Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I don't know whether it's an honour or not to be here this afternoon. It was three weeks ago today that I ceased to be the Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench. Compulsory retirement is at 75, and so I obeyed the law and retired. Up until that time, of course, I could not appear before a body such as this to give you my views, whatever they may be, as they relate to organized crime, particularly what we see of it from the point of view of the bench in Edmonton and Alberta.
I was invited late on Thursday to be here, and I said I could make it. I did a little work with one of our students and circulated a little bit of a paper that you have before you as to where we stand in Edmonton on the matter of organized crime as we see it.
I think we have to go back a little bit. You have to remember that we're a court of general jurisdiction. So my jurisdiction was not only to take care of the civil procedures in court but also the criminal procedures and to assign the judges. The only authority I had was to tell judges where and when to sit. What we tried to do when we got these complex cases relating to organized crime was to assign a judge who had some considerable experience in the area.
The big case that came before the courts in Alberta was Regina v. Chan about five or six years ago, when 30 were arrested. We didn't really know how to handle this because we didn't have the capacity within the courtroom to handle it. This resulted in our building a courtroom for about $2.3 million, fully equipped with adjoining cells in the basement of the courthouse in Edmonton. We had studied what was done in Winnipeg when it had a very similar case starting before ours. Winnipeg had moved its courtroom into an old mill, I think it was, about three or four miles away from the courthouse. We were satisfied to handle a mega-trial of this type, which we'd never had the experience of doing in Alberta before. We had to try to see if we could keep it within the courthouse for security and other reasons.
That trial became very complicated. There were a good number of lawyers. It finally got severed. Most of the accused pleaded not guilty. A few pleaded guilty. The proceedings then commenced and the case collapsed under its own weight, because it was under the section relating to organized crime. Regrettably, the prosecutors weren't really trained to handle that, as it was new to them. There was application after application, including all kinds of applications for particulars and further and better particulars. Finally, these charges were stayed. By that time, probably three years had passed and the people who had pleaded guilty were already back out on the street, while others were still being tried. When they severed the two trials and they were stayed, the crown never appealed. It was a well-learned lesson about gang trials and procedures.
The result is that we have since probably had three trials proceed under that section as it relates to organized crime in Edmonton. One of the trials was called Park, which dealt with a big fraud relating to mortgages. He was acquitted of the fraud charge and also of the charge of receiving benefits from criminal organizations.
There's one that's ongoing called R. v. Alcantara, which is a criminal organization. However, this trial is not proceeding under the organized crime section because the prosecutors feel they can better handle these cases without going under that particular section.
We have another case called the Caines trial, with Caines being the co-accused of Alcantara. He will probably be pleading guilty because of a deal that I think is going to be made.
That's the extent to which we have been involved with the organized crime trials that have come before us.
You will see some remarks from a Mr. Finlayson in the paper that I've circulated. It's somewhat interesting, because he gives reasons for not proceeding under the organized crime sections. He says to sever when you possibly can sever, and to lay specific charges because they can be handled a lot more expeditiously, in particular when it comes for demands for particulars and for full disclosure.
I know that the prosecutors would be reluctant to come before this committee at this stage because they're active in these cases, but you at least have the benefit of what a prosecutor has to say to me. This is from the justice department in Alberta. Some other comments in the paper may also be of some use to you.
Organized crime has been with us, in one way or another, for a long time. When I grew up there were zoot-suiters. They were more into mischief than into trying to get proceeds out of organized crime. Organized crime, as I see it in this particular city--and I think this feeling is shared by a lot of my former colleagues--isn't big, because the genesis of the organization does not take place here. It's probably Vancouver. In Ontario it's probably in Toronto. However, the individuals who are organized here are making other people rich. We have to read between the lines and make some inferences, but this is what we see during the course of the trials we conduct. We really don't see that much of it in comparison to other places.
We have a specific problem in Wetaskiwin because its jurisdiction takes in Hobbema, and there is organized crime among the native gangs in Hobbema. That may be one of the areas where there is more intense activity by way of organized individuals; the other place would be Fort McMurray. Once again, they are usually identifiable groups. A lot of them are immigrants. A lot of these immigrants come here with a lot of talent and add to our culture, but at the same time they bring their baggage. Sometimes their baggage is the fact that they've been involved in some type of organized crime activity back where they came from.
As an overall assessment, in Alberta and in Edmonton in particular we're not having any problems now in being able to handle these cases. We recognize that the prosecutors still have some considerable problems in supplying the information that they're obliged to provide under Stinchcombe. These are not easy cases and they're usually adjourned. On a few occasions it was to ensure that all the particulars were given in disclosure. A lot of these prosecutors are young and still learning their trade, and it's not an easy job for them.
The law has changed since Stinchcombe. The law has changed since the charter. I've been a judge for 36 years, and pre-charter it was easy doing criminal cases; if the policeman didn't beat the living daylights out of someone or else promise him everything that you could imagine, the evidence was admissible, but with the charter and the rights that are now given under the charter, it has become very difficult for judges. Judges have a tough time handling the charter.
We're getting better. When I went to law school, the charter was sections 96 and 97 of the BNA Act, and that was it. In 1982 to 1985, we started to learn about the charter. I had a landmark decision in the Bridges case; I had to impose the charter, and the Bridges case changed the warnings that the police had to give all across Canada. We had to advise them of the availability of legal aid.
To be quite frank with you, I hated it, hated doing that. I knew this guy maybe wasn't guilty, but boy, he was involved: scot-free. The police weren't used to dealing with individuals and applying the charter at that stage either, because they were still from the old school.
That to me was a very good example of where I as a judge, who all of a sudden, after sitting for about fifteen years.... You don't like to change, but you do change; you say, the charter is the charter, and that's the law now.
We're getting better at the application of the charter, and I think prosecutors are getting better at disclosure. Cases are running quite smoothly. These cases take a little bit longer, and we often adjourn them, but at the same time, we can give, in Edmonton and Calgary, a trial within seven months or six months after preliminary has been concluded and the person has been arraigned. We're pretty proud of that record. Maybe it's in part because the crown is now proceeding as I indicated.
Thank you very much.