Justice Committee on Oct. 20th, 2011

[Dr. Irvin Waller]

Correct.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

And 31% of crimes are reported to police. Is my recollection accurate?

[Dr. Irvin Waller]

That's correct, and that's what the Minister of Justice uses too.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

So my memory is better than I thought.

With respect to official police-reported statistics, which is what I think most individuals cite when they want to argue that crime is down, do you know if police forces across Canada uniformly record reported crime?

[Dr. Irvin Waller]

Statistics Canada has since 1962 had a reporting system called the uniform crime reporting survey, similar to the system in the U.S. or in the U.K. A lot of effort goes in to making that uniform, and there's no doubt, if you look over the last 10 years, that police-recorded crime has been going down in this country. The severity index was introduced only in 1998, so automatically that has been going down.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

The severity index attempts to rank certain crimes as statistically more significant than others, so that murder isn't weighted the same as shoplifting. Is that correct?

[Dr. Irvin Waller]

Correct.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

It has been suggested with respect to police-reported crime that there have actually been changes over the last 20 years in how police count crime, and specifically with respect to incident reporting as opposed to crime reporting. For example, if an individual breaks into six houses on one evening, where historically that would have been counted as six crimes, it's now reported as one incident. Perhaps Dr. Waller or Chief McFee could tell me whether my understanding is correct.

[Chief Dale McFee]

I think you're talking about reports versus incidents. It's pretty hard to put six different victims on one incident. So it would still be counted as six victims, if that's what you're looking for. There have been some changes, though. There has been a different weighting, in relation to the violence, giving a greater weighting to violent crimes.

You talk about the statistics. I honestly think there are some real contributors, and it's diverse across our country, as much as our country is diverse. A lot of this ties to age demographics. If you go to Saskatchewan and you look where I police, the majority of our population is under 24. There's high marginalization in northern Saskatchewan that predicts that in eight to 10 years, 50% of the population will be under 15. Tie that in to some of the northern regions, and then if you go into some of the bigger centres where it's an aging population of baby boomers, there's a play in relation to that as well.

I think what you've seen is the complexity of the crime and the severity and how we deal with it. There's a real good report, the Plecas report, that came out a few years back. There's a lot more time spent on crime and how we deal with it. What used to be easily reported has become complicated, but there have been so many processes added to it, and there's a lot of time spent in relation to that. So there has been some tweaking in how it's reported. I think it's highly affected by the demographic and it's different across the country, so to use one brush to paint across the country isn't right.

The other thing I would say is that in relation to the Scotland model, we took a team to Scotland to study it and we're doing some of that in Prince Albert.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

Thank you.

Mr. Stewart.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to the panel for your presentations.

My first question is for Mr. Waller. Obviously, you have studied this bill in great detail and have extensive experience and expertise in this area. Considering the bill in its entirety—all nine bills that have been rolled into the omnibus bill—I'm wondering if you can estimate how many more people you think will go to jail as a result of this bill. A proportion or percentage would be fine.

[Dr. Irvin Waller]

I don't think that is easy to determine, because we've had a number of bills, like the dangerous offender legislation, like the two for one legislation, that are going to have a downstream effect. What we can say is it is going to take some time, if this legislation were passed tomorrow, before there would be any significant increase in people in prison in this country. Initially most of that is going to be happening in provincial institutions, which are already overloaded with far too many people on pre-trial detention. This is why I think it is crucial at this time that this country invest seriously in things that will reduce crime within a reasonable timeframe, and that, frankly, is through prevention. That is what all the evidence shows. It shows it on gangs. It shows it on sexual assault. It shows it on car theft. It shows it on all the sorts of crimes that are covered in the victimization survey.

If you look at why we are at 31%, this is a shocking statistic internationally. You'd typically see that 40% to 45% of victims report in the U.S. or the U.K. Canada is somehow at 31%. Why? That is because we're a long way behind where we should be in terms of services and rights for victims. Quebec, which has a government-run victim service and gives amounts of money in compensation similar to England, has a 40% reporting rate. Ontario has 30%.

We need to do something across this country to bring ourselves up to the standards in western Europe and the standards that exist in many U.S. states and that the current Vice-President has approved in the United States—the Justice for All Act, the Violence Against Women Act. You do not see action any longer where you just focus on being tough on criminals. You have to be tough on causes, because that's the best way of focusing on preventing the harm. This harm of $83 billion is an enormous sum, and people like me have known for some years that the harm is significant and that we need to address that. A significant part of addressing that is investing seriously in using the things that we know work from Canada. And where we can adapt them from Scotland or California or Vermont, we need to adapt them here.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Just to bring you back to the question, you are here speaking about this bill, and you have endorsed this bill as a good step forward. I am just wondering if you think there will be no extra people put in jail with this bill. Perhaps you could give us a ballpark figure of how many extra, even a proportion of increase in the jail populations.

[Dr. Irvin Waller]

You've had many people, way more expert than I, who have been looking at what is likely to happen in terms of incarceration levels.

My focus is very much that there is a key element missing from a bill that is about safe communities, that is about reducing harm to victims, and that is about prevention. We see jurisdictions doing this, like Saskatchewan, like Alberta, but we need a much higher level of leadership in the federal government to make this happen, and if we do that we will not be talking about overuse of incarceration five to ten years from now.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Right.

Perhaps I can turn to Mr. McFee or Mr. Westwick. Within your jurisdictions, have you any estimate at all? Again, you've endorsed this bill and you've looked through it and you have spoken well about it. I can understand that you've looked at it in great detail.

What increases in the prison population would you expect in your jurisdictions?

[Vince Westwick]

I certainly couldn't propose a percentage. The thought that strikes me is that it would be more child sexual predators and more drug offenders who are linked to organized crime and serious drug offences who would be in jail, and that kind of skews our view of it to the positive.

[Chief Dale McFee]

The way I look at it has a little bit of a different twist. If these people aren't in jail and are committing these kinds of crimes, they probably should be in jail. This is serious stuff. These are not people just adding to the jail population. I see it that these are serious offences. The whole bill surrounds the serious component of it, and the reality is if they are doing the crimes that are spoken to in this particular bill, I honestly think those are the people who need to be in jail.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

Mrs. Smith.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Mr. MacKenzie, and thank you to everybody who came to committee today.

My question will be for Mr. Kennedy.

Mr. Kennedy, obviously you are one of Canada's heroes for the great sacrifice you made in coming forward and telling your story, because no one knows better than the victim of such a crime. You broke a lot of ground. I've worked with a lot of victims over a lot of years, and they always say, if Mr. Kennedy could do it, I can do it. I don't think you hear that often enough.

Having said that, I've heard a lot today about crime prevention and about making sure our streets are safe in terms of programs for victims. I know, Mr. Kennedy, that the anti-drug strategy we put $89 million into is something that would be in that category of crime prevention. Also I know that the first child advocacy centre in Vancouver, which was put in place for the victims of crime, is something that probably you would have wanted years ago when it wasn't there. Also, the $26 million to continue the federal victims strategy is something that I think is of paramount importance in our country and something that wasn't there for you when you went through all of this.

And of course my bill, Bill C-268, concerning mandatory minimums for traffickers of children eighteen years and under, basically fits into the same category, as does Graham James. This guy got three and a half years, and he has basically written off the record.

As you've said in your testimony, you don't think any child molester should have a pardon. Obviously it is something that has made the world aware of all these things, that you came out, you spoke, and in your unfortunate and very devastating experience all these things culminated in your becoming Canada's hero by rising up against it.

So how did you feel, Mr. Kennedy, when Mr. James actually got off almost, I would say, scot-free?

[Sheldon Kennedy]

Well, thank you for the comments.

I have been on the other side as well, and I know how hard it is to change. No change happens when it's voluntary. It needs to be mandatory and be part of sentencing programs and of having individuals be accountable to work through and to change.

The way I felt was shocked. We do a lot of work with youth organizations across this country. We work with hundreds of youth organizations, and they take for granted a police background check as being security, that it's going to catch everybody. It's a deterrent, but it's not the end-all and be-all. So individuals such as Graham James and others are able to be teachers, are able to be coaches, are able to be in every youth organization across this country.

Knowing how many repeat offenders we have when it comes to pedophilia, I think we need to protect those organizations from these individuals. I looked at it as telling me we need to change this, and this is a platform to make change happen. I think we saw the outrage not only from me, but from Canadians: Canada wants change around this as well.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

I think we have to end it there.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

We've run out of our time for the panel.

I would like to thank the panel on behalf of the members here. An hour goes by very quickly, as we all know, and certainly there's a lot more to be heard from the panel here and from the other panel.

We'll take two minutes to switch panels and we'll be right back.