EVIDENCE Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights NUMBER 017 2nd SESSION 40th PARLIAMENT Thursday, April 30, 2009 Le jeudi 30 avril 2009 Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights CANADA [Recorded by Electronic Apparatus] EVIDENCE April 30, 2009 Committee Edited Evidence * Table of Contents * Number 017 (Official Version) Official Report * Table of Contents * Number 017 (Official Version) Témoignages * Table des matières * Numéro 017 (Version officielle) 17 30 04 2009 2009/04/30 08:40:00 House of Commons Comité permanent de la justice et des droits de la personne Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights JUST Chair Mr.

Ed Fast 40 2 (0840) [ English ] The Chair (Mr. Ed Fast (Abbotsford, CPC)) : I call the meeting to order. This is meeting 17 of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Today is Thursday, April 30, 2009. Welcome to the members of the public and to the media present today. As most of you know, some time ago the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights agreed to conduct a comprehensive review of organized crime. Initially, we had looked at doing this in four meetings, and of course we very quickly realized it was going to go well beyond that. We are prepared to spend the time to do it properly.

We have asked witnesses from across Canada to appear before us to help us provide some direction to government in terms of fighting organized crime and to perhaps also identify some of the underlying circumstances that lead people to become engaged in organized crime. We have with us today quite a number of witnesses who certainly represent a broad range of views on the issues. First of all, I want to recognize Dr. Neil Boyd, criminologist, and Dr. Robert Gordon, also a criminologist. We have Wai Young. We have Evelyn Humphreys, representing S.U.C.C.E.S.S.

We have Michelle Miller, representing Resist Exploitation, Embrace Dignity. We also have two individuals representing the Unincorporated Deuteronomical Society, Mr. Robin Wroe and Chief Justice Bud the Oracle. Because there has been such a demand on our time--the demand to appear as witnesses was oversubscribed, in a sense--and due to our limitations in terms of time, we are limiting your presentations today to five minutes per organization. I'm going to make one exception, and that is for Dr. Boyd, because he is also going to be asked to appear on Bill C-15 . Dr.

Boyd, if you're able to, you can also address the issues arising out of Bill C-15 so that we have that for the record and can use it in our deliberations as we continue our review of that bill. Each of you has five minutes to present, and that's per organization. There's going to be lots of time for you to get in additional information as you are asked questions by the members of this committee. Again, thank you for appearing. We will start with Dr. Boyd. You have 10 minutes. Professor Neil Boyd (Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual) : Good morning.

Let me begin by saying that gangs and organized crime have been with us for at least 150 years—alienated and disfranchised young men finding a common bond of lawlessness, using crime as a lever for the creation of material wealth. Recall Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York , a reasonably accurate depiction of gang violence in New York City in the late 1860s, and then fast-forward to the streets of Vancouver, where, some 140 years later, there was almost a shooting a day until about three weeks ago.

The late 1960s and early 1970s provided new opportunities for those involved in gangs and organized criminal activity. The drugs of the third world arrived on the doorstep of the first world. The new availability of global travel had brought North Americans into contact with cannabis and hashish in such places as India, Lebanon, and Thailand, cocaine in Colombia and Bolivia, and opium and heroin in Southeast Asia. Some intrepid travellers and entrepreneurs brought these third world drugs into North America and western Europe.

Although marijuana, cocaine, and heroin have been illegal since the earlier 20th century, there was little traffic in Canada or the United States until the late 1960s and early 1970s—in fact, about 1,000 convictions per year annually from the 1920s until 1967 for all illegal drugs combined. By 1976 we had 40,000 criminal convictions annually, and these were just for simple possession of cannabis. Something quite dramatic occurred. For the last 40 years, we have continued to use criminal prohibition as our primary response to distribution and possession of these drugs.

Unfortunately, prohibition hands the responsibility for product quality and price over to organized crime, providing these people with lucrative and guaranteed profitability. It is entirely fair to say, given this backdrop, that our policies served to line the pockets of often thuggish drug dealers. It must also be said, however, that each legal or illegal drug is different, carrying its own risks and potential harms. The greatest irony of our current reality is that individuals are now being shot to death over the trade in cannabis but that it is almost impossible to die from consumption of the drug itself.

Ironically, we attach moral condemnation to the consumption and distribution of cannabis, but not to tobacco, a drug with a greater addictive potential, more negative health consequences, and unparalleled morbidity. There is a very real sense, then, in which we go through our lives with cultural blinders, unable to see the arguably bizarre social construction that previous generations have created for us.

A good part of a more effective response to organized criminals would be to remove financially rewarding forms of commerce from their control, and cannabis would be a good place to begin if there were any political will to do so. I also recognize that this is a global problem that can really only be solved in a global context. I might add that the fight against organized crime cannot simply be won by changing our approach to drugs that are currently illegal. There are some drugs—crack and crystal meth—that are difficult to see as commodities that are capable of any form of sensible regulation.

And there remain many other potentially viable means of commerce for gangs and organized crime. Identity theft, fraud, human trafficking, and cyber crime are some of the more contemporary prominent possibilities. But definitely, we have to recognize that while the regulation of some currently illegal drugs might put a huge dent into the businesses that organized criminals conduct, that alone cannot solve the problems we face.

Now, this takes us to the present and the federal government's response to the violence of organized criminals, particularly the recent spate of killings in the city of Vancouver, most notably a new category of first degree murder for any killing by a gang member. But put yourself in the position of a gang member on the streets of Vancouver. He's already carrying a handgun and willing to use it on his adversaries. He's already willing to kill and to risk being killed. He's not at all involved in any consideration of the severe penalties for his crime already set out in the Criminal Code.

(0845) Bill C-14 will also provide much grist for lawyers and the legal profession. When is an individual properly classified in law as committing a killing in pursuit of a criminal association? What kind of foresight is required for conviction for such a first degree murder charge? These questions will almost certainly occupy the time of crown counsel, defence counsel, and the judiciary, and there is no evidence that this diminution of the role of criminal intent will provide us with greater social safety. This should be, after all, the goal of any action we take.

In this regard, I would urge not a focus on penalties but more efforts with long-term prevention, targeted resources for police involved in the investigation and disruption of organized crime, and as my colleague Robert Gordon will likely suggest, an integrated Lower Mainland police organization. As the chair noted, what I'd really like to focus on this morning is not Bill C-14 , but Bill C-15,

an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act . I'll begin by making the observation that most individuals arrested and convicted of trafficking offences are not individuals who control the supply of these drugs. In fact, they are, for the most part, low-level user-dealers selling enough to maintain their own habits. As I'm sure you are aware, two of your own Department of Justice studies take issue with mandatory minimum terms for drug crimes.

The commentary prepared for this bill notes this from a 2005 study: “There is some indication that minimum sentences are not an effective sentencing tool: that is, they constrain judicial discretion without offering any increased crime prevention benefits.” The other study, from 2002, noted that the lack of deterrent effect flows from the barring of judicial discretion. Prosecutors and police are then forced to exercise this discretion, often choosing not to charge people with offences that would lead automatically to a prison term.

Additionally, juries may choose to acquit individuals who face an automatic prison term when it seems excessive and unjust. So what is the case to be made for the mandatory minimum? As the legislative

summary prepared for Bill C-15 notes, it is one of denouncing certain egregious kinds of conduct and holding people responsible for such conduct, irrespective of the effectiveness of such legislation. We do that for homicide offences, and it's an entirely appropriate action that we take in doing so. But what of an individual who grows a single marijuana plant or two and shares the efforts of his gardening with his adult friends and neighbours? Do we need to denounce his conduct by placing him in jail for a minimum term of six months?

This is what is mandated by Bill C-15 under clause 3 and its revisions to subsection 7(2) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Put simply, the bill does not make a distinction between the cultivation of marijuana and some of the egregious kinds of conduct that some marijuana growers engage in. The bill speaks to these egregious kinds of conduct: the creation of a public safety hazard, the theft of electricity, the exposure of children to toxic residues, the presence of firearms in a grow operation, and the setting of potentially lethal traps in and around the grow operation.

While it does make sense to denounce these kinds of conduct, it is grossly disproportionate to denounce all forms of marijuana cultivation with minimum terms of imprisonment. The same points can of course be made with respect to the distribution of cannabis.

I'd also like to comment on Justice Minister Nicholson's recent statement regarding cannabis: “Marijuana is the currency that is used to bring other more serious drugs into the country.” Agreed, we should be concerned about those Canadians who export marijuana to the United States in exchange for cocaine, heroin, or handguns, but what of the tens of thousands of Canadians who grow the drug for themselves or other Canadians?

Are they deserving of mandatory imprisonment for six months, particularly when their drug of choice has relatively insignificant health consequences in contrast to the much more lethal and actively promoted legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco? Finally, let's consider the cost of mandatory minimum terms of imprisonment under Bill C-15 . I will focus on marijuana cultivation, thus addressing only a small portion of the taxpayer dollars that will be required to fund passage of this new law, but we have very good data on this point.

(0850) An RCMP study in 2005 canvassed all found cases of marijuana cultivation in British Columbia from 1997 to 2003 and noted that there were 14,483 such cases in the province in that seven-year period, with a little over 500 individuals going to jail for an average of five months. The new legislation would urge at least six months in jail for an additional 14,000 British Columbians or, put differently, a further 2,000 British Columbians annually.

The cost of this imprisonment would be approximately $57,000 per year for each provincial prisoner, a total of $114 million annually for marijuana cultivators in British Columbia alone. In sum, Bill C-15 is poorly conceived legislation that is likely to cost a province like B.C. hundreds of millions of dollars annually in new jail cells. I'm not even actually calculating the cost of capital construction, but these jails will be built simply to house marijuana growers, among many others.

I can only hope that the Liberals, the NDP, and the Bloc Québécois will stand up and, if not willing to simply defeat the bill, at least pursue amendments that might stand the test of common sense. Thank you. The Chair : Thank you so much, and thanks for staying within your time. Dr. Gordon, I'm going to exercise a little bit of flexibility as well, because your assistance would be helpful on Bill C-15 as well. Professor Robert Gordon (Professor and Director, School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual) : I'm happy to do so. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for the invitation.

I've just cut my address back by two-thirds, so bear with me. I'll focus on five points. First, in the summer of 2006 I completed a report for the BC Progress Board on crime and criminal justice in British Columbia. The BC Progress Board is, of course, the premier's think tank on a variety of primarily economic issues. Among other things, my co-author and I were asked to determine the primary causes of crime and criminality in the province and to suggest solutions, all within 40 pages.

The view of those with whom we consulted for this project, mostly senior government, police, academics, and industry representatives, is that the most significant causes of crime and criminality in B.C. are drugs and alcohol. There is no evidence to suggest that the situation has changed since 2006. In particular, the problems associated with drugs don't appear to have changed. In fact, given the outbursts of violence in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley areas in the fall of 2007 and again just a couple of months ago, everything points to a burgeoning problem.

Both the supply side and the consumption side of the industry were seen in 2006, and continue to be seen now, as responsible for a vast amount of crime, and the supply side quite clearly is dominated by organized crime groups. There is little doubt that the province is playing host to an extremely well-entrenched and highly profitable illegal drug trade. It has been growing steadily for many years and without significant interruption. There's evidence to suggest that B.C. is a major exporter of a particularly potent form of marijuana that's marketed as B.C.

Bud, and that the primary trade route is north-south, into the United States. Coming north, of course, are cocaine, guns, and American dollars. We identified three approaches to this problem, three possible ways of addressing it. The first was decriminalizing marijuana in particular, but regulating and taxing the industry, with obvious savings--in fact, gains--to government in a number of areas, coupled with a health-based, rather than criminal justice-based, approach to drug use and abuse.

The second possibility is an all-out planned and fully resourced assault on organized crime groups involved in the illegal drug industry in the province, preferably taking a regional approach, and in particular focusing on the Pacific Northwest region as a whole, because this trade transcends political boundaries. The third possible approach was a combination of these two things, starting with an assault on organized crime. That is, of course, what we are proposing, a war on organized crime, not a war on drugs.

It would be coupled with a health-based approach to drug use and abuse and a gradual decriminalization and regulation of the marijuana industry in particular.

(0855) The Chair : I'm going to ask you to stop for a moment. We have a bit of a problem with

interpretation services. Prof. Robert Gordon : Okay. Please don't ask me to repeat it all. I could try Spanish, if that's any good. The Chair : Actually, Monsieur Ménard is bilingual. He speaks English very well. [ Translation ] Mr. Réal Ménard (Hochelaga, BQ) : There still is an interference. [ English ] Would you like to try again? But don't speak again on the government, or I will be very sad. Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

(0900) Prof. Robert Gordon : Okay. So there were three possibilities. The third was the combination of decriminalizing and regulating the marijuana industry in particular, coupled with an assault on organized crime. In our report these three options were merely stated, without recommendations being offered. But it's clear that if an approach has been embraced by government, it's option B, an all-out assault on organized crime groups. And there are reasons why that's predictable.

The next point is that the extent to which an assault on organized crime groups can succeed will depend very much on the extent to which it's properly funded, adequately organized, and fully and strategically planned. Unfortunately, there's every indication that these elements have yet to be put into place, the consequence being simply more of the same. It's basically the same strategy we've been attempting to use over the last 10 years. Periodic forays that target particular groups—often resulting in successful but temporary disruptions to the industry—make for good media events.

They cause temporary increases in the retail price of drugs on the streets, with increased profits to suppliers, and ironically, they can lead to increased property crime, as addicted consumers try to acquire more resources to satisfy their wants. They also create new opportunities for new and existing organized crime groups to grab a market share. And I think we've seen some of this happening over the last couple of months. But the problem is that the underlying industry continues to thrive, in part, because of the significant consumer demand for its product.

So the answer is to move toward a better organized approach to organized crime. In this province, I think it's a chronic and critical issue. One of the problems is that we do not have a single organization in place that will operate on a region-wide basis to address organized crime issues. We had such an organization. It was known as CLEU, but it was disbanded as a result of a report in 1998 of a committee chaired by Stephen Owen, a very distinguished British Columbian. That report recommended the creation of an alternative way of addressing organized crime in the province.

From that came the Organized Crime Agency of British Columbia, which got off to a flying start—seemingly, and predictably, well resourced and well organized, and with a clear strategy, led by Bev Busson, who subsequently went on to be the Commissioner of the RCMP. So at first blush, it was a very useful looking organization. That organization disappeared in 2004, for reasons I've yet to establish. It's quite mysterious why it was disbanded.

In its place came the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit and a whole host of other police organizations and agencies, which I really think represent a classic example of siloism. I don't see the kind of organization of policing services around the organized crime issue that really should be in place, particularly in British Columbia. And with that, I'll stop my remarks. The Chair : Thank you so much. We'll move on to Ms. Young. You have five minutes to present. Ms. Wai Young (Coordinator, Vancouver Citizens Against Crime) : Hello. Thank you so much for hearing me today.

I'm here today as the coordinator of the Vancouver Citizens Against Crime. It is a new community-based organization that is non-profit and non-partisan, because Vancouver citizens are very concerned about the daily shootings, as already referenced, and they want to have a voice to Ottawa. One of our primary mandates as a group is to provide and facilitate that voice. We are currently developing a brief and collecting input, comments, and suggestions from members of the public, which we will be tabling to this committee by the end of May.

I'm currently here as a backup person to somebody who couldn't be here, so my presentation is not as complete as I would have liked had I had a bit more notice. I apologize for that. I just want to say that, personally and professionally, I have grown up in Vancouver, worked in the downtown east side, and volunteered in the downtown east side for over 25 years. In that span of time, I have lost many youths as well as adult friends and relatives to organized crime. That is my passion and my concern in being here today.

I want to say that in cutting my teeth and working in the downtown east side, I've worked for neighbourhood houses services, the Chinese Cultural Centre, the Strathcona Community Centre Association, S.U.C.C.E.S.S., and as a child care worker by walking the streets of the downtown east side with the Ministry of Social Services.

(0905) During that time, I have also fostered seven children in my home, one of whom died of a drug overdose on the downtown east side at the age of 21. Attending his funeral was one of the worst experiences I have personally gone through. I also wanted to share with this group that some 26 years ago, as the president of the Strathcona Community Centre Association, I founded and formed the Vancouver anti-gang and youth at risk task force. As a task force, we worked quite a bit to lobby local, provincial, and federal governments for funding for youth at risk.

I'm happy to say that at that time we were very successful and did receive funding. This was the basis for many of the programs that we see today both provincially and federally. However, I'm so concerned that 26 years later many of these programs seem to continue to be ad hoc and, as Dr. Gordon said, working in silos. That is primarily what I wanted to share with you today. I believe the community can be more effectively engaged and supported to achieve better outcomes by also establishing a community-integrated task force. Dr. Boyd talked earlier about a region-wide community policing integrated task force.

I believe the community has a role to play in keeping our neighbourhoods safe. If we had these kinds of initiatives in communities across Canada—working with the law enforcement agencies, of course—I believe we could strengthen and make our communities and our neighbourhoods more integrated and safer places to be. The police cannot be everywhere. I think we have had a tendency in the last 10 or 15 years to professionalize crime in the sense that it is the police's responsibility to look after this. Average citizens do not feel they know where to report things or, if they report things, whether they're safe.

These are all valid concerns. Secondly, I wanted to share a point regarding current and future requirements for justice resources. I believe that a re-prioritization maybe needs to happen with this, because as we know, Canada's demographics are changing. New immigrants are coming here who do not know what their rights and responsibilities are, who do not know about the justice system, the police systems, etc. Again, the public education regarding this area—the translations and availability of translated materials—are very ad hoc.

It happens occasionally here and there, but there's no consistent, forward-looking view to let us reach out to these people. Maybe we need to incorporate a justice module into the Citizenship Act, so that when people go for their citizenship they can learn about what their rights and responsibilities are as citizens regarding justice. There's a number of those kinds of things that could be looked at. I also want to say that— The Chair : Ms. Young, you're at the end of your time. Can you quickly wind up, please? Ms. Wai Young : Sure.

In conclusion, I've been told by many community members and service agencies that the Young Offenders Act, as it stands right now, needs to be amended to be a bit stronger. We have zero tolerance for bullying in our schools, but we don't have zero tolerance for possession or for any of the more criminal acts. I think these are general areas we could be looking at to improve and strengthen community partnership with law enforcement in our communities. Thank you.

(0910) The Chair : Thank you very much. Ms. Humphreys, you have five minutes. Ms. Evelyn Humphreys (Project Manager, A Chance to Choose, S.U.C.C.E.S.S.) : Thank you. My name is Evelyn Humphreys, and I work with S.U.C.C.E.S.S., one of the largest not-for-profit organizations in British Columbia. About four years ago, I had the opportunity to create a program called A Chance to Choose, targeted mainly at youth who had not completed high school. We monitor the barriers that youth have to employment. It's funded by Service Canada, and its goal is employment.

However, we are finding that a lot of the youth have been involved in youth justice and adult justice, and that's one of the barriers we look at. On average, the youth have five barriers to employment. That would include homelessness. That would include justice. That would include not completing high school, having learning disabilities. We have a success rate for completion that's well over 80%, and 75% of the youth are working or back in school. Our success rate is really high. I did some numbers on our last class, because I think numbers are important.

Out of the 36 students involved in the tricities, 16 were involved in justice, nine in youth justice and seven in adult justice. If you look at the cost, according to the provincial director involved in custody, youth justice is $300 a day. Adult justice is anywhere between $100 and $170. If you calculate that out, nine young people at $109,000 is $981,000. The seven youth at $36,500 works out to be $255,000. Add them together and the cost is well over $1 million. A Chance to Choose costs $500,000 to run, and that includes paying the youth.

One of the things we do extremely well as one of the elements is community-based learning. We take youth out of their environment and put them into a community environment. We take them out and introduce them. The reason we came up with this is that I had the opportunity to work with adults. One of the gentlemen who came to my house told me that he had never been to a social function where there were not drugs involved. He was 54. That led me to believe that if you're in a world that does drugs, drugs are a part of your life. So we take the youth out of the environment to introduce them to a new environment.

It has been extremely successful. Another thing we do is listen to the youth. We have a Toastmasters, which we call Speechcraft, so that young people have an opportunity to share and talk about their stories. If we're talking about prevention, I can tell you about a young man who came in and shared his story. At Christmas he was in a shelter, and he said he'd never been so alone in all his life. He had no Christmas tree, no family, no nothing. He sat there and told us that it was the most depressing day of his life. January 1, he met his new best friend, a drug dealer, and soon started dealing drugs.

He needed the money. This young man--luckily--was arrested. He ended up in jail, which was worse than the shelter, and he ended up coming to us. He's now working and doing very well. What these young people need is connection, or reconnection, to their community. As well, I've done a lot of research on transition, and what has been really successful is the transition between adolescence to adulthood. If we can intervene in that area...but a lot of times we don't look at that area.

When they're in transition from adolescence to adult justice, youth have a tendency to look back on their lives and say, “I don't want to be here. I want to move forward.” We've had gang members and we've had violent offenders. It has been really successful in the whole concept of A Chance to Choose, because it's choices and consequences. We're very strict on the consequences. We have a no drugs policy and we have a no weapons policy. We're very tough on the youth, probably tougher than the justice system.

They come to us because we create an environment that's safe, that's inclusive, and that's fun for them to be in. I would really encourage this committee to look at this group of young people, look at the community base and at some of the things we've created in A Chance to Choose, because it's working, and it's working well. We had the opportunity to open in the downtown east side last year. Unfortunately, our funds were cut, so we pulled out of the downtown east side. I'm really angry about that, because it had worked really well. We run based on Service Canada funding, and we run on annual funding.

In four years, I think we've had one large gap in service. Our contract was negotiated for 2009 to 2010, and we signed it on March 27 to start on March 30. In two weeks we had to have a full class. We had over 49 applicants. We stopped taking applications because we couldn't handle them in the two weeks. So there's a huge demand for this type of programing.

(0915) We have also experienced young people who have offended again. Last week this young man got out of jail, and he was a violent offender, and his first stop was to A Chance to Choose. We had sent him his portfolio in jail to show him his positive things. We also create strengths, and we sent him his positive things. His first stop out of jail was to A Chance to Choose to say thank you. The Chair : Thank you so much. Ms. Miller, you also have five minutes. Mrs. Michelle Miller (Executive Director, Resist Exploitation, Embrace Dignity (REED)) : Good morning.

My name is Michelle Miller and I have the privilege of being the executive director of Resist Exploitation, Embrace Dignity, or REED, a self-funded organization that works for long-term change for women who have been sexually exploited. For the last 10 years I've been fighting to end sexual slavery of women and children, both in Vancouver's downtown east side and in the slums of Manila. I also live on the east side in solidarity with marginalized women. Not once have I met a woman who is prostituting by choice.

Prostitution is one of the simplest activities motivating organized crime, and it's one of the simplest to stop by ending the demand for sexual access to the bodies of women and children. Placing full responsibility on the johns, users, buyers, and consumers of women and children can and will stop the demand. With the Olympics coming, we decided to study events in other countries to see how they would affect prostituted women. What we have seen is a spectacular rise in the demand for sexual access to women and children's bodies during large sporting events.

In crass economic terms, this turns Metro Vancouver and Whistler into a market for which a product must be supplied. The market is the sex industry and the product is marginalized women and children, who are already vulnerable to sexual exploitation. We already know that Vancouver has a gnawing problem with sex trafficking that reflects the larger global reality. It is estimated that 27 million people are living in slavery worldwide, largely in sexual exploitation, which makes about $32 billion for organized crime.

Human trafficking is the fastest growing industry worldwide and ranks only second to the drug trade in profit. Prostitution is one of the simplest activities motivating and supporting organized crime, and one of the simplest to stop through ending the demand. Women and children are recruited, deceived, coerced, and exploited, then controlled through rapes, beatings, addiction, and psychological torture to keep them from running away. The average age of recruitment into prostitution is 14. A lot of this may sound shocking. It's an everyday reality in Metro Vancouver.

We see gangs routinely coercing girls into the sex industry through posing as boyfriends. Women are brought by force or deception from other countries and forced into sexual slavery, and aboriginal women and girls are so-called “recruited” off reserves in extreme poverty and prostituted on the streets. Of course, you know about prostituted women. They have been studied pretty much ad nauseam. But how often do you hear about the buyers, the ones who are driving the market? It was 8 a.m. on a rainy Vancouver morning, and I'm walking on the downtown east side to a friend's house for breakfast.

Pulling down the alley, shrouded in secrecy, is a lone male in a maroon minivan, complete with a car seat in the back, dropping off a destitute young native girl who was paid to give him a blow job on his way to work. This so-called family man has simply put money into the pockets of a pimp. I think of my friend Courtney, who was prostituted as a little girl in a Vancouver hotel. A gang made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling her to men eager to sexually abuse her.

These perpetrators enjoy complete anonymity, all the while ruining the lives of women and children and making piles of money for organized crime. Whether discussing international or domestic trafficking of women, the consumer driving the market is the same. Be it an immediate side street purchase, an escort, Internet pornography, it's all the same. It fuels trafficking and makes money for organized crime. Why don't we create dialogue about bringing about solutions that would stop the demand? Why don't we ask, what's wrong with our society that the demand for exploited sex is growing?

People are often paying for the women's misery. What's going on, that the demand for exploitive sexual experiences is ten times what it was five years ago? We're not counting the users and buyers of sex. We're not asking them--and believe me, they're visible if you look--why they buy sex. We don't study them to find out if it's poverty, boredom, or alcoholism. We don't seek answers that will tell us why a person would purchase a sex partner if he can beat her, rape her, and even kill her. Human trafficking operates as organized crime.

It's silent, hidden, secretive, and controlled by the threat of death and the experiences of murder. Drawing on the collective public guilt of the missing women of the downtown east side, some are seeking to legalize prostitution. That would be an absolute mistake. We're adamantly opposed to that, so please hear that. They are grossly misled in their logic, tactics, and solutions. So think about it. First of all, in order to work in a brothel, a woman would have to be clean from drugs. It's not going to happen. Addiction is part and parcel of their situation; it's often how they're kept there.

(0920) Second, they would have to register with the government and pay taxes. No one wants a record of this time in their life. Third, they would have to undergo health checks. Most I know wouldn't pass. And note that the health checks are put in place to protect the health and safety of the johns, not the women. We've also seen that normalized violence such as prostitution jeopardizes the safety of all women. So who would benefit? Organized crime. Operating with impunity, they would simply be businessmen--join the local business association, recruit your daughters at local college job fairs.

It would also be a gift to johns. Any country that has legalized prostitution has seen a rise in demand, a diversification of the industry, and a proliferation of underground brothels. Though some link the legalization of drugs with prostitution, it is important to realize that with drugs a person is asserting their agency over an inert substance, but in prostitution you're using an actual person who does not want to be there--forced slavery; it's a person. I realize that I'm almost out of time.

What we would promote is the Swedish legislation, where they've decriminalized the selling of sex and criminalized the buying of sex. They've seen amazing results. It was recently adopted in Norway and Iceland, and Britain has adopted something similar. We've changed attitudes around drunk driving, smoking, and domestic violence. We can do it. Prostitution is not the world's oldest profession, it's the world's oldest oppression. Thank you. The Chair : Thank you. Finally, we have the society. Will it be Mr. Wroe or Mr. Oracle presenting? Mr. Bud the Oracle (As an Individual) : Mr.

Chairman, I am Bud the Oracle, chief justice from the Unincorporated Deuteronomical Society. Peace to this hotel and to the House of Commons justice and human rights committee. In

summary, our society's judgment is that prohibition and your Controlled Drugs and Substances Act are failed policies that trespasses upon the peaceful possessory right that ought to be enjoyed by everyone. Your society's policy does not respect this right. You violently oppress otherwise law-abiding members of your own society. Your corporation's own policy is the organized crime. In respect of drugs, your government's own policy is what enables the black market to flourish. Absent your corporate policy, regulated companies would supply drugs on a demand-oriented basis, similar to any other product.

Your policy has alienated and will continue to alienate men and women from your society and its government. To flesh out our view, I now turn the proceedings over to the registrar, Mr. Robin Wroe. Mr. Robin Wroe (Registrar, Unincorporated Deuteronomical Society) : I am not mister; I'm just Robin. Thank you, Chief Justice. Our position in respect of Bill C-15 and drug prohibition in general is quite simple. Societies such as yours or ours govern their members by the content of those members. Drug crime is not really crime at all in any necessary sense. It is quasi-crime or crime mala prohibita on a par with

an act forbidding the importation of wool and not at all on a par with, for example, that divine precept forbidding murder. I would also like to add that slavery of persons is another thing that I put in much worse regard than the possession of drugs or what not, to refer to Ms. Miller's comment. But in any case, the rhetoric about drugs singularly destroying lives is fundamentally offensive. There is a wide variety of non-destructive reasons for drug use. Many human beings use drugs because they improve their happiness or quality of life.

Other human beings use drugs for production of heightened spiritual, esthetic, and interpersonal experience. In a commentary on DOB from the book PiHKAL by Dr. Alexander Shulgin, one of the amphetamines to be rescheduled--that's DOB, for example--in a three-milligram dose the experience was described thusly: “Wunnerful. It's been one heck of a good experiment, and I can't understand why we waited nine years to try this gorgeous stuff. Without going into the cosmic and delicious details, let's just say it's a great material and a good level.” Why should such a thing be prohibitorially scheduled at all?

Everyone has personal tastes. Some run toward automobiles, and automobile users are taken care of by regulation, and there is no reason your society should not, at worst, apply some sort of gradated licensing to drug purchase and dispensation involving training as to the calculated statistical risk involved with drug use. At best, your society would leave each to his own diet and not use blunt corporate policy instruments for dietary control. Further, repeal of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act will redirect a revenue stream that currently pumps into organized crime.

The stream will be diverted by the CDSA's repeal into legitimate, regulated companies subject to human rights law and all the other furnishings of a modern place of employment. Those legitimate companies will use law courts for dispute resolution, not guns. Repeal of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act will remove a key revenue stream from organized crime. Continuation of the act will sustain a key revenue stream for organized crime. Harmless men and women do not need to submit to being governed by those who seek to harm them by imprisonment.

If membership in a society becomes injurious to happiness, men and women may leave that society and they may form their own society capable of its own legislative acts. Of course, they cannot legislate away gravity, nor may they depart from certain customary behaviours. However, these have little to do with possessing or not possessing any specific plants or substances. Why should any reasonable marijuana smoker consent to being governed by a society that sustains the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act?

Why should he not instead consent to government by a society that respects his peaceful transaction with his chosen supplier? If your society fails to take up the duty of regulating demand-oriented drug suppliers, should some society or societies not fill that void? We will quote from our

summary of Bill C-15, in short, just to include one part that we think is rather important. It highlights the lack of care that has gone into the drafting of Bill C-15. As to the appending of amphetamine and its analogs to

schedule 1 of the act, we wonder why you've included the brominated and chlorinated variance of 2,5 dimethoxy-4-chloroamphetamine, yet have excluded the diogenated analog 2,5 dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine. This gives us cause to question what principles were involved in the drafting of the proposed appendix to

schedule 1.

(0925) To conclude our statement, prohibition is a failed corporate policy and it causes harm to members of your Canadian society. The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is the instrument that carves out the market enjoyed by organized crime in respect of drugs. Repeal of that act would also give the benefit of freeing up your scarce judicial resources. Absent repeal, we declare that men and women may constitute their own governments respectful of their right and good custom and be done with you, and that would be a shame, for Canada is a decent idea. It is not, however, a mandatory idea. The Chair : Thank you.

Your time is up. We are going to open it up now for questions from our committee members. We will start with a round of seven minutes. Mr. Dosanjh, you are going first. Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh (Vancouver South, Lib.) : Thank you. First of all, thanks to all of you for being here. I'm going to ask three questions of three individuals, and I hope you keep yourselves to the time limit. I only have seven minutes. The first question is for Ms. Miller. In terms of the prostitution, we have the laws on the books. We have the law of non-solicitation. There is the living off the avails law for pimps.

Also, the johns obviously aren't prosecuted for actually purchasing. Can you be creative for me and tell me if, with all the laws in place, we have not been able to deal with this issue...? I can tell you that I used to hear about it when I was the AG for four and a half years here. First, on simply criminalizing the purchase, how is that going to be easily enforced? And how is that going to be effective? Mrs. Michelle Miller : I think it will be effective partially by just having something on the books; I think that's a strong societal message that this is not okay. I think one step is to stigmatize it.

Will it go away tomorrow? No, it won't. Right now, I think we have a mishmash of laws that are quite unhelpful. We do see that the blame needs to be placed on the buyer. For whatever reason, it has been quite invisible, and we just don't really talk about it. I think making more visible the harm that prostitution does is important. But as far as the laws are concerned, there have really been dramatic changes in Sweden around criminalizing the buyers, decriminalizing the women, and having exit programs, and then educating people about what those laws are.

Part of the reason is that they were bundled together with the rape laws, and prostitution was identified as

an act of violence against women.

(0930) Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh : Are you suggesting that in law prostitution should be tantamount to rape? Mrs. Michelle Miller : Yes. Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh : I see Mr. Boyd jumping up to answer. My next question is with respect to organized crime. This study is being done in the context of organized crime. What would be your number one priority if we are to make a dent in organized crime? Politicians can't do 200 things at once. Prof. Neil Boyd : That's a tough question. On the one hand would be improved resources targeted at organized crime and improved prevention. I think the focus on penalties is misplaced.

I don't think it's at all productive, ultimately, as we have very tough penalties in place. That's one side of the continuum. The other side of the continuum is to look at the way in which we regulate drugs. As I said in my presentation, you can regulate all drugs in different ways and you would still have organized crime, because of many aspects and many other kinds of business that they can become involved in. But I think that something like cannabis is an interesting issue. You have a member of your own party who has proposed a bill to decriminalize cultivation and possession.

So on the one hand, it seems that you have to make a distinction between cannabis itself and the illegal trade in cannabis. It was my generation that was the first to come into contact with it. For 40 years, we've been telling young people that this is a criminal offence. I deal a lot with law enforcement and I deal a lot with the police. It's one of the areas they have difficulty with.

I guess what I'm suggesting is that the two sides to solving this problem are, on the one hand, to have much more money for prevention and much more money targeted at enforcement, and on the other, to think about what we can regulate and what message we can send that makes sense and is consistent around legal and illegal drugs. Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh : Would the top priority be decriminalizing it? Prof. Neil Boyd : I'd say that these are both priorities. It's not a question of one being more important than the other. Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh : Mr. Gordon, we've been talking about regionalizing police for some time.

I used to vent every now and then when I was the attorney general. I've said publicly that obviously I didn't have the political courage to force municipalities into regional policing, because essentially that's what you have to do in British Columbia. I remember that about two months ago, when I made a comment, there was an uproar from the municipalities and furor over imposition. It is important to have regional policing. I agree with you. But how do we get there? You've been in British Columbia for a long time. You know the politics of the Lower Mainland and Greater Vancouver. That's what we're dealing with.

How do we begin to actually get there? No beginning has been made. Prof. Robert Gordon : Right, and the status quo prevails, and we are rapidly approaching 2012, when the RCMP contract will be renewed, unless we can negotiate an alternative. It's a great question. There are two issues. First of all, we're talking primarily about amalgamating police services in the two large metropolitan areas: Victoria and in particular Vancouver. That's creating a single metropolitan force for those two separate city areas.

That is the issue that causes the greatest resistance on the part of the municipal mayors, with some exceptions. The answer to that, quite frankly, is for the province to seize the bull by the horns and go ahead and do it and, unfortunately, reap some of the consequences. But if it's done in the first year, as you well know, immediately following an election, by the time you get out of the green zone and into the yellow zone, you're at about year three, and most of the pain is over and done with, and people begin to see the benefits of it.

My advice to politicians on this issue is to start figuring out how you're going to do it in the year immediately following election and then just brace yourself. In the end, what will happen is that the electorate will realize that this is actually the best way to go. That is creation of amalgamated police services in the metropolitan areas. Over top of that, you have a second tier of policing. That is the tier two or level two policing. Level two policing involves policing across the region. There's often a confusion in the use of these terms.

When talking about creating regional response to organized crime, I'm talking about a response province-wide, plus across the state of Washington and the American services, plus in Alberta, because the drug trade in this part of the world most certainly is a regional drug trade, and with all due respect to folks who are concerned about human trafficking—I am too—it's the drug trade that is driving the operations at the moment.

If we can tackle that on a regional basis—and that will require the kind of organized crime agency that you created in 1999 that is going to operate in an amalgamated, organized, and properly funded way, with some accountability—we will make tremendous headway. But at the moment, we are facing a siloed system, and I don't think it's effective. I think many serving police officers will agree that it's not effective. And you're going to hear people who will defend the status quo.

(0935) The Chair : Thank you. I'll move on to Monsieur Ménard. You have seven minutes. Mr. Réal Ménard : I'm going to speak in French. [ Translation ] I greatly appreciated the presentation of Mr. Boyd. You told us that after 1967, the number of people charged has been massive. If I understood correctly, you mentioned 40,000 Canadians, while before there had been only 1,000. So I would like you to elaborate on this statistic. [ English ] [ Technical difficulty--Editor ] The Chair : Perhaps we could go to Mr. Comartin first, because the technician has a problem with the French-to-English feed. [ Translation ] Mr.

Réal Ménard : Are you going to get back to me? [ English ] Can I leave my line? I am a human being too. Some hon. members: Oh, oh! The Chair : The problem is that they're going to now switch it around, but while they're doing it there will be no feed to Ottawa and there will be no digital or analog record of this particular part of our testimony. Let me canvass the members. Are you okay...[ Technical Difficulty--Editor ]...officially recorded? It has to be by consensus.

(0940) Mr. Brian Murphy (Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, Lib.) : This is a committee of the House of Commons. It has to be official. If it isn't official and regular, it's an insult to the people who have come here and to the members of the committee. The Chair : We're going to suspend for five minutes.

(0950) The Chair : We're going to reconvene the meeting. Monsieur Ménard, I believe all the technology works now. We'll just start from the beginning again, so you have seven minutes. [ Translation ] Mr. Réal Ménard : I greatly appreciated your presentation Mr. Boyd, although I would like to have an exchange with you about three subjects. You know that our Committee has undertaken a study on organized crime. When we talk about organized crime, we are never far removed from the issue of drugs. Could you repeat the statistics?

You seemed to say that there has been a kind of cut-off between the period before 1967 and the period after 1967. If I understood correctly, you said that 1,000 people were charged before 1967 and 10,000 thereafter. I would like you to elaborate on how the prohibition strategy has been a failure and how we are going in a very questionable direction with Bill C-15. All sorts of scenarios have been put forward in our Committee. I am going to ask you my three questions all at once so I will not need to talk any more. I would like to know your opinion and that of your colleagues on the following idea.

Our Committee could recommend establishing a list of criminal organizations, but this would be circumscribed within a framework. For example, you know that despite the fact that three courts of law have declared the Hells Angels to be a criminal organization under sections 467.11, 467.12 and 467.13 of the Criminal Code, every time members of the Hells Angels are brought to trial, the Crown must start all over again and prove that this is a criminal organization.

So we are playing around with the idea of having a list that would say, after a court adjudication, that this organization has the status of a criminal organization. Do you believe something like that could be useful in combatting organized crime? If I have some time left, I would like to get back to the infiltration by organized crime of the legal economy, because I believe it will be the challenge of the next five years. So I would like to hear your opinion on these matters. (0955) [ English ] Prof. Neil Boyd : Thank you.

The point about prohibition is that until 1967 we only had 1,000 convictions per year for possession, distribution, and cultivation of all illegal drugs combined. So one has to ask, why was it so different? Why, by 1976, did we have 40,000 convictions for marijuana possession alone? The way to understand that is to understand global travel. Only the wealthy could travel globally until the mid- to late 1960s. People went to countries like Thailand and Colombia and they brought back the drugs of the third world. We've always had our first world drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

In fact, when we criminalized smoking opium in 1908, it was not because we had any informed debate about the harm. The law itself was introduced by the Minister of Labour and he said in the House of Commons, “We will get some good out of this riot yet.” There was a very virulent anti-Asiatic riot in the fall of 1907 that led to the criminalization of smoking opium. Smoking opium had been a part of British Columbia for 40 years, sold in Vancouver, Victoria, and New Westminster. And in fact, in 1885 a Supreme Court inquiry into local business concluded that it was much less harmful than alcohol.

The inquiry found that the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which was formed to combat beatings by drunken husbands, was on the right track to focus on alcohol as a more serious problem in British Columbia than smoking opium. So this is my point about how we've come to make certain drugs legal and certain drugs illegal. It's not because of informed public debate about health consequences but because of history, politics, culture, and economics. It's about good first world drugs.

There used to be a doctor clad in a lab coat and stethoscope: “More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette” was an ad in Life magazine. And a life expectancy table appeared on the side, demonstrating that since the twenties and the advent of the modern cigarette, life expectancy had improved. You couldn't put that forward today as credible. So we've used a regulatory model towards tobacco--aggressive public health education, non-smokers rights and issues--and we've accomplished a great deal. My point, then, about prohibition is this. The biggest issue there is really cannabis.

It's 10 to 20 times the market of all the other illegal drugs combined. The market for heroin use and cocaine use.... Many of the countries that have innovative approaches in western Europe are finding that heroin use, with prescription and supervised consumption and so forth, is declining among young people. It's not a glamour drug any more. So I think we have to make distinctions around drugs and have to think carefully. We've done that around alcohol and tobacco. We still have a lot of work to do around alcohol. You look at ads.... Anyway, I'm rambling. Mr.

Réal Ménard : Excuse me, I would like to know what you think about the Hells Angels. [ Translation ] That is the second question. I would also like to know the opinion of the other guests. What do you think of having a list of criminal organizations that the Crown could use? [ English ] Prof. Neil Boyd : I'll be quick on that point. If you get Supreme Court decisions that document that certain groups are organized crime groups, that may settle the matter.

On the other hand, as you know, you can get into a situation where groups change over time and what was once an organized crime group may not be an organized crime group at a future date. So it's tricky. There are many who are highly critical of the Hells Angels, who suggest that the best way to approach them is individually and not as an organized crime group. But that's a long debate for another day. [ Translation ] Mr. Réal Ménard : Mr. Gordon, what do you think? [ English ] Prof. Robert Gordon : It would indeed be a problem. The major problem, of course, is staying on top of the list of organizations.

At first blush, it sounds like a very useful way of proceeding. But I think that groups will simply either change their names or drop their names altogether. What you have to understand, too, about the drug trade in British Columbia--and this is obviously my primary focus--is that it's actually not operated by a single organization, or even by a couple of organizations, but it's operated by a lot of dispersed groups. That's why it's actually inaccurate to be referring to them as gangs. They're not actually gangs in the traditional sense.

You have clusters of criminals, of organized crime groups, engaged in different aspects of the industry. Some are concerned with financing and real estate acquisition, some are concerned with cultivation and production of drugs generally, and some are concerned with distribution. They break down across ethnic and cultural lines. There is no way of actually identifying any of these groups. They don't have names. If you noticed, the recent arrests in Vancouver involved individuals who were referred to as groups. They didn't have any specific name. One group was referred to as the Sanghera group.

There's a very good reason for that, and that is that they simply don't allow themselves to be identified in that way. So what seems to be useful may in fact turn out to be less useful than you think.

(1000) The Chair : Thank you. We're going to go on to Mr. Comartin, for seven minutes. Mr. Joe Comartin (Windsor—Tecumseh, NDP) : Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for being here, witnesses. Professor Gordon, as part of our briefing in advance of this, we were given documentation from the Province of British Columbia. In terms of task forces and an integrated fight against organized crime, or the gangs, I think you're left with the impression from these documents that with the uniform gang task force--and they make reference to another one--in fact, we don't have the silo effect here in B.C.

I have to say that when I came here, I had the opposite impression, and when I got this material, I was a bit taken aback. How accurate is this reflection that the province is moving away from silos and in fact having some kind of organized, integrated response to organized crime? Prof. Robert Gordon : I think your original impression is the accurate one. Unfortunately, I don't see any destruction of silos; in fact, I see a burgeoning of them. Let me give you a quick example. There is the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, which is designated to deal with organized crime matters in the province.

That operates at one level. You also have the integrated or uniform gang task force, which was originally set up to deal with youth gangs. That's operating at another level. You have the integrated homicide investigation team, which, among other things, investigates gang-related homicides. That's operating at another level, without, by the way, membership from three key municipal police forces: West Vancouver; Vancouver, which is the largest in the region; and Delta. And I could go on and on.

Even within the RCMP itself, you will find there are different groups or teams tackling different aspects of what constitutes organized crime. So I refute the claim that there is the level of organization that we need to effectively tackle organized crime. We need a single organization, under provincial control, that operates on a regional basis. And I will fight for that to the end. Mr. Joe Comartin : In terms of what British Columbia is doing, can you give us some sense of what either the other provinces or the major municipalities in the other parts of the country are doing by comparison? Prof.

Robert Gordon : Let's switch to Ontario or Quebec, and there you will see higher levels of integration of services. There's a recognition that the RCMP plays a key role in providing primarily federal levels of policing, and that includes dealing with organized crime on an international basis. Then you have provincial police services operating across the particular province with regional services such as the regional service in Montreal. That is a far more effective way of organizing a response to organized crime.

(1005) Mr. Joe Comartin : I have a technical point, Professor Gordon. I had the sense that you had much more extensive notes. Have you prepared those in the form of a brief that you could pass on to the committee? Prof. Robert Gordon : I'd be happy to do that, yes. Mr. Joe Comartin : Thank you. Professor Boyd, on the idea of decriminalizing or even legalizing and regulating marijuana, cannabis, is there any reasonable expectation we can do that in Canada, if the United States— Prof. Neil Boyd : You certainly can't legalize. I think that's why it's fair to say it's a problem that requires a global solution.

On the other hand, we can look around the world and see many countries that have decriminalized. There is a private member's bill. Keith Martin's bill is not very different from Bill C-17 of the previous Liberal government, which would have decriminalized the cultivation and possession of small amounts of marijuana.

The idea behind that, particularly the cultivation part of it, is that you basically gave out the message that we don't want an ugly organized criminal activity in marijuana distribution; we are prepared, on the other hand, to make a distinction between marijuana use by consenting adults and the growing of marijuana for personal purposes. So you could go down that road. I'm sure you know that in the Netherlands you have much lower rates of use among youth, and among all segments of the population, with de facto decriminalization. Mr. Joe Comartin : Let me interrupt you.

The point I'm trying to get at is that the market here in Canada is basically 80% of the cultivation, production, targeted to the United States. So even if we do the Keith Martin bill or the previous Liberal bill, we are still left with that market, and we're still going to be faced with organized crime being involved in that market. Prof. Neil Boyd : I think that's right. I don't think there's any way around that. I would make two points.

One is that the Senate, with Pierre Claude Nolin and the report that came forward, made the point that you could have--and they did urge--very strong penalties around distribution to the United States. The point was to be practical about this. At the same time, you have to recognize that only 3% of the cannabis consumed in the United States comes from British Columbia or comes from Canada more generally. So we're not the major suppliers. The major suppliers in the United States are growers in the United States. Having said that, yes, the solution is global.

President Obama has recently called off the raids on medical marijuana facilities. I understand, in terms of what's going on now in places like San Francisco, that you've got a kind of de facto decriminalization in effect. I wouldn't recommend to any justice minister that he or she proceed with legalization. I think that would be inappropriate. But I do think that decriminalization of small amounts for cultivation and personal possession gets the point across, whereas Bill C-15 doesn't make that distinction. I think it could.

I think it could be amended to make the kinds of distinctions we would like to see, that most Canadians would like to see. The Chair : Thank you. We'll move on now to Mr. Rathgeber. You've got seven minutes. Mr. Brent Rathgeber (Edmonton—St. Albert, CPC) : Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all the witnesses for your attendance here this morning. Dr. Boyd, I agree with your position that importation and exportation of drugs is a global problem.

Maybe you know or maybe you've read—I understand Holland, the Netherlands, is actually going in the reverse direction; they're attempting through legislative means to once again make marijuana and hashish less available. That's my question. Prof. Neil Boyd : They are attempting to limit the amount that people can buy, and they have been doing that for about 10 to 15 years, largely because of concerns expressed by France and other European countries. But as you look around you, you see such a patchwork quilt of different approaches.

In certain parts of Germany, for example, there is effectively decriminalization--you're allowed to possess, without penalty, up to a certain number of grams of the product--whereas in Bavaria, in another part of Germany, it's more of a criminal law prohibition approach. Portugal has recently moved to decriminalize. Italy has moved to decriminalize. So we see a patchwork quilt. What I think we really need, ultimately, is to get organized crime out of the business, and I don't think we in Canada can go it alone. It's a global problem with a global solution.

But certainly, the move away had more to do with resistance from some neighbours, and also with concerns that you want to have some control so that the coffee shops don't just become fronts for more and more distribution networks.

(1010) Mr. Brent Rathgeber : I listened to your opening remarks quite carefully and your answers to the questions from my friends on the other side. I'm curious as to your opposition to Bill C-15, and I understand a big part of it has to do with the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences. Is that correct? Prof. Neil Boyd : That's correct. Mr. Brent Rathgeber : So with recidivism being what it is--we see people coming before the drug court in Edmonton with 15, 20, sometimes 30 previous convictions--how do you deal with recidivism in the absence of mandatory minimum sentences? Prof.

Neil Boyd : I think what's fundamental here is deciding whether drug use represents a criminal law problem of morality or a public health issue. If we think it's a public health issue...and here's where I come back to saying let's put all the legal and illegal drugs on the same page. We have 35,000 deaths a year from tobacco. It's the most addictive drug known. There are two drugs that I would suggest people never put in their systems--heroin and tobacco. We have to start comparing legal to illegal drugs. We have to put them on the same page. It makes no sense to do otherwise.

So I just don't believe in a criminal law enforcement model as the most productive way to go. Having said that, there are exceptions to it. I'm a bit of a cautious person. I look at examples from around the world, and I see that decriminalization of cannabis can work and not give us any increase in difficulty. I see that with heroin you can use prescriptions and other mechanisms to deal with that form of addiction. I have yet to see any effective way of dealing with crack and crystal meth outside of prohibition, so I remain committed to prohibition on those substances. Mr.

Brent Rathgeber : Okay, so let's deal with those. You and I might argue whether or not this is a health issue or a morality issue, so let's deal with the drugs that we can agree ought to be subject to prohibition. With respect to those substances, the heroin, the crystal meth, which you just identified, do you not support mandatory minimum sentences for those who traffic-- Prof. Neil Boyd : Well, again, I'm not opposed to tough penalties on crystal meth distribution, in terms of the toxic residue left behind.

In fact, if you look at the courts, the courts have been making very clear distinctions between the people who are involved in the production of crystal meth and the people who are involved in the production of cannabis. With heroin, again, I think there are better ways to resolve or to solve the problem than to use a criminal law model. These are people who are injecting the most potent painkiller on earth. For any of us who have ever had something like heroin or morphine.... I broke my leg about 10 years ago and had morphine, and I couldn't wait to get off it.

Anybody who would want to repeat that experience on a regular basis has my sympathy, not my contempt, and I would want to urge some form of assistance to that person rather than to label that person as a criminal. Mr. Brent Rathgeber : Thank you. I have only about one minute left and I want to ask a question of Ms. Miller. I was a member of the Alberta legislature when we started seizing the vehicles of johns who were soliciting prostitutes. I'm sure you're familiar with that Alberta initiative. Has B.C. or any other jurisdiction considered going down that route? Mrs. Michelle Miller : Not that I know of.

The way they handle it right now is that we have a pre-court diversion program for men who are caught buying sex--it's largely men--where they can go through a john school. They pay $500. They're not charged. They don't go before a judge. There's no judging by their peers. However, in Alberta, I know that it's a post-court diversion program. So until we start thinking that way and get tougher on the johns, I wouldn't even consider that. Mr. Brent Rathgeber : Are you in favour of seizing property, specifically motor vehicles? Mrs. Michelle Miller : Oh sure, yes. Mr. Brent Rathgeber : It's working well in Alberta.

Mrs. Michelle Miller : I don't know if they are doing that in Alberta, but they're doing a post-court diversion program. They charge them, so there's some sort of social consequence--they're not locking them up and throwing away the key--whereas here it's a pre-court diversion program. That's the penalty that's in place right now. Do you understand? Mr. Brent Rathgeber : I do. I was a member of the Alberta legislature, and I understand that the only way you can avoid having your vehicle seized is if you go through that diversion program. Is that correct? Mrs. Michelle Miller : I'm just not familiar with that.

(1015) Mr. Brent Rathgeber : Okay. I'll go back to Dr. Boyd for my last 45 seconds. We talk about deterrents. I've heard many times from many witnesses that mandatory minimum sentences allegedly do not provide deterrents. Why do criminologists define deterrents as general deterrents as opposed to the other part, which is specific deterrents? Prof. Neil Boyd : We look at both specific and general deterrents. I think the reason we might focus on general deterrents from the point of the public or from the point of society more generally is that it's going to tell us going forward what to expect.

What we're finding is that we can do this, we can spend a lot of money locking people up, and we're still going to get just as many. Mr. Brent Rathgeber : Certainly you agree with me that mandatory minimum sentences promote specific deterrents. Prof. Neil Boyd : Yes. Sure. Mr. Brent Rathgeber : Thank you. The Chair : Thank you. We'll move on to Mr. Murphy. You have five minutes. Mr. Brian Murphy : Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, witnesses. This has all been very interesting. My colleague Dominic and I are from the east coast. We have a different set of problems there.

We're very cognizant that on the west coast, particularly here in the Lower Mainland, you have some deepening issues. I just want to get an understanding, perhaps from the local flavour, of how pervasive organized crime is in this area. On the beach this year, I read this book about organized crime. The story is that in B.C. you can find a home on a river, get your lawn landscaped, go to an Italian restaurant, call your date on a cell phone, and book tickets, all through businesses run by the Hells Angels, an organized crime group particularly predominant in the east end of Vancouver, according to this book.

It is just a book, and I'm just a politician, but if it's that prevalent.... Recently the police were asking to have tools, through the Attorney General, to fight organized crime. We spend a lot of time talking about drugs. I know they're the currency of organized crime. I realize that, but I don't think we've spent enough time getting the flavour of organized crime here and figuring out what can be done about it. You mentioned CLEU. Is it time to reinstitute an investigation unit like that?

Give us some hard deliverables that we can take back to the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and say what we can do nationally to get on this problem. Professor Gordon, maybe you could start on that. Prof. Robert Gordon : There are a number of national entities that are obviously very useful. In terms of the problem of British Columbia, you're right about the scope of it and the extent to which it has permeated most aspects of individuals' lives, because the money that is made from organized crime has to be processed in certain ways.

The Government of British Columbia has done a number of things that are useful, such as introducing civil forfeiture legislation. Even though that may be controversial, that has been a very useful tool. Still, we face this problem of a lack of organization at the law enforcement level. “Concentration” is probably a better way of describing it. I'm a great believer that while harsher sentences are quite useful in dealing with organized crime groups, what really counts is increasing the likelihood of being caught.

If you don't increase the likelihood of being caught and being successfully prosecuted, that is not what happens at the other end. It is not that process. It doesn't matter how long a person is in— Mr. Brian Murphy : I don't mean to interrupt you, but on the time end of it and the hard deliverables, we could say “resources”, and that's not a finite enough message. You have to talk about the tools, tweaking the rules on disclosure, giving the police more specific resources for drug detection programs, the radiation aspects, and so on. What are the specific deliverables? I have only about one minute left here.

Prof. Robert Gordon : I would just advocate for a single organized crime agency that's run by the province and that cooperates with other organized crime agencies in related regions in the United States and the prairie provinces. We should focus all of our resources and activity in creating that and making sure that over the long term it's going to be able to do its job. It requires more than four years of resourcing. It requires several years of planned operations. Organized crime has taken hold in this province in a very spectacular way.

It has taken 10 or 15 years, virtually without interruption, and it's going to take as much time to break it apart. Mr. Brian Murphy : Exactly like CLEU or better? Prof. Robert Gordon : Not exactly like CLEU, better. CLEU had problems, one of which was infiltration. And that continues to be an issue for any organized crime agency. There's also a lot of denial around that, around the corruption dimension, but there is a significant problem with that in almost any organization of that kind.

(1020) Mr. Brian Murphy : Thank you. The Chair : We'll move on to Monsieur Ménard. And I'm going to use my discretion to extend this session by five minutes so that each party still gets one more question. Monsieur Ménard. [ Translation ] Mr. Réal Ménard : Thank you. I would like to return to the list of criminal organizations. Next, I would like to talk about prostitution. In my view, there would have to be a process. For example, if you have a judicial finding, if parliamentarians are associated with the setting up of the list...

Obviously, we cannot use the Order in Council route where a minister would wake up one morning and decide that 15 groups are criminal organizations without any further validation. I do not believe the Hells Angels will change their name. In order to be effective, they need to use a strategy of intimidation, and intimidation is part of their trademark. If ever they changed their name, then the Crown attorney would have to prosecute them anew. These are my views. My colleagues know it, I will push hard to have this recommendation included in our report.

I would like to go back for a moment to the issue of prostitution. I sat , with Libby Davies of the NDP and Ms. Fry of the Liberal Party, on the parliamentary committee that studied this matter. I am quite in favour of a model that criminalizes johns. However, this model also has some negative aspects. We are told that even in Sweden it is extremely difficult to control johns and that this model caused people to migrate. When the Fraser report was made public, the idea was raised to provide... There are two main types of prostitution: addiction prostitution and subsistence prostitution.

In my neighbourhood, in the eastern part of Montreal, girls prostitute themselves to make a living. In an ideal world, I wish this would not exist. If we allowed prostitution out of one's home, in a controlled environment like the Fraser report recommended, would this not be better for society? I make this recommendation realizing that we must stop prostitution by addicts that is controlled by pimps and marked by violence. Should we not be more nuanced when we talk about prostitution? [ English ] Mrs. Michelle Miller : Yes, I understand what you're saying about being nuanced.

The bottom line is that prostitution is always violent, and there's almost always a pimp involved, at least in the beginning, who's making some of money. I might not have gotten this across at the beginning. We're not saying we need to have absolute prohibition and that's our only goal. We also think there need to be support systems in place for women--raising minimum wage, which I realize is provincial, and increasing core funding to women's organizations. And also, addressing the demand is a huge piece. I realize that in Sweden it didn't work perfectly.

If there was a silver bullet, believe me, I would deliver it to you today, and it would be over. But we did see a dramatic decrease there, and it's still happening in organized crime and street prostitution. So in some ways, there are two kinds. One is called survival prostitution and the other is more pimp controlled. But they're both fed by the buyer. They're both fed by the same system. And both of them exploit vulnerable women. That's really the bottom line. Other places have tried to do a kinder, gentler model, like they're doing in New Zealand and Australia, and it's just not working.

In Amsterdam they're rapidly closing down their red light district. They're now down to having closed two thirds of their red light district because of the organized crime and the trafficking. One of my colleagues there says that about 85% of the women there are not Dutch-born. Many of them are brought from poorer countries, places like Nigeria. And the women are also quite racialized in their sexuality. [ Translation ] Mr. Réal Ménard : Could I hear the views of Mr. Boyd on the prostitution question?

You know that reporters are listening and you are part of the local elite, but I do not want to intimidate you. [ English ] Prof. Neil Boyd : I think it's right what Michelle said about the Netherlands, in that it was active promotion of the sex trade. On the other hand, I don't favour legalization, and I don't think most of the opponents favour legalization. I favour decriminalization. I think it's the more nuanced approach that you're describing. That's particularly true in terms of women on the downtown east side. Mr.

Comartin's colleague Libby Davies has been quite instrumental in advocating decriminalization as an appropriate response in terms of saving the lives of these women. I agree with many of the comments made, but I don't agree with the solution. I don't think that zero tolerance is going to save the lives of vulnerable women. I agree that demand is a major issue, and I also agree that it doesn't have to be something that's just going to continue forever, in perpetuity. Having said that, I don't think that a criminal law framework is productive in terms of dealing with the problems we're presented with.

(1025) The Chair : Thank you. We'll move on to Mr. Weston. Mr. Weston, you have five minutes. Mr. John Weston (West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, CPC) : First, I thank you, colleagues, for coming to Vancouver. If I could move a motion in the House of Commons, I would move that most of our committee hearings should be in Vancouver. Second, to our witnesses, I salute all of you. You have a common goal of reducing gang violence and helping victims. Particularly, Ms. Young, Ms. Humphreys, and Ms. Miller, you live it, you breathed it. I salute you.

You have many stories to tell that we haven't heard today. I have three questions. I want to focus on some of the laws before the House because my time is so limited. Ms. Miller, I'm going to come to you with a very specific, a less specific, and a more general question: one, a date rape drug that will be more serious in sentencing; two, generally the question of organized crime and how that affects the victims of human trafficking; and three, the Olympics and what that's going to mean.

The first question is on one aspect of Bill C-15 that we haven't heard much about, which is the movement of a drug called GHB from

schedule 3 to

schedule 1. That's the date rape drug and many drugs like it. The effect will make it a more serious penalty for people using these drugs. The primary use of it is not for an individual looking for a high, but generally to aid an attacker who can somehow subdue a victim, and it's usually a male subduing a female in that way. My question is whether that is going to help in your campaign. Second, on organized crime, this movement to target gang violence and other serious crime, if we succeed in disrupting organized crime, will that help victims of human trafficking? Third, you mentioned the Olympics.

How is the Lower Mainland going to be more susceptible to gang violence and human trafficking in the context of the Olympics? Mrs. Michelle Miller : First, on Rohypnol, I absolutely support that as being part of the bill. I think that will help women, because some women, girls, and boys will be less likely to be drugged and raped. I'm sorry, what was the second question? Mr. John Weston : On the general trend in these bills to target gang violence, if we're successful in disrupting gangs with this trend, how does that translate to helping the victims of human trafficking? Mrs.

Michelle Miller : It translates to helping the victims because there would be fewer people recruiting them and making money off their bodies. I realize we're talking a lot about drugs today, but I'm telling you that organized crime groups are moving gangs all across this province and across our borders internationally every day. They are. It's happening. And they're making tonnes of money, because you can sell a woman over and over again. You do a line of cocaine and it's gone, but a woman you can sell over and over again until she's too sick, she's too old to be sold again, or she's dead.

I think that definitely interrupting this money-maker for them would be important for women and for many of my friends who have been pimped by gangs. I would love for that person not to have had any access to her and any access to networks that could move her and sell her across provinces. Finally, with the Olympics, we've seen in other countries a rise in demand. We saw that with the World Cup in Germany and we saw that in Athens. For whatever reason, when men are away from their social networks and they're travelling anonymously and also around large sporting events, they're more likely to buy sex.

We see that with the Super Bowl games in the United States as well. REED is starting a grassroots campaign called “buying sex is not a sport”, where we're just raising the issue about that demand link in the trafficking chain. [ Translation ] Mr. John Weston : Do I have some time left, Mr. Chairman?

(1030) The Chair : You have one minute left. [ English ] Mr. John Weston : Ms. Young, you talked about citizenship, and that was a very interesting thing you brought up. I wonder if you might elaborate on that a little bit. How could we build, as part of our citizenship process--and this is something Jason Kenney has been talking a lot about in and outside the House--things that would inoculate people against being tempted into gangs? Ms. Wai Young : I think the people who come to Canada choose to come to Canada and love it and want to be here.

However, having been raised in Canada for the last 40 years and knowing the language, etc., I do not have a thorough understanding of the justice and police system myself. It has been a huge learning curve for me in the last couple of years. I've been involved in a seniors abuse case quite intimately, which I've been working on, and I've learned all kinds of very interesting and disturbing things. So I wonder, for the 250,000 immigrants who come every year, where they will gain this knowledge, how they'll gain this access, how they'll become contributing members to our society to keep our neighbourhoods safe.

That's why I was saying that many of the programs and services are not integrated; they're a patchwork, and they're not sustained in terms of core funding and everything. I would like to see a focus on that to help our newcomers gain a greater insight as to how they can know their rights and responsibilities. Mr. John Weston : Thanks, Ms. Young, and thanks, Ms. Miller. Mr. Robin Wroe : I just had a comment in respect of GHB. The Chair : Hold on. We're trying to get enough questions in here, because we lost some time in the middle there. Mr. Robin Wroe : It's apropos.

The Chair : What we're going to do is go to a two-minute question and answer from each of the parties, so there are four more. Please keep it to that two minutes, including the answer. Mr. LeBlanc. Hon. Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour, Lib.) : Thanks to all of you for your presentations. The chair has asked that we be very precise and brief. I have one question for Ms. Humphreys. I have heard about and know a little bit about S.U.C.C.E.S.S., the organization you represent, and some of the great work they've done.

I share your view that by investing in programs like yours, in terms of effectiveness both for the taxpayer and for reducing crime and some of the after effects of a criminal past, we get a lot of value. You referred to your relationship with Service Canada. You went quickly over some numbers, which I think make a very cost-effective argument. You also said you were angry that funding was cut off or was reduced or threatened. Can you explain again your relationship with Service Canada?

Is it a relationship that's productive for S.U.C.C.E.S.S., or are there things that need to be changed in terms of what the Government of Canada can do to support your organization? Ms. Evelyn Humphreys : I just mentioned that we ran a program in Vancouver, called A Chance to Choose, in the downtown east side, and it was cut after one year. It was very successful. We did an amazing job of working with young people and working with the community in developing it. It was cut because the funding was cut in the downtown east side.

I really believe that's where the funding should be, that's where the youth are who need it. We were part of the community and we worked very hard with all of the other community members to develop a program in one year. You cannot establish something in a year; however, we had the same success rate as we did in Port Moody after four years. We really showed that the young people moved forward in their lives, and that's going back to school or working. Hon. Dominic LeBlanc : I don't want to interrupt you, but what reason was given for the cut to the funding? Ms.

Evelyn Humphreys : That there were no youth in the downtown east side who needed help. It was more in rural B.C. The Chair : The next question is for Monsieur Ménard, for two minutes. [ Translation ] Mr. Réal Ménard : I would like to follow up on the question asked by Mr. LeBlanc. What department are we talking about, Service Canada or Health Canada? How come you have been unable to offer your services? When did that happen? Please explain the background. I want to know more because this seems rather incredible. [ English ] Ms. Evelyn Humphreys : It does seem incredible.

I've been on a mission for about three months, and I've gone to every level of government and I've written letters to the minister saying we really need this in the downtown east side. We've got tremendous results. Within 15 weeks we had young people who were homeless go to work, and if you look at the cost for homelessness to work in 15 weeks, it's phenomenal. [ Translation ] Mr. Réal Ménard : Was it the federal or the provincial government that cut funding? (1035) [ English ] Ms. Evelyn Humphreys : It was the federal government, Service Canada. [ Translation ] Mr.

Réal Ménard : Was the funding cut by the federal government or by the province? [ English ] Ms. Evelyn Humphreys : It was Service Canada. [ Translation ] Mr. Réal Ménard : So it is Service Canada and not Health Canada. What did they tell you, in real terms, when they cut your funding? In what riding do you offer your services? [ English ] Ms. Evelyn Humphreys : We go across ridings, so it was Service Canada, the youth strategy. They cut funding. There was only a limited amount of funding, and we were one of the cuts. We were the only program running for youth under Skills Link in the downtown east side.

In case you've never been to the downtown east side, I can tell you that the downtown east side severely needs this program. [ Translation ] Mr. Réal Ménard : I might bring forward a motion later asking the Committee to write a letter supporting the services you have described to us. I will not do it today because this is not what we are here for but we will follow up on this. You could leave your business card with us and we will keep in touch. [ English ] Ms. Evelyn Humphreys : I will do it. Thank you. The Chair : All right. We're going to go to Mr. Comartin. Then we'll do two quick questions on-- Mr.

Joe Comartin : Ms. Miller, I think it was in February of this year that the UN put out a major study and report on prostitution, specifically on human trafficking. One of the findings I found almost shocking was that across the globe, more than 50% of the criminal charges relating to human trafficking were actually against women, not men. Have you seen that report? Do you have any understanding of why we'd end up with that phenomenon?

I suppose the reason I'm raising it is that when I see that kind of result, I begin to think that your idea of getting tough on the johns doesn't appear to be working in the rest of the globe. Mrs. Michelle Miller : I'm actually not familiar with the piece of the report you're speaking of, but I could make a very educated guess. Often it's one way that women are allowed to exit. If I've been recruited in when I'm 14, I've serviced thousands and thousands of men. My pimp has threatened to kill me and says, “You know what?

One way you can get out of this and stop having to do this is that you can become a trafficker. You recruit me two girls, and you're out. You become an enforcer.” For women, often the only route they're given out is to become a trafficker, so it's what I would attribute it to. Mr. Joe Comartin : Okay. You may want to take a look at that study. Ms. Humphreys, with reference to the funding from the federal government, Public Safety Canada has been spending less than it was allotted in our last budget. They have spent only about 60% of it. One of the concerns I have is the mandate they have.

The agencies have to show that they will be able to prove that they have reduced crime. Is there any comment? I'm cross-examining you here and giving you a leading question, but my sense, my observation, is that a social service agency is incapable of doing that. Do you have any comment? Ms. Evelyn Humphreys : I think we can prove that we've reduced crime. Mr. Joe Comartin : No, but you have to do it in advance. Ms. Evelyn Humphreys : Oh, it has to be in advance. We can't do it in advance, but we can look at our stats. We have four years of statistics that can prove we can, so we can now go back.

We have a history and we can actually prove we can. If we were going to propose in the future, we can look at our past and we can project. The Chair : Thank you. We'll go to Mr. Saxton. Mr. Andrew Saxton (North Vancouver, CPC) : My question is for Mr. Boyd. Mr. Boyd, you have indicated that you are against, or you're not in favour of, mandatory minimum sentences. Is that correct? Prof. Neil Boyd : It's correct in the realm of drugs; it's not correct with homicide. I'm in favour of the mandatory minimums that exist with respect to first degree and second degree murder. Mr. Andrew Saxton : Okay.

Is it correct that you're not in favour of it with respect to drugs because you do not feel it is an effective deterrent? Prof. Neil Boyd : That's only part of the picture. I'm also not in favour of treating the drug problem as a criminal law problem of morality. It's appropriate to treat drunk driving, homicide, assault, sexual assault, or any number of offences as criminal offences deserving of prohibition and deserving of penalty.

If I put smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol, and smoking tobacco alongside each other, I'd say the one that's most likely to kill you, the one that's going to be the most damaging, is probably tobacco. You wouldn't want to have official powers to encourage any of those activities, but we're using a sledgehammer, the criminal law, to control a problem that might be best dealt with through other means. Mr. Andrew Saxton : Okay. Well, neither of us is a doctor, so we don't have the expertise. Prof. Neil Boyd : You don't turn to doctors to solve this problem; you turn to the best available evidence.

You can read the best available evidence as much as I can, and you can determine what the relative odds are. If we do turn to doctors, if we do turn to the Canadian Medical Association, they'll tell you again and again that in terms of any list of dangerous drugs, cannabis ranks somewhere around caffeine. Right at the top are alcohol, cocaine, and heroin. What I'm saying is that what we're doing isn't really rational. We shouldn't try to pretend that the drugs that are illegal are somehow morally tainted and more deserving of censure than drugs like alcohol and tobacco. I just can't support that claim.

It doesn't make any sense.

(1040) Mr. Andrew Saxton : You do not agree that marijuana is a currency for...? Prof. Neil Boyd : It is in some circumstances, and I agree with the minister that where it is, the law should respond accordingly. If adults are growing marijuana for their own use or using small amounts of marijuana, that ought not to be subject to criminal penalty. Mr. Andrew Saxton : Okay, but you're making a distinction between personal use and trafficking. Prof. Neil Boyd : Yes. As I've said earlier, globally we're not in a position to have a regulation of cannabis. It's just not a realistic possibility.

I wouldn't suggest to any justice minister that legalization or any form of even regulation in the same way that we regulate alcohol be considered until there's a global kind of resolution. There are other things we can do to respond more effectively, and some of what your government has put forward in this bill makes some sense around specific issues of harm—the booby traps, children in the house, the residue, those kinds of concerns. But the cultivation or the use of marijuana itself by adults I don't think is an appropriate framework or context in which to use the criminal law. The Chair : Thank you.

We have one more question from the government side. Let me just follow up, if I may. One thing that hasn't been discussed here is public safety, protecting the public in the case of drugs. Let's exclude cannabis for a moment and talk about some of the more serious drugs—heroin, crystal meth, etc. Many of the people who are selling drugs are repeat offenders. They do this time and time again. It doesn't matter that you arrest them and put them in jail; they keep on committing these crimes.

It seems illogical to argue against the reality that if you take these repeat offenders out of society for longer periods of time, at least during the time of their incarceration, whether that's two years or three or five or ten years, they will not be committing those offences. The longer the period of incarceration, the more time they have to get some help for their problem. Or am I off base? Prof. Neil Boyd : I think so. I mean, you're not off base; I understand that this is a suggestion people often make. But I don't think it's very productive.

I think it's a very expensive suggestion, and we could deal with the problem in other ways. If you're a heroin addict and you're stealing.... Look at the NAOMI project that Martin Schechter and his colleagues at UBC conducted for three years. They found significant improvement in the psychological and economic functioning of the participants when they were prescribed heroin. These weren't people who were just randomly given heroin; these were intractable addicts who had failed at methadone, who had failed at virtually every conceivable possibility.

In fact, there were so many restrictions in the program that it was difficult to get people involved, but what the program revealed was that there is a different and a better way of responding to heroin addiction than using the criminal law. The Chair : Thank you so much to all of you for appearing. Your testimony has been very helpful. To those of you who have written submissions, please deliver them to the clerk. We'll make sure they are distributed to our members. Again, thank you. We will suspend for five minutes.

(1050) The Chair : I'm going to start the meeting right now. Gary Shinkaruk, are you ready to present, or will it be Al Macintyre? Assistant Commissioner Al Macintyre (Criminal Operations Officer, Province of British Columbia, Royal Canadian Mounted Police) : Good day. Bonjour. My name is Alistair Macintyre. I'm the officer responsible for oversight of all RCMP criminal operations in British Columbia. Violence characterizes the nature of organized crime in British Columbia. In 2008, 40%--or 55--of the province's 138 murders were organized crime and gang related. The costs are staggering.

The prevalence of violent crime, up to and including murder, occurring as a consequence of organized criminal activity is a major public concern. The people are scared. While British Columbia homicide rates are stable, the proportion of those attributed to organized crime is increasing. There's also evidence suggesting that the number of non-fatal shootings has increased, perhaps because of the increased gangster use of body and vehicle armour. It is estimated that there are approximately 133 organized crime groups in British Columbia.

While the estimated number of groups seems to have remained stable over the past four years, the exact number of individuals involved is yet unknown and difficult to accurately predict. Organized crime and gangs have multi-jurisdictional connections. In addition to their drug trafficking practices, which are national and international, they hire shooters from other jurisdictions, which thwarts homicide investigations. While organized crime groups and gangs were at one time characterized by their ethnic origin, there are growing trends towards emerging polyethnic groups organized around a criminal market.

Their structures are flexible, their skills diverse and sophisticated, while their knowledge about how to defeat the criminal laws is escalating. Emerging groups are also less inclined than their predecessors to blatantly display the trappings or signs of their branding, as more traditional gangs like the Hells Angels would, such as using a name, tattoos, clothing, and jewellery as identifiers. This makes prosecution under organized crime laws more difficult.

The examples of Project EPARAGON typify the gangster groups, those who import and export multi-kilograms of cocaine and other drugs and launder millions of dollars of their proceeds of crime, often at casinos. These groups import precursors, manufacture illicit drugs, then export the products to a different country. They also import cocaine from Los Angeles, then export the same drugs to Australia to maximize profit.

Organized crime is becoming more sophisticated, as seen in their use of technology, and there has been a noted trend for them to relocate production facilities to rural areas to avoid detection by law enforcement. Gangs and organized crime are showing a strong presence in Prince George and Kelowna, as evidenced by the Hells Angels' establishing chapters in these two major centres, as well as by Red Scorpions' and Independent Soldiers' presence in Kelowna, as confirmed by a recent shooting. Other outlying areas in British Columbia, such as Fort St.

John, have also reported increases in gang-related violence, frequency, and intensity. The Lower Mainland of British Columbia has recently experienced an increase in gang violence that has previously been described as a “spike in violence”, a “crisis”, and a “public security threat”. It has attracted considerable media attention, and there is increased public concern over the violence and the fact that the recent high-profile incidents have occurred in public places, particularly shopping mall parking lots.

The violence is not restricted to a particular community within the Lower Mainland, but has been witnessed in both Vancouver and the suburban cities. The jurisdictions in which this violence has occurred are policed by either RCMP contract detachments or stand-alone municipal departments. The overall police response is managed via the integrated gang task force or IGTF, the integrated homicide investigation team or IHIT, and the Vancouver homicide squad. Many other agencies routinely assist. The two integrated units are composed of police officers from many jurisdictions, but are led by the RCMP.

Organized crime in the Lower Mainland can best be described as a pyramid, with the street gangs at the low end and sophisticated international, multi-commodity Asian organized crime and outlaw motorcycle gangs at the apex. Typically, street gang enforcement is handled at the local level, and high-end organized crime is investigated by the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, which you will hear from shortly. The crime that has been of the greatest concern in recent days is that of the mid-band. The mid-band of organized crime is primarily focused on the drug offences and is very territorial.

Gangs argue over territory, alliances are much less permanent today, and there's a fundamental lack of respect amongst these gangsters, both within their respective gangs and towards other gangs. This results from increased police enforcement and the issues of supply and demand. There are also strong standing personal rivalries and jealousies amongst the gangsters. In recent months the Bacon brothers' gang has obtained wide news coverage. The Bacons have a family residence in Abbotsford and an apartment in Port Moody—I should say “had”.

Those cities, with their own police departments, have become focal points for much media attention and the public advisories to avoid the Bacons and their associates. The Bacon brothers are associated with the Red Scorpions, who are in conflict with the United Nations Gang.

(1055) Although mid-level gang activity used to be ethnically based, it is now multi-ethnic, with family and school ties being secondary. The number of gangs in the mid-band has increased rapidly over the past few years due to the lucrative drug trade. It has become more violent due to the easy access to new and modified firearms from Asia and the United States. A spate of recent murders and shootings in the Lower Mainland, i.e. 10 in 10 days, really raised public concern. Many of the shootings have occurred near a freeway, allowing for easy access and egress.

The gang task force and other units generally know the players in the gangs, yet procuring the necessary evidence in determining who in the gang was the shooter tends to be very difficult. Various legislative and legal obstacles make the investigation of these crimes more difficult and onerous. Search warrant and electronic eavesdropping requirements and pretrial disclosure tactics are prominent among these. I know you've heard much about that already. The prevalence of modified armoured vehicles and gangsters wearing bulletproof vests increases the risk to police officers.

Police concern has also been raised by homicides involving innocent victims: two within the Surrey six massacre of 2007, one in Richmond, and one in Burnaby. The integrated homicide team had its busiest year last year, recording 57 homicides in its jurisdiction. This does not include the cities of Vancouver, West Vancouver, and Delta. The next highest year was 2005, when there were 48 homicides. The homicide rate in Greater Vancouver exceeds that of Toronto and other major urban cities. Approximately 40% of IHIT's--that's the homicide team--homicide investigation relate to organized crime.

Some are high-profile gangsters in the mid-band, but many are functionaries in the drug gangs, such as crack shack reloaders and dial-a-dope runners. In an effort to stem the growth of gang violence, the Province of British Columbia announced a host of initiatives.

The initiatives include the assignment of PORF--that is, the police officers recruitment funding--obtained from the federal government to fight against organized crime; taking provincial action through increased organized crime prosecutors; and civil forfeiture and seeking action from the federal government in terms of amendments to the Criminal Code respecting gun violence, crime paraphernalia, evidentiary obstacles to prosecution, and sentencing.

The gang task force and the integrated homicide investigation team and numerous other RCMP and municipal units are working very hard to stem the violence on the streets. Many initiatives have borne fruit over the past year, including a uniformed gang squad for the Lower Mainland and increased resources. The current level of killings is unprecedented, however, and is taxing the skilled resources required to conduct these investigations. The trend in spiking gang violence continues today. The first three months of 2009 continues to show an increase in gang violence.

Homicides in the region are forecast to exceed last year's record numbers if continued at the current pace. When they are forecast, we can multiply by four to get approximately the annual projection of 52 gang murders this year in the metro area, within the 136 of the total for the province. In the 2009 provincial statistics to the first three months of this year, 13 homicide victims were from organized crime activity; 8 were without organized crime activity; and for 13, we're still trying to figure where they fit.

Through an intelligence-gathering process, police have identified and are now targeting the groups seen as being involved in the highest level of gang violence in the region. Some successes have been seen, and more will follow. Most of the gang violence seen today in the Lower Mainland is directly linked to the control of drug lines. Some of the examples and patterns seen are retaliation for taking over a territory or street-level drug lines in the region; continual hunting behaviour of key gang members by rival gang members.

This hunting is done with well-armed and experienced gang members, some of whom travel from other areas of the country. Other factors are internal conflict arising from the lack of profit being generated through the respective lines, the inability to pay debts, or the increased tax placed on individuals controlling drug lines for the various gangs by the upper-level gang members. This tax can come from the drug supply organized crime group as well. There are also some ethnic-driven rivalries between gangs in some pockets of the region, and marijuana grow rips or other drug rips.

Some known targets have made this behaviour their only source of income. They routinely carry rip kits made up of such things as firearms; body armour; balaclavas and bear spray; knives; conducted-energy weapon devices, or tasers; duct tape; and zap straps to conduct their activity. Another aspect is lists of named individuals--contracted violence against those who gang members identify as interfering with their criminal activities, who may be killed in the near future. The challenge that police face is often the sheer volume of gang activity that occurs in the region at any given point in time.

There have been an estimated 600 confirmed incidents of shots fired in the Lower Mainland area of British Columbia since January 1, 2006. Each of these shots-fired complaints reflect a conflict that is the cause of the incident.

(1100) The police have been successful in investigating some gang activity. However, success has come at the cost of a significant drain in resources and time. All the while, other gang members flourish due to their rivals being targeted by the police. Since 1995, well over 150 investigations have been identified that have involved a wide range of offences committed by organized criminal entities and/or gang members.

These investigations have targeted, arrested, and charged members and associates of the Hells Angels, the United Nations Gang, the Red Scorpions, and the Independent Soldiers, as well as Asian, Indo-Canadian, Middle Eastern, Eastern European, Hispanic, and independent organized crime groups. Many have resulted in significant seizures of illegal commodities, specifically marijuana, cocaine, illicit synthetic drugs and the chemical precursors used to manufacture them, heroin, and firearms.

In addition, several investigations have resulted in the seizure and restraint of cash and other monetary instruments, real property, or other articles deemed to have been derived from the proceeds of crime. A comprehensive review of over 50 of those investigations resulted in identification of 153 persons who have successfully been prosecuted and convicted in British Columbia. An additional 120 persons are awaiting an upcoming trial, or indicted, convicted in foreign jurisdictions, primarily the U.S.A.

The integrated gang task force, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, the integrated homicide investigation team, and other numerous RCMP and municipal police units continue to work hard to stem the violence in the street. This collaborative and inclusive partnership will continue to result in investigative successes. Police anticipate a decrease in the levels of violence only after sustained pressure by law enforcement, prosecutor services, the judicial system, and community support. A failure of any one component will result in a collapse of the entire effort. Thank you.

(1105) The Chair : Thank you. Before we continue, could I ask which of you is actually presenting? Is each one of you presenting? All right. Just remember, we have five minutes apiece. If we go over that, there'll be no time for questions. I'll think you'll find that the truly rewarding aspect of this is when we have a dialogue back and forth. So please try to keep within the five minutes. If you can, focus in on what you're suggesting are some of the strategies that we, the federal government, could employ to actually address some of these challenges that we face. Mr. Kiloh.

Superintendent Doug Kiloh (Chief Officer, Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, Royal Canadian Mounted Police) : Thank you, Mr. Chair and everyone here, and a special thanks to Dona. We have a long and very important history that brings us here today. My name is Doug Kiloh. I have over 30 years of experience in policing, and I'm presently in charge of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit for British Columbia. There are some reinforcing themes here, but I'll try to pick up speed on them, Mr. Chair.

Law enforcement in British Columbia has responded to the increased violence exhibited by street and mid-level gangs, as well as continuing to investigate more complex organized crime targets in the province of British Columbia. As was said, we have over 130 criminal groups in various stages of development and activity. Over the last few years, the adaptation by and violence of some of those groups has required equally adaptive law and policing tactics.

For public safety, our adaptations have included the development of a uniform gang task force, which is right in their face, on the street, finding them where they're at, as well as focusing the larger investigative teams on the worst public safety threat we see. For example, I'm sure you'll hear of the following investigations from the panel in Vancouver: Projects Rebellion, EPARAGON, EPESETA, and EPACEMAN. They are some of the large investigations that have had a significant impact on gangs and organized crime.

Intelligence gathering and enforcement actions continue to target several high-ranking Middle Eastern, independent, outlaw motorcycle gang, and Asian organized crime groups and their associates. They're obviously involved in a myriad of offences—murder and numerous acts of violence—largely committed by lower-level associates and drawn in by the higher level, embroiled in retaliation for drug rips, as has been stated. But there are also relationship issues within these organizations that cause this violence and them to fall apart.

All have access to firearms and routinely utilize body armour or armoured vehicles and may have access to, or are involved in the trafficking of, weapons. Many of the shootings, assaults, kidnappings, and extortions are carried out overtly without regard to public safety, which has probably driven us here today. Fraud, international smuggling of monetary instruments, and money laundering is well in excess of $100 million out of this province. Importation, exportation, production, manufacturing, and distribution of synthetic and other drugs fuel this activity...[ Inaudible--Editor ]...to make it viable.

They are also involved in international smuggling of people, and I believe you heard from some of the panellists earlier that the production of extremely non-genuine supporting documents is also prevalent. Structurally in British Columbia, we're linking municipal, provincial, and federal resources through the integrated teams.

For example, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, the integrated gang task force, the outlaw motorcycle gang unit, and a new firearms unit being developed out of the core funding that was spoken of earlier are all coming together and having closer ties, so we can have specific, pointed investigations where we can get the best bang for our dollar. CFSEU will have all the police agencies in British Columbia involved in its governance, direction, and actions to combat the spectrum of organized criminal activity. These units have a footprint across the province.

I'll mention again that we'll be opening two CFSEU offices, one in Kelowna and one in Prince George, because of the issues in the northern and central parts of the province. We already have one in Victoria. This won't take away from other local, provincial, or federal responsibilities, but will ensure that the complete spectrum of criminal activity is subject to a coordinated enforcement body focused on the specific threats. And I think that's a key component. We can't leave one area and focus on another. In other words, we can't focus on just one specific area; we have to focus on the complete spectrum.

We have clear designs on continuing our enforcement focus in that way to increase public safety by targeting the violent groups at the earliest opportunity through predictive intelligence models and utilizing both covert and overt tactics. We must continue to support local, provincial, and national direction to disrupt and dismantle the organizations, from the street level to high-end sophisticated groups. Again, to reinforce this point, if we stop enforcing laws on one part of the spectrum, it allows the activity to flourish.

We're continuing the local, provincial, federal, and international law enforcement efforts through our intelligence and our intelligence sharing. It's better than it has ever been. Is it perfect? No. Do we have a long way to go? Yes. We have to increase the analysis both at the local police department or detachment level as well as throughout all of the specialty units and develop better protocols and quicker sharing in that regard so that the intelligence can be utilized.

(1110) We have to develop anti-gang initiatives to prevent youth from joining, and provide options to those who want to leave the gang lifestyle. I think there's a real shortfall in Canada at this point, for us to do that--certainly in our area. We have to continue to educate not only law enforcement and the young law enforcement officers coming in, but the public and you as politicians, about the insidious nature of organized crime and how much of a grip it really does have on our society and the violence that spins out of that.

We have to have more empirical research—and it's very limited here—in the areas of organized crime and gang activity. We have to continue to support the modernization of the Criminal Code, lawful access changes, and change in evidentiary rules to allow us to do that. There are huge bureaucratic slowdowns for us to actually do our job. Thank you. The Chair : Thank you so much. Who will be next? Mr. Shinkaruk, please. Inspector Gary Shinkaruk (Officer in Charge, Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Enforcement, Royal Canadian Mounted Police) : Thank you. My name is Gary Shinkaruk. I'm an inspector with the RCMP.

I'm in charge of the provincial Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Enforcement Unit. The OMGs have been present here in British Columbia for about 30 years. There are eight different outlaw motorcycle gangs, but without doubt the Hells Angels is the number one gang in this province. They're recognized internationally and nationally as the flagship way to run a criminal organization. They have worked hard and been very successful in the last few decades at being accepted by society. In many instances, they are revered