SNUD Committee Meeting

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON NON-MEDICAL USE OF DRUGS

COMITÉ SPÉCIAL SUR LA CONSOMMATION NON MÉDICALE DE DROGUES OU MÉDICAMENTS

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, November 8, 2001

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[English]

The Chair (Ms. Paddy Torsney (Burlington, Lib.)): I'll call this meeting to order.

Pursuant to the order of reference adopted by the House of Commons on May 17, we are considering the factors underlying or relating to the non-medical use of drugs.

We're very pleased to have with us today as witness Paul Kennedy from Solicitor General Canada. Mr. Kennedy is the senior assistant deputy—boy, oh boy, there's the deputy, and the assistant deputy, and the senior assistant deputy—policing and security branch. Thank you very much for coming before us today. Your assistant is Karen Kastner.

Mr. Paul E. Kennedy (Senior Assistant Deputy Solicitor General, Policing and Security Branch, Solicitor General Canada): Thank you.

I know you've heard an awful lot of people, and Mr. White came over before and asked, who are you and what's your background? So maybe I'll just give you a bit of background before I get into the presentation that's been prepared and I'll be giving to you.

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I've been an employee of the Government of Canada since 1974. I spent the first approximately 25 years as counsel with the Department of Justice. From 1974 to 1980 I was doing drug prosecutions in Toronto, and I've done hundreds, if not thousands, of prosecutions, I've done hundreds of jury trials, and have appeared in the Court of Appeal. The work I was doing was on large conspiracies, organized crime activities, wiretaps, and things of that nature. Just going to the relevant portions for your purposes, from 1984 to 1986 I was also counsel at Health Canada to the drug production branch, which at that time had the bureau of dangerous substances and so on as part of it.

I've also was from 1986 to 1988 counsel for the Communications Security Establishment. From 1988 to 1994 I was the chief counsel to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and from 1994 to November 1998 I was senior general counsel with what was then called the Office of National Drug Strategy, responsible for coordinating drug prosecutions, money laundering, proceeds of crime, and those kinds of activities in Canada. In November 1998 I assumed my current duties, and I'm responsible for policing and national security, of which the RCMP and CSIS are two areas. So that's some of the historical background I bring to the table.

With your indulgence, I have a presentation here that, hopefully, is fairly comprehensive. As you've indicated, Karen's been with the committee for a while, and looking at the number of things that have come up, we thought there were some things we could put on the table that might be of use to you in respect of activities we're carrying on.

Before I start, I'd like to thank the committee for its indulgence. I know I was to be here last week, but other things came up and I just couldn't make it. I appreciate your indulgence in rescheduling me for today.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard (Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, BQ): I rise on a point of order.

So that everything be perfectly clear, when you talk about a comprehensive presentation, are you referring to the document we have been given or is it another one?

The Chair: There is another document, but it is only in English. This one is just a guide.

Mr. Réal Ménard: Okay. It did not seem very comprehensive to me. If there is another document, excellent, you will give it to us when it will be translated.

Thank you.

[English]

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I have, and unfortunately, I'm also involved in the follow-up to the events from September 11, so things have been a bit wild and crazy. I have a presentation, and it will be translated and made available to the committee. There are some other materials we have that we'll leave with you as well, because I know your research is going to go on for a while. I think it was my request at this time that I actually appear. It's not often that I ask a committee for a chance to appear, it's usually the other way around, but I'm grateful for the opportunity to make a presentation to explain to you what the Department of the Solicitor General does, in particular how it complements, I think, some of the presentations you've heard from corrections services and the RCMP. I believe Bob Lesser has been here.

The presentation will focus on our department's role with respect to hemispheric activities, bilateral activities, and national committees. By hemispheric I mean all of North, South, and Central America, the activities there, by bilateral a focus upon our American colleagues to the south, and by national committees the structures we've put in place to deal with coordination within Canada, both at the federal level and with our colleagues from the provinces and municipalities.

As indicated, hopefully, this will be a bit strategic, and I don't intend to speak to issues that have already been addressed by the RCMP and by Corrections Canada. What I would like to do is to describe mechanisms that have been put in place and with which I am personally involved to promote cooperation at the hemispheric, continental, and national levels. I think from the presentations you might have heard to date, one of the issues you may be looking at as salient to your considerations and recommendations is coordination and integration. What are the governments doing at the various levels? Therefore, I would like to situate our department's efforts in the context of a broader portfolio effort.

As you already know, the Solicitor General is responsible for law enforcement, corrections, and security at the federal level, and is accountable to Parliament for the four agencies, RCMP, CSIS, the correctional services, and the parole board. The department itself provides advice to the Solicitor General across the portfolio, and we've tried to make it strategic advice to advance his mission of public safety.

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There are two directorates within the department that are involved in addressing anti-drug matters. One is the policing and law enforcement directorate, the other is the corrections policy and research directorate. The corrections policy and research directorate provides advice on drug-related issues as they pertain to institutional and community programming. Officials with the policing and law enforcement directorate work closely with officials from other departments and with police organizations and NGOs in the development and implementation of drug policy and regulations. They support work in international fora, including the UN, the Organization of American States, the G-8, and bilaterally with our U.S. colleagues. In addition, they provide support for a national coordinating committee.

I'm sure it's going to be trite to indicate to you that the drug problem is one of global proportions. In fact, I had occasion to look at some of the testimony of other witnesses, and they say the same thing. The fact is, it's one of the truisms, unfortunately, the world is confronted with. It's important, because if you start from that proposition, you know that no one government or country is capable of dealing with it without the collaboration of other countries. The fact that drugs move across our country, across our borders on a daily basis is just a fact of the nature of exchange. We don't have ditches, moats, borders are very transparent, and drugs flow across those borders.

The consumption of illicit drugs is believed to be on the rise in this country, particularly among youth. The harm resulting from injection drug use continues to represent a significant challenge for Canadian health and enforcement authorities, especially in large urban centres. We're all, of course, familiar with the particular challenge faced in areas like Vancouver.

The popularity of marijuana cultivation has increased significantly, and over the past decade organized crime groups have come to control all but a small portion of marijuana cultivation. It is essential that all countries work together for this problem. I put it in that context because part of the role I'm involved in is trying to work on a greater role for Canada in the hemispheric participation, because we have to work in the context of the hemisphere, all 34 countries, to achieve any kind of progress. This isn't a problem for Canada alone.

The Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, which is known by its Spanish acronym, CICAD, is the drug commission of the Organization of American States. As a matter of fact, I'll be heading down on Saturday to Caracas, Venezuela, because we're having our next meeting to deal with these kinds of drugs through next week. Its mandate is to promote initiatives to deal with the drug problem in the Americas. The organization has currently 34 members with active participation from Latin American countries, the Caribbean countries, Canada, and the United States. I'm currently Canada's principal delegate to CICAD. Although it'll be a nice warm climate, the crime rate in Caracas is right through the ceiling, and I'm advised that I likely won't get out of the hotel, because it just is too dangerous. I went to Port of Spain last year and was met at the airport by armed guards and taken to a hotel, and the hotel was surrounded by armed guards. These are very difficult environments.

An important CICAD undertaking is the development and implementation of a mutual multilateral evaluation mechanism. It's commonly referred to as the MEM. The MEM is an instrument to evaluate the anti-drug effort of all member states and to encourage cooperation and collaboration among them. It's not a treaty, but rather a means developed by countries in the hemisphere to undertake a meaningful assessment of their efforts. This is a key document in showing the sea change of the philosophy of countries in how they're approaching the drug problem. Historically, countries have blamed each other, and part of the dialogue we've had previously was, you're a source country, you're a consuming country, and I'm a poor transit country. In other words, everyone was playing a role blaming someone else for their problem. That paradigm has been broken. Everyone recognizes they have a problem.

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The source countries are now experiencing large consumption in their societies. They have a drug demand problem, not only a production problem. What were described as the demand countries for some products, like cocaine, are also now the source countries for drugs that are manufactured, like ecstasy, methamphetamines, and so on. The transit countries are experiencing the same phenomenon. Everyone is playing in it now, everyone recognizes the common problem. They have to work together for a common solution, and there's no advantage in blaming each other. That is crucial, and it has only happened in the last couple of years.

At the San Diego summit in 1998 leaders of the 34 countries indicated they wanted to build on the hemispheric drug strategy that was developed in 1996, and they asked CICAD to establish a mechanism to evaluate and strengthen their individual and collective efforts against drugs. Shortly after the summit an intergovernmental group was formed. At that time the Deputy Solicitor General was asked to chair the working group, and it's a position I subsequently assumed and have been working on for the past couple of years.

That's central, because the countries in the Organization of American States go from countries with an annual per capita income of $200 per year, as in Haiti, to the United States and Canada, which are obviously better off financially. So the techniques and means and capabilities of these countries to deal with these problems are significantly varied, and the challenge is that if they don't address their problems, their problems become our problems.

So the task of this working group was to develop an evaluation mechanism that reflected a balance in respect of techniques that were going to be used, would indicate results, and would provide the leaders of these countries with a comprehensive picture of the hemisphere as to the nature, scope, and extent of the drug trade, measures to control it, and what its impacts were on the various countries.

The MEM, as a questionnaired measuring document, was completed in 1999, and it evaluates five main areas. It looks at the 34 countries with regard to their national plans and strategies, prevention and treatment, reduction of drug production, law enforcement measures, and the costs of the drug problem. I think that's one of the things we've all traditionally wrestled with, the cost, the impact on a society of the drug problem. It's a challenge for many countries to try to assess that. If you can't assess it, you don't know what kind of investments to make in prevention or enforcement. There is establishment of a set of critical indicators, and these indicators, in fact, are very powerful tools that allow us to evaluate individual countries' performances, as well as the collective progress of the hemisphere, through common standards.

So I think it's one of the few tools available that provides you with a comprehensive picture of the whole environment and what we're trying to accomplish. I think the UN does an assessment, and of course, we have annual assessments done unilaterally by the United States of other countries and how they perform. It's not the best way of doing it. This mutual evaluation mechanism is the best one to do it.

To give you an example, one of the indicators requires countries to report on the number of drug seizure operations by law enforcement agencies and the quantities of drugs seized. That gives you an idea of whether a country is actually doing something. I don't think there's been any shyness by these countries in admitting that they have a significant corruption problem. If we know there's a country that is not making any seizures, and there are not many operations, you can indicate that there are probably other underlying problems in that country that have to be addressed. So these indicators tease out these other underlying social factors.

As well, to assess progress on demand reduction, there's an indicator that asks countries whether they have drug treatment and rehabilitation programs, early intervention, outreach, and social integration of drug users. The police have consistently pointed to the fact that these programs are essential to a community response.

So what we're looking at is the whole picture, not just enforcement, as you also have to deal with the market that's been created. The addict is going to be there, you have to treat the addict's addiction to help eradicate the problem. So you have to attack all elements of that, and that's what we seek to measure.

The development of the MEM was completed in October 1998, and the first implementation round was completed in December 2000. In this phase countries submitted information on all aspects of their drug control policies, and these were synthesized into national reports, as well as an overall report on the progress of the region. The national reports and the reports on the hemisphere were presented at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. A plan of action was adopted that renewed the commitment of leaders to the MEM, which is described as one of the central pillars in effective hemisphere cooperation in the struggle against all the factors that constitute global drug problems.

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These are important, because when those reports are done, there's a series of recommendations for each country—this is what they have to do—and they are tailored to each country as to the state of its development and what is feasible for it to do. That helps other countries, donor countries, decide where we can lend them aid or assistance, either legally or in enforcement. Then they're measured annually against that—you have that, where are you at, what have you done?

The hemispheric report provides an overview of the situation and trends with respect to the drug phenomenon in the hemisphere and the capacity of states to deal with this. The report's main conclusions were that there has been a rise in the consumption, a drop in the average age of consumption, the emergence of new drugs, and on the availability and purity of existing drugs.

Criminal organizations have grown more sophisticated. They've gained power, financial resources, and weapons, and most of the 34 countries do not have the capacity to control this problem. Focusing national efforts on interdiction or eradication to limit supplies and drive down consumption has been insufficient, and countries have been more effective with comprehensive strategies that include both enforcement measures and demand reduction initiatives. The reports, therefore, called upon member states to improve their data collection, add analysis on drug abuse and addiction, devote additional resources to prevention and treatment efforts, and enhance cooperation efforts within the hemisphere and the rest of the international community.

The report on Canada provided an overview of the domestic drug problem and the policies and efforts deployed to address it. There was a series of 14 recommendations, and I've highlighted areas where specific action is required to strengthen Canada's control efforts, such as increasing data collection and analysis activities with regard to drug abuse.

I'll just stop there for a second. If you actually compare Canada to the others, we have a problem, but our problem is nothing like what is unravelling in, I'd say, at least 32 of the other countries through their recognition of the problem, what they can do, statistics they're trying to gather, methods they have in place to address it. We have a problem, but it's nothing like what is happening in the rest of the hemisphere. That's why, to some extent, we also have an international component to reach out and try to help those countries address some of their problems.

Why is our work with CICAD important? It's important to evaluate strategies of other countries, evaluate our own national measures, and ask, why should ours be a priority? MEM helps us evaluate progress and drug control, while at the same time identifying areas where countries require greater effort in their fight against illicit drugs. Actually, the document is an impetus for us to galvanize our own national information and to work in a coordinated way with other federal departments.

The first evaluation is significant in that it establishes a baseline, a year zero, from which we can compare our progress to date in years to come. I think the challenge is that it's very hard to get meaningful data of any kind in this area. I think in Canada it was 1992 the last time there were some data collected, though some have been collected recently by some provincial governments. It's very hard to get uniform national data. This is the first time we're actually able to get something across the hemisphere in respect of the amount of cocaine grown in a particular country, the number of seizures, and the amount of effort. It's the first time we have had a ground zero to work from.

So we believe it will help develop stronger and better partnerships between countries, between health and law enforcement officials. As I indicated to you a short while ago, there is a sea change. These countries are not defensive, they're working together.

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One example of that was within Plan Colombia, where there's a significant investment of money into Colombia to address some of the cocaine problems—and they have a very significant problem down there. Not only is the investment broader than just drug eradication, it's dealing with infrastructure, putting roads in place, alternative crops, trying to get people to do something other than harvest cocaine. More importantly, it doesn't just focus on Colombia, now it realizes you can't deal with Colombia without dealing with the region, because all you do is push the Colombian drug problem into Ecuador or into another adjoining country. So what you do is approach it on a regional basis.

Our success can sometimes be someone else's problem. Some of our cultivation problems are with people who've come from the United States to cultivate in Canada because our drug laws and punishments are different from those of the Americans. Once you step across the border, it's a different problem. We've seen displacement of heroin from the Golden Triangle, where heroin now is being cultivated in South America. These are displacements, so when you look at a problem, you can't do it by yourself, you have to deal with it regionally or in an almost hemispheric sense. So the MEM's strength lies in establishing a system based on shared responsibility, a system that results in inescapable political commitment at the highest level of government.

As I indicated to you, we're going to look at various things. One is the hemisphere, the other is, of course, what we're doing with our neighbours to the south, the United States. The department is involved with the United States on drug matters. That primarily takes place, from the department's perspective, through the context of the Canada-U.S. cross-border crime forum. This is a bilateral forum led by the Solicitor General of Canada and the Attorney General of the United States, and it has met annually since 1997. It brings together enforcement officials, as well as justice officials, from Canada and the United States. We deal with transnational—in this case Canada-U.S.—crime problems. Drugs, of course, remain at the heart of organized crime activities, and thus they are a key priority for both countries.

I have been involved in the forum since its inception, first as co-chair of the prosecution subgroup, and then as co-chair of the forum itself since 1999. The forum started out with about 60 people, and at that time it focused primarily on the eastern provinces and states, tobacco and alcohol smuggling and some organized crime activities. In 1998 it was expanded to include the participation of officials along the entire Canada-U.S. border. It focused on broader policy and operational issues, such as the impact of cross-border crime on communities, telemarketing fraud, money laundering, missing children, crimes using the computer, and other emerging crimes.

At our last meeting we had over 150 participants. They came from all levels of the federal government in Canada, the corrections services, Foreign Affairs, CSIS, Finance, because of money laundering, Environment, Health Canada. From the provinces and territories we'd senior justice officials representative of their organized crime agencies and the chiefs of police from Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. From the U.S. we'd the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, Border Patrol, Customs Service, Attorneys General, State Department, and other partners.

It's probably the most comprehensive regular meeting of law enforcement officials in Canada and the United States. In addition to that regular meeting, we have four permanent subcommittees that meet to deal with specific areas, such as drug trafficking, alien smuggling, and other topics of that nature. So it's a forum to coordinate action on enforcement issues. The forum also promotes joint training initiatives and establishes task forces.

One of the components it looked at and undertook to do a search on and release a document on was a joint cross-border drug flow assessment. This would be the first of its kind. The assessments to date, as I indicated, have tended to be unilateral. The American assessments, let's say, of drugs coming into the United States have indicated that drugs are a global problem, and drugs just as easily flow into Canada as they do going south. We've all heard about the marijuana that might go from B.C. to Washington State. The converse is the cocaine, which is not domestic to Canada, coming to Canada from the United States. So there's a two-way flow, and that's why it's a common problem that requires common solutions. So this kind of document helps shape and form strategic decision-making between the two countries.

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In addition to the agreements, legislation has also been developed, flowing out of this meeting, to address various kinds of issues. For instance, the telemarketing fraud stuff resulted in changes to our Competition Act and our Extradition Act, and we actually changed our Criminal Code to deal with mutual problems across the border like this.

One other thing we've worked on is a group called Project Northstar. Project Northstar was an American initiative dealing with their national drug control strategy in 1998, and it had a large military component to it. That doesn't really fit the nature of Canada-U.S. relationships, and we've changed that, we've made it an equal partnership, and we've moved the military component from it and put in law enforcement. It has groups right across the border of Canada-U.S. law enforcement officials. We've asked them to get together, which they do, and identify for us trends and problems, whether they're resources, holes in our legislation, or trends. They come to the cross-border crime forum and make presentations to us as to what their problems are, so we then, as policy-makers, know what the problems are and start crafting solutions for problems that exist now, not yesterday's problems.

Some of the models you've already heard about. The integrated border enforcement team is something we gave profile to at the cross-border crime forum in 1997. That's a combined unit of enforcement officials on both sides of the border. So you've got RCMP, customs, and municipal and provincial police forces in Canada, on one side, working on a team with DEA, FBI, INS on the American side and their customs folk to patrol the border to deal with the phenomenon of crime on the border, one aspect of which is the drug trafficking problem. That model caused us to put another unit in place in the New Brunswick-Maine area, and a third one was announced this year in the Massena-Cornwall area. It's the kind of thing we'd like to see expanded, where we have both jurisdictions working to address this particular problem.

Within Canada we have a number of committees that we've put in place to address coordination challenges. We have a steering committee of federal, provincial, and territorial deputy ministers. This was created because of a decision in October 1998 of ministers of justice from the provinces, territories, and the federal government, where they issued a joint statement on organized crime. They asked the deputy ministers to establish a steering committee to deal with that phenomenon, and of course, drugs are a big component of organized crime.

In addition to that, I chair a national coordinating committee on organized crime that has representatives from all the provinces, all the federal enforcement agencies, as well as the Justice officials and prosecutors. We come up with strategies to identify what the problems are, data collection, enforcement techniques, resources, or efficient models, and we feed that in to ministers to help them in discharging their duties.

In addition to that, I happen to chair, within the federal government, an assistant deputy ministers committee of about 14 or 15 enforcement agencies, where we coordinate our activities to find out what our problems are, where the gaps are, how we can improve our performance. As a matter of fact, that committee was pulled together and was handling some of our coordination following the events on September 11. So it does more than drugs, it does a whole range of issues concerning public safety.

So those are some of the comments I'd make to you. I'm not going to go any further. I think I've given you at least an overview. There are some mechanisms in place in those three areas that, hopefully, are addressing some of these problems.

The Chair: Thank you. That's a lot of information.

The first person is Mr. White.

Mr. Randy White (Langley—Abbotsford, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Kennedy, thanks for the information. You make it sound as though we've got a handle on things. While you may, I would like to know a couple things related to that.

You said our problem is nothing like those of the others, and I realize there are countries in this world that are in pretty bad shape. How do you know that? How do you know our problem isn't like others?

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Mr. Paul Kennedy: As I've indicated to you, I'm Canada's principal delegate to CICAD, which allows me to sit with the representatives of 34 countries to get the assessment as to the nature and size of the problem, what techniques or resources they have available to address the problem, and what success, if any, they are having. There's always a serious problem, and I certainly don't want to diminish the problem here in Canada, because it's a thing you have to work on. Just because your neighbour's house has burned down and yours is only scorched, it doesn't mean you have no problem.

Mr. Randy White: I'm not suggesting that. I appreciate what you say. I'm asking how you know how bad it is in Canada. I know you hear a lot from the other countries, but we had a witness who as much as said yesterday that we don't know how bad it is in Canada, because we haven't researched it since 1994. So I'm curious as to how you know how bad it is in Canada, as compared to the researcher we talked to the other day.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I indicated as well that we didn't have good research data since, I thought, 1992; 1994 is the correct date. This is a matter of degrees of magnitude. Other countries have grinding poverty, no health infrastructure, no social workers, corrupt police forces, inability to address it, huge protection, sometimes with civil wars and groups that are providing protection to growth operations. We have problems, but in a number of these countries they are very significant.

Mr. Randy White: But we have money.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: Yes.

Mr. Randy White: And often, with drugs, it would seem to me that having money is a bigger problem than it is if you don't have money, because you have the luxury, so to speak, to pay for it. I know we get delegations from New York City going to Vancouver to see our drug problem, because it's so bad. I'm just curious how we in Canada know what the heck the problem is, because we just haven't got any empirical statistical data to say why.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I didn't want my comments to be taken in any way to diminish the problems in Canada, and I concur with your observation about having money. The population itself becomes attractive, because it can purchase the drugs, which is one thing. The other thing is how smart we are in using our resources to address the problem, both in enforcement and in prevention. Clearly, those are all the problems you're working on. Your prevention aspect, obviously, is to help educate people that it's not good for them and it's not good for society to engage in certain forms of behaviour. Heroin addiction is not really going to advance your capability to succeed in life, so you have to reach out to those people and persuade them.

Conversely, in giving money for enforcement, we have to use that smartly to work efficiently with each other at all levels—what is the most effective technique to use? These are not techniques to use in isolation from each other: enforcement is complementary to prevention. It's no good for me to be baling out a boat if there's a hole in it, so you have to be doing both things at the same time. As I'm trying to cure an addict and dissuade them, there's someone else who is creating new addicts and new markets, because they want to sell their products. So these are multi-tasked and multi-challenging issues.

Mr. Randy White: We're charged with the responsibility of taking some recommendations to the House of Commons. You've made numerous recommendations, all of your committees and groups around the world. Have you any thoughts about what kind of recommendations a committee of Parliament should come up with? What is it that would be useful to you in your job?

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Mr. Paul Kennedy: Our philosophy, as indicated, is one of balance between enforcement and prevention. If your prevention can work, that's great. The challenge with an addict, I think, is a health problem in trying to get the addict off the drug, and health is not primarily a federal responsibility. So there has to be, within a Canada, a buy-in and recognition as well by our colleagues in the provinces that there should be more done to treat some of these people. I think that's important.

Part of what we have by way of pilots that I think could be more aggressively worked upon is the drug courts. We have a drug court in Toronto, and I think we're going to be trying to set others up, a court where the judge sits there looking at the particular issue, and you have the person finally in a position where they have to confront the consequences of their actions. So you may have more tools available to you to encourage them to take some form of rehabilitation, to address their lifestyle, and to address their addiction. The Americans have something like 800, I believe, of those courts, which they are using with some degree of success.

I think those are techniques you have to work on as complementaries. Once the person is in the system, it isn't a case of going to jail, because the peers in jail are not the peers who are going to keep you off drugs. You have to then use other techniques that are available to us socially to get the person off the drug, with a lifestyle, rehabilitated—find out what caused them to do this in the first place, and help them break that cycle. That's part of it. You have to get rid of that market.

Mr. Randy White: Let me give you a concept. Known drug addicts with three convictions, we'll say, are incarcerated, put in facilities for 18 months or two years for the purpose solely of drug rehabilitation, in a prison totally dedicated to drug rehabilitation. Would that work in getting these people off that cycle they are really not able to get off themselves? Is that a practical method of breaking the chain, if we had prisons that weren't as much of a sieve as the street—I'll be a little facetious when I say that, but I'm accurate.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I'm not a behavioural psychologist, so I can't tell you what the answer is, but I would have thought, as a layperson looking at it, that would seem to have some of the attributes that would result in a greater success rate, in other words, to isolate a person whose behaviour is drug induced, put them in an environment where drugs are not available to them, surrounded by other individuals who are equally committed to getting off drugs. As indicated, peer pressure is important, and it's very difficult to create a peer environment with a normal prison population. What you've indicated is creating, within that prison population, a peer pressure group of other people who are similarly inclined—

Mr. Randy White: Totally dedicated to it, that would be the purpose.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: —obviously, with some kind of stringent requirements that a person would have to perform in a certain way to be eligible to remain in there. That would seem to have the attributes that would lead to success. I think it would be worthwhile putting that to a behavioural pharmacologist to see if it would work, but on its face, it would seem to be an attractive model.

Mr. Randy White: Okay, thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. White.

[Translation]

Mr. Ménard, you have five minutes.

Mr. Réal Ménard: Thank you Madam Chair. I am pleased to welcome you. I have a few brief questions to ask.

You said that at the Summit of the Americas, in Quebec City, the leaders of 34 states received data and a report on drug consumption. From what I understand, this information will be included in the documents that you will give to our researcher, am I right?

[English]

Mr. Paul Kennedy: Yes, thank you for reminding me. I guess we're nearing Christmas—I've been in the stores, and I see that trappings are out. What we have here for you is a CD from the last cross-border crime forum. It will show you the minutes and some of the presentations and issues we work with. So it will give you a touch and flavour of what we do with our American colleagues.

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In addition I've got a report here, “The National Agenda to Combat Organized Crime”, which the deputy ministers submitted to the ministers just this year, their first report. It talks about some of the areas that were of concern, trends. We'll make that available to you. This is in bilingual format. I have as well the national and hemispheric reports dealing with the Organization of American States that were submitted. The ones I have here are in English, because I think English and Spanish are the languages, but I told my colleague I'm convinced there's a version in French, because I'm positive we did not submit this in Quebec City without having prepared a French language version, and we will get that for you.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: Madam Chair, this is Christmas in November! I hope that you will give it to us.

Here is my second question. You told us that there was within the Solicitor General's Department two directorates involved in addressing anti-drug matters. Presently, the quasi-totality of marijuana is produced and controlled by major criminal organizations. Could you inform us about the part which is outside of their control?

I have a brief supplementary. Our colleague Keith Martin, from the Canadian Alliance, has tabled yesterday a bill that would decriminalize the possession of marijuana without legalizing it, but it would make it a summary conviction offence which means that there would be no criminal record. Do you considered it a positive measure in the context of the war against drug?

Those are my two questions and I shall ask two more later, Madam Chair.

[English]

Don't be shy. Everything you say is going to be inside here.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: As you can tell by the lack of of hair on my head, I was not born yesterday.

Before we get into the comment, you used the language “war against drugs”. You made a reference to the terminology “the war against drugs”, and you've given me an opportunity. I'd like to respond to that, because that is not language I use. I'm not sure who coined that phrase, but we've been stuck with it ever since. It indicates a war is going to end. This is a human condition. Human conditions do not end. There are addictive personalities, there are work personalities. I think someone told me once 4% of the population, regardless of what ethnic or racial group they come from, are predisposed to some kind of criminality in their behaviour. We don't have wars against theft, we don't have wars against lying. I don't know what people's religious beliefs are, but I'll just use the example ofthe Bible. The Bible started off with a theft, the apple was stolen, followed by some sort of indecent exposure, and then the kids got involved in murder, and it went on from there. So in other words, it's part of the human condition that there will be antisocial behaviour. So we're not going to have a war against drugs and eliminate drugs. That's not the real world.

What we have to do, though, is target these organizations, so that they do not affect the ability of society to function. You control antisocial behaviour, you don't eliminate it. To eliminate it, we create police states. We are not a police state, we're not going to do that with the values we have. So that's not language I've used, and I was a prosecutor for many years, and I've sent lots of people to jail.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: Sorry if I went a little overboard, and it won't happen again.

[English]

Mr. Paul Kennedy: Okay.

I think it's important, though, if this committee is looking at what you want to achieve by way of your recommendations. You're not going to eliminate drugs unless you eliminate the human condition. That's just my observation.

With reference to the marijuana issue, I leave it to parliamentarians to debate that in the House, and I believe that was done yesterday. I just want to underline for you that there was a change made in 1997 by the government with respect to marijuana. Prior to 1997 the possession of marijuana was what was called a hybrid offence: it could be, either by summary conviction or by indictment, punishable by up to seven years, and it was in the same category as heroin, cocaine, and all sorts of other stuff. It was just the way it was. What that meant was that when you were arrested, the presumption was that it was an indictable offence, for which you're fingerprinted. In 1997 possession of I think, hashish less than a gram and marijuana less that 30 grams became subject to straight summary conviction, which means when an individual is arrested, they are not fingerprinted, so you don't have the same process that unfolds in respect of criminal records. That was maybe a subtle, but significant change in how people were treated, because there was a problem with people crossing the border, whether or not they have criminal records and things of that nature.

• 1620

For another thing, I know the Canadian Police Association has come out with a recommendation to use the Contraventions Act as a vehicle, and what's important is what they were looking at, the ability to exercise a discretion as to whether the Contraventions Act would apply, which is with a fine. Or a police officer might catch you driving a car under the influence of that and say, this is not a case for a fine, this is a case for giving you an appearance notice, so you go to court, a more formal process, under the assumption that there are signals to the person that there's something involved here.

As well, the CACP, I think, was looking at only a possession offence, as opposed to any trafficking in small quantities, which I think the bill yesterday dealt with.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: I shall amicably remind you that you did not really answer my question. You retraced the history of what your predecessors have done. You insisted a lot on your personal background and we can see that you are very experienced in the field of antidrug measures.

My question deals with the main purpose of our Committee's work. There is a regimen of offences. Being a lawyer, you understand well those realities. At the present time, in Canada, the possession of drugs, of marijuana or haschisch is an indictable offence that could give you a criminal record. Our Canadian Alliance colleague said yesterday that there were 1,000 members of the RCMP who were responsible for drugs, seizure and enforcement and that there were 600,000 Canadians with a criminal record only because of marijuana or haschisch possession.

So I am asking you if, to ensure an efficient distribution of resources and considering the goals of our Committee, you do not think that the present regimen of offences should be reviewed along the lines proposed by our Canadian Alliance colleague.

[English]

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I'll try to answer you as directly as I can, being helpful, maybe, without overly committing myself.

The first thing is, possession of drugs or use of drugs is a health problem. The governments traditionally have a range of tools available to them to address that problem, as with alcohol—you can either criminalize it or not. A criminal sanction is only one of the tools available. The government does not have to criminalize it to recognize it as a problem that still has to be addressed. So what I'm saying is, it is a policy decision for the government and for Parliament to make as to what tools you chose to use to address the problem. You could, obviously, as parliamentarians, decide to recommend to decriminalize or not. That will still leave you with a health problem to address. Then you'll have to ask yourself about the signal you send and the efficacy of other techniques we have available to us to address the problem.

One of the significant changes we've had in the past number of years is that the potency of marijuana has changed. There is very little science I know of in the area. When I was, in the old days, prosecuting, a marijuana cigarette would have 1% to 2% THC, tetrahydrocannabinol. Now I hear 15%, 20%, 25%. You can imagine what it would be like if you made the same jumps in the alcoholic content of something. What is the effect now in health or impairment of an individual? I don't know the answer. Hopefully, scientists and medical people can provide you with the answer. But I would say a marijuana cigarette of the sixties and the marijuana cigarette of 2001 are not the same marijuana cigarettes in potency.

One other thing I just want to say relates to possession. Most possession offences are dealt with by way of absolute or conditional discharges, which means there's no criminal record. The process is that you have a finding of guilt and a discharge, the discharge occurs, and there's no conviction. That's the way the system works, there's no conviction. You have a conditional discharge, and you can't apply even for removal of that. Maybe if there are 600,000 people with convictions or records for that, that's an awful lot, I would suspect an awful lot of those are probably eligible for applying for pardons. I don't pretend to know the answer, but it does seem to be quite high.

• 1625

The Chair: Thank you.

Just on that last point, yes, he may have gotten his discharge, but when you show up at the U.S. border, it's registered. We get a lot of business in our offices on the pardon process, and the Americans get a lot of business, because once you've been in that system, you end up having to pay a fee to have some clearance issued to you—it's a nice form of tax, I think.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: Okay.

The Chair: Mr. Lee.

Mr. Derek Lee (Scarborough—Rouge River, Lib.): Thank you.

Mr. Kennedy, I'm not surprised by the content of your presentation. You've outlined all that is there from the Solicitor General's perspective. I am struck again by the huge number of things going on—the acronyms, the committees, the meetings, the collaborations. I don't want to give the wrong impression, but I was going to say, people running around all over the place doing all kinds of things, putting band-aids on this, catching up here, money here, going to get a change in the law over here, and somebody else isn't carrying their load over there, and we can't trust these guys, we trust those guys. It strikes me as a lot of administration. It's consuming most of your current career, I gather. It's not good. Okay, you have other acronyms to pursue besides these ones, I guess.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: No.

Mr. Derek Lee: As the department goes about this, does anybody ever take a step back and say, what are we getting for all our investment, all these airline tickets, all our contributions to the secretariats? What are we getting for our money, the cost benefit? Does that ever happen? Does the department ever get together itself or with other ministries and say, what are we really trying to accomplish here? What are we getting for our investment? Where are we going with this? Does that ever happen?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: First, a lot of the committee structures I've indicated to you deal with public safety and crime, with more than drugs. Drugs are an issue we deal with in that forum, but we're not dealing just with drugs, we're dealing with money laundering, we're dealing with alien smuggling, we're dealing with all sorts of stuff. So don't think all these committees just sit around wondering how to handle drugs.

Rather than wondering about this functionality, I thought I'd laid it out nicely, where you could see we're like a Swiss watch, just sort of ticking along there. Obviously, I'm not going to have the Organization of American States sitting when I'm dealing with my federal group. So I've got a federal group that works together, then we have a federal-provincial-territorial group, and then you have, obviously, Canada-U.S. and the hemispheric. These are all different things, a series of circles, where you have to reach out and deal with them. So these things actually all do fit together.

Your other comment is, I think, a very good one: is there a cost-benefit analysis? I think it's fair to say I haven't seen anything of the nature of a cost-benefit analysis, and I think that would be useful. Part of what we're doing, part of the initiatives out of our organized crime group, is trying to get better data and better analysis, looking at impacts, and one of the areas was the drug area. Mind you, I'm looking at it largely from the perspective of enforcement. Clearly, Health Canada has the lead in Canada's drug strategy, and they look at the preventive and other health aspects. So I can say from one part, from the enforcement area, here's what we're doing, because I think we're part of a solution here. As I said, you're not going to cure it if someone's running in trying to convert new people to using the drugs and so on.

• 1630

So we're part of that, but there's a bigger picture. If you're going to do a cost-benefit analysis, I guess you have to assess what you're going to try to analyse, and you're obviously going beyond marijuana. You have to look at heroin and cocaine, you're looking at the new rave drugs, you're looking at ecstasy, you're looking at quite a bit. If you look at legalization, for instance, I don't think we've had a tremendously successful story to tell on alcohol. The substance of greatest abuse in this country is alcohol. I think there are some data on that in matters of family violence, sick leave from work, industrial accidents, addiction, crime. It's huge. I raise it only inasmuch as these are very complex issues. If anyone had a little wand to touch it, legalize it, and it goes away, that would not be a problem. Even though alcohol and tobacco are legal, we have alcohol and tobacco organized crime problems that were rampant in the early nineties, the spillover of which we are still dealing with today.

So it's complex, it's very hard to analyse. One of the things that came out of the Organization of American States was to try to create models dealing with social impact. The Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse had developed a model, and the other countries were actually looking at Canada, to try to find some way to factor this out.

Mr. Derek Lee: I want to pick up on a term used in your presentation, where you refer to anti-drug matters. That's a class of thought you have presented to us. There are two directorates involved in addressing anti-drug matters. I want to admit up front that anti-drug stuff is a term I had to use two or three or weeks ago myself. We're not clear enough in what we're dealing with here, and I'm not faulting you for it, I'm just saying that's the state of the art. I guess this is what I'm trying to draw out of you now, that the perspective of the Solicitor General's department is really “anti-drug stuff”, without saying which drug, without saying what “anti” is. With the drugs we want to go and get off the street, that's anti-drug stuff. Is there any more clear definition of that?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: Well, no, they don't exist. All I'm indicating is two areas that deal with the drug problem, that have areas of responsibility, corrections dealing with some of the drugs, rehabilitation, the penal institution, and so on. And the other was the police and law enforcement directorate, but that would be a directorate that supports me, for instance, in my dealings with CICAD and so on.

We're interested in youth gangs, youth behaviour. How do we stop that cycle? As a matter of fact, we fund various initiatives, a couple of annual reports, trying to work with the provinces and municipalities to come up with models whereby to try to break the cycle of people getting into youth gangs and drugs and all the things that are part of it. When we look at the problem, we look at a crime problem, guns, money laundering, corruption. Those are all part of this matrix as well. And we try to also fund preventive behaviours, as do the RCMP in some of their things.

I don't want the constricted language to show that our focus is that narrow, it isn't. We obviously have a primary role in the interdiction aspect, but we're cognizant that it's a very complex area. We try to get involved in other kinds of preventive behaviours as well, to avoid the problem.

In drug use, though, the primary responsibility clearly flows to Health Canada. We, for instance, provided some funding to the drug court program that was being run in Toronto. It was run as a pilot, and we've tried to fund that as a pilot. That, I think, is very much a preventive, rehabilitation kind of cycle.

• 1635

Mr. Derek Lee: There's tons of stuff going on, and we've sort of built a receptacle for it here in Canada.

You've referred to Canada's drug strategy. We've had some evidence here that there isn't any longer a Canadian drug strategy. There was an attempt at one a few years ago, but with the budget cutbacks, it's been gutted, so now there really isn't a drug strategy, although there may be something on paper. Do you know where the Solicitor General's activities on this anti-drug stuff fit into Canada's drug strategy? Is it your view that there's clarity, that everybody working knows what the strategy is, knows what components the Solicitor General is working on, and how successful you're being from time to time?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: Clearly, we fit within it, because there's an interdepartmental committee chaired by Health Canada, which the Department of the Solicitor General is a member of, that deals with Canada's drug strategy in respect of follow-up activity—what are we doing in this area? It's not as if we have fallen off the table. The integrated proceeds of crime was an initiative that was funded out of Canada's drug strategy. Part of our solution was to take away the money that was used by those who were profiting from this kind of criminal activity. So there was a strategy, and 13 units across the country still exist.

So it's not as if when the strategy stopped formally, those activities stopped. That started off as a pilot with three sites, and the sites proved to be successful. I believe in 1997 we went from three to 13, so we have 13 of those. The techniques that came out of that are still going ahead. They were funded in part from money out of the Canada drug strategy, and the government later invested in that as a pilot saying, there's a good idea, keep going with it.

As I said, Canada is doing things. The drug court I made reference to I think is an example of innovation in our country. We've looked at other models internationally and we're doing it here with the same philosophy: How do we more effectively address the drug phenomenon? How do we break the cycle? What are the best things we do?

Mr. Derek Lee: I'll just wrap up by saying I know we're doing lots of things and I know there's some success in a lot of the things we're doing. I'm just suffering from a lack of any sense of direction. While we use the term strategy, it's really a list of initiatives. It may not actually be a strategy with a specific goal or set of goals, but a plan, a list of initiatives. That's my sense, but I'll stop there. I thank you for your answers.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Sorenson.

Mr. Kevin Sorenson (Crowfoot, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Kennedy, for coming. If our trips are going to be half as fruitful as our witnesses, we're in for some great trips, because you're a wealth of information. We've had some excellent witnesses so far.

I guess this is your area of specialty, but I'm fairly new around here and I'm wondering whether CSIS is involved at all with gathering intelligence for some of the concerns about our security in regard to drugs?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I think for particular details, you're better off asking Mr. Ward Elcock. I think Chief Superintendent Lesser appeared before this committee and indicated that there was certainly a cross-over between some terrorist groups and narcotic trafficking. I don't think it's a surprise, for instance, that in Afghanistan there's a major producer of heroin. Looking at the Bekaa Valley, there was hashish there and that was coming out of some of those areas that were controlled by groups. Recently, of course, in Colombia there are groups that are involved in cocaine, either production or protection. So there obviously are traditional overlaps between some of these areas, and some groups can finance their activities through drugs. So to the extent that there would be any kind of an overlap, it would be secondary to the mandate of the service that looks at threats to the security of Canada. I'm sure anything pertinent that came up would be shared with the RCMP.

• 1640

Mr. Kevin Sorenson: You're the deputy or senior assistant deputy.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I always get big titles.

Mr. Kevin Sorenson: Are you the deputy directly under Lawrence MacAulay then?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: Madame Jauvin is, and I'm directly under her.

Mr. Kevin Sorenson: All right.

In regard to what we have happening in our country right now, with CSIS and with the RCMP, obviously, the priority is fighting the war on terrorism. Very much like you, I don't know if we should call it a war, because a war, as you stated, would signify that it's going to end, and really we don't believe it ever will end, we always have to be prepared for it. But I guess everyone else calls it a war on terrorism. Anyway, we've seen the RCMP and CSIS numbers being pulled strictly towards the fight against terrorism. With the drug trade being so huge in organized crime, our Solicitor General and our commissioner of the RCMP have stated very clearly that resourcing is limited and there are some things that are being taken off the table, some areas that being put on the back burner. How bad is it with regard to these ongoing investigations on drugs? Are a lot these drug-related crimes part of what's being put on the back burner?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I wouldn't venture to respond to that. Commissioner Zaccardelli would be the best person for you to put that question to. I think he has indicated that they have reallocated some 2,000 police officers in response to the events of September 11.

Mr. Kevin Sorenson: But even in my community we see where the RCMP are stretched. They're being pulled towards this, they're being pulled towards the Kananaskis thing. Is there a chance that organized crime really positions itself, recognizing that it's a venue of opportunity now as far as drugs are concerned? We talk about the venue of opportunity for terrorism, but there's much more that's going to fall through the cracks in the next few years.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I think this is important. A lot of the techniques that are used are generic techniques. As a simple example, if you increase our enforcement capacity at the border through RCMP, customs, immigration, or whatever, what you're doing is increasing that filter, and that filter catches smugglers of alcohol, tobacco, aliens, drugs, or terrorists. In other words, they're generic techniques that capture any kind of this behaviour. So if it's a terrorist coming across with false documentation or something like that, or stuck in the trunk of a car, you're going to pick those people up. So whatever we can do in response to September 11, if the government sees fit to increase the capacity of agencies, will be of a nature to assist us on organized crime, terrorism, and all the areas, including drugs. That's the blessing of that, it will help us in all those areas.

I would not want to go across the border right now if I were a drug smuggler, because the level of attention is such that I might get caught. When the flights came to ground, with the degree of search that was occurring, with all luggage being searched and all passengers being searched, probably people who would have slipped by before were all of a sudden caught now, because there's extra vigilance. That's what I'm saying. That degree of vigilance and any resources there are going to help us across the board for all kinds of public safety issues.

Mr. Kevin Sorenson: You talked about supply and demand problems in other countries related to drugs. You also had your theological point about the stealing of the apple. I'm not sure if I would agree with that. The whole garden was given to Adam and Eve, but they were just told not to partake of it, which would say the supply is there, but there are some things we just don't partake of.

• 1645

The supply and demand matters in other countries can give different problems. When we talk about supply and demand here, we usually think that when the supply is low, the demand and the price are high. In other countries it may be the same financial equation. But really isn't it, when the supply is low, the demand may be high, the cost may be high? If the supply is low, crime will be high. You've been thinking about the financial aspect, but if we use it with crime, supply and demand with secondary crime, if the supply of drugs is low, crime levels will be high, because people will be trying to do everything they can to get that supply. Is that true?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I'm not sure if it is.

Mr. Kevin Sorenson: Second, if the supply is high, the consequence of a high supply of drugs is going to be a high crime rate. We're losing every way, really.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I don't pretend to have done a study, but I suspect it doesn't play out in quite as Cartesian a fashion as you might suggest. I've seen people, for instance, who would use heroin and methamphetamine. One is a powerful narcotic, the other a stimulant, but the modus operandi is the use of the needle, and the mode can be an addictive feature in itself, which I find strange. Some people are multi-drug users. They have a drug problem, but it may not be wedded to a particular drug, so you're going to find unusual patterns of behaviour. So I'm not so sure the dynamic works that way. I think what you're looking at is property crime to support the habit, but there might be other kinds of crime that come from the use of a drug. Alcohol is readily available, but you have a lot of violence from it.

I don't know what you're trying to capture. I think your model is an economic one, say: if you can't work, you need money, and you have to pay more for the drug, then you'll do more breaking and entering or robberies to get the money to do it. But drug use, I think, generates other kinds of antisocial behaviour that expresses itself in other forms of criminal behaviour.

It's very complex, and that's why I am not sure it works quite like the clock—if you do A, then you get B. Others may have studied this, I don't pretend to have. All I have is enough gut reaction to say I don't think it works quite as cleanly as you've said.

Mr. Kevin Sorenson: I have just one other thing, and then I'm done and I've got to go.

Is Canada a benchmark? Are we the hemispheric success story? I think one of the things you said was, we have a problem, but it's nothing like in other countries. Is there a huge need for us to be studying drugs, in your opinion, or are we just maybe a success story that should be put on a pedestal—let the world come and look at how well we've done it here?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: The risk is in who you compare yourself to. As I said, if you went to a very poor area, you might think you're very wealthy. I don't want to diminish the drug problem in this country, because clearly we do have some significant drug problems. We have a significant AIDS problem because of intravenous drug use in B.C. and so on. We clearly have a growing use now of ecstasy, and I'm not really sure what the consequences of that particular drug will be on people. You have middle-class people using heroin, and you sit back and say, pardon me, why are you using heroin?

Things you wouldn't have thought would occur are there. The very fact that they're there suggests there's a health problem. The others are very significant problems. I think the use of looking at the others is that it shows you that if you don't do something and if you're not effective, you could find yourself migrating to what's happened in some of these countries.

The problem isn't just a health problem with drug use, but it spreads more rapidly into large amounts of money, violence fighting for the money—it's extremely violent in some countries—and the corrupting influence when you get a large amount of money, and that corruption goes into your enforcement and judicial agencies, political apparatuses. Those are almost nightmare scenarios that say whoa, and when you get to that point, how can you pull it back? It's very hard to pull it back.

• 1650

All I'm saying is, I think it's worthwhile for us to look at it. I think we're ahead of them, in that where we have a problem, we have an opportunity to successfully address it. They're examples of where you don't want to be in many cases, and they're trying very hard to fight their way back. They don't have the tools we have, an educated populace, infrastructure, modes of communication, health care systems, and money, to try to address these things as a challenge and make them a priority. If you have no running water, it's pretty hard to make these things a priority. If you don't have an educated population, you don't have the nurses and doctors to treat people. They're at a level where they just can't start, and they have so many other things that are priorities that they can't even address these things in many countries.

That's the challenge. I'm saying we have an opportunity. Therefore, let's do it and do it right, and try to fix it.

Mr. Kevin Sorenson: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you.

[Translation]

Do you have another question, Mr. Ménard?

Mr. Réal Ménard: Can I, Madam Chair?

The Chair: Yes.

Mr. Réal Ménard: I recognize your great kindness.

We must try to understand the extent of the phenomenon we are discussing. Up to now you have not given us any specific numbers on drug trafficking. You were not very generous in terms of statistics but it might be because of the precautionary principle. Could you give us a rough estimation? For instance, when we compare ourselves to the 34 countries of the hemisphere what is our position as concerns drug availability? In other words, is it easier to get drugs in our country, particularly for criminal groups? Is it easier in Mexico? How would you position our country by comparison with the 34 countries of the Americas?

[English]

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I'm sure you've got statistics from CCRA and RCMP; they must have produced that stuff for you, along with the CISC, the criminal intelligence section of the RCMP. I'm sure they have statistics they can make available to you, because the information is there. Certainly, the drug seizures and so on are data that Health Canada captures annually. I've seen those, those data are available, but I don't have them here with me. I haven't looked at the hemispheric report, but I recall that it has annexes in it. I think it actually has some data dealing with production volumes and things of that nature, the size of the crops, cocaine production in any given country. So you can see some of those data, I believe, from the hemispheric report.

I think it's very difficult to compare one country with another, because some countries have very poor data collection; they don't have the infrastructure we have to make the collection. There are some data, I believe, from the UN; UNDCP, I think, produces an annual document, so maybe we could get you copies of that and give it to you, if you don't have it.

Where are we situated? I think I indicated to you that each country's a little different in its drug pattern and drug use. Some countries that were producer countries, like Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Colombia, around that area, are experiencing significant consumption now of cocaine in what they call paste form. It's poor quality, but it doesn't matter, it stays. It's like anything else. If you want to buy a car, you can buy a Mercedes Benz or you can have a Volkswagen or something else. With drugs, there's the refined product that might get sold in North America, and there are some other lower quality, but equally addictive, products they sell locally. After all, the object is to sell it all. These people are very mercantile, and they maximize their profits. Everything is sold to make a profit.

• 1655

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: It is rather surprising that we have no comparison basis while we are investing in organizations like those you referred to. It is not a question but a comment. If I thought that we had some comparison basis, it is because you said in your presentation that member states were encouraged to improve data collection and to share this information. Anyway, we have so little data.

Earlier, I was surprised to hear what you said about marijuana. You said that in the 1970s the potency of marijuana was not as high as in 2000. When Senator Nolin appeared before this Committee—I am sure that you will remember this, Madam Chair—we were distributed a document quoting a report in the Lancet, a very prestigious medical journal of Great Britain, stating that marijuana consumption had no negative effects even in the long term, according to very credible medical evidence.

Obviously, our Committee will have to find the means to reconcile those two different opinions. I remember that during our debate in the House, one of our colleagues, Mrs. Elsie Wayne, who probably never came very close to marijuana, had used as her main argument the risk of negative health effects. You are saying before this Committee that marijuana is much more potent, much more harmful in 2000, 2001 and 2002 than it was in the 1970s.

[English]

Mr. Paul Kennedy: With reference to your first question, the purpose of the multilateral evaluation mechanism was to create baseline data. So the report we have is the first report from the 34 countries that creates baseline data. It's the first of its kind, I believe, in the world. I haven't looked at it recently, but that is the commencement point, and from there on we're to be measuring other countries in respect of performance. There are your baseline data, this is what you're doing, here are your recommendations. Can you do these things? If you do them, they should help move the figures up with age of consumption, I guess, down with the size of the problem.

The other thing is on strength. I don't pretend to be a scientist. It's a scientific question as to the effect of tetrahydrocannabinol. I won't speak to it. A scientist should provide advice to you in that regard.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: But you said earlier that according to your investigations, the THC content of marijuana was higher in 2000 than in the 70s and you stated that it was 15 per cent higher.

[English]

Mr. Paul Kennedy: There are, as I think you've probably heard, three areas in the country. There's B.C. bud, I think it is, Quebec gold, and in Manitoba I think they call it wacko weed or wheelchair weed—I think it's sufficiently strong that you need a wheelchair to get around. These are described as being sufficiently attractive that they sell for anywhere up to $5,000 or $6,000 a pound. It would be passing strange to pay that unless there were some reason for it.

The drugs that are seized...

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: You could send some samples to the Chair.

[English]

Mr. Paul Kennedy: Possession is against the law.

Health Canada has laboratories, and one of the things they can do, in addition to assessing the nature of the drug, is to assess the potency of the drug, and the activating ingredient in marijuana is tetrahydrocannabinol, THC. So you can assess at what level of purity it is. Canada apparently produces—I guess we're good farmers—some of the best marijuana in the world, some of the highest potency marijuana in the world. For that reason, it is attractive, and those are 3 areas that are producing, apparently, a very high quality drug.

You'll have to talk to a scientist about the effect of drugs of that purity upon the human body, physiology, in both the short and the long term. I don't pretend to know, but what I have indicated here about the purity is a well-known fact.

The Chair: Just before we go to Mr. Lee, I have a couple of question for you, if that's okay.

• 1700

First, it's very interesting how we relate to other countries, but frankly, if Canadians aren't satisfied, it doesn't really matter. No matter how we rate, we're spending a lot of money on a lot of activities, and really it seems, especially from our presentations yesterday, that we don't really know what we're buying—and that's not the THC level I'm talking about.

You mentioned in your presentation that you're co-chair of the Canada-U.S. cross-border crime forum. I'm not sure if you're aware, but there's a pretty active group, the Canada-U.S. Interparliamentary Group. Even some of the debate on the issues Mr. Ménard was talking about, whether or not we could stand down a little on marijuana in this country, drives those poor American politicians right round the bend. So it would be really helpful if on your Canada-U.S cross-border crime forum, at a very minimum, we added the two co-chairs from each country of the Canada-U.S. Interparliamentary Group, so that they can be active participants and understand more about the issues that are there—that's a senator and a congressman from the states and a senator and an MP from Canada. I don't know if there's a process for that, and perhaps you can tell me when their next meeting is, so I can try to get our guys on that.

Border issues are really important to that committee and to all of us, and the perception seems to be bigger than the reality. You mentioned that you've got these integrated border enforcement teams in Vancouver, New Brunswick, and near Cornwall. If they're so successful and there's such a need, why aren't they at Windsor and Detroit? Why aren't they in Manitoba and North Dakota?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: What you have to bear in mind is that the first one was set up just by police officers as a pilot, to see if it would work. They were reallocating their own resources. Clearly, any time you want to expand that model, you have to take away from something else. So whether or not we expand those models depends on proving to others that this is an efficient way to do it. And clearly, when we put those things in place, we draw in provincial and municipal resources, and they'll sometimes say, if we want to play, would you help pay our costs? And it's one where we have to have a dialogue with the Americans, because we have to get them to agree that a site is worthwhile.

If money, I suppose, were no object, there are other sites across the country that would clearly be of interest to us. The first one started off in B.C. because there was a flow of drugs across the border, and they extended the maritime area. The Massena-Cornwall area is quite well known for cross-border smuggling activity.

With reference to your comments, along the Windsor corridor area there's a huge amount of commercial traffic and so on that goes across, so it would clearly be one high on the level of consideration.

The Chair: Within your budget for IBET is there an evaluation element? According to the researcher we had yesterday, that's part of the problem, that nobody is building into the programs they're putting in place an evaluation of the program.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: In programs where we get the money, we do put in evaluation. Treasury Board is very strict. For instance, when we had our integrated proceeds of crime units, those were evaluated annually, and we're doing a five year wrap-up. We've got money for organized crime, and we have to do an evaluation for that and describe what the results are. The IBETs are something we've just done ourselves, it wasn't something they gave us money to do.

The Chair: Is your evaluation based on process or on outcomes?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: Outcomes, the results. What do you mean by process?

The Chair: Is everybody happy? Did we consult with everybody?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: No, we're outcome people.

• 1705

The Chair: You are on a million national committees, and I thought it interesting that you give more prominence to the one focused on organized crime. If we solve the organized crime problem, or at least make some more serious inroads, will we address the drug problem in Canada?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: When we do our report—and probably you'll see it—we have indicated there are about five or seven areas of major concern in organized crime activity, and drugs are involved in there, so that's clearly important. The committee we put in place, the national coordinating committee on organized crime, a deputy ministers committee, is the one that led to the recommendations you find in the Bill C-24 that's before the House now. So there's a direct link between the activities of that group and what you see in the legislative issues. These are techniques the police require to do these things, and if you do these things, it makes us more efficient in fighting organized crime, and that will help us with drugs.

The Chair: Okay.

You are a participant in the assistant deputy ministers committee on substance abuse. How often do they meet?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: That committee I don't go to. I have a DG who goes to that. I'd say it was meeting about every two or three months. You have to remember, once you've launched some of your initiatives—and that's what I was talking to Mr. Lee about—like the innovative proceeds of crime, you test the model. Is the model effective, and where do you go with the model? You're not going to be sitting around on the enforcement side every day coming up with a new idea, otherwise you're like a bumblebee dancing around from flower to flower. Some of these things take a fair amount of time to analyse—put them in place, let them run, see what their efficiencies are, and then adjust your models. Even when we pass laws, we find the behaviour of criminals changes to try to get around the laws, so we're always adjusting.

The Chair: I just have had some opportunity to participate in Senator Landon Pearson's committee on the sexual exploitation of children, and when you bring all those people who provide components of dealing with the problem together, you actually get this great creative energy, not so much to develop new programs, but to actually realize what's in place. So you can say to this person across the table, oh, right, actually, with what you're doing on this initiative, we've already got part of that, let's work together and be more collaborative. Getting it all on the table takes a long time.

I am concerned that there isn't a senior enough focus within each of the departments that are responsible. There are some who would suggest that nobody really in Canada is responsible for the drug issue and that if we had a drug czar or a minister of drugs, we would be getting the kind of focus we need in this country to solve the problem.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: First, I am not sure if the drug czar works. The Americans have had a terrorism czar, they have a cyber-crime czar, they have a drug czar. I'm not really sure how it works.

In Canada we have much more of a cascading kind of approach, with responsibilities at municipal, provincial, and federal levels. As well, among departments every one has a different part of the pie, so it's very much a mosaic thing. To have one person be drug czar and try to control things, you're into the Health mandate, you're into the Solicitor General mandate, God knows where else you'd be, and you have to reach down, as I indicated, into provincial and municipal governments.

The key thing, I think, is to try to get people together, so collectively, when they do their pieces, they're doing them effectively and efficiently, all pursuing the same objective. So rather than one horse, you've got a team of horses, and the object is to try to get everyone running in the same direction.

For instance, with the committee I chair, the ADM committee on public safety, I'll have about 15 different agencies and departments, 40-some people who want to sit on it, but I have to shape it according to what the issues are, invite people for a particular topic, and then say, you're the interested group, what's the issue here? Who's doing what? How do we coordinate our efforts?

From my experience with South America and CICAD, I see money going from a department to this country to help there, I see money from another department going over here to help intelligence, another bit on corrections, another bit on firearms, teaching the legal system, and stuff like that. What I've asked is for each department to tell me what it is doing in the hemisphere. I want us as a collective to look and see what we are doing. Is that strategic? How does that help that country, but also how does it help Canada? We're dealing with the transborder phenomenon in crime. There may be a country that is particularly vulnerable, that's a transit or source country. If we help them, we help us.

• 1710

That may be the kind of synergy you're talking about, but that's also the kind of thinking we bring to the table. I bring it in the context of the enforcement, but at the same time, I want to know what CIDA is doing in health protection down there. Because that is part of what we're doing in CICAD: Do you have nursing? Can we send people down to help the nurses learn these things? And we're paying for these kinds of things. That kind of dialogue actually does occur. At least, I know it occurs on my committee. Health, obviously, have a committee they chair on the strategy.

The Chair: Finally, there's a document that was prepared for the UN General Assembly special meeting on drugs. Are you familiar with that?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I've seen various reports, but I see so many reports. Do you want a copy, or do you want to quiz me on it?

The Chair: I read it and I thought, wow, isn't that pretty. It was an extraordinary disappointment—lack of hard facts, it just sounded as though everybody was holding lots of meetings and had everything under control. I found it shockingly devoid of any real hard facts. I don't know if that's something that would come out of some of the work you are doing, but I would suggest that pretty documents are not necessarily what we're looking for, and some real action would be a little more helpful.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: Well, I think what we're doing in CICAD is down-to-earth, pretty pragmatic, and hopefully, if you can look at it, it'll give you some sense. Countries aren't shying away from the nature of the problem, there's admission that they have a problem, they want to fix the problem, and we're collaborating to fix it.

The Chair: Are we listed as a supply country?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: We have a particular problem, obviously, in marijuana. We do export marijuana, but that's about the only one we really tend to ship out. We also, as does the United States, have a problem with chemical drugs, because we can manufacture, we've got the skill base, and we've got the chemicals for it. One of the challenges we've had recently is chemical precursors and what we should be putting in place in order to track those and keep better control of them, because they are used in manufacturing methamphetamine and other drugs.

Clearly, we've got problems and we have to fix those problems, and that's the attitude every one of those countries has taken. They're all saying, we've got problems, and part of ours is part of your problem. We're going to fix ours, and if you can help us fix some of them, so much the better. We're going to work cooperatively. So we've taken a very pragmatic approach to our problem. There's no fluff.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Lee.

Mr. Derek Lee: Thank you.

Your questioning has just brought us back to what I wanted to ask a follow-up question on. It appears to me that aside from all the designer acronyms, the strategy by acronym, and all that—I'm sorry, it's Thursday afternoon, and most MPs get cynical by this time of the week—

The Chair: You want to see his filing drawer.

Mr. Derek Lee: One of the elements of your submission relates to MEM, and that actually, for what little I know now—and I'm sure we'll learn more—sounds quite rational and forward-looking. I have two questions to confirm whether my perception is correct or not.

Did we design our own evaluation form? Did we do our own for Canada, Colombia the one for Colombia, and so on? And if we did, who did? How collaborative was the design of our own report card? Because it looks like a strategy in evolution, a strategy base, a plan base, and so that would be very important. I assume we have no product out of that yet. We might have the initial document, but if we had a product, we might want to see it.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: It was a document created by consensus. The then Deputy Solicitor General of Canada was asked to chair the meeting, Jean Fournier, with 34 countries, using experts who were hired, scientists, behavioural pharmacologists, supplemented obviously by other technical experts, to create what the actual indicia were, what kinds of data we needed, looking at the five areas that I talked about. That was then agreed to by all the countries, so that we had one evaluation mechanism.

• 1715

I ended up chairing it. That was then used to go out and get all the reports back from countries, which were analysed independently by experts. Each country had to pick an expert to add into a corporate pool. That expert would not participate in the assessment of the data from Canada and would not create Canada's report card. The report card would be done by other experts analysing those data. So there isn't a self-analysis bias. Our corporate resource, though, would sit and do an analysis of Argentina or Brazil or some other country. Then the experts as a body created a hemispheric report from all the aggregates, the data they produced.

I was then asked to chair the second working meeting to look at that document, with all the criteria and indicia, and say, what was our experience? Did it work, didn't it work? We asked the question, we didn't get the data we wanted, or didn't have the right precision.

About six months ago or so I chaired a group of the 34 countries, and we went back and refined those questions, and actually added additional questions, because we're also looking at money laundering and what financial institutions they have to check money laundering, because we know the problem's bigger than drugs.

So we've done that, and when you come up with your 14, for us, 28, for some countries, recommendations, then what we have to do is assess how you have performed with the 14 or 20 you were given. What have you done? So there is an anuual report card to mark your progress against that.

The retooled evaluation then will be used in the next cycle coming out, and then next year the data will come back in. So what you'll have is a cycle: year one, you're assessed against all those criteria and the data come in as analysed; a series of recommendations are made; you're then assessed in the off year as to how you're implementing those recommendations; and then another one in the second year is done to see what progress you made and what kinds of data you have. Bear in mind, with some countries the recommendation might be to put a process in place to allow you to collect the data, because they may not even have that.

So it is very pragmatic, and it's a tool that's adjusted or tweaked to give us data we need as policy people to say, is it working? What are we doing right or wrong? What steps should we be doing to improve our situation?

Mr. Derek Lee: Is that document in place now?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: Yes.

Mr. Derek Lee: Have we seen that?

The Chair: He's going to give it to us.

Mr. Derek Lee: Thank you.

The Chair: Is one of the 14 recommendations to work on prevalence of drug use in Canada? My supplementary question would be, since we haven't done any survey since 1994, how would you know if you're meeting that target?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: You'll have a copy of it, but for Canada—this is just to illustrate—they want us to, for instance, determine the average age of the first use of drugs other than cannabis and alcohol; determine the annual incidence of new drug users nationally; continue the evaluation of the drug court program; develop a national monitoring centre on drug abuse, in order to gather information on federal, territorial, provincial, and municipal levels, including information about NGO administered programs; continue to provide assistance with other countries with respect to drug efforts—we get some of that because we can reach out and help other countries; develop a system to estimate and monitor Canada's cultivation.

One of the problems we have is that we know we're pulling this stuff up, but how extensive is it? There's a lot of indoor cultivation using hydroponics. With a satellite you can go over and map out fields of cultivation. It's hard to do it with indoor cultivation.

They also want us to continue the destruction of synthetic drug processing facilities; develop regulations for the control of chemical precursors—one of the things I told you about was that Canada hadn't complied with that, and that's one of the things Health Canada is putting a mechanism in place to do; establish a mechanism to possibly identify weapons seized in relation to drug trafficking—one of the big concerns a lot of jurisdictions are looking at is the prevalence of violence and how that ties back into the drug problem.

• 1720

It's an illustration. You can look and see that we haven't been shy. There are things we know we have to do, because someone is telling us what the lacunae are in our system. If you're miles ahead of anyone else, it doesn't mean you can't improve. This is all relative, but we have things to improve, and we've been given things we're going to have to comply with.

The Chair: Mr. Kennedy, you're going to have a problem with, first, drug use and the general level of substance abuse, because there is no survey in Canada.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: These were things they recommended we address because we have a problem.

The Chair: When do you have to report?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: We have to report back this year. Obviously, some of these things have to unfold. We want to hold people accountable, so we're being held accountable as well to the Organization of American States, and they'll make comments upon our success or failure in implementing those things. If those are things you feel we should have that we don't have, maybe that'll find its way into your recommendations.

The Chair: How are you going to get a budget to implement your program?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: These are things, obviously, Health Canada will have to struggle with because that's in their area—and they're part, by the way, of the delegation I head.

The Chair: Right. What month are you supposed to report in?

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I'll be going down this week, and I expect the reports will be finalized in the next month or so.

The Chair: Well, start writing out “we have no idea”. That'll be the end of the paragraph, because there isn't a survey, so you won't know.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I've indicated to you that these are things that are identifying for us a problem: you don't have those data. The other 33 countries are telling us, we think you should have those data.

The Chair: Right.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: So they've told us to do it. We have to find a way to do it.

The Chair: It's going to be interesting.

Mr. Derek Lee: They're working on it.

The Chair: No, it's great. You may have just found the key to unlocking the money for fulfilling the obligation, because the Canadian agencies and people who are working on these issues are saying Canada's not doing the basic minimum. How are we supposed to be working on our issues? Everyone keeps thinking it's someone else's problem or that there isn't enough money or something, but surely, we have a great responsibility internationally. That may just unlock the dough.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: Yes, we are not being soft, it's not fluff. This is a serious venture by the Organization of American States and the countries to hold ourselves accountable in this area and to produce results that will, hopefully, move things ahead.

The Chair: This has been good. I'm glad we stayed until the end.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: We'll try to get the questionnaire for you—I think you want the questionnaire as well.

The Chair: Yes.

We thank you very much, and we wish you good luck with all the work you're doing on the post-September 11 stuff, on the organized crime stuff, and on the drug issue. We really appreciate your sending Karen Kastner to make sure we're on track, and I'm sure we'll get good feedback. We are looking for some solutions, and we're always looking for different departments we could help. So if you have specific recommendations, we'd be happy to have them from you as well.

Mr. Paul Kennedy: Thank you for your patience.

The Chair: Thank you very much for agreeing to come today and for encouraging us to have you come today—a little push-pull syndrome.

Before I leave, I made a little note to myself: “Oh my goodness, I don't think Volkswagens are necessarily the example of cheap—perhaps if it was lower in price”.

Mr. Paul E. Kennedy: Not any more.

The Chair: Quality, but...

Mr. Paul Kennedy: I was back with the 1960s example.

The Chair: Yes, when it was a cheap car—and those are still on the road in most of the countries you are visiting.

Thank you very much. This meeting is adjourned.