Public Safety Committee on Feb. 10th, 2022

[Benoît Dubé]

Okay.

Operation Centaur is a strategy that includes all the units that were formerly more or less independent. The goal is to enable us to exchange intelligence more effectively. We joined together to avoid being too thin on the ground. This strategy requires new ways of doing things that can have a greater impact and allow for enhanced information sharing. That in fact is what will enable us to be more effective.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

Now I will invite Mr. MacGregor to ask his questions. He has six minutes to do it.

Sir, the floor is yours.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I'll direct my questions to the Vancouver Police Department.

Staff Sergeant Rowe, in your opening remarks you mentioned the use of high-capacity magazines. In a previous meeting of our committee, Toronto Police Service reported that in a one-year period, they collected 50% more shell casings at crime scenes. Are you noticing a similar pattern in the Vancouver area?

[S/Sgt Michael Rowe]

Yes, sir, we are noticing more shots being fired. Even recently, we had a drive-by shooting of a residence. We noted that over 10 shots were fired in a very short period of time. I believe this is definitely a reflection of the access to more ammunition and high-capacity magazines. It can also be a reflection of the proliferation of fully automatic firearms as well.

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

In the mandate letter for the Minister of Public Safety there is an ask of him to require the permanent alteration of magazines so they can never hold more than the legal number of rounds—which would be five for a rifle and 10 for a handgun—and then further, ban the sale or transfer of magazines that can hold more than the legal number of rounds.

For a police officer looking at a high-capacity magazine, is it easy to tell whether a magazine has been permanently altered, especially if it looks like a large-capacity magazine?

[S/Sgt Michael Rowe]

The current practice to limit capacity on a magazine is that people will often insert a rivet in the back of the magazine that prevents the follower—the small piece that follows the rounds—from progressing lower and taking a higher capacity. Often we'll look for this rivet. You can often see on magazines where the capacity has been expanded that this rivet is simply drilled out. Therefore, it's not a permanent alteration. It's very easily defeated.

The other challenge is the manufacturing of these magazines using 3-D printers, or the import of these magazines from the United States, where they're legal.

I would definitely agree that the prohibition of high-capacity magazines is very important to law enforcement.

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

Yes, I wondered about that. For me, from a policy perspective, it seems it would be simpler just to ban high-capacity magazines outright so that there's never any doubt for a police officer.

Would that be something you think we should be recommending to the public safety minister?

[S/Sgt Michael Rowe]

Yes, I would certainly support the outright ban of high-capacity magazines.

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

Thank you.

On the question of ghost guns and the 3-D printing, from your experience, is it a specific type of 3-D printer that's needed to manufacture gun components? Are these types of 3-D printers widely available?

[S/Sgt Michael Rowe]

From my experience, and the education I've taken from experts in the field, we've learned that very basic 3-D printers—as I said, I think there's one on the market for about $299—that are commonly available at regular stores, once loaded up with a certain type of filament, a certain type of plastic that goes in them, can produce a very durable, highly functioning firearm.

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

Is there any practical way, from a policy perspective, of trying to keep track of who is purchasing these 3-D printers? We don't want to go after innocent people who are using them for perfectly innocent purposes, but with the ability they have to manufacture these parts, is there a way of tracking how suspicious activity might be occurring with these 3-D printers?

[S/Sgt Michael Rowe]

Respectfully, sir, I would suggest that it's going to be through the regulation of firearms parts.

Each 3-D printed receiver, the component they can 3-D print, requires specific parts to turn it into a functioning firearm, such as a trigger assembly, a barrel, a slide and rails, the metal pieces that go inside it. If we're able to regulate the sale, possession and importation of these specific parts, that would allow us to more effectively target people who are putting together the 3-D printed receivers into the functioning guns.

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

Thank you for that.

Switching it up a bit, you've talked a lot about your proactive and reactive measures with respect to gangs in the Vancouver area. I live on Vancouver Island, so I'm very cognizant of the news we hear out of our largest port in Canada.

Can you talk to me a little about what your efforts have been like in high schools and reaching out to youth who are more in danger of falling into gang life?

[S/Sgt Michael Rowe]

We support a number of programs. Our gang crime units have programs. Some are sports-based, such as our “Gang Tackle” program, which is centred around football. We also have a supportive program in the community called “Her Time”, which focuses on women and young girls who become involved in gangs.

We also have a very talented and very dedicated group of officers who work in our youth sections. They're very good at creating programs that engage youth and bring them into positive contact with police, which hopefully creates a relationship where they have somebody to turn to should a circumstance in their life come around where they're starting to be drawn into gangs or drawn into this type of criminality.

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

Thank you. I'll conclude there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, we have 10 minutes left in the hour. A quick calculation tells me that we can have a representative from each party speak in the second round, but instead of the full allotment, it will be something less. I'll be as fair as I can be.

Mr. Doherty, the floor is yours. Let's say that you have four minutes.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Staff Sergeant Rowe, I come from an aviation background. I worked extensively on border perimeter, security measures and inter-agency work with CLEU. When you were talking about these ghost guns and 3-D printed firearms, it really struck a nerve with me. Are they able to avoid detection in the current screening measures at airports and border entry points?

[S/Sgt Michael Rowe]

Sir, it's my understanding that right now a lot of ghost guns still require metal components to make them function. The rails and typically the barrels, the slide and the trigger assembly are still made of metal. I know there are advancements right now for full polymer firearms, but currently there are still metal components that would make them detectable to traditional X-rays or metal detectors.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

I'm from Prince George. I'm the member of Parliament for Cariboo—Prince George. You spoke extensively about the increasing gang wars that we have in the Lower Mainland, but we've seen that proliferation of gang violence and illicit crime and opioids up in our neck of the woods too, whether it's first nations gangs or some of the Indo or Asian gangs or other organized crime units or groups into the north.

Do you work extensively with that? Do you see any correlation between the importation of opioids and the illegal trafficking of weapons?

[S/Sgt Michael Rowe]

Yes, certainly, sir, there's a correlation there that I don't think can be disputed, especially as the manufacturing or sale of fentanyl produces an extremely lucrative drug market. That lucrative drug market typically invites conflict that will then result in gang violence. I know that from the Lower Mainland to the north, northern industries produce very attractive markets for drug trafficking, which causes a lot of the groups involved in our Lower Mainland gang complex to then migrate north in order to take advantage of those lucrative drug markets.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

I did some work up in Fort McMurray early on in the 1990s. I worked with the inter-agencies. I was staggered to learn about the amount of drugs that were going in and out of the camps up there. It was quite shocking.

We have a huge problem with recidivism in my riding, specifically in Williams Lake and Prince George, where it seems that 90% of the crimes are committed by the same people. We can't seem to keep them off the streets and we can't keep illegal weapons out of their hands. What can we do at the ground level, the municipal level, and how can we help end the violence and keep these guys off the streets?

[S/Sgt Michael Rowe]

From a municipal policing level, it would be increasing funding, especially when it comes to firearms, and being able to provide funding to put together local municipal firearms enforcement teams. I believe there's more work than our provincial and federal firearms enforcement teams have the capacity for.

The funding to provide local municipalities—whether it's municipal RCMP detachments or municipal departments such as Vancouver—with a dedicated firearms enforcement capacity would go a long way to being able to make more arrests and lay more charges, but also get more firearms off the street.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

I want to finish by saying thank you to all the officers here for their service. I know that the work you do very often goes unthanked. All of us appreciate the service that you provide, so thank you.

I think that's the end of my time, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Yes, perfect. Thank you very much.

I'll now invite Mr. Noormohamed to take the floor.

You have four minutes, sir.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

Just to echo my colleagues, thank you very much to all of you for coming. It's important to have your voices in this conversation.

I'd like to start with you, Staff Sergeant Rowe. First of all, thank you for all that you and the VPD do. It's great having you in my constituency of Vancouver Granville.

You talked about the ability of people to make firearms on their own. I have to say that I was at the Best Buy just behind VPD headquarters, and you can buy exactly that machine you were talking about right there. So I wonder, listening to this, when you think about where these weapons are really coming from and where we should be focusing our effort....

Would you say, first off, that it is primarily a concern about domestic weapons, domestically manufactured and domestically trafficked weapons, or is it really a border issue? I'd love to hear your perspective on that.

Then I have another question for you around the manufacturing of these weapons and what we might do.