. Hanson and Mr. Kohlhauser, you both raised an issue that interests me. Any time you have to talk to the public as representatives of police forces, people always give you statistics. Statistics will indicate if crime rates have gone down, for instance. Everyone is against you. People say you are too strict, even though on the ground, you realize you need to be even stricter.

Consider the example raised by Terry Kohlhauser. We are also interested in that example. When someone commits a homicide and the body is found, it is considered a homicide in Canadian statistics. When someone goes missing and is never found, that case is not included in the statistics.

We checked and noted that 41% of missing persons are found; 59% are never seen again. These people are young girls and young boys, men and women who go missing and whose cases are not included in statistics. Perhaps they were killed by criminal organizations, which have become so intelligent that now they hide the body after killing someone. The bodies are not found, and this gives the impression that homicide rates are going down. However, when we look at at-risk populations, as Mr. Kohlhauser mentioned—prostitutes or poor people—we see that these groups are being killed and not included in the statistics because their bodies are not found. They are missing persons.

I know there has been an increase. But how do you see this increase on the ground? I wonder if you have your own statistics. The statistics we get from Statistics Canada are not always effective enough to help us.

[Chief Rick Hanson]

You've raised a very good point. The problem is in tracking those people who are on the margins of society. We're talking about those people who are drug addicts or prostitutes, about those who really may go missing for a period of time. Nobody reports them as missing. Or when they are reported missing, they could have switched locations.

Again, the solution to this is twofold. One is a national database of missing persons that can adequately track who is missing, so that there is the link to the information systems of all police services, and when this person is relocated.... In Calgary, for instance, it could be a young girl who is a prostitute on the stroll and disappears. She may show up a year later in Vancouver under a different name.

It's very hard to track that information. There has to be a national database that not only tracks missing persons but accesses their information in the system, so that when the same person shows up as being arrested for shoplifting or whatever, it searches that database.

It's a very complex issue because, number two, you're absolutely right, in that there is a huge number, I'm sure, of homicides that occur where we're not even sure they've occurred because the person has a transient or high-risk lifestyle. They could have switched jurisdictions and we aren't able to track that adequately.

Again, it's resource intensive. All police services are faced with deciding on dealing with the dead body that's on the ground now after a gang shooting or tracking a missing person, who, in the majority of cases, will usually show up sometime later in another jurisdiction or sometimes even show up as being out of the country.

Organized crime uses that gap in the system to facilitate things like human trafficking. They can abduct somebody or get them under the influence of drugs and move them to another country, where they're prostituted.

I'm not going to pretend that we have the solutions to what you're bringing up. I'm just agreeing that there is an issue there and that our numbers don't adequately reflect what is actually happening in the real world.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Mr. Kohlhauser.

[S/Sgt Terry Kohlhauser]

It's a huge issue with respect to missing persons in comparison to homicide cases. Our statistics show that 95% of missing persons are located, one way or the other, within six months. At the investigator level, my level, that makes it difficult.

In regard to the person who lives a high-risk lifestyle or otherwise and who may be forced into a vehicle and never seen again, that will be a priority for, I would suggest, any police agency of the jurisdiction. However, knowing that a six-month window occurs for 95% of missing persons, all that police agencies can do is investigate it to the best of their abilities.

Hopefully, we will get things up and running. The initiatives have started with respect to the national initiative, our Alberta missing persons initiative, and some of the initiatives that the other provinces are putting together with respect to missing persons.