Public Safety Committee on Oct. 18th, 2018

[Jessica Maurice]

When we went to the rural crime meetings, a lot of people were asking, “What can we do?”The police didn't have an answer.

In our experience—with our very expensive legal defence lawyer—the police are not giving people the appropriate answers as to what they can and can't do. People in rural areas are asking for clarity on what that actually means. In our case, you get prosecuted.

Should we always have to defend that we were protecting ourselves and have to spend thousands of dollars on legal bills, when we are protecting ourselves?

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

What I'm trying to figure out....

I was just quickly looking through some articles, and what it said is that there were people rummaging in a car—

[Jessica Maurice]

Yes, 10 feet from our door.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I'm just saying.... Then somebody left your property with a shot, like a gunshot.

I'm trying to figure out in this how you would change our self-defence laws. If you looked at a crime's severity, presumably a gunshot wound is more severe than property crime overall.

I'm just trying to see where you're—

[Jessica Maurice]

Here's the thing. You don't know what they're there for in the middle of the night. They were 10 feet from our door. Who knows if there were five other people surrounding our house?

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Yes, but how would you change the laws? When the police come and they investigate it, what would you have us legally change in the law to change how that defence would work once you're in the situation?

[Jessica Maurice]

I think one of the things that needs to be done is a review of RCMP policies and procedures, and how they handle situations like this. Landowners and people protecting themselves in similar situations should be presumed innocent, not guilty first. In this case, they jumped the gun because it was two weeks after the Gerald Stanley case.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I'm sorry, but when you look at the presumption, that's exactly why the charges were dismissed. It is the way the justice system works. I'm just trying to figure out, if we were going to change the self-defence law, which is what you're asking us to suggest, and you want us to change, somehow, the proportionality equation, how would you weight that? How would we weight it so that somebody would be able to shoot in the direction of someone who has come on to their property?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Unfortunately, our time has run out.

I'm sure you'll have an opportunity to work that response back into another question.

With that, we'll go to Ms. Stubbs for seven minutes, please.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Given that conversation, here's what I would suggest to my colleague, who is in the government. The Liberals have the ability to do this. It should be incumbent upon the Liberals, in particular, and every one of us who is elected, to ensure the safety and security of the people we represent, and to give them answers about how exactly we are going to ensure that people forced into this position, against their will, because they have no other options, will not be revictimized and criminalized.

Let me suggest to this committee that this is an area that should be folded into the recommendations. Frankly, it's your job and ours to figure out how exactly to answer that question, not two people victimized by criminals who have broken into their property.

I would like to thank the people from Thompson, Manitoba, and the Maurices, for sharing your time here today. I wish that an entire hour was dedicated to each of your testimonies, but time is what it is.

Eddie and Jessica, I wonder now, would you do anything differently?

[Edouard Maurice]

I would not call the RCMP. That is why I was prosecuted. The criminals who came onto my property were on drugs. They didn't know where they were. In their statements, they couldn't even locate us at all. I wouldn't have had to go through what I went through if I hadn't called for help. The police didn't come for two hours anyway, so really there was no point in calling.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Given that this issue involves all three levels of government working together, I think on the point that Jessica made, and in response to your answer, it is the job of the Liberals to review the policies and procedures of the RCMP. It's their responsibility to take action on ensuring accountability, and that the RCMP give accurate information and are able to serve and protect communities. I'm sure RCMP officers want that too. You should never hear from a rural resident, or any Canadian anywhere in this country, that they wouldn't call the RCMP to come and protect them because they might not get help.

Can you tell me how this ordeal has impacted your family, and also what the overall feeling is in rural Alberta about the crime problem?

[Jessica Maurice]

In terms of how the whole ordeal has impacted us, obviously it was incredibly stressful, the whole four months of the court process. Eddie had nightmares after this incident and now we have to lock our doors all the time..

We always have a fear of people coming back. Every time there's a car we don't recognize on our street, we're wondering if they're scoping out our place, or if they're going to come back later that night. In this particular instance, we believe that they had scoped out our property. I was out of town and one of the vehicles was gone, so they had been watching our place for how many days—who knows?

I had to take time off work because I couldn't handle the stress of everything, and Eddie ended up quitting his job because the stress just got to be too much.

[Edouard Maurice]

Really, the overall feeling in Alberta is that people aren't going to call. They'd rather call their neighbours. They are setting up plans to deal with it themselves. People are saying they're just going to shoot, shovel and shut up from now on. They don't want to be the next Eddie Maurice.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

It's guaranteed that no law-abiding rural citizen in this country wants to feel like that or be put in this situation.

Our witnesses here from Thompson, Manitoba mentioned the impact on kids and on their family. Do you have any comment on the impact on your kids or your concerns about the future?

[Edouard Maurice]

When we were going through the whole court battle, we had to have conversations that no family should ever have. “What if I do have to go to jail? What will happen? We'll have to sell our property. What will we tell our kids?” These are conversations that we had to have privately while going through the court process.

[Jessica Maurice]

In terms of the impact on our kids, we now have a five-year old, who was four at the time, and our youngest daughter is just over 18 months, so she was about a year when this happened. They could feel the stress we were feeling. They had to spend a lot of time with their grandparents, because we were going to meetings with the lawyer. There were times when I couldn't cope with parenting and had to call my mom to come and get the kids because they throw tantrums when they're stressed out, when they're feeling things. It affected them as well.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Right. So everything quite clearly didn't just work out because the charges were dropped.

Do you have any sense of what happened with the criminals relating to the crimes at your home?

[Jessica Maurice]

Yes. We're not so sure about the one woman who was charged, but the male, his name is Ryan Watson. He was injured pretty seriously from the ricochet. Five weeks later, he was found in a stolen vehicle with break-in tools and charged again.

At this point, I don't believe they've really spent much time in incarceration. They were let out awaiting trial, I guess. They were also just charged with summary offences, trespassing at night and mischief at night, I believe it was.

[Edouard Maurice]

And theft under $5,000.

When he was on our property, that was his third time being arrested. He was arrested four times in a matter of six months for the same—

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

When people say there's a revolving door of criminals and the rights of criminals come before the rights of law-abiding citizens, the victims of crime, that's what they mean.

[Edouard Maurice]

Absolutely.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Are you convinced, and are your neighbours and your friends in the community around you convinced, that crime rates have dropped in Alberta and in rural communities?

[Jessica Maurice]

No. We hear about crimes every day. I just don't know if people are reporting it as much.

Actually, in the last six months in Turner Valley, which is a neighbouring area to ours, crimes have gone up instead of down, so I think people just aren't calling as much.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thank you.

Thanks to all of you for being here today.