Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee. I regret that I'm not able to join you in person.

Allow me to introduce myself. I was a member of the RCMP for 31 years, rising from constable to deputy commissioner. I also served as deputy commissioner of Correctional Service Canada.

Since retiring from government, I have authored various reports on money laundering and, more recently, on port policing. I teach at a law school, provide expert opinion evidence and am the author of a text respecting Canada's proceeds of crime legislation.

As president and executive director of the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy, I have the privilege of guiding our institute as its associates undertake projects within Canada and abroad.

I applaud this committee for examining the drug crisis on our streets. As a long-time resident of Metro Vancouver, I can state without hesitation that the situation today in the Downtown Eastside is worse than I have ever seen before. It has become a wasteland stretching for many city blocks. People are dying at a greater rate than we saw dying of COVID. Small decreases in the number of weekly deaths do not take away from the fact that this part of Vancouver resembles what has been described as an open-air hospice. There are thousands of human beings bent over and struggling to survive.

The housing crisis exacerbated existing issues: the depopulation of our mental institutions, drug addiction and the outflow of indigenous people from traditional territories.

There was a time when you could walk the streets of the Downtown Eastside in peace; not anymore. Many who live on the streets are carrying weapons for self-protection.

The crisis also extends farther afield to the suburbs of Vancouver and the interior of B.C., exemplified by the 2022 murder of an RCMP constable by a homeless person in Burnaby.

I do not pretend to have a cure for this crisis, and many smarter than I have proposed solutions. I believe it is safe to say that all solutions to date have failed. The number of people on the streets far outstrips the services available to them. Prevention, including education, is vital; so is treatment. My heart goes out to our first witness, Ms. Welz, for what she has gone through.

The one word I do not hear, however, is “enforcement”, yet it is through enforcement that we get drugs off of the streets. With the necessary amendments to our criminal sentencing guidelines, it can also allow us to provide individuals with a treatment option.

Canada has been referred to as a high-value, low-risk country for transnational organized crime. It provides a platform for criminals to undertake their activities.

All of those things that make Canada a desirable place to live also make it desirable to organized crime. Combine these benefits with a criminal justice system that does not provide swift justice or certain sentences, and we as a country become an easy target for organized crime.

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