Public Safety Committee on March 10th, 2026

[Peter German]

There are two things there. First, I would say in la belle province, the police work very well together. In my experience, the Gendarmerie royale du Canada, the Sûreté du Québec and the Ville de Montréal work very closely on organized crime cases. This has never really been an issue that I know of.

When talking about the issue before this committee in terms of immigration, I mentioned in my remarks that we should have joint CBSA-police task forces. Mr. Sauvé also said this to the committee. There's expertise at CBSA, but they are not police officers, and the police have a much wider scope. Working in an integrated fashion is the way to go.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon, QC]

As you know, in Quebec, on the Côte‑Nord, the RCMP, the Sûreté du Québec and even the indigenous police are currently fighting organized crime together.

Would you agree that one of the recommendations of this study should be that all police forces in Quebec and Canada, in collaboration with the RCMP and the CBSA, must form a specific force to address the problems of foreign criminal nationals on our soil?

Would you make that a recommendation, Mr. German?

[Peter German]

The police work quite well together. There's this theory of integration of police forces, and they work closely together, so I think we already have that. We're very fortunate in this country. We're not in a situation in which the police are keeping their secrets to themselves, not sharing and that sort of thing.

It really is prioritizing the work we do. In your earlier question, you mentioned that I said we need resources, and we do, but we have to target them as well. We have to be smart in how we use those resources and go after the priority cases.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Au, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Chak Au, Conservative, Richmond Centre—Marpole, BC]

Dr. German, I'm glad to see you again. I've seen you speak on several occasions. I represent the Richmond Centre—Marpole riding. I used to be a city councillor, and you spoke to city council a few times.

Today you talk about the process problem and the lack of a sense of urgency. To be honest, this is not something new; it has been going on for quite some time.

My question for you is this: Is this a lack of resources or a lack of political will? My assumption is that, if there's political will, then there will be resources allocated. What are your comments?

[Peter German]

Richmond is one beautiful city. I lived in Richmond for well over 20 years.

It's very good to see you again.

I often talk about both political will and bureaucratic will. I don't blame the politicians for everything. Politicians come and go with elections and so forth. Bureaucrats stay for a long time. You need bureaucratic will at the municipal, provincial and federal levels as well to carry programs through. That's critical. We see that in policing. Priorities change and so forth. I guess I'm in agreement.

[Chak Au, Conservative, Richmond Centre—Marpole, BC]

I have a follow-up question. You first wrote about dirty money in 2018, the money laundering problem in the Lower Mainland, the Vancouver model and that kind of thing. In these past years, have you seen any tangible, measurable improvements in these areas?

[Peter German]

For context, I wrote two reports, “Dirty Money” and “Dirty Money—Part 2”. They were related to casinos, real estate and cars—organized crime generally—in British Columbia in 2018 and 2019. The primary focus was casinos.

I think it's fair to say that we've seen a dramatic change in casinos, but not just because of my work. The Cullen commission came after me. We had excellent reporting by various media outlets.

When the heat is on organized crime, they move somewhere else. The important thing is that we effectively got them out of the casinos. It's important to keep them out of there now, but where did they go?

Now we're dealing with cryptocurrency. We're dealing with money exchange businesses. We're dealing with the supply chain for marijuana and competing with legal marijuana.

Unfortunately, organized crime doesn't just go away; it will move. However, I think we've seen a marked change, at least with respect to the casinos.

[Chak Au, Conservative, Richmond Centre—Marpole, BC]

I want to put my question into context. Today we are talking about foreign criminals committing crime in our country. In your work, do you see foreign criminals and local criminals interacting to pose a danger to our communities through drugs, money laundering and all kinds of criminal activities?

[Peter German]

Yes, definitely.

Foreign criminals come over here because they know somebody. Whether it's people in the same gang, people in the same community or whatever it might be, they have connections. They don't just pop up out of the blue in Canada. Definitely, there are connections.

With the high-profile shootings and so forth, you will occasionally see people from Canada being charged. It's not just foreign nationals. It can be Canadians as well. They may well be connected to gangs.

We don't talk about organized crime anymore. We talk about transnational organized crime. Virtually all organized crime has a transnational component.

[Chak Au, Conservative, Richmond Centre—Marpole, BC]

In your opening remarks, you talked about the fact that there should be more effective strategies for border security. Can you elaborate on that?

[Peter German]

Well, I'm a bit of an old record on this, but we have no port police. We have no police in our ports. Deltaport and Vancouver port, the largest port in the country, have no port police. They are regulated by fencing and security guards. That's a problem, because we've had reports for a couple of decades of organized crime in our ports. It's not a good thing. CBSA cannot be expected to police our ports as well. That's just one example.

I mentioned railways as well. We now have a railway system from Canada right through to Mexico.

We have to get as serious about this as we are in the airports. We all go through screening in the airports, but it's wide open in the ports. This is why I talk about needing a border strategy.

[Chak Au, Conservative, Richmond Centre—Marpole, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you for that interesting exchange.

Mr. Lauzon, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Stéphane Lauzon, Liberal, Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. German, thank you for being with us today. Your career spanning nearly three decades is very impressive.

You talked about investments. Every witness who appears before pretty much any of our committees tells us about the importance of increasing funding. You've been following these matters for generations. Money is not the only thing that has evolved. Technologies, innovation and, today, artificial intelligence have also evolved. You touched on that briefly.

Can you tell us how, as a government, we could take advantage of investments in new technologies to achieve our ends today and apprehend offenders?

[Peter German]

It's a very good point.

We talk about how criminals are always one step ahead of our system, our laws and so forth, but we're at such an early stage with AI that we haven't tapped its potential yet. I mean, I love it. It really has made life a lot easier. There's no doubt.

I can't speak with personal knowledge. I'm not in policing currently. I'm sure the police are using AI, but we have to recognize that criminals are using cryptocurrency, for example. When that first happened, the thought was, “Oh my God, how can we ever deal with crypto?” However, law enforcement is dealing with crypto. There are ways of following the chain, blockchain and that sort of thing.

It's a constant push-and-pull with new technologies, but it's a very good point.

[Stéphane Lauzon, Liberal, Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC]

Thank you, Mr. German.

You also talked about the good collaboration taking place. You gave the example of Quebec and its police forces.

How could we improve collaboration among the provinces and territories, as well as with municipalities? There's a lot of security. Basically, it is the municipal police that first arrests offenders, whether for speeding or for running a red light. I think they are well informed and know whom to apprehend on the ground. You gave that example.

We recently learned that, at truck inspection centres, some drivers change a letter of their name to game the system and that the authorities couldn't get information on offenders from other provinces. What is your view on that? How can we bring all these police forces together and include road controllers?

[Peter German]

We could talk about using technology.

Police officers working in municipal roles and in traffic roles have access to the national computers and so forth. That's where a lot of this data is loaded. There's no doubt that police at senior levels work very well together, but they also work well together at a very low level, at the working level. It really is a matter of prioritizing: What are we looking at? That's why I say that CBSA and police should be working jointly in removals.

Your specific example really deals with a bit of a corruption issue. We've seen a lot of it in Quebec, but Quebec has also dealt with corruption through the years, whereas other provinces are now witnessing the same thing and are not as advanced as Quebec in dealing with corruption. You have your own agency in Quebec. It's a multi-faceted issue that you're raising.

[Stéphane Lauzon, Liberal, Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC]

I don't have much time left, but I want to hear you quickly talk about police training. We have talked about technologies, the need to invest more money, and about software and artificial intelligence. What about the training of all these police forces, which seems to be insufficient? You emphasized the fact that laws exist, but interpretation doesn't keep up with the laws.

Tell us how we could recommend, in our report, something on training in general to improve statutory interpretation.

[Peter German]

I did a report on training. I looked at the major police academies right across the country. Generally speaking, most provinces have fairly good police training academies. We can be proud of that. There are exceptions, but it's fairly good.

I think what you're talking about is training in issues such as integrity, ethics and so forth. We may not be doing enough of that. Maybe it's what we should be doing.

It's a matter of explaining to police, in their training, that their job is not simply to deal with, let's say, traffic or whatever. It's the broader picture of immigration and the other things going on in our country. It's how police can contribute to the bigger picture.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you very much, Mr. German.

Thank you, Mr. Lauzon.

Ms. Kirkland, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I have learned a lot today. I am appreciative of all the questions asked, including those from my colleagues on the other side.

I appreciated some comments you made in your introduction, especially with regard to this: Why wouldn't the folks we're studying in this study pick Canada? I found that interesting because yes, generally they would.

I want to ask a question that's a little bit adjacent to that. Folks have picked Canada, come here and committed a crime after they arrived. I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. I asked a question about this in the chamber, but I thought it would be appropriate here.

I'm from the Toronto area—Oshawa, Ontario. In the GTA, for instance, a man tried to pay $140 to sexually exploit a 15-year-old girl. He was caught with the cash in hand. He received a conditional discharge and no criminal record. This was essentially because the judge took into account his immigration status.

Do you believe immigration consequences should ever justify lighter sentences in a case—specifically involving the sexual exploitation of a minor? Is it fair for Canadian citizens if we have a two-tiered system?

[Peter German]

I'm not familiar with this particular case, but I get your point. Without understanding or reading the decision and so forth—I'm not questioning the judge—I would basically agree with you that it's a matter of what the relevant considerations are in sentencing.

We look at aggravating circumstances. We look at mitigating circumstances. There's a lot of leeway given to the courts in that respect. Should the fact that you're going to lose your job or maybe get deported be considered a mitigating factor? When it comes to the immigration one, I would say no, but I'm sure some might say yes.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I would agree with you. I would say no, in these cases.

To be clear, I'm not talking about other mitigating factors that change the sentence. I think that, potentially, loopholes in our immigration system allow for this, such as when we suggest sentencing “less a day” for certain amounts that will change their immigration status.

Do you have a thought on that?

[Peter German]

In this country, we don't have minimum sentences, in most cases. When we did have minimum sentences, it was quite obvious that the courts didn't like them. Most of them went by the wayside.

In place of minimum sentences, we have to look at specifying in the provisions within the Criminal Code what might be relevant factors and what might not be.

A good example, if I may, is threats against politicians, which is an issue that has been raised. Why should this not be listed as an aggravating factor? The fact that you are a politician and a threat has been made against you could be put in the Criminal Code as an aggravating factor. We could do that.