Public Safety Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2022

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

I'll leave it at that, Mr. Chair.

Thanks so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

We now move into the next round of questions from members of the committee.

Mr. Lloyd, the floor is yours for five minutes.

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

My first line of questioning is for the Akwesasne first nations police and the chief, of course. When the people in communities are economically stable, have high employment and prosperity, are socially stable, have strong families and strong community attachments, and have low substance abuse issues, would you say that these communities are less vulnerable to organized crime, such as intimidation or bribery and things like that?

[Grand Chief Abram Benedict]

Yes, absolutely. As I said in my opening remarks, many people take to cross-border crime because of the money that can be made. When there are fewer opportunities, that means they look for ways to support themselves that are outside of social supports. Absolutely.

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

Are you currently getting that economic development support from the federal government? You sort of talked about that in your testimony.

[Grand Chief Abram Benedict]

We need greater opportunities within our community. Believe me, we're challenged by the location of our community as well, on an economic front, because, again, in some industries you're regulated by external legislation. Depending on where you are, that can make a determination on what makes sense and what doesn't.

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

We've seen that the current federal government has put forward a plan. It's estimated to cost possibly over a billion dollars for a gun buyback for legal gun owners. What could a billion dollars do for border communities, particularly indigenous border communities? What could a billion dollars do to be effective in disrupting organized crime in your communities?

[Grand Chief Abram Benedict]

Ultimately, we need more boots on the ground and technology and equipment to be able to continue to keep our community safe.

What I can say is that with any of these commodities, whether it be guns, people or drugs, it's not grown. It's not manufactured. It's not coming from here. It's coming from somewhere else. It also means that, with a lot of enforcement agencies, it's going through their jurisdiction as well before it comes through our relatively small but large community.

We get a lot of bad press saying that it's coming through here, but at the same time, there are 8,800 kilometres of Canadian border. Not everything is coming through here; I can assure you of that.

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

Certainly.

That will help me transition to the Winnipeg police force.

I thought it was very interesting that, as you were saying, the profit margins for moving illegal guns, say handguns, have grown and we're looking at 300% profits. When these profits increase, with the laws of supply and demand, people will take riskier and more creative activities to get these firearms. Do you guys know what the top avenues are? How are these guns getting smuggled? We heard on Tuesday that trains are a big vulnerability, and marine ports of entry.

Where are you identifying these guns getting into Canada?

[Shawn Dulude]

For us here in Akwesasne, obviously there's no rail service, so we're looking at either land or water. Those would be the two main entries.

As I said earlier in French to the previous question I received, once the St. Lawrence freezes over, in the winter they will move commodities, whether it be weapons, drugs or humans, by snowmobile over the frozen waters.

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

Winnipeg Police Service, how are you identifying these guns getting across the border? Is it by train, personal vehicles, drones...?

[Maurice Sabourin]

My colleague advises me that it's mainly by land. As mentioned before, 8,800 kilometres of—

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

We know it's either by land or by sea, but what are the means or the methods, more specifically, by which they get over the border?

[Maurice Sabourin]

I don't have the answer to that specifically, but I could probably turn it over to my colleague, Detective Neyron.

[Philip Neyron]

My understanding is that a lot of it comes through vehicles, smuggled through the border, either personal, truck—

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

Mr. Chair, Mr. Neyron's comments cannot be interpreted. I don't believe he's wearing a headset. The interpreters are signalling that they cannot interpret what he is saying.

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

Mr. Sabourin, I'll switch back to you. You were saying there's an economic aspect. I feel as though if we get more creative at the border, we can really disrupt a lot of guns, but then we're going to be turning those profits from 300% to 500% to 1,000%.

What can we do to disrupt that supply-and-demand incentive to get guns over the border? What would be your recommendations?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Mr. Lloyd, we're going to have to wait for that answer. Unfortunately, we're out of time. Thank you.

Colleagues, we have only two minutes left in this hour. Therefore, I'm going to ask Mr. Zuberi, who is next in line in this round, to keep his intervention to two minutes, and then we will move to the second tranche of witnesses.

Mr. Zuberi, with that limited time, the floor is yours.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thanks to all the witnesses for being here.

I'll start off by saying that I'm speaking to you from Montreal, from the historical territory of the Kanien'kehá:ka Nation.

I have one question for Mr. Sabourin. You talked about gang intervention and being severely under-resourced. There's only one person who's actually working in that area, in that domain. Do you think there's a critical need to expand that aspect of work within the police service in Winnipeg?

[Maurice Sabourin]

Yes, sir. Absolutely there's a need to expand that unit, the number of individuals who are involved in the particular gang unit. We have school resources that deal in a very limited aspect with the gang members. Any gang members who approach our school resources would be referred to our gang intervention individual. However, as I said before, one individual is—

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

—too little.

Thank you. I want to ask a follow-up question.

Is there an awareness of the uniqueness of indigenous and non-indigenous activities that we're dealing with in this study? Are you guys locally implementing that awareness?

[Maurice Sabourin]

Yes. There is regular training that is done with the general patrol members in particular, as well as our guns and gangs unit. The unfortunate thing is that the training is fairly limited. It might be on a professional development day that our general patrol shifts would attend on a regular basis, but COVID has prevented us from doing those large gatherings.

Ultimately, we do need more resources in helping some of these young people get out of gangs.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

There's a need for more sensitivity training around issues related to indigeneity and helping people leave street gangs.

Thank you for that. I believe my two minutes are up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Zuberi. That's exactly right. Your time is up, literally to the second.

Thank you, colleagues. This ends the first hour of our meeting this morning.

I would like to thank the witnesses very much for their generosity with their time and their insights from an accumulation of so many years of experience. On behalf of all members of the committee, thank you very much for your contributions to this study.

Colleagues, we'll now move to our second hour. I'd like to introduce the individuals who will be making presentations, followed by questions from members of the committee.

We will be welcoming Mitch Bourbonniere, outreach worker for the Ogijiita Pimatiswin Kinamatwin. From the Bear Clan Patrol, we will be welcoming Kevin Walker, who is the interim executive director. From the Native Counselling Services of Alberta, we have Marlene Orr, chief executive officer; and Nicole Whiskeyjack, community coordinator.

They will have up to five minutes for opening remarks, after which we will proceed with rounds of questions.

Welcome to all of you. Thank you for being with us today.

I now invite Mr. Bourbonniere to make an opening statement of up to five minutes—

[The Clerk]

Mr. Chair, if I may interject, could you suspend for a few minutes? We need to let the witnesses go from the first panel, and then invite the witnesses from the second panel and do a sound check.