Justice Committee on April 22nd, 2013

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Absolutely, yes.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

When you began your testimony, Member Dreeshen, you mentioned specifically that this week is the correct week to bring this bill forward to this committee, obviously because this is a week for remembering and becoming more aware of the issues that victims face, so I'd like to focus my questioning specifically on victims.

Section 130 of the Criminal Code is a hybrid offence and it's punishable by a maximum of five years' imprisonment on indictment. Prior to the enactment by the Conservative government in 2009 of Bill S-4 for identity theft and related misconduct, it was a straight summary conviction offence punishable by a maximum of six months' imprisonment.

Obviously your work here on Bill C-444 is a little different from Bill S-4, but do you think that both these bills will ensure that victims are better protected in our country? How do you think that will work?

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Albas, for that question.

When we were looking at this, there was that transition. At the beginning, and based on the sentence that was meted out, it was only six months, but then as we were discussing it, the change had taken place so that it was the hybrid offence, so we were caught in the middle.

However, when we took a look at it, we recognized that the focus was still there. It was still a case of recognition that this was what the courts were going to be looking at. They would be looking at the five-year maximum, I suppose, under these circumstances. However, we would still have this opportunity to let a victim know there was a serious reason that they were stopped and what happened and why they were put in that particular position.

I think in a lot of ways, if we imagine ourselves in that case, lots of things happen to us that we wish didn't and are unseemly and so on, but to think that you were put in that position because of some type of an activity, that, I think, is the critical part. Again, it's the idea, the concept of using a gun to stop somebody. You're not going to stop. If somebody comes up to you and starts waving, sneaking up on you, you know you're going to lock the door. You're going to take all the precautions you possibly can, and then you can stand up and say you're doing what you can to protect yourself under these circumstances. But when you give yourself up openly because you're wondering why the police are coming to you, and that maybe they need your help.... I look at it from that perspective. Usually, if I'm driving, I have an idea why they might want to talk to me, but there are a lot of other circumstances like donations to the policeman's ball, that I get along the road.

Nevertheless, it is a situation where you don't want to be duped and you don't want other people thinking that you did something improper to put yourself in that position, because that certainly isn't the case. It wasn't the case in the incident that was the impetus for this particular bill, and it certainly isn't the case for anybody else who has had something happen to them either.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Do I have any time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

That's your time, Mr. Albas. I'm sorry.

Mr. Dreeshen, thank you very much for your presentation on your bill and your defence of it. We're going to take a two-minute recess while we get the witnesses who have joined us today ready to talk to us for the next 45 minutes, and then we will go to clause-by-clause study on your bill.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

We'll recess for a couple of minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

We're going to call this meeting back to order. We've been joined by our guests, Ms. Laurie Long and Ms. Jordan Knelsen-Long. I want to thank you for joining us as witnesses to Bill C-444.

I'll give the floor over to you for approximately 10 minutes, and then there will be questions from committee members.

Ms. Long, the floor is yours.

[Laurie Long, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon. My name is Laurie Long, and this is my daughter Jordan. We are from Penhold, Alberta.

Thursday, February 26, 2009 at 9:30 p.m., Jordan went to gas up her truck and get some juice for a sore throat. She had been feeling unwell all day but had determined she was not going to miss school the next day. She was 16 years old. She had been driving for about three months and enjoying some of the freedoms that go along with that milestone in life.

That night was the start of a horrendous ordeal for her and our family. She was observed at the gas station by a man who followed her back to our home and, while dressed as an RCMP member, forced her out of her vehicle and into his at gunpoint. He covered her eyes with blacked out ski goggles, cut her face with a knife while shouting, “You're under arrest. You're under arrest”, and ultimately bound her and put her in the trunk of his car and drove her about 30 kilometres away on a -32° Celsius night.

He approached her in our backyard not 25 feet from my bedroom window where I was. She was bound, blindfolded, and assaulted multiple times. She was missing for about 47 hours. It was terrifying, a parent's worst nightmare, certainly a young woman's worst nightmare.

On Saturday, February 28 at about 8:45 p.m. we received a call from a payphone to our home. Hoping against hope it was Jordan, my husband answered. It was Jordan. While he tried to figure out where she was, he told her to stay there and that the police were coming. What she replied stunned us. She said, “Dad, a policeman did this to me”. We found out the next day that the man was not a police officer, but he had dressed like one with the coat, the fur hat, and the flashes on the shoulders. He had borrowed his mother's white car and had a police light in it. He had pulled in behind Jordan in our backyard and told her that she had an insurance violation. Later a member of the major crimes unit in Edmonton stated that he felt the man's uniform was authentic enough that his own wife would have had trouble knowing whether the man was RCMP or not.

The major point here is that he never would have been able to get as close to her as he did without her using her cellphone for help or attempting to run into the house if he was not dressed as law enforcement. During the criminal trial for this man, he faced one count of personating a police officer. We were stunned to learn at that time that the maximum penalty for this offence was six months' jail time. That has now been changed to a hybrid five years maximum. Making the personating of a police officer an aggravating circumstance would allow judges to impose penalities befitting the crime.

In 1954 Abraham Maslow published his research and findings on the basis of motivation and referred to it as the hierarchy of human needs. This simple idea has become a fundamental framework for understanding how people are motivated and how they become successful and productive. The hierarchy is represented as a tiered triangle in which each tier must be achieved before the next tier can be reached. The triangle consists of a base of basic physiological needs like air, food, water, etc., followed by safety. The next levels are social, ego, independence, and self-fulfilment.

For all intents and purposes, safety forms the base of this triangle. If there is no safety, there is nothing else. Jordan has had this sense of safety torn away from her by someone who she thought was there to keep her safe, because that is how he represented himself. We depend on the police to keep us safe. We trust that they will. We tell our children that if they get into trouble they should find a policeman or they should call the RCMP.

An individual who dresses as a policeman in order to victimize someone or control them is abusing the public trust. I cannot tell my children not to trust the police. Police serve a valuable and needed purpose in society. The uniform and the office are sacred, and we as citizens of this society require it to be sacred. Because of how small this world has become in the wake of social media and 24-hour news, an episode like this does not affect just one person or our family; it affects thousands of people.

This is why we approached Mr. Dreeshen in May 2010 to bring to his attention the importance of this issue. He did not let us down. He drafted a piece of legislation that asked that the Criminal Code be modified to make personating a police officer an aggravating offence.

I would like to thank Mr. Dreeshen for working so hard on his bill, and thank this committee. It is a profound privilege for a citizen from Penhold, Alberta to come to Ottawa to be heard by the leaders of our country, so thank you.

Jordan continues to have issues regarding anyone wearing a uniform, be it the RCMP, the police, security, or a peace officer. It is likely that she will have these issues for the rest of her life. As another RCMP member said to us when we were talking to him about this issue, it's understandable that she would, because even as members, he said, they feel a little jolt when faced by the flashers in the rear-view mirror. For her, it's a whole other story.

RCMP members worked with us to flag Jordan's registration so that in the event she was stopped on a traffic violation they would be aware that she would be calling for confirmation of identification. Members were as distressed as we were that someone would commit such a heinous crime while representing themselves as law enforcement.

She was actually pulled over about three months after her abduction, which sent her into a panic attack; however, she said that because there were two policemen and she had three friends in the car, she was able to talk herself down. She never speeds now. She never disobeys the rules of the road. She never wants to give a policeman any reason to pull her over, because of her deep mistrust of the uniform.

This is not how we need the police presence to be viewed in this country. We ask those people to go out and possibly give their lives to protect the citizenry of this country. By that fact alone, the penalties for personating an officer of the law need to be strong. They need to approach the maximums more often than keep the minimums.

About five months ago, Jordan and her boyfriend Jimmy were driving home from bringing me a drink at work, and not an alcoholic drink, but an iced tea. It was late at night. I work night shifts. I'm an RN in the emergency room in our local town. On their way home, they came upon an accident involving a single vehicle, with a driver who appeared to be drunk. They did the right thing, and they called the police.

For whatever reason, five RCMP cruisers arrived in a short amount of time, lights flashing, and Jordan experienced a full-on flashback and began panicking and crying uncontrollably. The very people who we as a society are supposed to turn to in times of crisis sent her into an exacerbation of her post-traumatic stress disorder.

Thankfully, a kind policewoman asked Jimmy what was happening, and when he told her that Jordan was the girl from Penhold—they all know who she is—and had been abducted by someone dressed as a police officer, she went around, got all the flashers turned off, and let Jordan go home in Jimmy's car, later giving him a ride to our house.

My point is that this is ongoing, this fear of the RCMP and law enforcement persons in general, and it hasn't eased up. I very much doubt that it ever will.

Because our society is based on laws and those who protect and uphold the law, it is doubtful that Jordan can go through her life never seeing a member of that profession. That man and all others who commit crimes dressed as law enforcement abuse the public's trust. Our society cannot function if we do not trust law enforcement.

We need to make it clear that personating a member is not only an offence under the Criminal Code, but it's an offence against society as a whole, and that is why it should be an aggravating offence, so that justices may penalize accordingly and make the punishment fit the egregious nature of the crime.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you, Ms. Long, for sharing your story with us.

We have some questioners.

Our first questioner is Madam Boivin from the New Democratic Party.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

I'm not yet sure that it's a question. It's more a comment, because when we have to study these bills and the sad and really terrible, terrible ordeal you went through, it breaks my heart to know that what you should be having the most confidence in.... That sense of confidence has been totally violated and is something that never comes back.

It's good for politicians to hear this, because we deal with paper, and some of us are lawyers and we deal with words. Although I don't wish this to happen to anybody, it's good that we have had your testimony here today. I'm sure that it's not easy to come here to share this story with us. For that, I really thank you.

This is one of those occasions when I'm proud to be an MP, in the sense that we can all work together to try to do something better, although I do take into account the fact that you still have your doubts, and I still have my doubts, in that even legislation like this will not solve everything. There are always going to be people trying to do something bad to people. I'm not sure that even this will...but if it can help, make it move forward, and maybe help Jordan get some—I don't know how you say this in English—solace, I guess you could say, with regard to the whole ordeal, I think that just for that it will be worth it. I really commend you for taking the time to come in front of us to share this very important story so that we can now put a face to it, even if not all the faces.

Jordan, you're going to be the face of all the others who have had to live through this, and for that you should be very proud of yourself. I do hope that one day you will be able to—not to forget, because you never forget—feel a bit more confident. There are some ex-cops at this other table. It must hurt them probably even more to know that somebody's actions give a bad name to what is such an important job for all Canadians.

That's all I wanted to share with you. Thank you for your courage.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you.

Monsieur Goguen.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for having the courage to come and testify here today. I can't think of a worse trauma to live through, but certainly you approached this in a very rational fashion in going to Mr. Dreeshen, who took your concerns very seriously and brought forth this bill, a bill that basically has been viewed as very important and unanimously accepted by all the parties because of its importance, because of the trauma you suffered.

It's certainly not a negligible thing to be the poster child for this bill, but I'm wondering if you've had occasion to talk to other victims' groups, if others have approached you to share this horrible story with them. Certainly there are other victims who'd like to hear about this. I know there's compensation for victims of crime, and I suspect you've had to have some sort of treatment, and that's only normal. I wonder if you could comment on whether they've been of any assistance to you and whether or not you've been approached by others to speak about this horrific event.

[Jordan Knelsen-Long, As an Individual]

I did go to the crisis centre in Red Deer to talk a lot about what had happened to me, and then I ended up getting a referral to Dr. Magill, who's a PTSD specialized therapist. After that, I've gone to the CASART team for the Red Deer nurses, that's the sexual response team at the emergency hospital there, and I've talked to them about it as well. For anybody who wants to reach out to me, I'm willing to do that. I've got lots of Facebook messages and e-mails and whatnot, and so far that's been my response. It's only been recently that I've been able to actually come out and speak about it.

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

Thank you.

As a result of your courage, society as a group will be better because of the strengthening of the Criminal Code. The Criminal Code is basically about public order and this is certainly off the map. So thank you.

[Jordan Knelsen-Long]

You're welcome.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Goguen.

Mr. McGuinty.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to also thank both of you for being here today. It takes a lot of courage and a lot of guts to be here to testify. So on behalf of all of my constituents and on behalf of my two daughters and my two sons, thank you for doing what you're doing. This is very important, to come forward and make a change, make a difference. There's something good in all of this here today, so thank you for being here.

I'd like to ask both of you to comment on the difficulty of survivors of situations like this in participating in the justice system. We have a lot to learn from your experience. It's often very difficult. We know, for example, that many survivors don't come forward. We know that the prosecution rate is relatively low, and should be higher.

I wonder if you have any ideas you can share with us about how to make this whole process easier, more conducive to the participation of survivors and their families. How can we do this better in Canada to make sure that we get more people feeling more comfortable coming forward, and also, more prosecutions?

[Jordan Knelsen-Long]

First of all, we need to stop thinking that women deserve it because they wore too short of a skirt or they drank too much or they took a ride home with the wrong.... That's why I went to my mother's CASART team, because she had come home and said one of the women on the team had said, “She deserved it”.

Women need to not feel ashamed. It seems that if a man sexually assaults a woman it's not...whatever, we'll keep going, but when it happens to a woman, then we're supposed to hide and not tell anybody and not share. Before this had happened, I had no idea how many people I knew it had happened to, but afterwards I've had a lot of people come to me and say, “This happened to me, but I never reported it because I was scared”.

[Laurie Long]

I think what we can put forward to survivors of sexual assault is that there is no statute of limitations on reporting. They can always report. They can go when they want to. They can make use of victims services. They can make use of crisis centres in their respective places, if they have it.

Our emergency rooms are getting better at having sexual assault response teams and at referring people for psychological help. We've found that the quicker people get mental health help afterward, the better the results are and the quicker they can resume their normal activities.

As Jordan has said, the attitude of shame that surrounds a rape victim is ridiculous in this country. In what other situation would a victim feel embarrassed for having had something happen to them? We've just had this crime happen in Nova Scotia with that girl, right? It's the same issue. If we can come together as a society to promote wellness among our people who have had this happen to them, and promote that it's okay for them to say what happened to them....

Why should they be ashamed of it? They didn't do it. They bear no shame. I'm not sure where that came from, or why that attitude exists, but that is part of what we're working on here.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

You've given a lot of thought to this situation, and I want to get your advice or insight on another idea.

Many countries have moved to restrict access to fake police uniforms, to deal with the strobe lighting for cars that some folks will try to pass off as police lighting, and to deal with badges and so on and so forth. Do you think it would be helpful for us to consider restrictions in Canada on access to this kind of dress, for example, to people dressing up as police officers for Halloween?

Would that kind of thing be helpful?

[Laurie Long]

I do think it would be. I don't even like the thought—it's so ridiculous to say this in front of a House committee—of a bachelorette party where a stripper is dressed up as a policeman. I don't like that either. I think it's disrespectful to the uniform. We ask those folks to do a job where they can lose their lives every day, and I think that's wrong.

Do I think they should be restricted? Yes, I do. I do think they should be restricted. I am a nurse, and people tell me stuff all the time that you would never think anybody would tell you about their personal life. I can't take that and go use it against them. I could, but that's against my code of ethics and my practice. I can't do that.

It's the same with a policeman. These fellows here who are ex-policemen would not do that either. It's part of your code. It's part of the people's code, I think just human beings' code.

If there are people out there who need to have things restricted because they just don't understand that it's not right, then yes, it should be restricted.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Mai.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll just add to what Ms. Boivin said. For us, having you here is a privilege. Often in the justice committee we read bills, we look at things, and we hear from witnesses, but when we hear from witnesses who are actually behind a bill and who have gone through the whole experience, for us it's really deeply moving. I really thank you for sharing your story and for bringing this to life, if you will. It helps us to understand.

I would also like to commend both of you for sharing your story. It is important that we hear from you. You are role models in terms of going out there and sharing your story. If some other victims are also going through this, maybe they will share that with you. Hopefully this will make us better understand what's happening and also understand your views more.

Thank you very much for coming.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

That's all the questioners.

Thank you very much for your presentations. Obviously, it's a very moving story for us. It's important that it was here on victims week and it was very coincidental that it happened. We really appreciate it. As a father of two daughters, I believe it was an important message you gave, and it's very important for us to hear it. We read about it in the paper, but unless you're a lawyer in the criminal court you don't experience this very often, thank God. When we do, we need to have a better understanding. You've done a fantastic job of that today.

Thank you very much.

We're going to recess for a couple of minutes and then we'll do clause-by-clause study.