Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise in support of Bill C-18 which, as we know, will provide customs officers with the power to enforce the Criminal Code.
I should say that my riding is on the Ontario-Michigan border. In fact, it records the third highest volume of border traffic on the Canada-U.S. border on the one side, Port Huron, Michigan and on the Canadian side at the village of Point Edward. We have two bridges with six lanes of traffic coming and going through the country and some 6,000 trucks alone every day crossing both ways.
At the southern end of my riding is the Sombra crossing where there are tens of thousands of trucks and cars crossing each year. We are open to the United States. That is patently clear with the 17% annual increase in truck traffic alone each year which has been going on for a number of years. We find that more and more Americans and others enter Canada through our entry ports, especially at southern Ontario.
This, as we know, represents trade and tourism for Canada. However, as is always the case, with more traffic and people comes more problems. Occasionally individuals who are attempting to enter Canada have committed or are committing a criminal offence, individuals who are wanted for all kinds of criminal offences. The other problem is impaired drivers who attempt to enter. As more and more of these people enter they pose a risk to all Canadians. We do not want these people entering our country. We want to stop them.
However, the reality is that when very impaired drivers try to enter, the only thing customs officers can do is attempt to detain them until the local police arrive to lay charges and take them into custody.
For years the taxpayers in the village of Point Edward where I live have been subsidizing all Canadian taxpayers because it has been the police force in the village that has been called when there was a problem. I have to ask why the taxpayers of one municipality should suffer financially by paying for local police because a border crossing happens to be located in that municipality.
This bill certainly goes a great distance in balancing that inequality.
Statistics from all ports of entry indicate that there were 8,500 suspected impaired drivers who tried to enter Canada in a two and a half year period which is about 3,400 impaired drivers rolling into Canada from the U.S. each year. In the past we had little or no opportunity to stop them or apprehend them.
We are told that each year there have been some 80 suspected child abductors, sad cases of people using children as pawns in illegal activities, rolling up to customs where little or nothing happens to detain or arrest them.
Canadians certainly welcome visitors to this country whether for pleasure or business, but no one wants impaired drivers to roll in or any individual who is being sought on a warrant by the police to just simply sail through our customs and enter the country.
For too long we have talked about customs officers as being our first line of defence at our borders and ports of entry, but for too long we have not given them the tools. In brief, we have said one thing but never given our first line of defence the tools to do the job. It is, I can see, the strange dichotomy which at long last is being corrected by this bill. This bill responds to three factors. The first and the obvious is that those who are the first to have contact with individuals entering the country must have the right to detain and arrest those who may be committing a criminal offence or a person for whom there is an outstanding warrant.
Second, we tend to forget that customs officers live in and are an important part of our communities. They have been frustrated when they have been incapable of preventing persons alleged to have committed serious criminal offences entering our country. This bill gives them the right and the authority to do what we want them to do and in fact what they want to do and that is detain suspected criminals.
Third and finally, this bill takes pressure off local police to respond to border problems because local taxpayers have been subsidizing directly the policing function that ought to have been carried out by the federal government. If anything, I suppose I can suggest that this legislation could go a step further and that is that the legislation as drafted would require that the prosecution of the offence be carried out by so-called provincial authorities.
In some jurisdictions where the RCMP are the provincial authorities the policing cost is divided 70% by provincial payment and 30% by federal payment. This is clearly not the case in Ontario where the RCMP are not provincial authorities. In British Columbia for example where the RCMP by agreement are provincial authorities referred to in the bill, the prosecution of border crossing offences are paid for out of the 30% federal contribution, yet in Ontario it is a different situation.
One could ask, why should the taxpayers of Windsor who pay for local police pay for prosecutions of offences at, for example, the Ambassador Bridge or the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel. I could say the same thing about the people in my riding.
I hope and trust that the standing committee will examine this issue in the bill and perhaps look at it more fully.
On the face of it I would suggest that allowing customs officers to prosecute as peace officers would recognize them totally and absolutely as such and would free up local police to deal with local problems and not problems associated with international trade and travel.
In conclusion, on balance I know that the people in my riding are pleased that the pressure is going to be taken off the local police. I think Canadians should be pleased that customs officers are now going to be able to deal with those people who for various reasons are coming into our country and we do not want them to come in because they are impaired or because they have committed offences for which there are outstanding warrants. As such I think this is a good piece of legislation. It is an important piece legislation. I believe it deserves the support of this House.