Debates of April 21st, 1997

Criminal Code

[Chuck Strahl, Reform, Fraser Valley East, BC]

I do not deny that. I confirm that. I affirm the minister's statements. I am sure he would have support for that.

I was merely trying to establish whether that distinct society clause the House past more than a year ago had any effect on drafting legislation, especially when it was at the request of the Quebec government. I agree with the minister that it is a country-wide problem. Like most problems in the country it does not lend itself to the distinctiveness of any one province. It needs to be addressed in a Canada-wide way.

The question I left with the minister just before question period concerned a clarification that criminal organization means any group consisting of more than five persons. If I understood his argument before question period, persons are anybody over the age of 12. Is that what will be applied in this case, or when is a person a person in this law?

[Allan Rock, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Person will have its usual and ordinary meaning.

As I said before in the first segment of this committee meeting, the definition and the measures contained in Bill C-95 apply to any group of persons consisting of those who have engaged in the commission of serious indictable offences over the last five years and where the group has as one of its primary activities the commission of those offences. There will be no exemption from the definition by reason of age.

The criteria are dependent upon offences in the code which are indictable and punishable by a maximum of five or more years imprisonment. That does not disqualify young offenders. Anyone who meets that definition will be covered. As I said in answer to the questions put by the hon. member for Crowfoot, it may be that a particular accused because of the Young Offenders Act will face the jeopardy governed by the Young Offenders Act. That does not mean that Bill C-95 does not apply.

[Chuck Strahl, Reform, Fraser Valley East, BC]

That is the point people want to know about. Young offenders are being used as mules in the drug trade. It is commonly done in the west. People want assurances in that regard. There could be a group of five of which only one is of legal age. However it would still cover that person.

We could call it a gang. We could get the guy who is living off the avails of and corrupting youth. We could charge him under all kinds of jurisdictions. Even if no one in the gang is of legal age, we could still use the legislation for enhanced wiretap accessibility and all the other good things the minister mentioned.

I assure the minister that out west organized crime is often made up of largely under age people. That is the shame of it. Two or three kingpins frequently use young people because they get off with lighter sentences or with immunity if they are young enough. That has been documented on the west coast and I am sure across Canada.

People need assurances that it will cover groups even if they are not of legal age.

[Allan Rock, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

That is exactly what we intend. In relation to my interpretation of the act, I invite the member to look at section 20 of the Young Offenders Act as an example of what I am talking about. It relates to young persons being found guilty of offences for which the punishment provided by the Criminal Code or any other act of Parliament is imprisonment for life.

In other words, section 20 of the Young Offenders Act speaks about offences provided for in the Criminal Code for which the punishment may be more than that which can be given under the Young Offenders Act. It does not mean the offences do not apply to young people. They certainly do. It simply means that if a person of that age is charged, they are transferred and the maximum contained in the Young Offenders Act applies.

I know the situation described by the hon. member is true. I have spent evenings travelling with the youth gang section of the Winnipeg police force. I went out in their cars with them. I watched while they cruised the streets. I listened to their explanations of the kinds of crimes they investigate. I walked the beat with police officers of the Edmonton police force. I spent an evening on the streets of Vancouver with members of the Vancouver police force, sometimes driving and sometimes walking along the streets and the back alleys of downtown Vancouver. I saw for myself the extent to which young people are tragically caught up in crime and all too often at the direction of older people.

I spent time driving through the streets with the Calgary police force, seeing young people involved in unlawful activity and too often under the direction or encouragement of older people.

I well recognize the same could be said of Toronto, Halifax, Quebec City and Ottawa. In each of those places I have travelled with the police in their cars to watch them at work and to see for myself very troubling, very serious situations.

Our intention with this statute is to catch the kind of case to which the hon. member has referred. The investigative tools will be available to police officers looking into groups that involve people under the age of 18 to see if they are engaged in the commission of offences for which penalties are described under the Criminal Code. That is the intention and based on this wording I believe that is the effect.

[Jack Ramsay, Reform, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Chairman, we are talking about serious offences, offences that carry a minimum penalty of over five years.

The minister has provided that kind of penalty in Bill C-68. That means a group of hunters or a group of farmers or a group of people who own firearms like .22 calibre gopher rifles and do not want to register them fall within that category. I suppose they could be designated as members of a criminal organization if there were five of them.

If their primary activity could be determined to be failure to register their firearms and challenging the gun law in court, it could

be considered to be a series of offences. Would they fall into the category of a criminal organization?

[Allan Rock, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Mr. Chairman, it is remarkable, no matter what the subject, how the hon. member somehow finds a gun in it somewhere. Such is his dedication and his passion of commitment to opposing gun control in Canada. It is regrettable.

I happen to think the hon. member is completely out of step with the vast majority of Canadian people who want to see us take military type assault weapons off the street. I think the vast majority of Canadians support the fact that we banned the future sale and import of most cheaply made handguns called Saturday Night Specials that have killed so many police officers in the U.S. We do not want them in Canada.

The majority of Canadians support gun control which gives police officers the tools they need to take guns out of the hands of people who should not have them. It is regrettable that no matter what the subject, the bill, the measure or the objective, the hon. member will find some way to bring it back to his passionate commitment to oppose gun control which is so broadly supported in the country. It is odd and curious, but it is something I have to live with. In living with it let me do the best I can to respond to the question in which the hon. member has laboured to make firearms somehow relevant to anti-gang legislation.

I do not think the example given by the hon. member could possibly be. I suppose we could invent facts to make it happen, but he is talking about individuals acting on individual occasions and not respecting the law passed by Parliament. I hope all Canadians would respect the law passed by Parliament. He may know some people who do not or will not. That is interesting.

Let us get back to what Bill C-95 is all about. Let us get back to what the anti-organized crime bill is all about. It is all about those who band together in groups or associations to ruthlessly dedicate their lives and their efforts to profit at the expense of others and sometimes at the expense of the lives of others.

It is about giving police tools to deal with those who would put at risk the lives of families and of children by battling over turf for illegal drug distribution. It is about finding a way to deal with hardened criminals, career criminals who over the last five years have committed a series of serious criminal offences and are committing indictable crimes punishable by five years or more in prison.

This is the hard core of organized crime in Canada. They are at war right now in the province of Quebec. The cost has been measured in human lives, in the peace of mind of communities. I met people from towns and cities in Quebec who are not able to take their children for a walk down their own street, who tell me they are afraid to go to parks in their towns and who feel their communities are under siege.

They live in fear in their communities. This is unacceptable in Canada. The conditions described by the people who live in these towns and villages in Quebec cannot be tolerated. I met with the mayors of some of these communities. They told me straight off that these conditions were unacceptable, and I agree with them. That is why we took action. We have now done our share to amend the Criminal Code and to propose measures that will help our police forces fight these offences.

That is what this bill is all about. As much as the hon. member might use his creativity to imagine ways to make his opposition to gun control relevant to an organized crime bill, it is interesting, creative and mildly amusing. It is even charming in a way because the hon. member has made such a career out of it. However, it is hardly relevant, not helpful and it is broadly off the point.

[Jack Ramsay, Reform, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Chairman, what is regrettable is that the justice minister, in creating that bill, placed the maximum penalty of 10 years for a person knowingly failing to register their .22 gopher rifle. That is what he has done. He has gone to great lengths in his answer to suggest that this is not an issue that should be raised and overlooks the fact that he has created such a severe penalty that it makes anyone who chooses to challenge that law in a court, like the three provinces and the territories are doing, come under at least the eaves trough of this bill.

That is what is regrettable as far as the justice minister's response is concerned. Some concerns were indicated in some newspaper articles about how the bill may be applied in such a way that it was not meant by the justice department or justice minister to be applied. We have good evidence of that kind of legislation going through the House and Bill C-41 is a good example. He, by his own admission, did not expect the conditional sentencing to be used in the manner that allows rapists to walk free.

We have to look at the minister's rationale in this when he suggests that we do not have to worry about this. Maybe he does not have to worry, but as representatives of the people of this country and as the guardians of their rights when it comes to legislation like this, it is very appropriate that not only do we examine this bill but its ramifications as may occur through the interpretation of the very clauses of the bill and the terms that lie undefined.

I would like to ask the justice minister the following question. There have been over 60 gang related murders in Quebec since October 1994 to 1995. Eighty gang members were arrested and charged for some 200 offences. Outside of the extension of the wiretap laws which may help the investigating peace officer to investigate a murder, how is this bill going to help those investigating police officers apprehend those responsible for these murders, including those who set the bomb off that killed the little 11 year

old boy? How is this bill going to help other than perhaps the extension of the wiretap laws?

[Allan Rock, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member has told me that he and his colleagues in the Reform Party support this bill. I hope he has a better understanding than he has indicated of how the bill is going to help.

When you have a medical problem you go to a doctor. When you have a legal problem you go to a lawyer. When you want to know what will help the police in what they are doing to combat crime on the streets you go to the police. That is what we did. We went to the police.

I spoke with Chief Duchesneau, the director of the Montreal Urban Community Police Department. I met with Chief Richard Renaud from Quebec. I met with a dozen chiefs of police and directors of police departments three weeks ago in Hull. I talked with police forces about their needs and about the changes that could be made to the Criminal Code to give them better tools to fight organized crime. Most of the measures contained in Bill C-95 were proposed by police officers. They have been working with us for months to find ways to deal with this problem.

The police themselves think that these measures will improve the law and help us arrest and prosecute those responsible for the murders referred to by the hon. member.

We did not develop these proposals in a vacuum. We did not develop them in the absence of practical advice from the police on the street. We worked very closely with the police community in devising these measures. We have given the police tools that will help them.

The hon. member asks how and he referred to wiretaps. Far more than that is given by this bill. It is permitted to seal up information on which warrants are obtained in order to protect the confidentiality of informants, in order to protect the lives of informants, in order to make it easier for police to derive information from third parties to help them in their war on organized crime.

It is provided that, under certain circumstances, with court order, investigating officers can get access to income tax information in the course of investigating organized crime. That is a rare event. To the present, Revenue Canada and Finance, because of the traditional confidentiality of income tax information, has permitted access to investigating officers only in a limited category of cases. We propose to expand that to include the participation offence in organized crime.

The legislation will permit the seizing not only of the proceeds of crime but any property used to help commit organized crime, including real estate if it is fortified or modified to enable or facilitate the commission of those offences.

The legislation provides for stern, stiff prison sentences for those who engage in organized crime. Let me make that point clear so that the hon. member sees the full force and effect of these provisions.

Not only the leaders that the hon. member for the Bloc was asking about, but members and even strangers to the group who are enticed for cash, for example, to transport, to store or to place explosives on the part of a criminal organization, these stiff sentences will stand in the way of anyone who is complicit with organized crime.

The onus on bail applications for those arrested on organized crime offences are reversed. The court in sentencing for organized crime offences and for explosives offences committed in connection with organized crime are required not only to impose the stiff sentence but required that it be served consecutive to any other sentence the person is then serving or to which they may be required to serve as a result of other infractions.

The police, with the authority of the attorney general of the province, will be given the powerful tool of seeking a judicial restraint order where there are grounds on which a judge can conclude that there is a reasonable basis to fear that someone will commit an organized crime offence.

That is determined on the civil balance of probabilities and not the criminal beyond a reasonable doubt. The court will be empowered to make an order limiting the liberty of that person, requiring that person to comply with conditions that are appropriate, that may, for example, prohibit one member of such a group from communicating with others.

These are powerful and important tools that the police welcome. If the chiefs of police believe that these tools will assist in their efforts against organized crime, if those who are on the ground dealing with these problems day after day who have developed expertise, who have experience, believe that these tools are powerful and useful, to be a first step, to be the first phase, establishing a framework to which can be added more in the months and years ahead, then I say we should conclude that not only in our own judgment but based on the advice of those who know from their own experience that this bill is going to make a difference out where it belongs, in the real world.

Before I conclude, in answer to the hon. member's question, he referred to registering guns. In a pattern that has become all too distressingly familiar over the years, as he has returned with his remarkable attachment to his opposition to any form of gun control, the hon. member seeks to instil the hysterical reaction which he seeks in others by overstating his case.

The hon. member knows full well that if someone fails to register the garden variety .22, we have provided not in the Criminal Code, but in the firearms act, for a remedy which falls far short of the draconian consequences to which he has referred. The hon. member takes a hypothetical case and attaches to it the most extreme result.

I think the country is on to his pattern of activity by now. Just in case there is anyone out there who has not seen the hon. member at work in the past on this subject, for the record it should be noted that he has once again misstated the case in order to encourage over reaction to legislation that he has been opposed to from the outset because he just does not like gun control.

As I say, it is regrettable he is so out of step with the vast majority of Canadians. I guess that is something he is going to have to live with.

[Michel Bellehumeur, Bloc, Berthier—Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Chairman, first of all, I want to reassure Reform members. Everyone in the House knows that the distinct society motion agreed to has never been used to pass any legislation whatsoever. It is a meaningless motion, and Quebec as a distinct society is in no way at issue in Bill C-95. In this regard, I must say that the minister is right. The problem of gangs does not exist only in Quebec, but is spreading and is also very present in Ontario and in the other provinces of English Canada.

That having been said, my other comment concerns the answers the minister has given to a number of questions. Several times, he said it was unacceptable that people should be afraid to walk on the street in towns in Quebec, that, in Canada, mothers should be afraid to let their children go outside, and so on.

I am very pleased that the minister has said this in the House, and that he has also admitted that it was urgent to act in such a situation, given that, I remind you, we have been asking the minister to act for two years now. I congratulate him on having seen that what the Bloc Quebecois was calling for made good sense and on introducing legislation along the lines of what we have pointing out for at least two years.

But what strikes me is that the minister said several times that this is a first step. It is a step in the direction of what police forces have been calling for. It is a first step. He has repeated this at least ten times since oral question period.

My first question, and later on I will have another, is that, while they were drafting such a bill, why did the minister not take more than that one step?

Why did the minister not go a bit further regarding leaders, among other things, and regarding the demands made by Quebec City and certain mayors as well that the minister met with? I am very happy that he met these demands because, once again, it was the Bloc Quebecois that really backed him into a corner, so he decided to go to Quebec City. The air in that city did him good, because when he came back it was an urgent matter. Before he left for Quebec City, there was no rush. So this is an extremely important point. The air in Quebec City did the Minister of Justice a lot of good.

Given that he himself admits it is a first step, and it seems to be a small one because he has mentioned it so many times, why did the minister not decide to take more steps in the fight against crime?

[Allan Rock, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

First of all, Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out that, as a government, we have acted promptly and effectively in response to the demands, not only from the Government of Quebec, but also from police forces throughout Canada, with respect to organized crime.

Not only have we reacted with Bill C-95, now before us, but we have also passed Bill C-17. When I was in Quebec with my counterpart, Quebec Minister of Justice Paul Bégin, he asked me to act to fight organized crime in the Criminal Code, and also to get C-17 through rapidly, which we did. That bill is now in the other place.

We also passed Bill C-8 against the drug and narcotic traffickers. These are very valuable measures for the police forces, including the organized crime squads.

But with Bill C-95, we decided not to go with the option whereby mere membership in an organization would constitute a criminal offence. That proposal came mainly from Nr. Bégin and the Government of Quebec, who asked for an amendment to the Criminal Code making mere membership in a criminal organization a criminal offence. The idea, I presume, was to have a schedule to the legislation which would list the criminal groups and gangs

We looked seriously at that option. We studied the consequences and concluded that such an approach would be unconstitutional; it was neither desirable nor necessary to go beyond the law or the legal framework to have an effective and durable bill. We therefore decided on other measures, which are now in Bill C-95.

We are convinced that our approach is valid and constitutional. It is very important to me to avoid raising false hopes. For us,

adopting a measure such as the one proposed by Mr. Bégin, only to have the courts toss it out in six months, would be an approach that would raise false hopes among Quebecers and Canadians. So we found a response or a valid approach to this situation.

The hon. member asks why we went no further. In my opinion, this bill is the start, the first phase in our legislative response to organized crime. Without a doubt, we are going to find the other approaches in the months and years to come. For the moment, however, the measures before the House are valid, constitutional and also, I believe, effective.

[Michel Bellehumeur, Bloc, Berthier—Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Chairman, what I understand is that they are introducing the first phase because they do not know what to propose in the further phases. The minister has just said so. I understand.

What I do not understand however is when he says that it was quick and effective. Again, I remind members that we have been asking the government to introduce this bill for two years now.

The same thing can be said about Bill C-17. The minister spoke about it three or four times. I remind him that this bill had been introduced back in 1994. The Bloc Quebecois had to threaten the government to propose anti-biker amendments in order to get the minister to bring that bill back to the House and have it passed.

There is another point I want to raise with the minister. The government of Quebec and the Bloc Quebecois raised on several occasions the issue of crime proceeds and money laundering in Canada. Again today, a newspaper mentioned that legislation on money laundering is very difficult to implement because there are so many loopholes. Reference is made to Canadian policemen; they must be the ones the minister says he has met several times. I also met several chiefs of police and policemen in Quebec, who told me almost the opposite of what the minister has been telling this House for the last little while, in particular about the legislation on money laundering, about which they were almost unanimous. I have even talked to judges and attorneys general of Canada. So, we read in the paper this morning that the police in Canada would love to have half or even one quarter of the measures that exist in similar legislation in the United States.

As for the whole issue of anti-biker or anti-gang or anti-crime in general, we in the Bloc Quebecois have said repeatedly that stricter legislation is needed on money laundering.

I realize that Bill C-95 contains provisions concerning the seizure of real property or other property. I know that Bill C-95 is a step forward. However, this is nothing compared with what chiefs of police have been asking for years in the way of legislation on money laundering.

While the minister was at it, why did he not add some amendments on money laundering, in order to make this activity more difficult in Canada? Now we are known as the drug trafficker's paradise. We already knew that Canada was a tax haven for money laundering. The minister should realize there is some urgency in this case as well, and even the Bloc Quebecois would have liked to see him pass legislation to deal with this.

As far as money laundering is concerned, when we talk to the police, they say that between 20 and 30 billion dollars are laundered annually. A judge of the Quebec Superior Court told me it could be as much as 50 or 60 billion dollars.

Again, considering the urgent nature of these demands which, I think, we made very clear to the government, the same way we did in the case of anti-biker legislation, I want to ask the minister why, when he was working on this bill, he did not introduce legislation to make it well nigh impossible to launder money, an activity that is today a disaster for the economy? And tomorrow it will be even worse for Quebec, for a sovereign Quebec, but for Canada as well.

[Allan Rock, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member mentioned his interest in the issue of money laundering. As I said before, we already adopted Bill C-17. In this bill, sections 27 to 39 deal with money laundering. Most of the improvements mentioned by the hon. member have already been passed in Bill C-17.

Of course we need more. As I said before, we do not see Bill C-95 as the last phase of our efforts but as an initial step. So let us start with the first step, and then in a few months or a few years we will propose other measures, but for the first time, this bill will provide a legal framework for dealing with organized crime.

[Jack Ramsay, Reform, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would move an amendment to clause 1:

That the word "five" be changed to read "three" in line 23 on page 2.

[The Deputy Chairman]

Is the committee ready for the question on the amendment?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

(Amendment negatived: Yeas, 4; Nays 22)

[The Deputy Chairman]

I declare the amendment lost.

Shall clause 1 carry?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[An hon. member]

On division.

(Clause 1 agreed to.)

(On clause 2:)

[Jack Ramsay, Reform, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Chairman, we have here another term that is not defined. Would the justice minister tell us what he means by the term explosive substance in clause 2.

[Allan Rock, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Mr. Chairman, I believe the relevant section of the code is section 82 which provides for the original offence. The code also contains the the definition of explosive substance. It includes anything intended to be used to make an explosive substance; anything or any part thereof used or intended to be used or adapted to cause or to aid in causing an explosion in or with an explosive substance; and an incendiary grenade, fire bomb, molotov cocktail or other similar incendiary substance or device and a delaying mechanism or other thing intended for use in connection with such a substance or device.

That definition has been in the code for some years. It has been the subject of jurisprudence. It is well known in the courts. We used it in this section, intending it to have the same meaning it always had for many years.

[The Deputy Chairman]

Shall clause 2 carry?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[An hon. member]

On division.

(Clause 2 agreed to.)

(Clause 3 agreed to.)

[The Deputy Chairman]

Shall clause 4 carry?

[Some hon. members]

On division.

(Clause 4 agreed to.)