Public Safety Committee on April 15th, 2024

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Many in this room would probably agree with you that I often oversimplify things.

Are there items in the United States' RICO legislation that you would see as beneficial if they were enacted in Canada? I guess it would also be constitutional, since those provisions are different.

[Det-Insp Scott Wade]

I think it's a good place to start the discussion and a good place to explore.

I don't have the specifics of RICO legislation in the States. It's more about Canadian legislation. However, I think it's good to explore what other jurisdictions are doing and how we can improve, and constantly examine the tools we have and how to utilize them best.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

I'll ask you this, and perhaps I can ask the RCMP as well.

We talk about sentences not being high enough, and we know this is outside of the control of the police. This is what judges decide. It's independent.

If the maximum penalties were high—much higher than what the average sentence is, even in cases that are very serious—what's the barrier between arrest, Crown and getting a sentence? I know some are talking about how we need stricter sentences, but if we're not using the existing maximum penalties as they are, what's happening in the criminal justice system?

[A/Comm Matt Peggs]

I honestly don't know how to answer that question, because I don't think we put criminal cases forward with the idea of getting a particular sentence. We gather the evidence we can and present it to the court.

To be honest with you, I know I raised my hand to answer this question, but I don't think I.... I don't have one, other than to say that we bring the evidence forth and the court makes those decisions.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

I appreciate that.

At the same time, police are telling Crown attorneys and your partners on that side of things that this is serious. I think Crown attorneys understand this is serious. It involves organized crime. There are gangs involved, and violence. Judges live in our communities and see it with their own eyes. I guess I'm at a loss as to....

There's been some talk of new legislation or increasing penalties, but there are already penalties on the books to deal with the serious nature of this. I'm trying to understand what the roadblock is. If we increase the maximum penalty another two or five years and still get sentences in the range they are now, we haven't done anything. We've just checked a box, which hasn't done anything.

First, I'll go to the OPP, then the RCMP.

What is your relationship like with the CBSA in terms of partnerships? Are there any changes that need to be made?

[Det-Insp Scott Wade]

I can say that our relationships and partnerships with the CBSA are excellent.

We're working on many fronts in Ontario and Quebec. Traditionally, the OPP hasn't come to Quebec to conduct enforcement and investigations, so it's a.... I mean, we have traditionally, but this is a different way, and I think it's great. We're sharing intelligence and finding new ways, I think, to share information. We're considering an evaluation of the Customs Act and broader application of sharing that intelligence and information, which is ongoing. We've had excellent success as a result of those partnerships.

[Supt Martin Roach]

Mr. Chair, if I can speak for the RCMP, our relationship with the CBSA is excellent on many fronts, not only on auto theft, but also when we look at the border and firearms. These are dynamics that bring our organizations together. We sit on multiple committees within the provinces of Quebec and Ontario and at the national level, where we look at those dynamics holistically.

When it comes to auto theft, there are various committees when it comes to intelligence. Also in the private sector, there are liaison committees involving Équité Association and many other organizations where the CBSA is at the table as well. There's a great relationship.

As we said in our opening remarks on the international perspective that we brought in terms of linking our CPIC database with the stolen motor vehicle database of Interpol, the CBSA plays a big part in that role as well.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Ms. Michaud, you have six minutes, please.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

I participated in the government's national summit on combatting auto theft. Not surprisingly, most of the criticism was directed at the Canada Border Services Agency. The Port of Montreal has become a hub for auto theft and the export of stolen vehicles abroad. People are being more and more vocal about blaming organized crime for auto theft in Canada. There have always been rumours, but people are more willing to talk about it now, it seems.

In fact, I read in a Radio-Canada article that it's no secret the Irish mafia in Montreal is involved, along with the Italian mafia, and that there are corrupt customs officers and port workers at the Port of Montreal. This raises questions about how Canadian port employees are selected and vetted. The Association des directeurs de police du Québec has even suggested that police services should handle the vetting process.

Mr. McCrorie, can you tell us how many customs officers there are at the Port of Montreal and how the selection process works? Should changes be made to make it more rigorous?

[Aaron McCrorie]

Thank you for the question.

It felt like there were two parts to it, so I hope I get this right.

Generally speaking, when it comes to port security and the background checks that are required for all people working at the port, that is the responsibility of Transport Canada. Transport Canada has a marine security program that requires not all, but probably most, port staff—it's for them to say—to have some kind of background check that's similar to what they do at airports.

I apologize, but I don't have readily at hand how many people we have working at the port on any given day.

Our border services officers go through a very rigorous selection process, much like our law enforcement partners do, in terms of assessing character and doing background checks. Then they go to our college at Rigaud, where they spend time getting trained professionally on the Customs Act, the Criminal Code and techniques for searching, based on what they'll do coming out of the college. They may end up at port of entry—a land port of entry for example—where they'll be dealing primarily with travellers or they'll come to a place like the Port of Montreal, where they'll be working primarily on searching imports. The same techniques apply in terms of searching export containers.

Again, it's always intelligence-driven. We have professional intelligence analysts who work very closely with other intelligence agencies, including police of jurisdiction, to generate intelligence that can tell us which containers to target.

We also have a professional standards division that looks at instances of corruption or inappropriate behaviour by our staff. There are mechanisms to report that and for investigations to take place.

My personal view is that our officials who are conducting the searches and targeting the containers are the last line of defence and they are doing their very best. I think they're doing a very good job.

I'm not concerned. There may be some bad eggs there, but by and large I think the vast majority of BSOs working are doing a great job with a lot of integrity.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you.

We hear a lot about whether it would make sense to add more imaging devices. As members said earlier, apparently a very small percentage of containers passing through Canada's ports, less than 1% according to some sources, are inspected. I do wonder if that's a good solution, though, because there are also cars being exported legally. Just because a car is in a container doesn't mean it has been stolen.

Sometimes fraudulent documents are used, though. For a recent investigation, the Journal de Montréal analyzed more than 74,000 vehicle export declarations from the Port of Montreal between January and mid-September 2023. The newspaper found that 4,125 of those declarations used vehicle identification numbers, or VINs, that had been previously declared as exports a number of times. By carrying out a simple analysis using an Excel document, the newspaper was able to see that these VINs had been used on a number of occasions.

What's preventing the Canada Border Services Agency from quickly identify VINs or fraudulent documents? What's being done about companies that export containers through the Port of Montreal? Isn't there a better way to do background checks on them?

I understand that the police want to do their job well, but they need a warrant and grounds to believe that there is something fraudulent going on before opening a container. What is the process for that? Could that be strengthened as well?

[Aaron McCrorie]

As we become more engaged in auto theft—again, I'll point out that last year, we seized about 1,800 vehicles—we are getting better in how we do our targeting and how we manage things like the vehicle identification numbers, VINs, for example. What we're trying to do is take the information that we get as part of export declarations, which includes the VINs, and use that to improve our targeting.

We have a very sophisticated targeting capacity in our national targeting centre, which is primarily focused on inbound containers. We're now turning our attention to exports and trying to do the very same thing.

If we were to try to search every single container.... At the Port of Montreal, I think there are 2,300 containers a day. The technology we have to do a search can do about 10 per hour. If we had 10 screening devices, we could do all 2,300 in a day, but that doesn't account for the backlog that would occur with vehicles lining up and trains lining up. It's just physically impossible to search every container. That's why it's so important to leverage information and intelligence and do our targeting.

Have there been gaps in our targeting? Yes. Are we getting better at it? I'd like to think so. We're seeing it in our results.

Historically, at the Port of Montreal, we prided ourselves on responding to 100% of referrals from the police of jurisdiction. It meant that most of the vehicles we were finding for a while were from police referrals. Now, about 70% of the vehicles we're finding are based on our own targeting, and the other 30% are from police referrals.

This is not just at the Port of Montreal; we're now seeing vehicles being exported through the Port of Vancouver. If you look at the Port of Vancouver, where we've launched a project, about 90%, if not 95%, of the targeting is based on CBSA analysis. We're starting to see the results, with 27 vehicles in the last two or three weeks at the Port of Vancouver.

One of the challenges we have is that every effort we put in at the Port of Montreal will displace the threat to something like the Port of St. John's, the Port of Halifax or the Port of Vancouver.

While our focus is very much on the Port of Montreal, we are also looking at other ports in the country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you.

Mr. MacGregor, please go ahead.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you very much, Chair. It's really good to be back in my old stomping grounds in the public safety committee.

I'd really like to thank our witnesses for helping guide us through this really important subject. I think your expertise is going to be very valuable to us in issuing a report with recommendations.

Detective Inspector Wade, I'd like to turn to you first. It's along the lines of the question you received from Mr. Bittle.

I think you're getting a peek at the conundrum that we, as policy-makers, find ourselves in. I've had experience on the standing committee on justice and I've taken some deep dives into the Criminal Code. There are many provisions in the Criminal Code that allow for sentences to be harsher or lighter, depending on the circumstances, such as whether there are aggravating factors. There's a fair amount of freedom.

Similarly, when it comes to Crown prosecutors, the executive branch—in this case, the Ontario provincial government—has to be very careful to not get involved in the operational details. There has to be that prosecutorial independence that's so very necessary.

Of course, we value that our courts are independent.

I'm looking at the Criminal Code as a legislator. Do you want to take an opportunity to delve into it a bit more deeply?

What is more of a deterrent? Is someone who is thinking of stealing a car thinking about the sentence they will receive, or are they thinking more that the risk outweighs the chance of them actually getting caught doing it?

Do you think more resources are needed in our police operations' intelligence-gathering? Do we have to rely simply on the Criminal Code, or is it probably a mix of both?

[Det-Insp Scott Wade]

It's a combination of both. Police have to investigate the crimes and present their cases before the courts, but there has to be a deterrent, like a sentence, otherwise the great investigations won't result in the results we want.

Again, what's important, with the establishment of the major auto theft prosecution response team in Ontario, is that we have to maintain a distance and be bipartisan, but we're also going to be working very closely with them to present the right case. We're going to educate each other—from Crowns to police and police to Crowns—and present those cases, and expert witness cases if possible, to assist with sentencing and providing the most information to the court so they can make an informed decision and an informed sentence.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

It was mentioned that, when people are arrested with a stolen vehicle, in many cases they can be found with illegal firearms, and in some cases drugs—which I would think are aggravating factors in the arrest and eventual charges—but many have previous criminal records as well. When you're handing the case over to Crown prosecutors, are you seeing that follow-through, that this person is obviously not learning their lesson from the first time around and they do warrant a harsher sentence, as is provided for in the Criminal Code?

[Det-Insp Scott Wade]

To answer that question, as an example, with the provincial carjacking task force we're seeing that a large percentage of the offenders arrested are out on bail at the time for either other offences or similar offences, and then the majority of the offenders are being released on bail when they're brought before the courts.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you for that.

I was looking through the 2023 list of the most stolen vehicles in Canada—and I'll let anyone else jump in, maybe the RCMP this time. The top three are the Honda CR-V, the Dodge Ram 1500 series and, of course, the Ford F-150. Are we finding that those particular models are being stolen because they are so numerous or is it a particular design flaw? What's your intelligence showing as to why these particular vehicles seem to be topping the list? Does anyone want to jump in?

[Supt Martin Roach]

There are multiple reasons that they're jumping up to the top of the list. It could be, sometimes, what the demand is at the other end, overseas. It could be accessibility. There are all kinds of issues that are beyond just our intervention, in terms of the RCMP, but in the list of vehicles we found all sorts of vehicles that will go overseas, and not just the top three or anything: There are probably 25 different types of vehicles that are being recovered. It varies a lot, depending on where they're found in the world.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

When a stolen vehicle is recovered—and I think one of you mentioned the fact that you found programmed key fobs, which allowed the thief to gain easy access to the vehicle—and when it comes to police reports on recovered stolen vehicles and the method that was used to steal said car, does that usually go through the Insurance Bureau and then to the car manufacturer? I'm just wondering how we can improve the lines of communication between what you're finding in your investigations and how car manufacturers are then taking that information to make a better product that is less likely to be stolen.

[Det-Insp Scott Wade]

I can speak to that. It's a combination of all of those approaches. We're gathering information from the cars that are seized at the port. We're sharing that information directly with Équité and other insurance industry partners. We have regular ongoing collaborative meetings with global automakers. Basically, it's constantly revolving. They're sharing information with us. They've giving us ideas and opportunities we can use to track vehicles more efficiently, and then we're doing the same and sharing our information with, a lot of the time, Équité and our insurance partners, and then they share the information with the automakers. It's ongoing at all levels.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you.

We're now moving into round two. We'll start with Mr. Lloyd, please, for five minutes.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

I'll start with Detective Inspector Wade. You said, in response to the previous questions, that a lot of the offenders you're catching are out on bail. Is that the case? You said that a significant number or a majority of the offenders you are catching with auto theft are out on bail.

[Det-Insp Scott Wade]

That is correct, and I was specifically referring to the carjacking task force, and it was around 40% of the offenders we were arresting who were out of bail at the time.