Mr Anderson: It’s an honour to stand and speak in favour of Bill 11, the Witness Security Act. I also want to commend the Justice minister for bringing this legislation forward as well as the Solicitor General with Bill 10. I think that this government overall has done a very good job on the Justice file. I think we’re moving in the right direction, and I think that’s something that as opposition we will continue to support.

We’re going to have some differences on Bill 12, and we’ll discuss those because as with anything, we can go overboard, but Bill 11, for sure, is a solid bill. Obviously, for the benefit of my constituents I’d like to speak to why I support this bill and maybe bring some interesting factoids to their attention. This act will complement the current federal witness protection program, which is interesting because the federal program was actually put in place in 1996. Doing research on this bill, I was just amazed that it took until 1996 to have a federal witness protection act, which is really mind-blowing. The one in the United States was brought in in 1970. It took 26 more years to bring in one in Canada. I don’t know if that’s because we’re more safe up here from organized crime or if it’s because we’re a little bit naive or because our justice system was lacking through the ’80s and ’90s. I’m not sure. It’s probably a combination of things.

It is good to see Alberta take a leadership role in this. You know, everyone has heard these stories. You hear them in the States from time to time where people will be witness to a crime, and they’ll just stand around, and they’ll not do anything about it, or they’re afraid to talk with police. You see this all the time in some of the larger centres in the United States. I’m sure it happens here, too, where people essentially will be afraid. I mean, they will be absolutely petrified to come forward because they know that they will be marked men and women if they were to do that. What happens is that people’s hearts almost become cold to some of the crime in those areas. It’s almost a survival tool because they have to kind of become callous and cold to witnessing crime because it might drive them crazy if they care too much about it. So they kind of have to compartmentalize it and stick it on the shelf because if they were to come forward, they would die. That’s often how it happens.

Even though we have a witness protection program in Canada and the United States, it doesn’t mean that it gets used a lot. I mean, it’s an expensive program. There are still situations where people are still afraid to come forward, so I’m happy to see that we’re taking a leadership role in this. I will say, too, that there are all types of examples in the United States with regard to this program and how effective it’s been. Obviously, our program here in Alberta is going to be a little bit different if this law passes than the one in the United States because we have our federal legislation.

Basically, the witness protection program came out of essentially trying to deal with the Mob in the United States, organized crime down there. Everyone has seen, of course, The Godfather movies and some of the things that happen there, where basically the government needed to prosecute these criminals, but they just couldn’t find people willing to testify against the Mob. Surprise, surprise. You know, you have that classic scene in one of those movies where there’s a guy who wakes up, and there’s a horse head in his bed with him. It’s scary, very scary stuff. That’s why they introduced legislation, because of the intimidation that was going on and, of course, the killing that was going on of witnesses who wanted to leave the Mob and otherwise would leave the Mob, and they wouldn’t testify against their former bosses because they weren’t willing to take the risk.

Since 1970 7,500 witnesses and more than 9,500 witnesses’ family members have entered this program and have been protected and relocated and given new identities via the U.S. Marshals Service. It has had a lot of effect, obviously, for those 7,500 people and their 9,500 family members because I don’t doubt that many of those individuals would not have survived had they testified against their former bosses or would never have left and would have continued on in the crime. So this is an absolutely essential piece of Justice infrastructure that we need.

There is a problem we have in Canada, and it would be nice to see the Justice minister speak to this because she probably more than anyone else here would understand it because of the circles that she travels in with other Justice ministers around the country. There was a recent Italian mobster named Francesco Di Carlo. He admitted to the media several months ago that Canada was essentially known in the organized crime community as a bit of a safe haven for organized criminals. I mean, obviously, I don’t know if we want to take the word of an organized criminal on whether that, in fact, is true. It does seem, though, that organized criminals are taking advantage of our lax laws in Canada on organized crime.

Obviously, a lot of this is not under the purview of the provincial Justice minister, so I’m not laying blame, but I really am curious to see what we’re doing to alter some of this federal legislation. I really do believe that it needs to be stronger, that we do need some very low- or no-tolerance policies for organized crime. A lot of these guys we just kind of let run around. I mean, you look at the Hells Angels, you look at some of these other groups, and essentially they’re out there, and they’re kind of doing their thing.

We’ve tied up our police force and our justice system so much and made it so difficult to get prosecutions on some of these individuals or, once we prosecute them, to keep them in jail that it really has brought our justice system into a bit of disrepute. I wonder what the reasons are for that. Is it because our judges are too lax in their sentencing? Is it because our laws need more mandatory minimums and need to be tougher? Is it because we’re not putting enough police resources into it? Is it because we’re tying their hands with too much procedure and too many loopholes that essentially allow these criminals to walk free early?

The Justice minister talked earlier about the two-for-one sentencing and how that has been a big problem where people will get credit for time served. She has obviously talked a lot about addressing that issue. It would be nice to have a good discussion about some of the things that this government is doing to move that file forward, understanding, of course, the limits that they have. It being mostly a federal jurisdiction, there is very little that we can do as a province, but there obviously are some things we can do.

I wonder if it would be in our interest for the Justice minister to maybe put forth a kind of a plan or a blueprint for the type of justice system that we would like to see in Canada, just, you know, in your spare time, Minister. I know you have so much time. You put something together to that effect and then decide how we would like to arrive at this justice system. So figure out what type of provincial laws need to be changed, figure out what federal laws need to be changed, and really proactively pressure our federal MPs to change those laws.

I mean, maybe we could be a little bit more proactive with the type of justice system that we want to see in Alberta even though we’re not in complete control of our destiny on that issue. I would like to see that. Hopefully, if we had a good enough kind of master plan of what we want our justice system to look like in the end, some of the reforms we would like to see, and we got other provinces, B.C. and Saskatchewan to start, to buy into this, it could be quite a powerful thing.

I know that the Justice minister is always talking about working with other jurisdictions. The previous Solicitor General talked about that as well, about working with other governments in pursuit of the same goals on defeating organized crime, gang violence, all those types of things. I think that would be good, but it would nice to kind of have a blueprint for what success looks like. I mean, we have some recommendations from task forces on some of the things we need to do, but I don’t know if we really know what our goal is. Do we have any goals? What is it going to look like when we come out the other end? What are we trying to achieve? We seem to kind of sometimes run around and put out fires rather than have a proactive approach. I’m assuming the safe communities task force fits into that.

I’m assuming the Safe Communities Secretariat fits in there, but again I don’t think the average Albertan, let alone the average member in this Assembly, really knows what the end goal looks like for the justice system in Alberta. Obviously, this is probably a piece of what the solution is, but I think that, again, we need to figure out what the master plan is.

Those are some of the things that I’d like to see answered by the Justice minister either now or in Committee of the Whole. Other good things about other – and I’ll bring some of these questions up in Committee of the Whole, so I won’t read them out here.

I do want to end by saying again that I absolutely support this legislation. I support the intent behind the legislation. I think that the Justice minister and the former Solicitor General have done an excellent job over the last two years in bringing forth piece of legislation after piece of legislation that is making our communities safer. Again, congratulations to them.

Those are my remarks, Mr. Speaker.

Video:

Protecting Witnesses to Help Cut Crime (Part 1)
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Protecting Witnesses to Help Cut Crime (Part 2)
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