Justice Committee on March 25th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

We'll get started. Thank you very much for coming to meeting number 66 of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Wednesday, June 20, 2012, we are discussing Bill C-394, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the National Defence Act (criminal organization recruitment).

Ladies and gentlemen, we have an hour's worth of questions and presentations from three different groups, three different witnesses. Then we will suspend for a few minutes while we switch over, and we will do clause-by-clause after that. We have eight amendments. We will talk about those when the time comes.

First of all, we have Minister Andrew Swan, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General for the Government of Manitoba.

Thank you very much for coming.

From the Winnipeg Police Association we have George VanMackelbergh.

Thank you very much.

From the Boys and Girls Clubs we have Rachel Gouin and Marlene Deboisbriand.

We'll start in the order that I've introduced you.

Minister Swan, you are first to speak, for 10 minutes, please.

[Andrew Swan, Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Government of Manitoba]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairperson.

On behalf of the people of Manitoba, thank you for the opportunity to present on Bill C-394.

I'm not going to read through my submission word for word. Let me say at the start that we support Bill C-394. I commend MP Parm Gill for bringing this forward. I appreciate Mr. Gill's visit to the Manitoba legislature some time ago to discuss it.

Let me also say at the outset that you're all welcome to come and visit us in Manitoba whenever we're talking about working together to build safer communities.

We do believe that the bill can be made even better and more effective, and this is the time to get it right.

My home province of Manitoba is a great place. It's a place where we celebrate diversity. Also, StatsCan has told us once again that we are the most generous people in all of Canada. Of course, among other things, we're celebrating having NHL hockey back.

But I have to tell the committee that I can't deny the challenges that are posed by crime. Our crime rates and our incarceration rates, like those of other western provinces, are higher than the national average. Along with Saskatchewan, we often experience the highest crime rates of any of the provinces, and it has been that way in Manitoba for many decades.

Our government is meeting those challenges through a balanced approach to building safer communities. In part, of course, that's about making the right laws, both here and in Winnipeg, within our competence as a province. We get there by support for law enforcement, and we get there by preventing crime from happening in the first place. As you'll see from this submission, our government has been very active on all three of these fronts in taking a balanced approach to dealing with public safety issues.

We see every budget that our government brings in as a chance to invest in our young people and a chance to build safer communities. That means greater education, better training, more recreational opportunities, and support for groups such as the Boys and Girls Clubs, which do such good work, and of course it means standing shoulder to shoulder with police and law enforcement in the province of Manitoba.

When it comes to laws, I don't want to brag, but Manitoba has for many years punched above its weight in terms of bringing forward solid proposals, in working with the federal government, whatever political stripe that government may be, and in working with provinces and territories, again without being politically partisan, to try to get better laws to keep our communities safer.

Still, there are challenges in many communities. The area I represent is the west end of Winnipeg. It has always been a place for people to start a new life. It's where my grandfather came to from Scotland almost a century ago. There have been successive waves of immigrants from Iceland, Italy, Portugal, Vietnam, the Philippines, and African countries. It is still a place where people can come as immigrants through our provincial nominee program, sometimes as refugees and sometimes as people moving from northern communities and seeking a better life in Canada.

I prefer to spend all my time talking about the promise and the potential of youth in areas like mine. I spend time at my local high schools, such as Daniel McIntyre and Tec Voc, and I see youth fulfilling their potential in academics, in skilled trades, in sports, and in the arts. But sadly, I have to tell you that in areas like mine there are youth who don't have positive things keeping them on the right side of the law.

There are youth who aren't involved in school, who may not be involved in sports, who may not have a faith community, or who may not have other positive influences to keep them on the right side of the law. These are youth who, let me say very clearly, are at risk of being recruited by gangs and criminal organizations. These are youth who are at risk of being exploited. Certainly, I don't know what's worse: you see youth who may have a developmental delay like FASD or others who are bright with potential who fall under the influence of gangs.

Make no mistake: the gangs know the laws. They recruit those under 18 because they know that the Youth Criminal Justice Act will have a very different set of consequences for youth who are apprehended by the police. Also, tragically, they recruit those under 12, because they know there will be no repercussions if those youth are picked up by the police.

Gang life is dangerous. Gang life closes out family, friends, school, and community. Many young people who get brought into gangs, who are coerced to join gangs, find that there is no financial benefit. There's a cutting off of all the things that the youth have been involved with, and there is no easy way out.

Being involved in a gang increases the risk of violence to an individual and even the risk of death. The criminal organizations and gangs of course advance their own financial goals. Their greed leads them into the drug trade and into prostitution. It leads them into smuggling guns. This provides violence and intimidation and it wreaks havoc on communities just like the one I represent in Winnipeg.

The changes to the Criminal Code that are suggested in Bill C-394 are warranted. They would better define what recruitment is.

This bill would provide guaranteed consequences, which we say are needed in order to take on those who would recruit young people into gangs. It also increases the range of penalties that could be imposed by a court if somebody were found guilty of this provision.

There are existing provisions in the Criminal Code that I'm told by my crown attorneys and that I expect to hear from police are unclear and difficult to prove and that don't adequately reflect the seriousness of the offence, namely recruiting people into a life of crime in a gang or criminal organization.

That being said, we believe the bill can be improved. We have two ideas as to how that can happen.

The first is that the bill should not apply only to criminalized recruitment of youth into gangs. It should also apply to threats and coercion used to keep young people in gangs. I've spoken with many youth and youth providers in Winnipeg and elsewhere in Manitoba, and they tell me that when youth become involved, they discover the violence, the threats, and the lack of a future, and they even find their gang involvement is limiting where they can safely go and whether they can attend school. These youth tell us they fear reprisals against them, their family, and their friends if they try to leave the gang and put that negative life behind. It is how gangs and criminal organizations operate: by intimidating people and by threatening them and their families to try to keep them involved in the criminal organization.

For that reason we believe Bill C-394 could even be expanded, not just to criminalize recruitment but to criminalize the threats and intimidation used to keep young people involved in gangs.

Secondly, we believe Bill C-394 could be improved by being applied to anyone recruiting in places where youth are expected to gather, the very places I think all of us want to keep safe, such as schools and schoolyards, community centres, friendship centres, and parks—places where we want it to be safe for young people to go.

One example of that in Manitoba is our Lighthouses program. The Department of Justice and the Department of Children and Youth Opportunities provide funding to keep some 70 community centres and similar places open in the evenings and on weekends to be a beacon and a safe place for young people to go. If somebody arrives at one of those facilities with the goal of recruiting somebody into their gang or their criminal organization, we believe whether or not the person recruiting is under 18 it should be a criminal offence.

Our goal obviously is to make Canada a place that's inhospitable territory for gangs and for organized crime. We believe, through the collective efforts of governments, we can do more on the prevention side through education, recreation, and opportunities. We can continue to work together to support police, but certainly we want to have the right laws in place. Bill C-394, in Manitoba's view, is the right step to take.

I would ask the members of the committee to consider amending the bill, as I have suggested, because this is our chance to get it right and to protect our country's most valuable resource, our young people.

I'm certainly open to questions the committee may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you, Minister.

We'll go on to the other two presenters, and then we'll go to questions.

Our next presenter is Mr. VanMackelbergh from the Winnipeg Police Association. He's the vice-president.

[George VanMackelbergh, Vice-President, Winnipeg Police Association]

Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity.

By way of introduction, my name is George VanMackelbergh. I am the vice-president of the Winnipeg Police Association. I represent 1,943 women and men of the association. I have 24 years as an experienced police officer working in downtown Winnipeg as well as in the north end. I spent six and a half years working as an organized crime investigator in the full gamut of investigations—multi-jurisdictional, technical investigations—as well as developing informants and pushing them to agents, so I know a little bit about gang activity.

I work in one of the most challenging jurisdictions in the country when it comes to gang activity. For approximately 30 years Winnipeg has experienced a multi-generational gang membership, and for three decades it's had what is considered the current model of street gangs.

At face value, the WPA supports this legislation particularly, as we would support any legislation by the government of the day that attempts to stymie gang or organized crime activity. Bill C-394 contextually speaks to recruitment but doesn't specifically address it, and along with Minister Swan, I believe this is key legislation.

Gang recruitment is targeting younger and younger persons. In Manitoba, in Winnipeg, we have 10-year-olds being actively recruited into gangs, whether it's “standing six” or holding drugs for the older gang members. We currently have 15-year-olds on charge for murder who were driven to this by older gang members, knowing they would face a lesser penalty.

Again, tackling recruitment and making it illegal is very important, because often when these people are recruited at a young age, they don't understand the life they're getting into. They see it as having rock-star status in the media. Popular culture makes it look like it's something to do. It's not until they're in it and they've been in it for two, three, or four years at age 15 that they realize the road they're going down. There aren't riches, there isn't fame and fortune, and they cannot leave the gang.

They suffer severe beatings at the hands of the older, more experienced gang members, who do this to maintain loyalty. The threats are to their family and to their community.

There are neighbourhoods and communities within Manitoba and within Winnipeg itself in which if you are not a member or an associate of a gang, it's understood that just by living in those neighbourhoods you'll support the gang if they knock on your door.

I liken this to Belfast in the 1970s. Whether you were a Loyalist or a Catholic, many people in Belfast believed that the way to handle those issues was politically. But make no mistake about it, when there was a knock at your door at zero dark thirty, you were expected to support.

I think legislation like this will define what gang recruitment is: it's not complying out of necessity, and I think that's important.

We foresee difficulty meeting the burden of proof in some gang legislation, so I would ask on behalf of the association that the crafting of this come up with a burden of proof that isn't onerous. As we see with some organized crime, probably when this hits the court you're going to have to deal with the question of whether the gang is organized crime. You'll have to prove that in the burden of proof before you even get to the recruiting issue. We've seen in jurisdictions in Canada that doing this can be tremendously difficult. Sometimes proving this exceeds the capabilities of some police agencies, so we'd like to see this legislation be a crafted, workable piece of legislation.

A key part of that will be having support for this legislation. To be successful in prosecuting these charges, crown attorneys across the country will probably have to rely in great part on documentation that's been gathered.

The many shareholders in the criminal justice system have individual silos of information. As it stands now, there's no real conduit to allow these stakeholders the ability to share this information, which will be crucial in these prosecutions. It would be good to see the federal government have a standard or provide a conduit so that this standard of collecting information and disseminating it is unified across the country. That would be a great help to this legislation and would support it.

Gangs continue to exist in Canada. We're starting to see a trend where larger criminal organizations recruit from smaller gangs and organizations who want to align themselves with the big fish. The problem this provides for law enforcement across the country is that it creates insulation from law enforcement, but it also allows the big fish to look at a potential member ten years down the road. They can weed out possible informants or agents, which makes undercover work virtually impossible. Again, we believe this legislation would help law enforcement in trying to chip away at that.

In closing, I would agree with Minister Swan that our country's greatest resource is our youth. I wouldn't say adding more laws is the solution to this, but it certainly is part of the equation.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you, sir. Thank you for your presentation.

Marlene, go ahead with your presentation.

[Marlene Deboisbriand, Vice-President, Member Services, Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for inviting us to speak to the committee today.

My name is Marlene Deboisbriand. I'm the vice-president of member services for Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada.

Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada is a leading provider of quality programs that support the healthy development of children and youth. Our association of over 100 clubs reaches over 200,000 children, youth, and their families across the country. We are in 500 community locations from coast to coast to coast.

My colleague Rachel will be speaking to our brief.

[Dr. Rachel Gouin, Manager, Research and Public Policy, Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada]

Thank you.

Let me start by saying that we appreciate MP Parm Gill's efforts to keep children and youth safe from gangs and are happy that the Boys and Girls Clubs were included in consultations on this bill.

We are not opposed to Bill C-394. Our concerns are mostly related to the need for enhanced prevention efforts, which we understand the committee and Mr. Gill also support, and rehabilitative programs for youth who want to rebuild their lives outside gangs.

Most young people are not gang involved, but the small number who are have a disproportionate impact on their communities. Some of our clubs are located in neighbourhoods that are affected by the presence of gangs and are familiar with the violence that accompanies this presence.

The situation at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Winnipeg has been cited as an example of recruitment tactics that would be addressed by this bill. One of their club locations is in a community that has a high number of newcomers. Gang members stand in a parking lot a mere 100 feet from the club and wait to recruit youth. This poses a challenge to the safety of youth who attend club activities. The club works with local police to address this issue, but it's a recurring one, and we understand that Bill C-394 is the kind of law that would help. It would provide police officers with tools to deal with such recruitment.

We also have consulted Boys and Girls Clubs in the Toronto, Regina, and Vancouver areas, which have informed us of more subtle recruitment tactics. We know from these clubs that homelessness is a significant factor in young people's involvement in gangs. Youth are more vulnerable to recruitment and sexual exploitation if they have unstable housing situations that include expectations about doing their part.

These clubs also tell us that youth are born into families that are entrenched in gang life, and for them there is no real decision. They are assumed to be part of the gang. The repercussions are very severe should they deviate from that.

Finally, we heard about entrepreneurial youth whose talents are wasted in a lifestyle that has no promising future.

Recruitment is not always clearly identifiable, as in the Winnipeg case, but the repercussions of being disloyal, as we've already heard, are always severe.

How can we protect our youth from being recruited into gangs? The legal system certainly has a role to play in addressing coercive, intimidating, and violent tactics. As well, should Bill C-394 become law, it will also punish those who recruit young people into this lifestyle and who target minors.

Young people don't join gangs out of the blue. The risk factors are well documented. If we can act on these factors early enough, we increase our chances of keeping children and youth safe.

Gangs can become rooted in impoverished communities with inadequate resources for youth. Those who face the greatest social and economic disadvantage are most likely to be targeted by recruiters and lured by the promise of belonging, protection, and money, whether or not that promise is fulfilled. These same youth are most vulnerable to being utilized by those who are higher in the ranks to take part in criminal activities, as we've already heard, including recruiting other youth.

Once a person is in a gang or is assumed to be part of the gang because of a family member or a friend, the choices they have are more difficult. They have to choose between the risk of being caught and facing criminal charges or the risk of retaliation by the gang, which is a very real risk. I find the proposal by Minister Swan to criminalize threats to keep people in gangs interesting, because certainly we have heard from our clubs that this is also an issue. Walking out is not easy.

But we can offer young people more options before they get to that point. The Boys and Girls Clubs strongly believe that if we provide vulnerable youth with a genuinely safe place to stay, access to programs that support their well-being, education, employment, and life aspirations, we can divert them from gang membership. Legal measures and policing will help. We also need youth programs in communities and sustained, targeted interventions for those who face known risk factors and who are more vulnerable to being recruited. Also, we need to have mental health and employment supports in place for those who want to leave, those who have been gang involved and want to turn their lives around.

We are pleased to hear from your previous meeting that young offenders would be dealt with under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Providing a restorative justice option for minors who have been charged with recruiting will allow them to see the impact that recruitment has on other youth and on the community and will offer them a way out for themselves. Easily accessible mental health services would also play an important role in these cases, helping youth to heal from the trauma they may have experienced in the gang or at home.

In 2012 reductions were made to the youth justice services funding program, which supports provinces in offering these rehabilitative programs. We hope to see investments in crime prevention to ensure that fewer youth go down that path in the first place.

As was mentioned in our brief, we are pleased to hear the government announce the next phase of the youth gang prevention fund, and feel strongly that, given the seriousness of the situation we're facing, more could be done.

As the committee now considers how Bill C-394 can help protect children and youth from being targeted into gangs, we'd encourage you to also recommend complementary measures to help Canada's youth be more resilient. Enhancing funding for the youth justice fund and the youth gang prevention fund would be a good place to start.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to questions. We have exactly 40 minutes. We have five-minute rounds and we have enough questioners to take up all 40 minutes, so I'll try to keep members to their five minutes. It's questions and answers within the five minutes.

Madame Boivin, from the New Democratic Party, will be the first to ask questions.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being with us. Welcome to the committee, minister.

I'm glad to see that the Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada support Bill C-394. I think it's important to stress the need for a balanced approach. I'm equally glad that Manitoba's justice minister also favours a multi-faceted strategy, one that isn't based solely on suppression. Unfortunately, however, this bill seems to focus strictly on suppression. But the two are not mutually exclusive. I think we really need to establish clarity around this, because it would be wrong to think that Bill C-394 is going to completely solve the whole problem of street gangs. This issue affects us, the members of Parliament, as well as our communities. Clearly, a balanced approach incorporates prevention, intervention and suppression.

I was pleasantly surprised, minister, at the number of organizations you had consulted with as part of your very extensive reform process in Manitoba. You also have some recommendations. You aren't necessarily of the opinion that Bill C-394 goes far enough. You also talked about gang-free zones such as schools and community centres. I'd like to hear more about that element.

Do you not think that the bill's comprehensive coverage applies, by extension, to specific elements? In other words, since the bill applies to all areas, it also applies to school zones. That means it could be an aggravating circumstance, as per the interpretation it already has if we look at the case law. Do you think sentences longer than five years are necessary? I didn't understand everything in your brief, and I didn't quite understand your reason for wanting to target schools and other recruitment zones.

[Andrew Swan]

I will answer in English because we don't have enough time.

Certainly the Province of Manitoba does believe that building safer communities requires a balanced approach.

Today we're talking about a bill that is based on suppression and a change to the Criminal Code. We don't take our eye off the ball in terms of what we need to do in terms of supporting police and other organizations—the safer communities act in Manitoba, for example—as well as dealing with the root causes of crime and trying to find positive places for young people to go.

The Boys and Girls Club in Winnipeg gave the example of the positive things happening at the Boys and Girls Clubs, and the fact that young people are coming to the Boys and Girls Clubs for positive programming as then being a beacon, if you will, for gangs to try to find youth at risk and to try to indoctrinate them into a gang.

The idea of considering an amendment to Bill C-394 to include the place where something happens means that if somebody shows up at a place like that, it doesn't matter whether they're recruiting a youth or an adult; if they're on or near those places and are carrying on those activities, that in and of itself should be enough to be a criminal act.

We want those places to be safe. Whether it's the Boys and Girls Clubs, whether it's the Spence Neighbourhood Association, or whether it's Magnus Eliason community centre in my end of Winnipeg, we really think those places should be gang-free zones. Young people should be able to be kids, and not be indoctrinated into illegal activities.

We don't think we need to increase the maximum penalty that's set out in the bill, but we do think it could be recrafted to include the places where we think our young people should be safe to go.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Just to be clear, would it be in the sentencing process that it should be seen as an aggravating factor? What's your analysis on that basis?

[Andrew Swan]

Our suggestion is that it could be written right into the main language in Bill C-394, but if an alternative is to make the activity at a place such as a community centre or school an aggravating factor, that would be a reasonable step for Parliament to take as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for the question and the intervention.

We'll hear from Monsieur Goguen from the Conservative Party.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for coming today and casting light on this important bill. Certainly, all of your suggestions and amendments are appreciated. We certainly hope that the Boys and Girls Clubs recruit many people into their gang, because we know what great work you do.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

My question is for Minister Swan.

The Toronto City Council passed a motion to unanimously support the passage of Bill C-394.

Before I go any further, Mr. Chair, this will be a short question, and I'd like to share my time with Mr. Seeback.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Okay.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you.

Has the bill been received very well by stakeholders and victims of crime in your province? Does the Province of Manitoba support a swift passage of this private member's bill?

[Andrew Swan]

Yes, for.... Well, let me put it another way. I can tell you that from the meetings I've had with various groups working with youth, and in speaking with youth directly, the problem that Bill C-394 is attempting to deal with is a real one, and it's a serious one. For a young person getting involved in a gang, it's a life sentence. Even worse, it can be a death sentence, both in Winnipeg and in other cities across the country.

I haven't really gone out on tour in Manitoba to ask whether the particulars of Bill C-394 are exactly what those groups would want. I think it is a legitimate effort to try to deal with a serious problem, and I think progress on this front is welcomed.

Again, while this bill is before the committee, we think there are some additional things that could be added to it. I would point out that the criminalization of recruiting gang members is something Manitoba has been asking for since 2006, as Madame Boivin indicated. We had a very complete process called the OCI, the organized crime initiative, whereby officials from our government went out and met with stakeholders, police forces, and others from across Canada and North America.

In the ministers meeting in 2006, Manitoba put forward 14 proposals for things that we felt we could do to make Canada hostile turf for organized crime. Many of those measures have been acted upon by the government, and we're thankful for that. This is one of the 14 that hasn't yet come to fruition. We think Bill C-394, perhaps with some work on the things we've suggested, would be a good step towards keeping our young people safe.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you, Monsieur.

Mr. Seeback, you have two and a half minutes.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

Andrew, I know that one of the things you've raised in your brief is “must address the use of coercion”. I don't know if you have seen any of the proposed amendments for the bill today, but one of the amendments being put forward, and by me, coincidentally, is to add coercion in the paragraph that mentions “recruits, solicits, encourages or invites”. I add “coerces”. Would you be supportive of that amendment? I think I know the answer.

[Andrew Swan]

Well, yes. I just want to make sure whatever language becomes part of Bill C-394 and then part of the Criminal Code is clear—that it's not just coercion to get someone to join a gang, but coercion to keep somebody in a gang or a criminal organization. That's really the nuance.

We know all the tricks gangs employ to try to get young people involved. They may tell them a very different story from what happens when they're in the gang. We want to make sure, while we have this opportunity, to also address the actions of gang members to intimidate, to threaten, and to scare gang members, as well as their families, their friends, and their associates, with a goal of keeping the young person in the gang.

I haven't seen the particular section, but I hope you understand: it's dealing with getting members into the gangs, but it's also dealing with activities that are used to try to hold people in gangs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you, Mr. Seeback.

Thank you for the answer.

We'll hear from Mr. Casey, from the Liberal Party.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Gouin, I want to ask you a few questions about your brief, particularly your reference on page 4 to the fact that funding opportunities don't take timeframes into account and that they are undermined by unreasonable timelines or the elimination of funds following the pilot phase.

Are there any specific pilot projects you can point to that haven't been afforded a chance to work? I guess my concern here is that we're going to be moving resources into longer jail terms, more difficult prosecutions, and mandatory minimum sentences, presumably at the cost of other choices, such as those that you put in your brief. I'm specifically wondering what you're talking about there in terms of programs that you haven't been given a real chance to assess.

[Dr. Rachel Gouin]

The gang prevention fund, from what I understand, is allocated to a group for three to five years. Regardless of it achieving wonderful results, the funding after that time is switched to another group. To me that's a barrier to effective programs, which could be changed if a program could demonstrate its success. In order to help youth transition out of gangs and to stop them from getting into gangs, you need to have strong relationships, and those take time. So having that changed would be helpful to groups that have effective programming in place. I know the fact that there is a limited amount of money is a barrier to our club applying for that funding in the first place, because they're concerned about building expectations.