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]

Wednesday, October 3, 2001

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[English]

The Chair (Ms. Paddy Torsney (Burlington, Lib.): I'd like to call this meeting to order, with the aid of several colleagues.

We are very pleased to have before us Chief Superintendent Bob Lesser, officer in charge of the RCMP's drug enforcement branch; Ross Toller, director general of Correctional Service Canada's offender programs and reintegration; and Julie Keravel, who is CSC's director of security information and emergency management.

To all of you, we know you're under tremendous stress these days, and we appreciate you taking the time to come to our committee.

I think we've set it up so that you're going to do presentations one after the other, and then we'll go to questions.

Ross, are you first?

Mr. Ross Toller (Director General, Offender Programs and Reintegration, Correctional Service Canada): No, Bob is first.

The Chair: Bob is first.

Thank you, Mr. Lesser.

Chief Superintendent R.G. (Bob) Lesser (Officer in Charge, Drug Enforcement Branch, Federal Services Directorate, Royal Canadian Mounted Police): Thank you very much. We certainly appreciate the opportunity to be able to address this committee on what we consider a very urgent and very important matter.

[Translation]

First of all, I would like to tell you that we are having our PowerPoint presentation translated. As soon as it is ready, we will have copies available.

[English]

Hopefully we'll cover most of the points provided to us as an indication of the interests of the committee.

First of all, just as a general overview, the mandate of the RCMP is to enforce laws, prevent crime, and maintain peace, order, and security. In particular within Canada's drug strategy—and I understand Health Canada did a presentation earlier today on drug strategy—there are a number of main platforms within the framework. The RCMP's involvement in the drug strategy is primarily in prevention programming, enforcement and control, national coordination, and international cooperation.

To provide a bit of a global perspective on the illicit drug situation out there—this is from the UNDCP report, or the United Nations International Drug Control Programme report—and to give you a bit of a sense of things, 70% of the global opium production came from Afghanistan in the year 2000, and about 23% was from Myanmar. The global cultivation of the coca bush is relatively stable, although, with a lot of assistance from the United States, it has shifted from being produced in Bolivia and Peru and has switched over a bit more into Colombia. The pressure in Bolivia and Peru has caused greater production within Colombia.

With the UN, there is an absence of reliable information on global cannabis cultivation, but the seizure data that they do have indicate there was a 35% increase for herbal cannabis in 1999 worldwide. Their trafficking figures and 1999 seizures show one-third of all drugs seized are in North America, a quarter of the drugs seized are in western Europe, a fifth are in Asia, and a tenth are in South America. ATS, or amphetamine-type stimulants—more commonly known as ecstasy primarily, but this also used to be speed or methamphetamine—more than doubled in 1999 worldwide. Cannabis herb rose by a third, and opiates rose by 14%. Cocaine seizures fell by about 6% globally.

The ten-year trend from 1990 to 1999 shows that amphetamine-type stimulants, ecstasy, etc., are growing at an annual average rate of 30% in increased seizures, compared to about 6% for cannabis, 5% for heroin, 4% for cannabis resin, and 3% for cocaine. Very clearly, ATS and ecstasy are far and away out front of all other drugs as far as increase in use is concerned.

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On consumption, the UNDCP estimates that 180 million people consume illicit drugs. This includes 144 million for cannabis, 29 million for amphetamine-type stimulants, 14 million for cocaine, and 9 million worldwide for heroin. The strongest increases recorded in 1999 worldwide were for cannabis and ATS consumption.

Certainly after September 11, this is opportune, but I thought perhaps the committee would be interested in knowing this information. It's from testimony that was provided before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary on December 13, 2000, quite a ways before September 11 of this year.

According to the U.S. reports and the testimony, the IRA and the Real IRA are allied with Middle Eastern narcotics industries to support their activity. The Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, is alleged to traffic in narcotics and to tax narcotic traffickers. According to French authorities, they are responsible for smuggling 80% of the heroin going into the city of Paris.

Hezbollah is involved to a significant extent in importing drugs from the Biqaâ Valley. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are involved in drug trafficking. The Colombia Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FARC, are reported to tax traffickers and engage in cocaine processing.

According to the U.S. testimony, the Taliban taxes all aspects of the drug trade. For the opium harvest, it's 12%. For heroin labs, it's $70 per kilogram produced. They charge for permits at a rate of $250 per kilo to transport heroin throughout their country, with the net income estimated to be about $75 million annually.

Very clearly, for a number of years now, there has been a lot of information regarding narco-trafficking, the connection between organized crime, drug trafficking, and terrorism.

I'll give you an overview of the Canadian situation, but the presentation we have provided in both French and English provides a more detailed overview of drugs in Canada. I won't go into too much detail there. I'll just leave that for your perusal later on.

The drug trade continues to be a major source of revenue for most organized crime groups. Estimates are that approximately 80% of their funding is from drug trafficking. Ecstasy has joined cannabis, heroin, and cocaine as the most popular commodities within Canada. The Canadian illicit drug market has the potential to generate proceeds between $4 billion and $18 billion at street level. The Organized Crime Agency of British Columbia has estimated that the B.C. bud industry is valued at about $6 billion annually.

In terms of our estimates of what is smuggled into Canada annually, we estimate that 100 tonnes hashish comes into Canada, along with 15 tonnes of cocaine, and 6 tonnes of liquid hash; that approximately 800 tonnes of marijuana are produced within Canadian borders; and that 1 to 2 tonnes of heroin are used annually by addicts in Canada.

To give a quick overview of some organized crime groups and their involvement in the drug trade—but it's important to note they're involved in much more than the drug trade—Asian-based organized crime groups continue to monopolize the heroin industry. They are also involved in cocaine and marijuana, and have recently diversified into the ecstasy trade. Italian-based organized crime groups are involved in high-level drug importation, in joint ventures with other organized crime groups, and in laundering of drug proceeds. Colombian-based traffickers continue to control much of the cocaine trade in eastern and central Canada. Outlaw motorcycle gangs, most notably Hell's Angels, remain exclusively involved in importation and distribution of cannabis, cocaine, and chemical drugs. Of course, there are also independent Canadian and foreign entrepreneurs involved in various links of the supply chain throughout Canada. At the international level, Israeli-based and Dutch-based groups are responsible for most of the ecstasy that is smuggled or imported into Canada from Europe.

I'm going to go to an Ontario student survey. I'd like to present to you what is happening nationally, but, regretfully, there has been no national survey in Canada since 1992 because of a lack of funds. There are some provinces, Ontario being the prime one, that have continued to do use surveys throughout the years.

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What Ontario has released from its 1990s study is most disturbing. There has certainly been an upswing in drug use, and not just in illicit drugs. As reported by students, heavy drinking increased from 18% to 28% between 1993 to 1999. Cigarette consumption has more than doubled. Cannabis use has more than doubled in high school and elementary grades. Ecstasy has gone from 0.6% of the students to to 5%. That's an amazing increase in the use of ecstasy. Hallucinogenics use has increased from 3% to 14%. And the number of those using four or more drugs has increased from 8% to 27%.

Very clearly, there's a trend in Canada—and I'm not just focusing on illicit drugs—to turn to drugs more and more. Anecdotally, from information that we have primarily from needle exchange programs, whereas in the 1960s and 1970s people would do drugs to be able to have a better vision, to hear music better, to hear sounds better, now more and more youths are turning to them as a way of escape.

Unfortunately, the only decrease that was noticed in drug use was amongst those who are reporting they are not using drugs. That decreased from 36% to 27%, so there are a lot fewer school children who aren't using drugs now. Only 27% aren't using drugs. I don't know if any of you have children or grandchildren, but to me that's an alarming figure.

From 1997 to 1999, averaging grades 7, 9, 11, and 13, there has been an increase in uncontrolled reported use of cannabis from 6% to 11%. That's almost a doubling of the people who say they have uncontrolled use of cannabis. Those who have attempted to reduce their use have increased from 31% to 43% of the people in schools. That's how many are trying to decrease their use of drugs. Those indicating they have three problem-use indicators increased from 2% to 7%. Again, I think those are alarming figures when we take a look at the youth and the future of our country.

Why has there been this sharp increase in consumption? The authors of the Ontario study suggested three areas. One is a weakening in perception of risk of harm. In other words, people think there's less harm in doing drugs. From 1991 to 1999, the number of those who thought there is a great risk in trying cocaine decreased from 43% to 34%. Clearly, there's a thought that maybe doing coke isn't that bad. Those thinking there was a great risk in regular use—not experimental, but regular use—of marijuana decreased from 73% to 52%.

Another reason given by the researchers—and this was done by the Addiction Research Foundation of Ontario—is a perception of a weakening moral disapproval of drugs. In other words, according to our students out there, they think there's more and more approval from people to use drugs. Disapproval of cocaine dropped from 55% to 42%. Disapproval of regular marijuana use dropped from 61% in 1991 to only 43% in 1999.

Also, if there's a perceived increase of availability—and this brings in the important role of enforcement within Canada's drug strategy—they say that will also lead to increased use.

Of those in grade 13 from 1991 to 1999 reporting that cocaine was easy to obtain, it was 14% previously, but now 20% think it's easy to obtain coke. In terms of those who think cannabis is easy to obtain, 29% thought it was easy to obtain ten years ago, but 53% now think it's easy to obtain.

So that is from Ontario, and I would certainly suggest it probably reflects a lot of the country. I think it gives you a good view of where drugs are with the important people of the country: with our youth in the schools.

What is the RCMP approach to drug issues? We have said for many years that the best response to drug abuse lies in the potential of awareness and prevention activities. However, only in an environment of reduced supply will prevention activities succeed. We see those who import, produce, and traffic as an enforcement and criminal justice system issue. Those who are addicted to illegal substances we see primarily, although not exclusively, as a health issue.

The illegal status of a substance is only a hindrance to criminal organizations. Profit is the motivating factor. There are all kinds of of examples of very legal commodities that are the source of a lot of profit for organized crime. Tobacco, cigarettes, Internet fraud, and stock market manipulation are just some examples.

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How do the RCMP decide what we do? How do we target our resources? Our slide actually was supposed to simplify the process, but maybe I can try walk you through it. You should have seen the complicated version.

We have a variety of different groups, from drug enforcement areas, to criminal, to customs and excise, to immigration, to proceeds of crime, to uniform work. Through their day-to-day activities, they develop information. That information is funnelled to our intelligence section. They're responsible for collecting information, analysing it, and turning it into intelligence in order to give us both strategic and tactical intelligence. It's based on that intelligence that we commit our resources. From the intelligence, we develop a threat assessment. We've called that process of looking at 29 indicators the Sleipnir model, for lack of a better term.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

C/Supt Bob Lesser: That's apparently some Norse god, on a horse probably, with a mounted...oh, anyway.

We develop a threat assessment. We take a look at how widespread an organization is. Are they local, national, or international? How complex is their organization? Are there two or three, or do they have an hierarchical structure? What is the threat to the Canadian financial economy and industry? What is the threat to the security of the nation? How hard is it to investigate? How insulated are they? It goes over those 29 factors, and then we come out with our top priorities.

These priorities are then discussed by the operational commanders throughout the country and they set what we call national operations priorities—and I'll share those with you in a minute. From these very general strategic priorities, that information is then subjected to a further intelligence examination, in which we then take a look at which groups we choose. For example, if we choose outlaw motorcycle gangs, which gangs do we choose, and which specific chapters do we choose to target? We can only target what we have resources for.

This is all then rolled up into operational plans, and we take a look at what the budget is that we need for those plans. The final discussion is in February, when we reset our budgets and our priorities, and come the new fiscal year on April 1, we're ready to go with the tactical plans we have set in place, the targets we're going to work on, and the budgets we have to do those operations.

The current for this year is strategic national targets. This is not just for drug enforcement, it is for the RCMP generally, and it includes not just federal officers, but provincial and contract members at the municipal level as well. Those targets include outlaw motorcycle gangs; Asian-based organized crime groups; Italian-based organized crime groups; and eastern European-based organized crime groups. This demonstrates that the high-threat areas are in those groups also involved in drug trafficking, as well as immigrant smuggling, as well as credit-card fraud, and lists and lists of other different types of serious crime.

What does the RCMP have in the way of strictly federal enforcement resources? I don't know whether I chuckle sometimes or cry a bit when people talk about Canada's war on drugs. Of course, as you know, that has never been our policy. When you take a look at the resources that we have, this year we are pretty well back to where we were in resource levels in 1987. There was an increase in l988 from the drug strategy that happened in 1987. Then we looked at a further increase as proceeds of crime—which used to be the anti-drug profiteering program—got additional resources to deal with the proceeds of crime. We then went through program reviews 1 and 2, and except for a slight blip in 1997—and certainly in 1997 and 1999 you can see a significant decrease in resources from program review—by and large, we have stayed level since then.

Where are our resources situated across Canada? In brackets is the number of resources that are federal resources geared strictly toward prevention activities, not enforcement. You can see the bulk of the resources are in British Columbia, Ontario, and the province of Quebec. There is representation in all the provinces and all the territories, although it's obviously very small for some because of their size, with four in each of the territories except for Nunavut; and six in P.E.I. We have seven in headquarters on enforcement, and two in crime prevention. That is our national complement of resources at the Ottawa headquarters.

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With those resources, what have we done? What are the seizures? By and large, except for the last year, heroin has remained stable—and I'll say right now that some of these seizures don't relate to work necessarily done in that year. A lot of our investigations take two or three years to do. Something seized in 2000 likely started in 1997 or 1998.

So by and large, heroin has been consistent. Cocaine has bounced around, but seizures of it are consistent, by and large. LSD has dropped significantly, from 25,000 hits seized in 1997, to about 2,000 in 2000. Unfortunately, that has been overtaken by the significant growth in ecstasy. You can see there were 10,000 tabs seized in 1997, while last year there were well over 2 million tabs seized. That's a significant increase, and it reflects what the student surveys were telling us.

As far as just the leaf seizure is concerned, marijuana has reduced by more than 50%, from 50,000 kilograms to 21,000 kilograms. On the other hand, the seizure of marijuana plants has increased. It has a little less than doubled. This is a reflection of two things. One is that we're targeting the actual growing operations at the front end—where they are being produced—as opposed to picking up the baggies at the far end. And for B.C. and some of the other areas, in Ontario and Quebec, it certainly shows the massive increase in home-grown cannabis is really quite unbelievable.

As you can see, hashish has increased as well, but it has sort of been up and down, although it was significantly higher in 2000 than it was in some of the previous years. Hash is usually seized in multi-tonne shipments. They're usually motherlode operations in which big sea-going ships are seized with container loads. That's why you see some fairly significant differences from year to year. It depends whether or not there are one or two motherlodes seized. It's not unusual to seize four, five, six, or eight tonnes of it at a time.

Liquid hash has increased, but liquid hash is primarily an eastern Canadian phenomenon. Liquid hash isn't popular in the States, and it's not really popular from Manitoba west.

On persons charged by the RCMP, I just provided a general outline here. Our seizure stats are certainly available for those who want to take—

Mr. Randy White (Langley—Abbotsford, Canadian Alliance): You said seizures. Are there convictions along with those, or are they strictly seizures?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: I'm sorry, no. These are persons charged.

The last one was seizures, what we've seized.

Mr. Randy White: And each one would be a charge?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: The next one is persons charged. We don't track persons convicted, just those charged. I'm sorry. You're quite right.

Mr. Randy White: Okay, thank you.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: The bottom line is that, of the total for all charges—possession, trafficking, and importation—the majority of those charges, which have been fairly stable over the years, are for trafficking in heroin. Similarly for cocaine, those figures represent all offences related to cocaine, but they are primarily trafficking charges in cocaine. You can see there was a bit of an increase of about 500 charges in 2000. And we've also included marijuana possession, because that tends to be an interesting one that people want to focus on. You can see there was a significant peak in 1990. It dropped around 1998, for reasons of which I have no idea, and it went back up to a peak in 2000.

I think these figures do two things. One, they really just reflect the drug survey, the student survey, on the use and acceptance rates. And there's more out there, people are using it more, it's more acceptable to people, and police are running across it more often.

I will say, though, that as much as people have suggested the police target simple possession—someone with a few grams of marijuana—that is certainly not the information and it is not our belief. There was a study—and I only have one copy in French and English, but I can perhaps leave it if that would be useful—in which we took a look at a preliminary report on cannabis done in Ottawa over the years 1996 to 1998, on whether pot users are over-targeted. That was a concern for us, because we certainly didn't want our resources working at that level.

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What we found was that of 96% of the cases looked at within the Ottawa-Carleton area, they were related to other offences. In other words, police officers were stopping cars for speeding or other traffic offences, or there were people complaining about kids in the park or hanging around shopping centres and the police intervened. Charges related to trafficking in drugs were later reduced to simple possession, or people involved in theft or other crimes ended up having a possession charge. So a lot of it was that people had cannabis with them when they were involved in other crimes—and we keep asking why we call it dope....

The Chair: On that last slide, were those only the charges by you guys?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: By the RCMP, yes.

The Chair: So in the provinces where you have provincial responsibility—

C/Supt Bob Lesser: —they include those. Primarily, those are our provincial and municipal resources. There are very few that are just federal charges for simple possession. There are some, but I forget the numbers right now. We looked into that, and a lot of them were picked up by Canada Customs when people were coming into the country. They were just turned over to us and were charged instead with importation or whatever.

Our drug awareness service is an extremely important part of what we do. I started drug enforcement in 1971 here in Ottawa. In 1971, we were going to high schools because we were asked to talk about drugs. We thought it was important to be able to talk to the kids about the dangers of drugs, and we've continued that.

As you can see, we have 31 federal, full-time resources that look after coordination of drug awareness presentations. Of those, 14 were provided through Canada's drug strategy. The remaining number we have taken from enforcement positions and put into prevention because we thought that was so important.

We have a budget of $4 million for drug awareness. That is a very small amount. Unfortunately, though, when you take a look at all the federal money that is provided, my information is that this is the highest amount for pure prevention. Other federal departments are spending a fair bit of money on treatment and rehabilitation, but as far as the front end is concerned—stopping it before it's a problem—our information is that this is the highest in true prevention.

Our members out in the field—primarily uniformed officers—give approximately ten presentations annually to students, athletes, community groups, and parent groups. We are there because we think it's important to be there, because we want to be there. And I think it's equally important to note that there's a void out there, there's a gap. Nobody else is doing it nationally. As much as people say that for every dollar in prevention you save a dollar in health care and enforcement, there is pitifully little money going into preventionin this country.

I'll get off my soapbox now.

In terms of the RCMP drug awareness service, there are different things that we do in the drug awareness service.

The Chair: Sorry, Officer Lesser, but just for the record, it was 10,000 presentations a year.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: Thank you.

One is PACE. That stands for Police Assisting Community Education. We had contracted with the Nova Scotia Addictions Foundation when it existed. They developed a program whereby the police were part of a group of people that included pharmacists, school teachers, legal folks, and occasionally addicts, who would go in to talk to the kids about the dangers of different kinds of drugs. Unfortunately, with the cuts of the nineties, we were unable to keep that program up, running, and active. As a result we ended up turning—and I'm not being critical at all—to the DARE program, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program.

We turned to DARE because it's an off-the-shelf program. It comes out of the United States, although there are approximately 50 different countries that use it. It would be nice to have a made-in-Canada program, or at least some kind of blueprint that all provinces could follow, using particular elements of that blueprint for the prevention programs in their schools. Unfortunately, that doesn't exist. And what is also further embarrassing is that to fund even the training of RCMP and other police officers for DARE, the United States has provided funds to the tune of $750,000. There has been no Canadian funding.

From the PACE program, and with the Nechi Training, Research & Health Promotions Institute in Edmonton, we have also developed what we call the Aboriginal Shield Program. That involves the elders and other people within the aboriginal community to keep the circle strong, to provide substance abuse and drug abuse presentations, and to get the communities involved in those kinds of activities. It's a two-way street in that it's designed for the parents. We can give all the presentations we want to the kids, but if they go home and there's abuse in the home, or if there is no safe home environment, those presentations are going to have a minimal effect. So we deal with the parents as best we can.

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Amongst athletes in the last few years, there has been a significant increase in the use of performance enhancing steroids. I think there are approximately 10,000 injection drug users on steroids. We usually think of needle users as those using coke and those using heroin. Unfortunately, some of our top athletes in our schools are injecting with needles and are also subject to the dangers of AIDS, HIV, and hepatitis C.

And we also have programs specifically for drugs in the workplace.

What are we doing in the RCMP and amongst community police within the drug environment at the national level? In addition to working with other Canadian municipal and provincial police departments and the Organized Crime Agency of B.C., we obviously work with a lot of our American counterparts and international counterparts as well. I didn't include that fact in the list, though, because I suspected it would be presumed.

What we work with as well is the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police Drug Abuse Committee. We have representatives there from all federal departments, as well as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

We are part of what is called HEP, or Health and Enforcement in Partnership. The co-chairs right now are Barry King, who is the chair of the CACP Drug Abuse Committee, and Michel Perron, who is the executive director of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. HEP includes health professionals and enforcement professionals, people from addictions, and people from needle exchange programs, getting together to take a look at how can we work better across the country. New Brunswick is probably our best example—and P.E.I. is a pretty good example as well—of where police officers work hand-in-hand with needle exchange programs and other harm-reduction entities, to take a look at what they can do to address drugs in a multi-faceted way.

We work very strongly with the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse—that's a national resource centre for Canada, with funding out of Health Canada—as far as the newest research available nationally and internationally is concerned.

We are part of the Canadian Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use, or CENDU, which is a lot easier. It has fourteen sites across Canada that report on the different admissions to hospitals and different drug trends in the major cities across Canada.

We've been involved in the consultations for marijuana for medical purposes. We're on a federal-provincial-territorial committee on injection drug use. Their report was just released by health ministers last week in St. John's. And I'm on the task group on the Feasibility of Supervised Injection Sites Research Project in Canada.

So we're involved in far more than enforcement and prevention. We try to get involved with dealing with the problems.

On the police community position generally, in 1999, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police resolutions called upon governments to action Canada's drug strategy through demand reduction initiatives, education, and anti-organized crime initiatives; to establish a champion to lead Canada's drug strategy; to undertake research and development of, and legislation to support, drug impairment detection capabilities; and to extablish alternative justice measures for summary conviction in Canada's possession cases.

In 2000, our CACP resolutions followed a similar vein. We called upon governments to position Canada's drug strategy as a national imperative; to demonstrate federal leadership by appointing a champion to lead Canada's drug strategy; and to enact legislation and to support the development capabilities to determine levels of impairment by drugs.

Right now there is no way to determine the impairment level of people driving cars. With the reported increased use by so many people out there, there are no provisions and there is no research to tell anybody how much cannabis causes impairment. There is no definitive research out there that takes a look at cannabis and alcohol combinations. For those living in Ottawa, I think it was three years ago that there was a very tragic accident in which four youths were killed. The father of one of the youths who died is still going to schools here in the Ottawa area to warn people of this.

What the Canadian police community is talking about is the fact that we require an integrated approach that sees all government levels and all communities involved in this.

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If we could just go on to close this, there are two things. This is not about enforcement, it's not about people putting in MCs, and it's not about resources. Those things are part of it, but what this is about is our future. What kind of legacy do we all want to leave behind? Do we want to leave behind a community that's drug-dependent as we're going down that road, or do we want a community that supports healthy lifestyles? I think the choice certainly is up to this committee that's looking at it, and we look forward to your findings.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Officer Lesser.

Mr. Toller or Ms. Keravel.

Mr. Ross Toller: Thank you very much for the opportunity to address the committee. I'm sorry I don't have overheads.

The Chair: My chiropractor is happy that you don't.

Mr. Ross Toller: On April 5, 2000, Correctional Service Canada announced a multi-pronged initiative to address illegal drug use, namely, looking at combatting the supply of drugs in federal institutions; reducing the demand for drugs by federal offenders; and addressing the problem of substance abuse by offenders living in Canadian communities.

Every correctional service in the world has problems with substance abuse among their offenders. Almost seven out of ten federal offenders are assessed at the time of admission as having a substance abuse problem. Approximately 60% report being under the influence of some level of intoxicant during the commission of their crime. We know their drug problem does not stop when they arrive at our doors.

Some studies have shown a 25% report by offenders who indicate pressure to have drugs smuggled into a correctional facility. Almost a third of offenders admit to engaging in injection drug use prior to incarceration, and 11% indicate they have injected since being incarcerated, since being in custody.

Our drug seizures are not at all unlike what you saw from Mr. Lesser's presentation. We have alcohol seizures, marijuana-THC seizures, benzodiazepine seizures—that's the Valium family often associated with relaxation types of drugs—cocaine, miscellaneous pills—which often will be ecstasy—and opiates as the most common types of drugs. The demand for drugs by offenders certainly does threaten the safety and security of our institutions.

As you know, substance abuse or user abuse is a high-risk behaviour associated with the transmission of infectious diseases. The number of federal inmates known to be living with HIV or AIDS reached 200 for the first time in April 1999. That's an increase of nearly 100% since 1994, and it's attributed primarily to an increase in the drug injection population. The number of hepatitis C cases is estimated at about 3,000 members of the inmate population, with rates as high as 70% of those being injection drug users. So, as you can see, our inmate population poses many significant types of challenges.

I had mentioned earlier our multi-pronged approach to addressing these challenges, and it touches on demand reduction and interdiction. Aside from our regular searching functions that include routine and non-routine practices, urinalysis, security, intelligence—including collaborating with police agencies—and surveillance techniques, we have complemented our approach with the introductions of ion scanners scanners to all of our facilities this year. Ion scanners are a tool that we use to detect ions—I guess that's the best way to describe them—on people who would have been in contact with drugs, but I will explain that to you later, hopefully at questioning time.

In addition, we have instituted a drug dog program that will place a drug dog in each site over the next three years. Currently, we have these in place in twelve of our facilities. Those without at this time have the ability to borrow drug dogs from the other sites, as well as from other law enforcement agencies, such as Customs or the police agencies.

We have initiated the concept of intensive support units, where offenders enter into a behavioural contract agreement to remain drug-free. Units include an increased level of urinalysis and searching, combined with programming support. They're currently in operation at fourteen of our facilities, with a plan to have them in every one of our sites by the end of March 2002.

We provide a range of substance abuse programs based on assessed level of need. These are cognitive-based behavioural treatment approaches such as skill development and relapse prevention, harm reduction, counselling, and a continuum of care from institution to the community, including community-based interaction.

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To enhance harm reduction approaches, we provide educational initiatives and counselling through our health care facilities, around such topics as HIV awareness. We provide a voluntary HIV testing program for inmates, and associated treatments. Bleach is provided to inmates, and although this appears to be contradictory to professional practices, it is not. The practice is attributed to the prevention of the spread of infectious diseases.

Furthermore, we have a methadone program for inmates with serious addiction problems. The program is designed to assist inmates who have been in community methadone programs at the time of their arrest. As well, it considers cases on exceptional circumstances when the health of the inmate is considered to be in dire need.

This year, we have opened our national Addictions Research Centre that will help us to learn more about the nature of addiction and how it relates to criminal activity; how best to treat offenders with substance abuse problems; and how best to prevent drug and alcohol addiction in the first place. This in turn will help us to protect the health and safety of all Canadians.

We're spending approximately $200 million to reduce the demand for and the supply of illicit drugs to protect the Canadian public—and I would ask, Madam Chair, if you would allow me a few minutes at the end to just give a little more detail about how we've arrived at that figure.

We are seeing some good results emerging. A 1999 evaluation of the Offender Substance Abuse Pre-release Program indicated that participants had a 13% reduction in readmission, a 29% reduction in new convictions, and a 53% reduction in violent offences during a one-year period on release. A similar evaluation—

Mr. Randy White: Could I just get a clarification? Did you say you're currently spending $200 million just on drug...?

Mr. Ross Toller: That's on our approach to addressing the drug problem. What I want to do at the end, if I could, is come back to just give a little more detail on how I arrived at that figure, because it does warrant an explanation.

Mr. Randy White: Okay, thank you.

Mr. Ross Toller: A similar evaluation of the Choices program showed a 29% reduction in readmissions overall, a 56% reduction in reconviction, and a 50% reduction in readmission for severe substance abusers. An evaluation of the methadone program showed a 16% improvement in the sense that inmates using methadone were less likely to return to custody. Of those who did return, 7% were less likely to have engaged in a new offence.

In urinalysis, the positive rate for random selections was 39%. At the end of the fiscal year 2000-01, the positive rate had dropped to approximately 14%. As well, there is no supportable evidence that our urinalysis program has resulted in inmates moving toward hard types of drugs.

In closing, we still have much more work to do to address this societal issue. We'll continue to work with our criminal justice partners, other domestic and international correctional jurisdictions, our medical communities, and our research approach, in order to contribute to the fundamental goal of public safety for all Canadians.

On the budget, if I may, Madam Chair, it's pretty easy to quantify budget allotment in some cases. For example, if I take our urinalysis program, we identify $3 million directly toward our urinalysis program. If I take our substance abuse core programs, we identify $8 million toward the direct approach of substance abuse. If I look at other types of programming, like psychological counselling, some of the alcohol or AA types of programs, we spend $4 million on that particular program. On the methadone program, we spend $1.5 million.

To talk about the figure of about $200 million, given that close to one in five of our inmates is actually being incarcerated for drug types of offences, we just took our budget as a whole and basically did a pro rata distribution of the dollars. This would include everything like clothing, inmate pay, recreational activities, costs of security, case management programs, etc., all within the giant milieu of the budget, knowing that we would have close to 20% of our population that would be serving time for drug-related offences. We pro-rated it on that basis, and it basically consumes the lion's share of that $200 million.

The Chair: So those other figures are taken out, like the $3 million for urinalysis and all that? Yes? Okay, I think I understand.

Mr. Ross Toller: Yes.

The Chair: Mr. White, for the first round.

• 1920

Mr. Randy White: I wish I had a week to ask questions here, Madam Chair, but I don't. I can only see Mr. Lesser looking at Corrections Canada and wondering how it is that Corrections Canada gets $200 million, while the RCMP gets $4 million and health care gets $33 million.

I'll be critical of Corrections Canada. Corrections Canada does the worst job I've ever seen—and we're going to go through some of that. I'm not a big fan of your drug programs.

I want to ask Mr. Lesser this: I've done a fair bit of research on individuals who are convicted of crimes and drugs. It was with the police that I did this, and we looked at about 180 various cases of certain individuals. I just want to read to you one individual's case—and I can assure you there are a lot more that are worse than this, and you would know that—and I want your opinion as to what you think the problem is here.

This is an individual who, in 1998, had his marijuana growing operation visited. He was caught with $194,000 worth—that's the street value—of marijuana, and $6,000 worth of growing equipment was seized. He was convicted and sentenced to six months in jail.

Now, this same person was recently convicted for selling two pounds of cocaine. In addition to this, his life started in August 1977, with common assault; 1978, disturbance; 1978, failure to appear.... It goes on and on, right through just about every month—possession of stolen property, possession of narcotics, failure to appear, narcotics, narcotics, fraud, narcotics. With each one of these, there's a conviction.

An hon. member: [Inaudible—Editor].

Mr. Randy White: No, it goes from 1978 right up to now.

The penalties are one day, one day, $300 fine, $800 fine, 14 days, one day, stay of proceedings, six months, concurrent three months, 21 days, $1,000, four months. Like many, this guy is basically in and out. You can get the point I'm making here. It continues: possession of narcotics, narcotics, stolen property, income tax, trafficking narcotics, trafficking, failure to appear. On and on it goes: trafficking, trafficking, trafficking, possession, and so on.

Here we have a guy—and there are many more like him—who just has a disastrous record, and at the end of the day, for the last one, this guy got six months for $194,000. Can you put some sanity into this?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: I wish I could.

The answer is that it takes the police to present a good case and to make sure the court understands the significance of those cases. It's for the court to understand that, to find appropriately, and to sentence appropriately. It's for legislation to be put in place that is appropriate.

There are some people now who are involved in major money laundering schemes, but because they haven't personally been involved in violence or because it's their first offence even though they may have laundered millions of dollars dealing with drugs, they are eligible for release after one-sixth of their sentence.

In the presentation, I think we said the answer is enforcement and the entire criminal justice system. Our view is that, although it's always good to try to rehabilitate different people, some people just aren't going to pick up on that really quickly. If our goal is to disrupt or dismantle organized crime, a lot of people have to be put on ice and just be taken out of the system for a significant period of time. Unfortunately, we don't always dismantle or disrupt organized crime. Sometimes we barely disgruntle organized crime. All the systems have to be in place in order to be able to do that.

Mr. Randy White: I would maintain that's why we don't see statistics as much any more on convictions, or why the marijuana statistics seem to be going down. I think it's because your people are giving up. I really do. I think they look at the courts and say it's just not worth it. I've been with police when they should have arrested guys who were just smoking marijuana but had lots more on them. The police just said they'd be back out in a few minutes.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: The courts are clearly sending a message. Whether that's their intent or not, I guess it's a question for the courts.

• 1925

Mr. Randy White: I want to read a statement to Mr. Toller, and it comes from somebody who has been interviewed:

The official federal policy on drug use in prisons is zero tolerance, but the Matsqui doctor tells us as many as eight out of ten prisoners can be stoned on heroin at any one time.

I believe that. I live right next door to Matsqui, and I'm a big critic of it. It's one of the worst prisons I've ever seen for drugs. The prisoners tell you that, and the staff tell you that.

How is it possible that we in Canada could develop a policy on drugs out on our streets and hope to do something effective, when people behind four walls, with barbed wire, guards, and you name it, can't keep drugs out of a prison to the point where inmates are going in clean and coming out addicted?

Mr. Ross Toller: I guess I would point to some of the figures I quoted earlier. We do have a high incidence of people who come in with motivations to have drugs, motivations to use drugs, for a number of reasons. As Mr. Lesser pointed out in his presentation, whether it's profit, whether it's greed, whether it's excitement, whatever it is, they go to great lengths and great pains to move drugs in a number of spectra.

These people have demonstrated in the past that they're not pro-social types of people. We have the lion's share, for want of a better word, in captivity, and many do go to great pains and use creative methods to the extent that they can. As I said, we do take a number of steps through the approaches that we try to use, from interdiction to searches to all the things we try to do to try to stop them. That's combined with all the things we do. The vast majority are coming back to the community, so it's important that we take all the steps we can to try to prevent it.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Toller.

[Translation]

Mr. Bigras, you have seven minutes please.

Mr. Bernard Bigras (Rosemont—Petite-Patrie, BQ): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have several questions.

First of all, your statement regarding the increase in drug use by youths is worrisome. I think the committee should take this into account in devising its approach.

The resources that have been put at your disposal for the fight against drugs and the statement that you made show that to a certain degree, the battle has resulted in failure.

If I understood your chart correctly on the distribution of your resources for cracking down on or preventing drug use, as regards prevention in Quebec, there are only four people involved, whereas 132 work on monitoring. I think that is food for thought, because the strategy that has been implemented to date has not allowed us to reduce drug use, particularly among youths.

My question is the following. Given that, at the very least, there has been an increase in drug use by youths, do you not feel that an approach based on supply rather than demand may not be the best approach?

I know that you have had cutbacks, and you are quite right to say that you will need more resources, but should we not reallocate our resources in order to put more emphasis on prevention rather than reducing the supply?

The Correctional Service example is a good one. Within a microcosm, a small environment where we control everything, we still can't reduce the drug supply to prisoners. Therefore, there is a problem. If within such a microcosm, such an environment, we are unable to reduce the supply, how can we succeed in reducing the supply in society?

Do we not need to change our approach? Of course we have to boost resources, but we also have to act in the area of prevention. Your example is interesting. Through prevention programs, you at Correctional Services have managed to reduce consumption. Is that not the approach to take?

The Chair: Mr. Toller.

[English]

Mr. Ross Toller: I will perhaps try to respond first.

• 1930

I do believe strongly in the notion of prevention. I mentioned something earlier about the clientele that we get. Often, they come to us with horrific pasts of substance abuse. Through the course of their lives, many have had interventions along a number of avenues, be they schools, home, the Children's Aid Society, group homes, or provincial systems. The issue is an extremely complex one, but I do believe any ounce of prevention that goes anywhere in reducing the demand is well worth any investment of dollars, time, energy, or effort.

Like Mr. Lesser indicated in terms of the RCMP involvement, we also have staff—and in some cases we have had inmates do this—going to various schools and community agencies to talk about the scourge of drug activity and the things that go on there. There is preventative work going on in a number of areas and jurisdictions.

I hope we do not concentrate too much on a comparison of the dollars that I quoted in relation to what was presented earlier. That's largely because, as I mentioned, I've taken the whole budget of the Correctional Service Canada, recognizing that a portion of our population is doing time for drug activity. A “portion” of every person or staff member is therefore devoted toward that end. And I would think that, if the same comparisons were made by other government departments, you might see higher figures represented up there.

So, yes, I think prevention is a very positive thing. I do believe many of the programs we undertake are very much preventative in nature. In fact, they're entirely preventative in nature, recognizing that the vast majority of inmates will be returning to the community, as I mentioned before. The programs we do provide are able to succeed in preventing further demands, so they do contribute to the community.

[Translation]

The Chair: Thank you very much. It is not Mr. Lesser, is it? Is it Officer Lesser?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: Whatever you wish.

[English]

The Chair: Chief Superintendent Lesser.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: Whichever. I've been called worse.

May I just answer very quickly to that? In Vancouver, with what I think is one of the most open drug scenes in Canada—I don't want to pick on them in particular, but it just happens to be the most open; other cities have smaller open areas and other areas in which it's happening but is just hidden—they've come up with a strategic action plan that talks about four pillars: prevention, enforcement, treatment, and harm reduction. Health Canada talks about some of those same pillars.

When we talk about balance, we should never have talked about enforcement versus demand reduction. It's an integrated approach that we need. We need all governments, schools, and agencies to be involved in this. I think one of the biggest problems is that it has been given to certain groups and everybody has felt it's not theirs because somebody else was looking after it. In the end, that whole message has consistently gone to our youth and consistently gone to parents.

Take a look at some of the people who are living in addiction right now. What chances do their children have of a good, wholesome life? I think we can debate that, but I wouldn't give them a whole lot of hope.

We have to target. Drug use is only a symptom. It's a symptom of far bigger, larger things. It's a symptom of illiteracy. It's a symptom of lack of education. It's a symptom of dysfunctional families. You know this more than I do. We need to address those issues as well. Putting a band-aid on the drug issue—and enforcement was never meant to be the only answer, just one of them—or just dealing with the drug issue alone is never going to resolve the main causes of what we're seeing in Canada. I think we have to do a complete response.

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras: I did not interrupt while our witnesses were speaking.

What strikes me is the number of Ecstasy seizures there have been in Quebec, and even in the City of Brossard. I would like to know why that is.

Mr. Jacques Saada (Brossard—La Prairie, Lib.): It is not my fault. Don't look at me like that.

Some Hon. Members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Bernard Bigras: How do you explain the number of pills seized in Quebec, more specifically in Montreal? Is the demand higher in Montreal? Is it because Montreal is a port of entry?

Ms. Julie Keravel (Director, Security Information and Emergency Management, Correctional Service Canada): It is because of the Port of Montreal.

• 1935

Mr. Bernard Bigras: Why not elsewhere?

Ms. Julie Keravel: Montreal is a large port of entry.

[English]

C/Supt Bob Lesser: The main thing is that it comes from Europe, with a lot of it being sent from Belgium via Germany, so the easiest port of entry is Montreal. There's a big market there as well, but it happens to be on the eastern seaboard, which is closest to the source of supply.

The Chair: Just before we go to Mr. Saada, why is it coming from Israel and Holland particularly? Is there some sort of chemical that's more available to them?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: They've developed it there, and the main drug labs are still there. So far in Canada, we've mostly picked up either the pills or the powder that is made into pills here. It hasn't been picked up here in Canada where we have developed that expertise ourselves. Why? In particular, different people tell you it's just because of the open drug scene in Holland to begin with, and that it was an easy, next best thing.

Ecstasy is very popular because it combines two things: amphetamine, which is a speed or stimulant, and hallucinogenic, so you get your LSD and your speed all combined. Because it started in clubs, it's a very mod thing to do. It's not seen as dangerous because it looks almost pharmaceutical in format. You're just taking a pill. It's like TV: if you have a problem, take a pill and that will solve it. This is just part of that whole general attitude that we have in the world, I guess, but certainly in North America. It just very rapidly expanded.

The Chair: Okay, thank you.

Mr. Saada.

[Translation]

Mr. Jacques Saada: I have many questions. I will try to keep to one or two to start. We could spend three days asking questions on this subject.

First of all, so that it is clear to me, can you tell me if the local police is responsible for prevention,

[English]

the police of jurisdiction?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: If it does or not, that's debatable. We're there right now because there's a gap and a void. I think a lot of the research is suggesting that, if there's an intervention with kids before they're at drug-use age, the input from the police, as well as others in the community, is valuable.

The police have more of a challenge when we deal with groups in which people are already using drugs. You then get into some of the harm reduction messages that police really can't provide. I'm like that, too, if I'm talking to my daughter and the message is that—this is a little old school here—she should not have sex until she's married. Then, if she does have it, I also want for her to know there are certain precautions she wants to take. As a father, though, it's hard for me to send both those messages.

Mr. Jacques Saada: I'm sorry, but let me repeat my question just to make sure. I hear what you're saying, but I don't think it's the answer I was looking for.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: That was not your question.

Mr. Jacques Saada: In Ontario and in Quebec, the responsibility for policing is in the hands of the provincial police. In some other places, like New Brunswick or B.C., the RCMP is in charge under contract. My question is this: Am I correct to assume that responsibility for prevention by the police is assumed first and foremost by the police of jurisdiction? In other words, it's assumed by the Sûreté du Québec in Quebec, by—

C/Supt Bob Lesser: Yes.

Mr. Jacques Saada: All right.

When you compare the efforts in prevention and awareness—and we don't need figures, because we all feel it's the right way to go, even though it might be very difficult to objectively assess the impact—can we have an idea of the amounts invested in the provinces that have their own jurisdictional police, as compared to what we do where we have jurisdiction with the RCMP?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: I don't have their figures, and we don't really capture anything other than the hours our members would spend on those.

Mr. Jacques Saada: Let me tell you why I'm asking this question here. That's what I'm driving at.

We have the figures, which are alarming, but we have difficulty putting our finger on who is doing what, and on which one is producing satisfactory results and which one is not. I'm not placing blame here, I'm just trying to...because programs are not all the same. Your answer is that it's very difficult to sort out, but we do put it all together in the national stats.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: The prevention?

Mr. Jacques Saada: The outcomes—when you have charges and so on. Am I correct to be very cautious about the interpretation to be given to these figures in terms of the direct link between the efforts put in by all police and the increase or decrease in the number of charges and number of seizures and so on?

• 1940

C/Supt Bob Lesser: No, they're not really related. Number one, we should be seeing less charges in a lot of cases, because we're attacking the main dealers rather than doing the street sweeps that we used to do in the seventies and the early eighties. Whereas you'd pick up literally hundreds of people with small trafficking charges over months back then, you may see the police pick up only one or two people now, just because OMERTA, out of Totonto, has gone after a major Sicilian organized crime connection in which there are only a small number of people. Had we followed those drugs to the streets, there'd have been thousands of charges. So the number of charges really should decrease, depending on the level the police are working if you're just looking federally.

The amount seized could either increase significantly—like we've seen in hash, where you have the multiple seizures—or...for instance, Maurice “Mom” Boucher doesn't touch a lot of drugs. You will get “Mom” Boucher on conspiracies for murder cases, but you'll never get him on possession of drugs, so there would never be a drug charge connected to him.

So it's very risky. There are too many uncertainties involved in trying to combine those figures.

Mr. Jacques Saada: Very good. I understand.

I have one question having to do with the proportionality—for lack of a better word—between the funding and what happens at the end of the line. If I remember properly—and maybe we could go back to the slide if we need to—in 1993, there was peak funding for your department, but still the charges in 1993 and in 2000 are roughly similar. I understand you are charging maybe less for simple possession and more for trafficking per se. Especially if I take into account the fact that you mentioned it takes three to four years sometimes to...I fail to see a direct relationship between the amount of funding and the amount of either seizures or charges or whatever. Here again, can you explain to me how you can make this connection, and if it is worth making it?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: Those are excellent questions that we have asked ourselves as well. We've tried to prove the effectiveness of doing different things, but the scene keeps changing. Right now, it costs us literally millions of dollars to take a case to court simply on disclosure. We're literally bringing millions of documents to defence. In some cases, we have had conspiracies in which we have been taking 30 or 31 people to court, so we're certainly rethinking that.

The costs there are just phenomenal. If you're doing a case that's two or three years long and there are wiretaps where you have 80 different phones done and you have surveillance all over, the expenses are in the millions and millions of dollars. In another case, it could be just as significant in the end, but you may have an informer who comes in and you're able to use and protect him in the Witness Protection and Relocation Program. For maybe $100,000, you'll be able to take somebody to court in that instance. So just because of the situations, it's very hard to make those comparisons. Some cases happen very quickly, while other cases may never happen even though you may spend hundreds of thousands of dollars doing surveillance, wiretapping, and trying to develop informants. At the end of the day, they sometimes just don't pan out.

So it's a business, but we haven't really found a good way of comparing it like you would other businesses. Clearly, with Treasury Board and their requirements, they want to see performance measurements. The performance measurements we've been developing are of the more general, more broad types of developments.

Mr. Jacques Saada: Madam Chairperson, or Madam Chairwoman....

The Chair: Chair works for me.

Mr. Jacques Saada: Or Big Paddy? Will you stop me when I come to the end of my time? I have a few more questions, okay?

The Chair: I'm going to have to put you on another round, because you're at seven minutes.

Mr. Jacques Saada: All right, no problem.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Sorenson.

Mr. Kevin Sorenson (Crowfoot, Canadian Alliance): I've really enjoyed the discussion tonight. It has been very educational. I've learned a lot, maybe because I didn't start with a lot of knowledge on the drug issue. I've sat through a few reports, and this one, to me, has been excellent.

In my riding, I believe I have nine RCMP detachments. The riding is basically an agricultural community that has not seen a lot of drug use in the past. Maybe I'm naive, but there hasn't historically, traditionally been a lot of drug use.

• 1945

That said, however, one of the areas, one of the communities, couldn't get any more constables. Their evidence showed drug use was really increasing in their community. The RCMP therefore needed another constable, they needed more force. They were unable to get it, so what basically happened in that community was that the principal of the high school went into his budget because he recognized the problem happening in this rural community. He said they had to bring another RCMP constable into their small community there because drugs were increasing so much.

We look at the RCMP stats on what's been cut out of the budget—2,200 personnel, $175 million—and we talk about the war on drugs, but really the soldiers are getting less and less all the time. In other detachments, you talk to the people on the front line of defence and they say they know somebody is growing it or they know somebody is providing it for the young people of our communities, but they just cannot keep the fight going with so few people.

One of the things you mentioned was that there are a lot of things we know have helped to increase the use of drugs. These are symptoms, I guess, but you used illiteracy, dysfunctional families, and poverty. Isn't it a fact, though, that although those are three areas, increased drug use is really happening in all areas, including in the middle class and wealthy homes? We're seeing an increase in drug use across the board, and perhaps there has been even more of an increase in drug use amongst upper- to middle-class children.

We had an individual here this afternoon who was in charge of the Canadian drug strategy, and who said there is really no way of evaluating whether or not we're winning with this strategy. Yet when I talk to the RCMP and when I talk to the people on the front lines, they're saying we're losing this war. That's my first comment. How are we doing?

And I do want to ask one other short question.

The Chair: You might want to hold that for another round, because you're at three and a half minutes.

Mr. Kevin Sorenson: Okay, then I'll just ask this one question quickly.

On the prisons, on corrections, I have a prison in my riding. I see the same thing that Mr. White has mentioned. People are coming in on charges of robbery and have never been involved in drugs before. There are some who have never been involved in drugs to any degree, yet they come out addicts. My question is in regard to the methadone program and all drugs. I've seen people who have been coming down off a high. I've sat with people who were absolutely going through withdrawal and were higher than a kite.

The Chair: The question, please.

Mr. Kevin Sorenson: For all drugs in prisons, are there ever any brought in to help lessen the effects of watching someone go through what he's going through as he's coming down?

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Ross Toller: Yes, and methadone is certainly one example. When offenders who come in are addicted at the time of arrest, we do administer a methadone program for any who are still continuing to exhibit some levels of signs of addicted qualities. As well, each region has a regional psychiatric centre that will admit offenders in situations in which they have overdosed on some drug activity while in prison and have a drug induced psychosis. There is applicability for those types of events.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: May I just quickly answer to yours?

When I mentioned that some people have substance abuse with their parents in dysfunctional families, I wasn't referring entirely to poor families at all. You find that in Rockcliffe Park, although you may not find the problem with illiteracy.

You're right. I was in Vancouver's downtown east side last weekend, and I walked through with two addicts. They were runninge VANDU, which is the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users. One has a degree, and he is very articulate and very intelligent when he's not high. There was one we watched for a while who was a ballplayer out of Burnaby. He was just sitting there doping up in front of the TV set, just in a far-off, other world. There's another person right there now who's a coke freak. He used to be a multi...[Technical Difficulty—Editor]...store in Chinatown, and now he's just on the skids. So, yes, it hits all levels. It obviously doesn't just hit the poor.

• 1950

As for losing the war on drugs, again, it has to be an integrated approach. No one would ever argue that you don't need more resources in all areas. I think we can be a lot smarter, and perhaps more coordinated in what we do. I think we really keep away from the war. Realistically, in those detachments and probably nationally, we could barely put up a skirmish, much less a war. It takes a whole community, as well. It would take that principal to put in programs in his or her school in order to talk about prevention: bring in the pharmacist to talk about it, bring a nurse into the school, bring in the PT teacher, and people like that. We have to do something to get the communities alive to this issue, to get governments alive generally. There are some that are, but, by and large, they are not.

You also mentioned, too, that there's not a lot of drug enforcement personnel in some of the provinces or in some of the areas. With the exception of Quebec and Ontario, provinces have not funded provincial or municipal resources to any significant amount. By and large, they've relied upon the RCMP, although there are exceptions in some of the bigger cities. Some of B.C. is changing that way, but if you take a look at the number of provincial and municipal people that Quebec and Ontario have fighting drugs, you see numbers far higher than what the ratio would be in other provinces.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

Ms. Allard.

Ms. Carole-Marie Allard (Laval East, Lib.): Thank you for being here this evening.

I would like to raise a subject that we have not yet discussed, that of the sentencing of drug traffickers.

Amongst your colleagues, do people feel that the sentences handed down to drug traffickers are too lenient, too short?

I recently read the book Blood Lines and I saw just how difficult it is to do a drug investigation, especially when I read afterwards that one of the main dealers who had been arrested was merrily travelling around other countries while he was under mandatory supervision.

That is frightening and it makes one lose faith in the system.

[English]

After all, these people are killing our kids. So I would like to know if you have an idea if there is a general sentiment amongst your officers? What do you think about the sentences?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: That's one of those deadly questions, right?

First of all, it's clear that, in its report, the United Nations was very critical of sentencing in Canada. The Organization of American States has been equally critical of sentencing in Canada, particularly in dealing with marijuana and particularly out west.

There is clearly a difference in sentencing across the country. In one case, we had wiretap evidence that we provided to the Attorney General of British Columbia in which the targets were saying they'd much rather get caught in Canada because our justice system is less than stringent.

You always hate picking on one particular part of the whole process. I think it's an entire process, and I think everybody has to get on the bandwagon and see the problem for what it is. I mentioned both the police and the justice system, but it's legislation as well. I think it all has to be online to be effective.

Ms. Carole-Marie Allard: Yes, but what do you personally think of what's going on right now?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: Okay, how many years do I have left?

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

C/Supt Bob Lesser: I certainly question a lot of them. If our purpose is—and it's in a lot of the Treasury Board agreements—to disrupt or dismantle organized crime figures, then they have to be taken out of circulation for significant periods of time. Taking people out of circulation for months at a time doesn't do the trick.

Ms. Carole-Marie Allard: I have read in books that traffickers normally are very quiet in prison so that they can come out more rapidly. They are very nice people, but it seems they always start again. They never really leave the business.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: Well, it's a good income. Aside from the fact they deal drugs, I've found a lot of them are nice people. By and large, they tend to be intelligent. You deal with them and you wonder why they are doing it, because they could do really well in a legitimate job. But as Ross was saying, it's either the excitement, it's just the group they're in, or it's whatever, but we have some people who have a definite lifestyle that doesn't follow what legislation would suggest.

• 1955

[Translation]

Ms. Carole-Marie Allard: Do you feel that, throughout the world, Canada is critized for imposing too lenient sentences?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: Indeed. [Editor's Note: Technical difficulties]...every month we have stories.

Ms. Carole-Marie Allard: When I was in court, where those youths were being told not to use drugs, I could not help wonder what would happen with those who sold them drugs.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: Precisely.

Ms. Carole-Marie Allard: They are left in the street.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: It is not an easy job.

[English]

The Chair: Monsieur Saada, you wanted the last minute on that round.

Mr. Jacques Saada: Exactly, and on this very specific point.

[Translation]

We have tabled a bill on organized crime that foresees some rather severe measures. I hope that they are tough enough. In particular, there's the non-availability of what is called mandatory release after having served one-sixth of one's sentence. I do not remember what this thing is called, but it is the remedy that is available after having served one-sixth of one's time in prison: it is the accelerated parole review. It also provides for longer and heavier sentences for people who are involved in organized crime, whether or not they have committed any offences.

There is a whole range of measures under the bill which seem to be targeting what you deplore. But there is a problem that this will not solve. The present Criminal Code is not enforced to its full extent. I am not talking about the prison system and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act; I am referring specifically to the Criminal Code. The maximum sentences that can be handled down for the offences we are discussing are not currently being handed down. Judges decide on the sentence. The police put in a huge amount of work and invest a lot of time. They're doing a very good job. They build their cases with major investments and resources and when they find themselves before a judge, it often happens that the sentence seems relatively minor compared to the efforts made to catch these people.

We live in a democracy. It is very difficult for legislators to oblige judges to apply the sentences set out in the Criminal Code. What do you suggest? How do you suggest we tackle this?

[English]

C/Supt Bob Lesser: Clearly, we have to guard the discretion and independence of the justice system, because that's what Canada is built upon. But there have been some discussions in which we have explained to some members of the court system, to some of the justices, what the strategies are when we do enforcement. I'll just use Vancouver as the most recent example. In particular, I'll just use the downtown east side as an easy example.

In Vancouver, they're targeting commercial dealers, not addict dealers who are dealing for a few hours for a rock of coke. It's very specific targeting. With those people in particular, they're gearing toward drug courts and coercive treatment methods in order to see if they work.

We also have had some discussions, certainly, with crown prosecutors. That's an area in which funding is lacking as well. Usually when we go to cases, we have one or two prosecutors and there are 32 defence counsel, so the crown prosecutors just get motioned to death. It's just motion after motion after motion.

As we saw in the “Mom” Boucher case, there were motions presented that he was losing his mind, so they had to help out with some recreational facilities. It wasn't very long after the major case in Edmonton that, all of a sudden, the accused was losing his mind because he was in jail too long.

Defence lawyers—all credit to them—have a very good system, so the justices need the assistance as well in order to be able to have experienced people to present the proper cases to court and to work through those kinds of things. Also, I think discussions, either through presentation of evidence or otherwise, about the seriousness and the extent of organized crime generally, and not case-specifically, probably doesn't hurt. I know some conversations have happened in which justices have appreciated that information, because it hasn't been there in their line of work. They get a very interesting perspective from people before them, both from the crown and the defence. So I think a lot of it is dialogue.

• 2000

As you've mentioned, some of the legislation isn't bad. A lot of our legislation is fairly good. There are some changes coming. We'll see what happens with Bill C-24 as it goes through, but there are a lot of areas there that are very good. It's that whole system, in terms of gearing up and really appreciating the impact that I think they can have.

I think there's a real question out there—and you're certainly raising it—about what the value of enforcement is, and whether or not enforcement is going to win. Well, enforcement was never going to win. When we took a look at drinking and driving, enforcement played a part, but it was a change in total social attitudes that made the difference. If we're going to deal with the drug issue, it has to be a total social change toward people wanting to use drugs. There then has to be a coercive perspective to it as well, in which you have enforcement, in which you have the penalization when people don't obey the law. But to be effective, it clearly takes many different parts to work together.

Mr. Ross Toller: I just wanted to add my view toward your question, and that was on the connectivity of the jurisdictions in terms of information sharing. We do much now, but I think we can do better. I think there are a number of initiatives underway to look at that better. What we have is critical to enforcement, what enforcement has is critical to what we and others do, etc. That really touches on that broader issue that, in my opinion, you were referring to there.

The Chair: Mr. White.

Mr. Randy White: Thank you. I have two questions. Are you both familiar with Canada's drug strategy? Do you think it's working?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: I think that's a trick question.

The Chair: They're familiar.

Mr. Randy White: No, based on what they've said—

C/Supt Bob Lesser: I think the document is valuable. I think what is in it is very good. As we said in the CACP resolution, it needs to be actioned. I think the last strategy funded was in 1995. So I think it's not a bad document, I think it's something to build on. But we have to move with it, we have to do something about it. Documents are nice, but people need more than that.

Mr. Ross Toller: What I strongly believe in is the multi-faceted approach. It can't just be one. It's an absolutely complex issue, as you will appreciate, from the upper-middle-class people using it, to the lower class, to all those kinds of things.

I think the strategy has hit on the main focus of how to deal with drugs, at least in my opinion. It has a concentrated, multi-dimensional approach. I think we should never sway from that particular look at the things we do, and we should keep building on it. Look at the things we're beginning to uncover in research. The whole intent is what we can find that will give us some better advances. So I think it will be built on and be moved.

Mr. Randy White: [Technical Difficulty—Editor]...cities and communities across the country, right from Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Vancouver. Not only did every organization I showed it to not know what it was, they just said, “This is the street, that's Ottawa.”

I want to ask both of you another question. We here are responsible for making recommendations to the House of Commons on something that has really not been studied before by a parliamentary committee. Even the Le Dain commission basically talked about cannabis, so we're talking about some different kinds of drugs here as well.

I'll just try a concept, so don't panic when I throw it out here. Why can't we take a prison, take everybody out of the prison, have that as a drug rehabilitation facility, take addicts who have been convicted three times, for instance—I'll just throw that out—and have mandatory sentencing to that rehabilitation facility? In other words get them off the street, get them into a facility, force them into a facility, and clean them up for eighteen months to three years. What would be the effect of that, notwithstanding the civil libertarians out there who say I'm crazy?

• 2005

I'm saying we have thousands upon thousands of these individuals out there. They're living in places I wouldn't put a dog in—and I've been in them, and so have you if you've been to downtown east side Vancouver. But what about a concept like that?

Mr. Ross Toller: I guess the first thing I would say is that, in many approaches now, we try to at least mirror that in a smaller fashion with certain drug rehabilitation activities. For me, I think the fundamental question that's being posed here really relates to looking at substance abusers in a criminological standpoint—

Mr. Randy White: No, I'm talking about mandatory rehabilitation. That's basically what I'm saying.

Mr. Ross Toller: Right, exactly.

I think the mandatory issue, as you mentioned in terms of being able to force treatment, is a large liberty concept that is certainly beyond the scope of what I could respond to you with. But in terms of the fundamental premise of having the capacity for people to go in, develop, learn, and take some levels of forced treatment, I don't know if forced treatment would work.

With inmates who are motivated and come into treatment in order to change ideals or behaviour, our experience is that sometimes their motivation is suspect, but many times it's not. That's probably the best way to look at it.

Mr. Randy White: I'll be very quick here, Madam Chair.

What I'm trying to do is break the cycle. There are so many people out there who are unable to help themselves. In order to feed their habit, they basically have to break the law in one way, shape, or form. It seems to me that, in addition to all of these other things, we somehow have to find a way to break their cycle. I know that's not pleasant, but where they are today is not pleasant.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: Maybe I can respond a little bit to that.

The experience in the drug courts is that, number one, coercive treatment is what you're talking about. They get a bit higher numbers of people going in, because someone before a court in the United States is facing either ten years or going through the rehab system. There's a big choice to be made, although the choice in Canada is perhaps not as great.

From talking to addicts—and I'm certainly not a treatment rehab person—they have told me that doesn't work for them. It may be that, for some people—they would say a small percentage of people—coercive measures for mandatory treatment are effective. For the majority, though, the sense is that it's the same as with people who smoke cigarettes. Sometimes those people are ready to quit smoking, and sometimes they aren't. Sometimes they'll quit smoking many times before they finally quit smoking, but other people will never quit smoking. It's the same thing with people on heroin or coke.

People have to be in a certain state of mind. I think that's why it's critical that there are the treatment facilities, the low threshold facilities into which people can go and maybe do a needle exchange, get that contact with counsellors, get some food, get some clean clothes, get those kinds of things. It's through that environment that there's a place that can take them right away if they're in any way feeling that maybe they want to quit.

Until a short time ago, I think there were less than 300 beds for about 10,000 addicts in Vancouver. And that's actually just an easy example. Across Canada, we don't have the treatment facilities. Across Canada, there's still not even a really good acceptance of methadone. We're trying to develop a national policy in a lot of areas, but one side of the country wants to push supervised injection sites and the other one is really questioning the methadone treatment. We're miles apart here on this whole issue nationally.

The research on this is also the pits. We've been following the Senate committee hearings and some of the experts who go before it. As much as people would argue with our position that we need more research because it's not definitive out there, the experts are all over the map. Some people will say there are short-term effects, while other people say there are no short-term effects. They just argue with each other. They bounce all over the place.

So before we make any major changes, I think we really need to know what it is we're looking at as well.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. White.

Mr. Lee.

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

I was pleased to see in your presentation that the RCMP are targeting resources and are taking the intelligence and analysing it. I guess my line of questioning is going to focus on the process of targeting.

• 2010

In looking at what we've seen so far, it looks to me like all drugs are treated the same. It seems there is no visible targeting in the drug strategy. There may be, though, so you can tell me if I'm wrong. All of the drugs are bad—the depressants, the stimulants, the psychotropics, the cannabis. My question is whether the RCMP—I'm not certain about Corrections Canada, which is the end of the pipeline in some respects—uses any kind of index of harm. Or do you target certain types of drugs as being more evil and harmful to society than others?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: We used to have heroin teams, we used to have coke teams, we used to have hash teams. We still have clandestine laboratory teams, because that's a real special expertise. What we have found with the examples of different organized crime organizations that we talked about is that they are involved in poly-drug trafficking. They will do whatever they can to get money. The Vietnamese-based organized crime used to just deal with heroin, but now it's into all kinds of drugs. So from a very practical point of view, if we were going to say heroin is the most dangerous, we'd still be working all the same groups, because most of the groups are all involved in all the drugs.

Mr. Derek Lee: I understand how you will target groups. I understand how you're likely to get the biggest bang for your resource bucks by focusing on organized crime. But is your analysis based on the nature of the drug itself in any way? I'm looking at the list of drugs here, and I'm looking at ecstasy. I know this is a public hearing, but in terms of tolerance and dependence, the material or the description shown for ecstasy is a little thin. I know it's potentially harmful or very harmful, but it just doesn't have the same harm attached to it as perhaps some other drugs do. At least that's how I read this stuff. If it's a question of resourcing an operation in relation to cocaine or heroin, which are highly addictive, I'd say to please go after those drugs rather than going after the 10,000 ecstasy pills. Do the RCMP do that kind of analysis when you target your resources?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: Yes, we take a look at the commodities they're involved in, but as I mentioned, if we target Hell's Angels, for example, they're involved in all of them. At the end of the day, we don't care what we take them down on. We'll take them down on whatever case we can get. In a lot of those cases, we end up taking them down on murder just because that's the way the community works.

There are different groups that aren't organized crime project oriented. By and large, they will do the most dangerous work. They will do their own assessment, but regionally or locally. They will look at those kinds of issues, but also at the groups that are the biggest threat to that particular community, at who's threatening people the most. You may have a group that's only dealing in, say, cannabis, but they're forcing people to live in homes with growing operations and are threatening all kinds of community people if they tell on them. The safety factor becomes an issue in terms of where you would target.

At a lower level, it's probably more commodity-specific. They would certainly pick coke or heroin or the hard drugs over some of the soft drugs. By and large, though, a lot of the ecstasy seizures have been thanks to our police colleagues in Europe. By and large, they have been controlled deliveries. They're picking them off in Belgium and some other countries. They're then phoning us up to tell us we have 100,000 or 500,000 hits coming into Montreal, and to ask if we want to work it. We'll then take it through for a controlled delivery. So a lot of those cases are quick and dirty.

Mr. Derek Lee: On the same targeting theme, I realize neither of your organizations represents the courts, but we did discuss sentencing earlier. I think Madame Allard raised it. Is there any targeted sentencing out there that you're aware of, or is it just a mishmash, a foggy stew all across the country? Is there any targeted sentencing based on the harm of the drug? I realize there's some targeted sentencing based on organized crime. If you're coming out of that, it's a certain envelop. But what about the drugs themselves? To your knowledge, do your officers working with prosecutors have...can you make reference to a harm index. Is there a series of cases saying that, with that drug, you're looking at six years? Is there anything like that?

• 2015

C/Supt Bob Lesser: No, and we really haven't followed a whole lot to date. It varies significantly across the country. As I've said, it's something we really haven't followed because that has historically been an area we're not supposed to look at. That's judiciary. It was just recently that this issue started to gain a little bit of attention, with a look being taken at it as perhaps part of a solution.

What we try to do is bring our cases so that what we present to the court gives the court a full explanation. Rather than taking down a growing operation in, say, Burnaby, where it could be a mom-and-pop type of shop in which they're growing 5,000 or 6,000 plants for their own personal consumption over the winter, what we'll do is bring forward a case in which there are five houses that all have the same computers that control this thing, in which these people don't own the houses but other people in organized crime do own these houses, and in which we'll show the similarities in the cases. The court will then have a better understanding of the depth of involvement of different groups. But then it comes down to the court to decide.

As I recall, I believe there are provisions within the CDSA and within the Criminal Code that can take a look at whether there is trafficking near schools, or whther there are other mitigating circumstances that we could provided to the court that would perhaps convince the court to look more seriously at some of the cases.

In fairness to B.C., from my discussions with officers with the Vancouver city police last week, courts have come down with some relatively good sentences for that area. They're three, four, five, and six years in some areas, so we're hopeful.

The Chair: Mr. Toller, did you want to comment on the issue of sentencing by drug type? Surely there's something by quantity, at least.

Mr. Ross Toller: We were just saying the only thing we can think of on which we have seen movement in the judiciary is around some campaigns around drunk-driving issues or around alcohol consumption because of the impact it has on the social end of things. But, no, we just talked here—

The Chair: But in terms of drugs...?

Mr. Ross Toller: —and we can't think of any.

The Chair: Thank you.

We do have another round with Mr. Sorenson and Madam Allard, but I did have a couple of questions I wanted to ask.

You mentioned that there's a national Addictions Research Centre. I think that's a fairly new product. It's the only research centre of its type in Canada, but is the mandate strictly on prisons, or what? Can you please elaborate on that?

Mr. Ross Toller: No, it's not entirely on prisons. Certainly, I'll just give you a quick list of the things they're looking at.

The centre opened up in May 2001, and one of the things being looked at right now is the unique needs of aboriginal offenders related to substance abuse. Of course, there's a criminality aspect to it, but it also broadens beyond criminality.

We're also looking at the special needs of women in terms of substance abuse. Of course, some preliminary research is showing differences in rationalization as to why the genders use substance-abuse types of substances. We're looking at fetal alcohol syndrome and research into that, causative factors, impacts on criminology, and impacts on cognitive behaviour thinking in the future.

As I mentioned at one point earlier, at the centre right now, we're looking at evaluating our intensive support units that we're putting in all our facilities. We want to evaluate those to determine if they are in fact effective and what is working and really. Fundamentally, that often boils down to the question when you deal with drugs.

Methadone maintenance has been raised here by Mr. Sorenson and a few others here. We're looking at the evaluation of that from a research end of things. How effective is the methadone maintenance program?

The random and mandatory urinalysis program, which Julie certainly administers and is responsible for, is another area we're looking at again in the terms of effectiveness in that program.

And we're working on an update on a couple of the assessment tools that we use to determine levels of substance-abuse types of behaviour.

So many of them have expanded things beyond that of corrections. Of course, our predominant interest is correction related to criminality, but we do extend beyond that.

The Chair: Is the budget for that program within that $200 million?

Ms. Julie Keravel: Yes, it is.

Mr. Ross Toller: Yes, it would be.

The Chair: How many people are involved in this site in P.E.I.? That's where it is, is it not?

Mr. Ross Toller: Yes, I believe there are eleven, but I can check that, if you would like.

• 2020

The Chair: While he's looking for that, Mr. Lesser, you mentioned the RCMP has recommended—I think it's through the CACP particularly—that you want a lead, a champion, to take over the drug file. I'm wondering if you can elaborate on that, and if you think that would be the singular achievement of this committee. Or is there something else you would like us to do?

I would also like to know if your programs—and this is actually also for the Corrections people—are targeted, broken down, or can be broken down on the population health model that supposedly we're all following as part of Canada's drug strategy? If you haven't done that, can you do it for us?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: For the first one, CACP and the police committee are looking for some kind of a focus. Without being critical, certainly, of Health Canada, they have a mandate primarily in certain areas. Although a lot of the drug issues surround the health issues, there are a lot areas that don't surround the health issues. They're educational issues, and we certainly appreciate the fact that those are within the domain of provinces and territories. So there's a real mishmash of people who have their fingers in the pie or who ought to have their fingers in the pie.

The first U.S. drug czar may not be the best example to pull onto, but they have had subsequent drug czars in the States. In the United Kingdom, they have a drug czar. Australia also now has a drug czar, as they've just picked up their strategy over the last little while. But what that does is provide a focus to the issues, and it provides a secretariat for the drug czar to look at all those various interests at different levels of government, in different communities, in order to try to get all those players working together.

The Chair: Do you see it as a Nancy Reagan, “Just say no!” type of person, someone like a spokesperson, or as a real cabinet minister with full responsibilities?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: We had talked about that. There are certain advantages to an elected official having that position. I guess the downside is that they become an elected official...you know, in all the good senses.

Voices: Oh, oh!

The Chair: Okay, then. I knew you meant that in a positive way.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: Yes, that's what I meant.

The Chair: You meant it in that we only have short mandates.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: Well, there's that, but they also have a lot of things to concern themselves with, so sometimes it becomes difficult to push things that may not be in favour politically. I think what is needed is a high-profile individual who has the confidence of the government, and who also has the energy and the capability to work with all kinds of folks who will raise the profile of the position and move it forward, staying with it for some kind of continuity for a reasonable period of time.

The Chair: Well, we have some young senators. Maybe it could be something for them.

Mr. Toller, you were going to give us—

Mr. Ross Toller: Yes, I'll just confirm that it is in fact eleven staff. Eight more will be hired over the course of this year, and there are also four students who are brought into the facility. So at the end, when it's fully operational, there will be nineteen full-time staff and four students.

The Chair: I assume they're going to commission some research at different universities as well.

Mr. Ross Toller: I know they're very much linked to the university community, so I would imagine there will be a lot of dialogue between the two.

The Chair: Okay, thank you.

And on the...[Technical Difficulty—Editor]...health.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: I didn't quite understand your question. Maybe that's because I'm not sure how it fits into the strategy.

The Chair: Well, there are some who would argue that, rather than just targeting DARE programs...that's 12- and 13-year-old kids, and that's great, because it gets the message to them and they're all committed. But when they're 15 and they have a peer group, it's all of a sudden harder to remember all those lessons. Then, when they get to university, there's a whole other set of issues. When they get out into the workplace and people are at work parties and are passing cocaine, it's another set of issues.

The prenatal program should be.... We really need a continuum of interventions and approaches. We should be focusing our efforts all along that spectrum—and seniors are another whole set of issues. Yet there are some commonalities, and there are some different approaches. We really should be doing what I understand is called a population health method.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: Yes, I agree with that fully.

Just quickly, I just redesigned DARE in the last year because of criticisms, but it's geared for the elementary schools. There's also a portion for the high schools, there is a portion for universities, there is an equivalent to what we have as drugs in the workplace, and they're just developing something for sports. Within that program and within our separate programs, we're trying to include that in the things we do.

• 2025

Very clearly, what people need from the get-go is the clear and consistent messages that go along. Those messages need to change. For the 6-year-old, “Just say no!” probably makes sense. To 14-year-olds, when they're into their teenage years, that's definitely not going to work. The message has to be different, and it probably has to be given by different people. But there have to be some of those similar things.

They're also now in a position in which they are now going to have to make their own decisions. They're having to do that younger and younger, so the types of information that you need to give them will vary so they can make those decisions.

The Chair: So in terms of your programming, can you delineate what part of it is focused at which groups? Again, a 6-year-old who is not using needs one kind of message, a 6-year-old who is using needs another message, and a 6-year-old who is completely messed up and addicted needs a third kind of message. Do you have your information presented in such a way? Can you break it down that way for us?

C/Supt Bob Lesser: The program we use in the elementary schools now is DARE. It used to be PACE, but that has gone the way of the worry-free. We have very limited high school level programs, because we just don't have the resources to train the people to go into the schools and do those kinds of things.

For the workplace, we specifically have the Drugs and the Workplace program, which is designed to do two things. It's there to address substance abuse in the workplace so that it's a safe environment, but it's also there to give the same messages to the parents at a grown-up level that we're giving to the kids, so that the kids get consistent messages. That is also given in communities. Whenever they give a DARE or a PACE program, the teachers are involved, but they also talk to the parents so the parents know what they're going to receive. And there are other similar programs. Lions International has Lions-Quest. There's also the VIP program that the OPP do in Ontario.

When I talk to most people and ask them if their kids get any kind of education on drug awareness and prevention, it's interesting that, by and large, most people got it from the police officers if they got any. There does not seem to be a lot in the schools. It's just not part of the process, although I do know Alberta is looking at trying to develop a package to go into the core curriculum. It will go on throughout all of their schooling, and that will be fantastic.

As I mentioned, we do have programs for the aboriginal communities specifically and for the sports community specifically. So we do have some of those, but there are huge gaps throughout. And there's no evaluation.

The Chair: Does Corrections also focus on...[Technical Difficulty—Editor]...adults and seniors, and users or non-users? I guess there's some family programming as well.

Ms. Julie Keravel: Yes, we do family programming, too.

The Chair: All right.

Mr. Sorenson.

Mr. Kevin Sorenson: I just have a couple of questions.

First of all, I'm going to pull a couple of sentences out of your report.

The Chair: In a minute?

Mr. Kevin Sorenson: Yes.

I don't want to take them out of context, but I just want you to see the basic theme of what we're driving at here:

Every correctional service in the world has problems with substance abuse among offenders. ... We know that their drug problem does not stop when they enter the penitentiaries.

...offenders...indicate pressure to have drugs smuggled into a correctional facility.

...The demand for drugs by offenders threatens the safety and security of our institutions.

The inmates are threatened. The staff are threatened. The guards are threatened. The guards are threatened into bringing drugs in. There are instances in which someone will drop drugs off for a guard, and that guard is threatened to make sure those drugs get in. This is a very serious.... If we can't keep them out of our jails and out of our prisons, how in this world are we going to keep them off our streets?

Let me continue:

In addition, we have instituted a drug dog program that will place a drug dog in each site over the next 3 years. Currently we have these in place in 12 of our facilities.

Comment on that. Are those drug dogs in maximum-, medium-, and low-security?

One other thing—and this is not to contradict or to debate what Mr. Lee suggested—is that I would strongly suggest that, contrary to what he said about having a choice between going after ecstasy or some of the lower-level drugs or going after the high-level drugs, I'm horrified of the stepping-stone drugs, beginning at the low-level drugs and then...no one starts out on heroin.

Mr. Derek Lee: It starts with Aspirin.

The Chair: Or maybe Tylenol.

Mr. Kevin Sorenson: Yes. Very few people start out on cocaine. We have to have a commitment to the low level. We see the RCMP lowering that commitment just by the resources it's taking to charge and to see through a low level of marijuana, for example. In thirty seconds, could you comment on how we fix this thing?

• 2030

The Chair: First you steal their magic bullet....

Ms. Julie Keravel: In terms of the institutions, our first concern is to prevent it from coming in, whether it's brought in by staff members, by a visitor, or an offender who has gone out on passes. If and when they're pressured, we try to work with our intelligence officers and with the staff in observation. If we can identify it, then we can take measures to prevent it or to stop it.

In terms of the drug dogs, we will have them in all our facilities, at every level, whether it's minimum, medium, or maximum. Right now, they're in medium and maximum. We have another six that just started their courses, and another seven will be finished by the end of this fiscal year.

We try to make every effort, whether it's searching at the front gate, searching everything that comes in, like food, or going out, like garbage. Every time our doors open, there is a potential that something is being brought in. We even have drugs that are thrown over the wall. Like it is with our police counterparts, it's an economy. Where you have people who are addicted, there are enough people to offer the supply. We don't target just hard drugs, we target all of them, because all of them are a risk to the safety and security of our staff and our offenders.

The Chair: Mr. Lesser.

C/Supt Bob Lesser: As much as the federal resources do target that upper level, there are actually some interesting comments from colleagues in Europe who are saying that, although the laws are still on the books against drugs, they have de facto legalized certainly the softer drugs due to the funding situation of police departments.

But right here right now, our provincial and our municipal contract resources are tasked with looking at the lower level and at the street level of drugs. They only have a certain capacity as well, of course. In those areas—and I hate to harp on this—again I think it has to be a consistent message.

Right now, the government is taking great pains and is spending millions of dollars to try to get people from smoking regular cigarettes. We know some 23,000 deaths annually are related to cigarette smoking. We have cigarettes with ugly pictures on them. We have signs written all over them. The health minister is against even calling cigarettes light or mild. But in the last ten years, I have yet to hear governments come out to suggest taking cocaine or heroin may not be a really healthy lifestyle choice.

There's no message out there. There's nothing. By and large, what people are hearing nationally is that people want to liberalize or legalize drugs. What I'm hoping is that a silent majority out there actually is just silent. There's nothing out there. Compared to cigarettes, it's just very sad.

The Chair: Well, thank you very much, all of you, and also your team of helpers who appeared with you this evening. We appreciate your wisdom and counsel.

This committee is going to be doing some travelling, so if you think there are specific things or places we should see, if there's an operation that we could see and be careful in, we would be appreciative of your recommendations and suggestions. If there's something you think of or that you see and that we might be interested in, in terms of literature, or if you want to send us something that comes up in the next couple of weeks or months, we would be very happy if you would forward it to our clerk and we'll get it distributed to all the members.

We do have a pretty open page here, and we're trying to figure out how we can make things better for you and for all Canadians, so we really do appreciate your support and your help with that.

Finally, thank you for coming to us on fairly short notice. Hopefully the Corrections people aren't quite as busy, but we certainly know the RCMP have been busy post-September 11 with a lot of different initiatives, so we appreciate your taking the time to come before us tonight.

Colleagues, when we resume after the recess, we will be asking Senator Nolin to come before us in order to give us an update on his committee. We also need to have an in camera meeting on our budget—since Randy has us flying all over somebody's half acre—on meeting times, and what have you. Right now, I guess we'll schedule that for Wednesday, October 17, unless I hear otherwise and everyone wants a Monday meeting or something. You should let me know.

• 2035

Thank you. This meeting is now adjourned.