Parliamentary Committee Notes: Contribution Program to Combat Serious and Organized Crime (CPCSOC)

Date: April 6, 2022
Classification: Unclassified
Branch / Agency: Organization Name

Proposed Response:

• The Contribution Program to Combat Serious and Organized Crime of the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness supports initiatives, research, partnership building, and specialized police services to increase knowledge, raise awareness and/or help advance efforts to combat serious and organized crime.
• This Program includes investments for the National Strategy for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation on the Internet, a comprehensive and coordinated approach to protecting children from online sexual exploitation.
• The contribution program also provides investments targeted to fighting human trafficking through the National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking.
• It also supports specialized policing services to enhance capacity of First Nations police to address organized crime and related criminal activities in and around high-risk First Nations territories.
• And it also supports initiatives to build law enforcement capacity to detect and deter drug-impaired driving.

Financial Implications:

• The 2022-2023 Main Estimates for the Contribution Program to Combat Serious and Organized Crime included vote appropriations for Public Safety Canada of $23,667,222.

Background: Online Child Sexual Exploitation

Online child sexual exploitation (OCSE) is one of the digital age’s most pressing safety issues that continues to increase in terms of scope, reach and impacts. The sexual exploitation of children is a heinous crime, and is a serious concern for the Government, law enforcement agencies and partners in other orders of government and internationally.

The National Strategy for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation on the Internet (National Strategy) was launched in April 2004 and was renewed on an ongoing basis in 2009. Public Safety Canada (PS) is the lead for the National Strategy and partners with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Justice Canada (JUS) and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P), a not-for-profit organization responsible for operating Cybertip.ca, the national tip-line.

PS coordinates and oversees the implementation of the National Strategy and leads the development of OCSE policy. PS also provides contribution funding to C3P for the operation of Cybertip.ca. The RCMP’s National Child Exploitation Crime Centre is the national law enforcement arm of the National Strategy; it is the central point of contact for investigations related to OCSE across the country and internationally when the victim or offender is Canadian. JUS reviews and develops legislation, and provides training, legal advice and support to federal strategy partners and others.

The Strategy aims to:

• Provide coordination and oversight of federal efforts to combat OCSE;
• Support law enforcement capacity to combat OCSE;
• Enable the reporting of OCSE to proper authorities;
• Support victims of OCSE by facilitating the removal of imagery/videos;
• Facilitate research on OCSE to increase understanding of the scale/scope of the issue and inform action;
• Increase public awareness and reduce the stigma associated with reporting; and
• Work with digital industry to find new ways of combating this crime.

Total ongoing investments for Strategy partners total over $18 million per year. Some of PS and RCMP funding was provided through the It’s Time: Canada’s Strategy to Prevent and Address Gender-Based Violence (the GBV Strategy).

Key initiatives under the National Strategy are contributing to increased public awareness of this crime and supporting C3P’s operation of Cybertip.ca and Project Arachnid, a web-crawling technology solution to identify and increase the rate of removal of OCSE material. The National Strategy has also helped to expand the RCMP’s National Child Exploitation Crime Centre’s investigative capacity.

Recent investments of $22.24 million over three years, starting in 2019–20, are supporting Public Safety Canada’s enhanced efforts to raise awareness of this serious issue and reduce the stigma associated with reporting, increasing Canada’s ability to pursue and prosecute offenders, and fostering work with the digital industry to find new ways to combat OCSE. This funding is not reflected in the 2022/23 Main Estimates as it sunsets on March 31, 2022.

Budget 2021 provided $20.7 million over five years, starting in 2021-22, for the RCMP to enhance its ability to pursue OCSE investigations, identify victims and remove them from abusive situations, and bring offenders to justice, including those who offend abroad.

The Government believes in supporting a safe, inclusive, and open online environment. In partnership with the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Canadian Heritage has been mandated to take action on combatting online harms, hate groups, online hate and harassment, ideologically-motivated violent extremism, and terrorist organizations, and to ensure the RCMP and CSIS are equipped to combat this growing threat. To that end, Canadian Heritage is developing a legislative and regulatory framework that proposes to address five categories of online harms: 1) child sexual exploitation content, 2) terrorist content, 3) hate speech, 4) content that incites violence, and 5) the non-consensual sharing of intimate images.

In the summer of 2021, the Government held consultations with equity-deserving communities, Indigenous organizations, non-governmental organizations and victims of hate speech. These consultations identified concerns from civil society, experts and industry on the initial proposed approach. In the spring of 2022, a panel of experts will further engage with Canadians to consider additional perspectives in advance of the development of a potential legislative and regulatory approach to combatting online harms. Upon completion of these consultations, the Government of Canada will determine next steps in its approach.

Background: Human Trafficking

In September 2019, the Government launched the National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking, which is supported by an investment of $57.22 million over five years and $10.28 million ongoing. These investments are shared among Public Safety Canada (PS); Women and Gender Equality Canada; Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada; Public Services and Procurement Canada; Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada; and the Canada Border Services Agency.

The National Strategy builds on the internationally recognized pillars of prevention, protection, prosecution and partnerships, and incorporates a new pillar of “empowerment”, in order to enhance supports and services to victims. PS activities under the Strategy include: the development of guidelines to support the provision of care to victims and survivors of human trafficking; a public awareness campaign; training tools for individuals employed in targeted economic sectors, so they can better identify victims; new contribution funding for supports for at-risk populations, and the establishment of a Survivor Advisory Committee. 

Budget 2018 announced $14.51 million over five years and $2.89 million ongoing to establish a national human trafficking hotline. Operated by the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, the Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline was launched in Spring 2019. It is a multilingual, 24/7, toll-free line, referral service and resource Centre that receives calls, emails and texts about potential human trafficking in Canada and refers victims to law enforcement and trauma-informed supports.

Background: Organized Crime

Public Safety Canada’s Illicit Tobacco Strategy is funded under the 2018 Canada Tobacco Strategy. Public Safety’s efforts under the Illicit Tobacco Strategy include research on the state of illicit tobacco in Canada as well as funding for first nations law enforcement to enhance their capacity to address organized crime, including illicit tobacco, in and around their communities.

Through the CPCSOC, Public Safety Canada assists First Nations police services in addressing organized crime and cross-border criminality. The initiative provides funding to the Akwesasne Mohawk Police Service and the Kahnawake Mohawk Peacekeepers with the aim to:

• Increase their capacity in intelligence gathering and information sharing through training and enhanced partnerships
• Increase their knowledge of skills and techniques used in complex organized crime investigations; and
• Disrupt organized crime and related criminal activities in and around their communities and surrounding areas

In addition, through its Illicit Tobacco Strategy, Public Safety considers the integration of research, data and stakeholder engagement in order to provide an accurate Canada-wide picture of the illicit tobacco market. Public Safety’s research priorities include items related to the illicit tobacco market and the characteristics and trends of tobacco-related products and activities.

To ensure that the intended outputs and outcomes of the Illicit Tobacco Data and Research Strategy are achieved, Public Safety has engaged partners, stakeholders and other governments and organizations to undertake information sharing initiatives, joint research projects and intelligence exercises. The Illicit Tobacco Strategy is aligned with the Government of Canada’s priorities of reducing crime, securing the border and ensuring the safety and well-being of Canadians.

Background: Enhancing the Detection and Deterrence of Drug-Impaired Driving

While drug-impaired driving has been an offence since 1925, changes to modernize the Criminal Code’s impaired-driving regime, and provide new tools and powers to law enforcement agencies were adopted in June 2018. These modifications also responded, in part, to Canadians’ concerns that cannabis legalization would lead to increased drug-impaired driving (DID).

The new regime created three new offences with regard to the concentrations of cannabis in the blood in excess of set limits within two hours of driving: (1) more than 2 but less than 5 ng THC/mL of blood;  (2) more than 5 ng THC/mL of blood; and (3) more than 2.5 ng THC/mL of blood and more than 50 mg of alcohol/dL of blood. The new regime also authorized police to use approved drug screening equipment (ADSE), and allowed for blood samples to be collected without first requiring a driver to undergo a drug recognition evaluation if there are reasonable grounds to believe that an offence has been committed. It also removed the requirement that the sample be taken under the direct supervision of a medical doctor to provide more flexibility to police forces.

On September 8, 2017, the government announced investments of $161M over five years to address DID by: (1) enhancing training of frontline officers to recognize the signs and symptoms of drug-impaired driving, (2) building law enforcement capacity, (3) providing access to ADSE, (4) developing policy and research, and (5) raising public awareness about the dangers of DID. The objective of the horizontal initiative is to build law enforcement capacity to enforce new and stronger laws related to drug-impaired driving.

This horizontal initiative, involving Public Safety Canada (PSC), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is designed to follow through on the Government's key objectives of protecting public health, safety and security. PSC was provided with funding of $81M, the RCMP with $7.3M and the CBSA with $12.3M over five years (including EBP but excluding SSC and PSPC costs). The Agency received $12.5M fully loaded.

More specifically, the initiative aims to protect public safety on roadways in Canada by equipping law enforcement with the tools, technology and training necessary to enforce the new drug-impaired driving legislation, conducting public awareness campaigns on the risks of drug-impaired driving, and by developing evidence-based policies through data collection and research.

The federal partner organizations will establish and implement ongoing delivery of this initiative including policy and program development; research and data collection; national public education and awareness activities; and tracking and measurement.

Activities under the initiative are organized under four key themes:

1. Training Development and Delivery
2. Devices and Processing
3. Policy and Program Development; and
4. Awareness Campaigns

As part of this initiative, Provinces and Territories can access up to $81 million of this funding. A significant part of the funding is used to enhance law enforcement training in Standard Field Sobriety Testing (SFST) and Drug Recognition Evaluation (DRE). In June 2018, there were about 13,000 SFSTs and 775 DREs across the country. At the end of calendar year 2021, there were over 27,000 SFST trained officers, and 1,100 certified DREs.

Further to recommendations from the Drugs and Driving Committee of the Canadian Society of Forensic Science, the Attorney General of Canada approved the first oral fluid drug screener (Dräger DrugTest® 5000) on August 22, 2018. This drug screener detects the presence of THC, the main impairing component in cannabis, as well as cocaine. The second oral fluid screener (SoToxa™) was approved by the Attorney General of Canada on June 22, 2019 and is designed to detect the presence of THC. Other drug screeners continue to be evaluated on an ongoing basis. So far, 11 Provinces and Territories have procured almost 340 approved drug screening devices. Training on the use of the devices is also provided through the federal initiative.

Funding to Provinces and Territories also includes salaries for data analysts who work with Public Safety Canada to develop standardized national indicators to ensure the monitoring of the evolution and scope of the drug-impaired driving problem in Canada. An annual national report on trends and patterns in DID is prepared by PS in cooperation with Provinces and Territories, and posted on Public Safety Canada’s web site. The second annual report has recently been published on its website.

Key findings from the 2021 report include: a continued decline in the proportion of past 12-month cannabis users who report driving within two hours of cannabis use (from 38% in 2018 to 21% in 2021), and a continued increase since 2009 in the proportion of DID incidents detected by police (from 2% of all impaired driving incidents in 2009 to over 9% in 2021). The increase in police-detected DID incidents does not necessarily reflect an increase in the actual number of drug-impaired drivers on the roads. Rather, it is likely a result of increased awareness and detection capacity among law enforcement personnel.
Nevertheless, a recent study conducted in British Columbia observed a doubling in the number of injured drivers with THC concentrations above the prescribed limits after legalization. This indicates a need to continue the close monitoring of trends in DID.

The report also notes that the CBSA initiated training in the administration of the Standardized Field Sobriety Test in 2018. To date, over 700 border service officers at land border ports of entry have been trained. This represents half of the Agency’s training commitment under the DID initiative. Furthermore, certified DRE officers are conducting on average twice the number of evaluations in 2020 than in the previous year.

The report also noted a number of outstanding data gaps in our ability to monitor trends and patterns in DID, including a lack of police data on the use and results of SFST, a lack of systematic toxicological data on injured and fatally injured drivers, as well as the absence of post-legalization roadside surveys.

Recognizing these gaps and given the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in both 2020 and 2021, the initiative has been extended to March 2025, under the same overall funding envelope. Starting in 2021-2022, the funding agreements allow provinces and territories to improve data collection and to expand public education and awareness campaigns to prevent drug-impaired driving.

Financial Implications

The table below provides funding levels per PT under the original contribution agreements and projects funding levels in the remaining three fiscal years of the initiative.

Capacity for PTs to spend the allocated funds will depend in part on whether law enforcement training can fully resume once the COVID-19 pandemic abates.

Contacts:

Prepared by: Peter Ives, Senior Policy Advisor, 613-862-9217
Approved by: Talal Dakalbab, ADM, Crime Prevention Branch, 613-852-1167

Date modified:

2023-05-11