FAIR RENTAL POLICY ORGANIZATION OF ONTARIO
PARKDALE COMMUNITY LEGAL SERVICES
METROPOLITAN TORONTO POLICE CENTRAL DRUG INFORMATION UNIT
WHYY MEE FAMILY COUNSELLING FOUNDATION OF METROPOLITAN TORONTO
METROPOLITAN TORONTO POLICE SERVICES BOARD
VANCE LATCHFORD
ANNE SMITH
FREDERICK HOOD
SANDRA GARDINER
CONTENTS
Tuesday 8 March 1994
Tenants and Landlords Protection Act, 1993, Bill 20, Mr Runciman / Loi de 1993 sur la protection des locataires et des locateurs, projet de loi 20, M. Runciman
Fair Rental Policy Organization of Ontario
Philip Dewan, president and chief executive officer
Metro Drug Action Committee
Ian Hood, co-chair
Parkdale Community Legal Services
Raymond Kuszelewski, staff lawyer
Metropolitan Toronto Police central drug information unit
Det Sgt Craig Hilborn
Whyy Mee Family Counselling Foundation of Metropolitan Toronto
Eugenia Pearson, executive director
Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board
Norman Gardner, vice-chair
Vance Latchford; Anne Smith; Frederick Hood; Sandra Gardiner
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
*Chair / Président: Marchese, Rosario (Fort York ND)
*Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Harrington, Margaret H. (Niagara Falls ND)
Akande, Zanana L. (St Andrew-St Patrick ND)
Chiarelli, Robert (Ottawa West/-Ouest L)
Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord L)
*Duignan, Noel (Halton North/-Nord ND)
Harnick, Charles (Willowdale PC)
*Malkowski, Gary (York East/-Est ND)
Mills, Gordon (Durham East/-Est ND)
Murphy, Tim (St George-St David L)
Tilson, David (Dufferin-Peel PC)
*Winninger, David (London South/-Sud ND)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants présents:
Callahan, Robert V. (Brampton South/-Sud L) for Mr Murphy
Cooper, Mike (Kitchener-Wilmot ND) for Ms Akande
Jackson, Cameron (Burlington South/-Sud PC) for Mr Harnick
Murdock, Sharon (Sudbury ND) for Mr Mills
Perruzza, Anthony (Downsview ND) for Mr Malkowski
Phillips, Gerry (Scarborough-Agincourt L) for Mr Chiarelli
Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC) for Mr Tilson
Clerk / Greffière: Bryce, Donna
Staff / Personnel: McNaught, Andrew, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1019 in the St Clair/Thames Rooms, Macdonald Block, Toronto.
TENANTS AND LANDLORDS PROTECTION ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LA PROTECTION DES LOCATAIRES ET DES LOCATEURS
Bill 20, An Act to protect the Persons, Property and Rights of Tenants and Landlords / Projet de loi 20, Loi visant à protéger la personne, les biens et les droits des locataires et des locateurs.
FAIR RENTAL POLICY ORGANIZATION OF ONTARIO
Mr Philip Dewan: Thanks for the opportunity to appear this morning. I'm representing the Fair Rental Policy Organization, the largest landlord association in the province. We represent some of the smallest and some of the biggest landlords in Ontario, primarily in dealing with provincial regulatory issues, rent control being first and foremost among them, but basically any area of legislation that affects landlords in the province.
Interjection.
Mr Dewan: No, we won't deal with rent control today. We'll stick to the issue at hand.
FRPO certainly supports the principle of the proposed legislation in that it's looking to provide a mechanism for the speedy eviction of tenants who have been convicted of narcotic offences. We would favour any provision that makes it easier to evict those tenants who intimidate and threaten the safety of other tenants as well as make rental buildings less desirable and obviously affect the ability of landlords to carry on their business.
There are provisions under the Landlord and Tenant Act today, which I think you've heard about previously, which do allow landlords to evict tenants who are conducting illegal acts, not just criminal acts under the narcotics act but any type of illegal activity.
One of the difficulties that landlords encounter is that they may be either unaware of or unwilling to employ those provisions under the Landlord and Tenant Act, and therefore the provisions of this legislation could provide a complement to the rights that are already available under the Landlord and Tenant Act.
There are something like 130,000, 140,000 individual small landlords in the province of Ontario. I shouldn't say they're all small, but obviously a great many of them are. A large majority of those people would own a single unit or duplex, maybe a fourplex. They're very small, part-time landlords, and often their knowledge of the Landlord and Tenant Act and the legal recourses available to them when there's criminal activity going on may be more limited than it should be. They also don't have the legal resources or the financial resources to engage the type of help they'd necessarily need to get an eviction in some circumstances, and many of them are from immigrant backgrounds and they may be shy about going to authority with problems. They tend to take a different approach in some cases than others in that their background has not encouraged them to go to police authorities or legal authorities. In all these sorts of cases, having legislation of this type may be a useful complement to the provisions of the Landlord and Tenant Act.
However, when we first saw the legislation, I guess we did have a very significant concern that Bill 20 as it's drafted could inadvertently have the opposite effect of what I think was intended by in fact imposing or encouraging a higher standard than is available now. Obviously, to get an eviction under the Landlord and Tenant Act under section 107 at the moment, you do not have to await a criminal conviction, and we would be very much opposed to anything that would encourage, in the majority of circumstances, awaiting a criminal conviction before you could get an eviction. Right now, a landlord who is faced with a problem in his or her building can proceed and under several different provisions of the Landlord and Tenant Act seek an eviction on relatively short notice because of illegal activity going on in the building, or also because of the noise and disruption which in many cases affects other tenants when there is criminal activity going on in a particular unit. We certainly want to avoid any impairment of that ability to continue to seek eviction under those circumstances.
Because the Landlord and Tenant Act, being a civil act, requires only proof on the balance of probabilities, there is a lesser standard imposed as well than in the Criminal Code, where of course you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there has been criminal activity taking place. For that reason as well, we want to make sure landlords continue to have that ability, because you do not want to have a tenant who is carrying on criminal activities in a unit continuing to disrupt the other tenants and damaging the unit and destroying the environment of the building for the months or years that it takes to get through the criminal justice system and get to the stage of conviction and sentencing.
I won't cite the specific provisions, but there are precedents available in law to show you can get tenants out of a unit where there are reasonable grounds to suspect there's criminal activity, long before there's actually been a conviction. So that is our major concern about the legislation.
I saw last night -- late, late last night -- the amendments that have been tabled by Mr Runciman to try and address some of the concerns various groups have raised about the bill, and I think they are a good indication that there's been a willingness to try and meet some of these concerns and address them. I think the lawyers and the agents for landlords we've dealt with would still be most comfortable to have language that is a little more explicit than what I saw in the amendments in terms of stating directly that there's nothing in this act that would deprive a landlord of the right to seek an eviction under section 107 of the Landlord and Tenant Act. Other lawyers may argue that's unnecessary, but given the way some judges have interpreted legislation in the past, we want to be absolutely clear that this is a complement to and not a provision that overrides the Landlord and Tenant Act.
There are a number of other specific concerns about the bill that are raised in our brief, which I'll touch on quickly, relating to the time delays that are incurred. There can be, as I understand it from talking to lawyers and crown attorneys, a significant delay in some cases between conviction and sentencing, if the judge has asked for preparation of a pre-sentencing report, for instance, which can take many weeks to complete. We would prefer in these cases that there be the ability to ask for an immediate eviction on conviction rather than have the individual in the unit for the six weeks or whatever time it takes while awaiting the judge's decision on sentencing. Also, the notice period that's provided, 30 days, is significantly longer than what is in the Landlord and Tenant Act. We think those should be meshed, to be in agreement, and also that there should be an ability to appeal the eviction only if there's an appeal of the conviction itself, that those should be linked together.
Finally, there's an issue that is very important to landlords. It's not addressed in this bill, but since it's referring to the whole environment that's created by drug offenders in buildings, we think it should be raised, and that is the issue of restitution. There can be an enormous amount of damage caused by illegal activity from drug-related offences in apartments. Units get virtually trashed in many cases. I mean, they're uninhabitable without major restoration, and the costs of this are enormous.
It's one thing for a major landlord owning many thousands of units to have to absorb this cost on a number of units in his complexes and it's quite another thing for the individual small landlord who owns one unit or a duplex to be essentially facing those kinds of restoration costs plus the loss of many months' rent while the work is going on. It may mean, and in some cases has meant, that the individual can't carry the mortgage on the building. This is something we think should be looked at. Obviously, there are overlaps here between provincial and federal jurisdictions as well, when you get into issues of criminal compensation and restitution, but there are some overlaps in the legislation anyway, and since we've raised the issue, I think it's something that should be examined much more carefully.
I guess I'd just conclude by saying that for landlords across the province drug-related activity is an increasing problem. It is something you hear about very regularly. As I say, there are provisions now where knowledgeable and aggressive landlords can get these people out, but for cases of lack of resources, lack of knowledge or simple intimidation where individual small landlords are afraid to act against criminal elements in their buildings, this proposed legislation would provide an additional route by which society could try and help address the problem. We would support that intent. I think that's all I have to say. I'll try to answer any questions that the committee members might have.
Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): There are a number of concerns. The first one was that the eviction, unless this act is amended, would result in perhaps the innocent people, the family, being evicted as well. There were some suggestions as to how that could be deterred by the writ of possession being engineered to be just directed towards the person who is involved. My major concern, and I expressed it yesterday, was about the fact that this has to go to the General Division court. Certainly 70% of the cases of trafficking and importing may wind up being dealt with in the provincial court, which gives no remedy whatsoever.
I had suggested that maybe the approach to deal with the purpose of this bill would be to have the feds provide legislation, an enlargement of that section that allows an injured party to seek compensation on a sentencing hearing from the person in question. I don't know whether you'd get into a constitutional issue there as to whether or not, this being property and civil rights, they can do it, but it seemed to me that this should allow them to deal with that issue at the provincial court level as well, because they're already making compensation orders at the provincial court level. That would allow the judgement to be filed as a civil judgement with the courts, thereby saving an awful lot of duplication of court time, because I'm sure you and others are aware of just how backlogged the courts are.
The General Division court probably wouldn't hear any of these because of the reason that most of these cases are heard down in the lower court. I'm looking at the time frame. To try to get into the Ontario Court (General Division) in my jurisdiction is probably a year, maybe more, 18 months. In Toronto it could be two years. As I understand it, under the Landlord and Tenant Act provisions it's a summary application, so you can get it on in motions court very quickly.
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So having said all those things, and you seem to be nodding your head in agreement, it seems to me that -- and we've had a lot of arguments from people here about the constitutionality of this section and whether it infringes subsection 15(1) of the charter and there are very compelling arguments it probably does, or you'd have a tough time fitting it into the race, religion, sex and so on, but they try to create by analogy that these people might fit in the Anderson case in terms of being infringed against.
I don't know, I hear what you're saying and I hear what the landlords are saying, and I certainly think that, not just from the landlord's standpoint but if I was a tenant in an apartment building where there was active drug trafficking going on with the complementary fact that the drugs usually mean guns as well, I'd like to find a way to get them out fast too. But I'm not sure that we're creating that.
There's one other concern I have as well, which you might want to address if you have time. The question is, if this bill were to pass -- and because it becomes part of the penal process you may very well be met with the argument in the civil court, if you tried to use that remedy, that it had to be stayed pending the outcome of the criminal process on the basis that cross-examinations on affidavits, if that was required, would prejudice the trial of the accused and the potentiality of sentencing provisions there; a lot of things.
I understand what Mr Runciman's trying to do and certainly in principle I think that any logical-minded person would support that type of principle or accomplishing that principle, but the more I hear, the more I read, the more concerned I get that the bill is going to do nothing more than develop another layer of applications to courts which is going to slow down the prosecution of those guys, and ladies perhaps, who we should be giving permanent housing to in our reformatories or our pens if in fact they're guilty of that type of an offence.
Mr Dewan: Certainly there are some real problems here with overlapping jurisdictions. Unlike you, I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to try to sort through all of it, but I think that our biggest concern coming in here was just to make sure that in supporting the principle of this legislation and seeing it move along -- we'd very much like to do anything to help address these problems, but we absolutely cannot risk compromising the ability of landlords to get evictions at an earlier stage under the Landlord and Tenant Act. That has to be made predominant because, as you say, applications in the criminal courts in these cases may well take a year or more or two years to get to the stage of being heard and then the delays with sentencing and so on.
Mr Callahan: Any time you move in next to a person who's charged with a drug offence and been committed for trial -- even though they're not guilty at that point, there's certainly enough evidence for a jury to be instructed about the charge -- I think it would be more dangerous at that point to continue living next to somebody if you know they've got drugs and guns in there.
Mr Dewan: And I think a landlord in many cases would be negligent if he did not take action to try and get an eviction at an earlier stage. Landlords are required to protect the environment in the building as well. In most cases there are other routes that are available. I can see how this type of action would be a complement for those instances where the landlord, through his own lack of initiative or for financial or legal or whatever reasons, was not taking action; this could be useful. But, as I say, we certainly cannot afford to compromise the ability to get evictions under 107 of the Landlord and Tenant Act.
Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): I appreciate the witness's appearance here today and the work he's done. In introducing the legislation, I didn't want to compromise the ability of landlords to achieve speedy evictions either, as I'm sure you appreciate. We'll try to address that tomorrow when we're dealing with clause-by-clause. One of the things you said at the outset, which I think was somewhat contradicted by what you said just a minute or two ago, is sort of a general degree of satisfaction with the eviction process through the Landlord and Tenant Act. Early in my adult life, my wife and I owned an eight-unit apartment building. I tell you, it's one of the worst experiences I have ever had.
Mr Dewan: I wouldn't want to imply that landlords are satisfied. We just don't want to make it worse.
Mr Runciman: I agree. I don't think it could be much worse. I'm telling you, my wife almost had a breakdown over the process dealing with the sheriff's office and trying to get this thing going with people who hadn't paid rent for months. When they did leave the apartment, they left excrement all over the walls; they did all the sorts of things you were talking about.
Yesterday we heard sort of a blanket condemnation of landlords; talk about the worst people in the world, if you believe many of the witnesses here yesterday. Most of them are honest, hardworking people, but they were certainly dragged through the coals yesterday without an opportunity to respond.
But we did hear from these same people who purported to represent tenants that this legislation was cruel and unusual punishment for drug dealers, a violation of drug dealers' human rights, those kinds of concerns were expressed here yesterday. The representative of the Bathurst Quay Residents Concerned mentioned that as far as she knew, drug dealing wasn't a real problem. She'd only seen one when she was out walking her dog. A more serious problem, whether she'd seen this in person or not, but she certainly had no reservations about what she considered racism on the part of police in her district.
Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): On a point of order, Mr Chairman: With all due respect, I was here yesterday and I heard the witnesses and quite frankly, that's not what the witness said. The member was corrected in that yesterday and the person's not here today to challenge him. So to make those kinds of blanket accusations in someone's absence or to distort the serious presentations that were made before this committee carte blanche is really inappropriate. I would ask the member to sort of keep his comments in check.
Mr David Winninger (London South): He was right, though, when he said she had a dog.
The Chair (Mr Rosario Marchese): I understand your point. The record is there in terms of what the deputants said so that people can verify that if they want.
Mr Runciman: That's right. She said something to the effect that the police were shooting an awful lot of blacks in her area. So I'm not withdrawing it. I think the implication was pretty clear in what she said.
Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): Mr Perruzza was not present.
The Chair: Mr Perruzza, it's not a point of order.
Mr Perruzza: It is a point of order, Mr Chairman.
The Chair: It isn't.
Mr Runciman: He's taking up my time. This is deducted from their time, I hope, Mr Chairman.
Mr Perruzza: The member is using someone's comments to distort the facts and to present a different kind of picture. He misleads both the members sitting on this committee today who were not here yesterday and the public who are here today party to the proceedings.
The Chair: I appreciate your comments. All I can say is that the remarks of the deputant are on the record and so for anyone wishing to verify that, that can be verified through that process.
Mr Runciman: Absolutely.
The Chair: But your comment has been noted.
Mr Jackson: Point of order, Mr Chairman: My understanding is that when a point of order is called for, your immediate responsibility for the sake of this committee and for the record is to rule if the comments are out of order. You thanked him for his comments and I would ask you to rule he does not have a point of order.
The Chair: In the same way that I'm allowing you to make your comments, which are out of order, his comments were out of order; they were noted. I am noting your comments. We are trying to move through this as smoothly as we can and all I can say is, Mr Runciman is ready to continue with his questions.
Interjection: Rule.
The Chair: You're both out of order. They're not points of order. Mr Runciman, please go ahead.
Mr Runciman: Thank you, Mr Chairman. I would like to ask the witness if he can give us any indication of experiences that his firm has had with respect to this problem. I know we've heard the concern of other tenants who've come forward, whether they're immigrants or others, who are concerned about the real dangers that may pose for them in terms of complaining about a neighbour and the illegal activities that are occurring next door or the dirty needles that are lying in the hallway and these kinds of concerns that people have in terms of the intimidation factor and their own personal safety and the safety of their families. I'm just wondering if you could relate any experiences your firm has had in this regard and how serious the problem is.
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Mr Dewan: I think it is a serious problem. We do not deal with landlord and tenant issues specifically. As I say, our main mandate is on rent control and provincial regulatory issues, so what I hear about this is largely anecdotal, primarily in talking to the various regional landlord groups around the province in different cities.
It's a very frequent refrain from the smaller landlords as we visit these centres that they are enormously frustrated with many aspects of the Landlord and Tenant Act, and certainly securing an eviction on any grounds, as you were commenting, even for non-payment of rent.
In the area of illegal activity, which is mainly drug-related -- some prostitution-related and others, but primarily drug-related -- there is a real intimidation factor for many of the small landlords that cannot be ignored. If you're the proverbial widow who owns a duplex, and there are lots of those small landlords around who own a single unit or duplex, dealing with a very scary drug operation going on in one of your units is quite a threatening situation. I think anything that can try to help those people out would certainly be desirable.
Mr Jackson: It's true then in the scenario you've suggested that where an apartment unit has sustained inordinate amounts of damage and where a landlord acquires larger legal costs associated with evictions, under certain circumstances both are pass-throughs for the calculation of the rents, not complete pass-throughs, but they are a part of the cost of doing business which is included in a form of rent. Therefore, any process which helps to marginally minimize those costs, because the eviction would occur through a criminal court under this recommendation and therefore it's just an application to the judge and the judge rules, there's less money being spent, that has a more positive effect on the bottom line which is the costs incurred by tenants in the form of their rent. Ultimately, there's a link here.
Mr Dewan: Under the current Rent Control Act, I'm not sure you could make that argument, because the limitations are so specific as to what can be passed through. In fact, if you incur huge legal costs because of a situation of this sort, there is no provision to go for an above-guideline increase in that case. Or the capital cost to repair the building, unless it was in excess of the 2% that is claimed to be built into the act, you wouldn't recover the cost either. But in theory, you're right, if it got to be significant enough. Either way, it's being passed through. Either it's an additional huge burden to the landlord or it's going to be passed through to the other tenants who are paying the costs of the illegal activities.
Mr Winninger: Thank you, Mr Dewan, for coming again today. It's always a pleasure.
Mr Runciman was right when he said yesterday that someone got hammered. The person who got hammered was not so much the landlords as Mr Runciman for bringing the bill forward. Even though the majority of the presenters opposed Mr Runciman's bill, there was one person, Mr Harry Verschuren, manager of legal services, Greenwin Property Management -- do you know him?
Mr Dewan: I know him, yes.
Mr Winninger: He had several criticisms of the bill similar to yours, but he actually did Mr Runciman a favour and rewrote it for him and appended it at the back. One of the arguments that Mr Verschuren made was that you shouldn't just stop at drug trafficking; you should include drug possession and other illegal acts. In fact, in your paper you've given us some examples of illegal acts which led to the eviction of tenants, such as assault, weapons and other charges.
We had tenant advocates here yesterday who suggested that one should only be evicted if the illegal act affects the quiet enjoyment of other tenants. If it doesn't put other tenants at risk, why would you want to have that separate section? I put it to you, and I know you're not too sensitive on this subject, because I raised it the last time, one of the people I used to tangle a lot with on landlord and tenant matters when I was still in practice was Julius Melnitzer, the former president of your association until he went to jail for nine years for the biggest fraud in Canadian history. If someone like Mr Melnitzer was living in residential rented premises and perpetrating his frauds, would that be a reason to evict him?
Mr Dewan: That would be grounds for eviction now under the Landlord and Tenant Act: any illegal activity. It doesn't even have to be criminal activity. You can evict for a violation of a bylaw if you can get the judge to agree. In fact, there was a case quite recently where a landlord in Ottawa, after a long legal process, was finally able to evict a tenant, and the co-tenant who actually rented the apartment, for keeping about 17 large tropical reptiles in the apartment. It wasn't a criminal matter, but it was something where the kids in the play area next door were rather intimidated by seeing these pythons crawling around the windows and so on, and there was an eviction allowed on those grounds. It can be any type of illegal activity, according to the Landlord and Tenant Act.
I just picked up some of the submissions at the back from the previous deputants. Looking at what CERA was saying, for instance, yesterday, the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation, they appeared to be making the argument that it is unconstitutional or contrary to Canada's international human rights obligations to evict for any criminal activity, which would be the opposite extreme, which would in fact be an argument that the current Landlord and Tenant Act is also unconstitutional. I think that's rather excessive.
I think you're going to find the judges who hear these applications using their judgement in terms of when and when not to make an eviction, and not all these applications obviously were successful in the past.
Mr Winninger: I guess I would have to ask you then as a follow-up question, if the Landlord and Tenant Act is so flexible that it can include snakes or reptiles and if, as we hear, even in Toronto, which is one of the busiest jurisdictions, it takes 2 1/2 to 3 months to get the tenant out, to actually get the writ of possession from the time the tenant is served -- and a lot less in jurisdictions that I come from, like London -- if it's so summary, if you can proceed before you even have a conviction, if it captures offences such as drug trafficking, and if it can be done in such a speedy and expeditious manner, why would we even need a bill like Bill 20?
Mr Dewan: As I say, this is something we would see as a complement. You certainly don't want to eliminate the existing provisions, but there may be cases where a judge is reluctant to find that there are probable grounds. Obviously if there is a stream of shootings outside the unit because of drug activity, that's a pretty clear case. If you're having a shooting den in a building where people are coming in the back door, sneaking in at night and shooting up in the building, the landlord may well not have any grounds to try to demonstrate even probable, reasonable grounds that there is illegal activity.
Mr Runciman: The landlord may not want them out.
Mr Dewan: There's that. There are criminals who buy buildings to be able to rent them out. There are a number of circumstances that can arise. I guess this would help cover off a few of the ones that fall between the cracks now.
Mr Winninger: But you are aware that criminal judges, as part of their dispositions on sentencing, can issue orders restraining defendants from associating with or being anywhere near certain premises.
Mr Dewan: They can.
Mr Winninger: They can order them to remain a mile away, if they want to.
Mr Jackson: If the victim is a party to the process.
Mr Winninger: They can issue orders of non-association with anyone they please.
Mr Jackson: If there's a victim impact.
Mr Winninger: No, with or without a victim impact.
The Chair: He's not asking you, Mr Jackson.
Mr Dewan: You have to remember, this covers everything from a high-rise apartment to a single-family dwelling that's being rented out as well. You don't always necessarily have other complaining tenants or people in the area. If it's an owner who doesn't live in the facility, who rents a single unit or single house or duplex, trying to provide evidence that there is even probable grounds for believing there is illegal activity going on may be quite difficult short of setting up a video camera for a week outside the facility. Having to rely on police sources, which are obviously quite different than what's available to the tenant in terms of their inside information, may well be the next fallback, and so for those situations I could see this bill being an important adjunct to what's illegal under the code.
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The Chair: We've run out of time. We thank you for taking the time to come today.
METRO DRUG ACTION COMMITTEE
The Chair: Metro Drug Action Committee, Mr Ian Hood. Welcome.
Mr Ian Hood: Thank you. First of all, I would like to thank the committee for allowing me to come here and make a presentation. I'd also like to thank Bob Runciman for giving us the opportunity and creating the catalyst to discuss these issues in regard to his bill. I had a very large presentation I wanted to come up with in regard to all the things you've heard. No doubt you don't want to hear them again, so I'm going to get into another area of consideration here.
I'm going to come straight to the point. The people who traffic in narcotics, in my opinion, are people who are the scum of the earth. I'm going to use the strongest terms possible here today. They're the merchants of death. They spread disease and misery throughout our community. The welfare rolls are full of the victims and it goes on and on and on. Anyone who comes down here and supports drug traffickers in any way, shape or form has lost their mind. They're not serving any purpose. I can assure you of that.
The greatest single problem that comes under these dope dens and shooting galleries is AIDS. It's a breeding ground. It's a serious, serious problem and we'd better start looking at it and addressing it. It's one of the most serious problems we face.
There are some people here who are opposition critics for Correctional Services. Let me tell you something: 20.1% of all women going into correctional facilities today are involved in intravenous drug use; 12.5% of males are involved. Those are staggering figures when you think about the amount of money it's costing this province to keep them there.
When people get involved in addiction, they become instant criminals. It isn't something they develop over a period of years in regard to patterns; it's just something that happens instantaneously. Why it's so important that you look at this bill and deal with it is because it's going to send a clear message to the international community that traffics in narcotics and the cartels that are here.
They're extremely well organized. They've got accountants, lawyers; they've got real estate agents. I can go on and on and on. This is a billion-dollar industry that's sucking the lifeblood out of this province. If you want to look at the budget, take a look at the serious circumstances that these people represent in the health care -- and I can go on and on -- policing, fire. Some 85% of all crime today that goes before the courts is directly or indirectly related to these kinds of circumstances.
You want to talk about their modus operandi? Without rental accommodation, their distribution network is in serious trouble. I can tell you, in the winter months they're not out there walking the streets. It's too cold; they have to go inside. That's one of the benefits we have in this province: They can't operate in the wintertime. They've got to go inside. The shooting galleries are nothing more than sickness. They're selling sickness, they're selling AIDS, they're selling disease. That's the bottom line, gentlemen.
The thing that concerns me is under the Health Protection and Promotion Act. Under section 13, the chief medical officer of health can walk into these places and close them down. For some reason, this government hasn't got the will to exercise it. They can order immediate evictions and they should, and no one's doing anything about it.
Your government some time ago had an opportunity to change the Health Protection and Promotion Act from 22 to 35, which would make this a virulent disease, which would clamp down on the wilful spread of the AIDS virus. That's what these dope dens represent. I can assure you, anyone who comes down here and supports drug traffickers is not doing anyone any service.
I'd like to thank Mr Runciman here, a man of vision and understanding, a man who is trying to do something here. I tell you this: It's not a matter of rights; it's a matter of controlling one of the most serious problems we face in society today.
The Addiction Research Foundation has made it very clear it's costing this province, indirectly or directly, $9 billion a year. That's Bob Rae's budget deficit almost. Think about it. Welfare? When you're on drugs, sir, you can't work; you're on welfare.
I could tell you something else: Public housing is under attack. There are serious problems affecting the poor and the disadvantaged within this society, because this is where they get their human resources. Independent landlords, small landlords are being victimized. You've got 140,000 of them out there who don't have the money to get rid of these people. The problems that they represent from the perspective of trying to deal with it are staggering.
So I say to you, whatever mechanisms are available, deal with this. Send a clear message to these people. The bipartisan politics down here have got to be put aside. This issue is too great to argue on the principle that Mr Runciman being a Conservative and the NDP being another persuasion is part of the body politic of this province. It's got nothing to do with this.
This is a serious issue and you've got to address it, because the consequences are simply this: With the AIDS virus, as you well know, the people do not die of AIDS. In many cases, they die of what we call class 4 diseases, which are airborne. We've got thousands of people coming on stream today, and I can say this most sincerely to you, who are developing full-blown AIDS. Their T count is below 200. They were infected two years ago or three years ago, and this problem is absolutely immense. Let me tell you something: You breathe the same air as they do. Meningitis, hepatitis, tuberculosis, all of these diseases that we've known for years that have been arrested in this province because of the diligence of the health department and many other people who have worked very hard, are now surfacing again.
You've got thousands of people walking around with immune disorders who have absolutely no protection. Get back to the reality of how this is happening. I can tell you right now, it's happening with us looking on and not taking the action we should be taking. I'm not talking of violence and all the other considerations; we're talking the health and wellbeing of the state here.
There are two main transmission points today in this province: One is correctional services and two is these places. Understand that. That's a reality.
I can assure you that this is not something to be trifled with. It's something that we all need the cooperation of everybody around this table to deal with. It's very important, and I hope that politics don't transcend here, but that the community is the most important thing.
I was going to get into a much more comprehensive assessment of this problem based upon all the legalities of this bill, but psychologically this sends a damned clear message to these merchants of death: The bullshit's coming to an end. We are going to deal with it.
I'd like to thank Mr Runciman for doing what he has done here to give us the catalyst and the attempt here to discuss this.
Mr Runciman: I appreciate the witness's appearance and his comments as well, obviously.
I want to ask you about the public housing question that you raised. I mentioned this briefly in my initial comments yesterday about public housing, and certainly the feedback that we've been receiving is that it is indeed, especially in the Metro area, a very serious problem in public housing areas.
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I know that Mr Mammoliti, who is a government member and supported this legislation on second reading, has a great deal of public housing in his riding. He indicated to me that in his riding it indeed was a very serious problem. I understand he was going to be here today but perhaps he has difficulty if the government members have taken a position they're already going to oppose this legislation. I'm not sure.
Mr Winninger: He's on a committee down the hall.
Mr Runciman: Indeed, he has indicated to me his strong support for the legislation and for the intent of the legislation but --
Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): Mr Perruzza supports it, I think.
Mr Perruzza: Yes, I mustered the votes to bring you here.
Mr Runciman: Thank you. I appreciate that. My point, of course, in dealing with public housing is that I guess a sort of additional offence against the public is that the taxpayers are subsidizing these units and in fact taxpayers are subsidizing these dope dens that operate out of public housing.
I'm just wondering what your experience has been, if you can tell us a bit of what you've heard, what you've seen in respect to public housing and what's happening in public housing in respect to the illicit drug trade.
Mr Ian Hood: Public housing no doubt is fertile ground for traffickers because they can easily access the units based upon the economic considerations the public housing represents. There are virtually hundreds of units within public housing across Metro, and I can assure you the figure is not exaggerated, that are being utilized for these purposes. A lot of them are what you call around the welfare time, meaning they open up for 10 or 12 days when the welfare cheques are around and then they close down. A lot of them are full-time, especially the shooting galleries.
We subsidize Metro housing and the units at roughly between $900 and $1,800 a month, and that's the bottom line, gentlemen. The bottom line is a lot of crack is sold in public housing because it's cheap. It's one of the most addictive drugs out there and it's one of the most devastating. If you see somebody who's involved in crack cocaine, a young mother, you can be assured that the children are being abused physically, mentally, emotionally, in many cases to the point of absurdity. There's no way possible that there is any way we should tolerate any of this.
I understand the budget right now is about $1.1 billion for subsidies in regard to housing today. We should not be subsidizing anyone for trafficking purposes. Use the Health Protection and Promotion Act, and when you get them before the courts, use this. Get them out, prosecute them, make them pay, and sentence them. I'm not going to get into the ideas and all the rest of it in regard to what kinds of penalties should be there, but anyone who traffics and creates the misery that these people represent -- I can tell you straight, it's a good thing that a lot of the victims are not in government, because we'd be looking at reinstituting the death penalty for people who import who are not involved in addiction. We've got a lot of people out there who are involved in addiction whom we have to look at as victims, but the people who are making the bucks, the huge dollars, are not involved; they're not addicts themselves. Those people, as far as I'm concerned, should get the full weight of the law because they kill thousands, indirectly and directly. They cost billions of dollars in property damage, and it goes on and on and on.
We're listening to people who come down here, getting back to what Mr Runciman was talking about. Public housing is being exploited. It's being exploited like everything else, but more so. The misery is much greater because the people who are there have difficulty making ends meet. You get involved in addiction, and if you're a low-income person, that's it. There's no way out. You lose your kids in most cases, and in many cases the misery is unprecedented.
As I say to you, we can't subsidize drug traffickers. We've got to come down hard, and there should be no bipartisan politics on this issue. It's too great. There's far too much involved here. People have got to work together collectively to fight for the common cause, to rid our streets and our rental accommodation of these people.
They can't exist in the wintertime in this province. They've got to go inside. They must use rental accommodation. It's an integral part of their distribution network. If you interrupt that, you can create a great problem for these people and make it almost impossible for them to operate. In the summertime it's different, but they're not going to be sitting out there in the wintertime in subzero weather. You just can't do it. You've got to have rental accommodation, and I'm saying that's the key.
Mr Runciman: You were describing some of the low-income people who have to live in public housing and who get addicted to things like crack cocaine as victims. I'm wondering what your organization's experience has been in terms of other tenants in these properties, whom I would describe as victims as well. I just wonder what your reaction is to that.
Mr Ian Hood: I would like to talk about my own family, but I'm going to say something straight right now. We worked to interdict and to oppose the traffickers in Alexander Park and every other community we've worked in, especially in public housing. My family has suffered greatly from these people. My brother lost his wife because they broke into his house. My niece they had for four days because of our activities. When they finished with her, she ended up a basket case.
Interjection: She burnt herself.
Mr Ian Hood: She later lit herself on fire because of what occurred. I don't want to get into that. It's very hard to sit here and talk about your immediate family. We've suffered greatly. We've gone through a great deal with regard to our efforts to try to rid the streets of these kinds of people. Our immediate families have been threatened.
You talk about the small landlord. If a landlord has a dope peddler in there, the first thing he does when he tries to evict, he's pressured in the sense that he's threatened, intimidated, and it goes on and on and on. These people know how to continue on with their efforts no matter what the story is. You have got to come up with vehicles to stop them. I can tell you right now, this family of mine has suffered substantially. My brother lost his wife. Right now he's taking care of his daughter's children. As I say, when you see somebody who has tried to light herself on fire after they had her for four days, it's a pretty rough deal. So we've gone through the experiences. I won't say what has happened to me over the years, but I can tell you, it's been a very rough ride in many cases. So when I say to you that the need to deal with these people is paramount, the bleeding hearts who come down here and tell you that these people have rights, I say to the people who are coming down with AIDS and all the other diseases coming out of these places, they have got to be paramount and we have to get a balance.
This is what this bill represents. Bring in the Health Protection and Promotion Act when there's disease being spread in these places. The NDP government or no matter what government's in power has got to have the will to use it. Right now they don't want to because there's a problem out there, and that's what may occur if they create too much of a fuss. There's a lobby.
Mr Winninger: It may come as a surprise to you, but actually our party did place a lot of emphasis and does place a lot of emphasis on getting tough on drug abuse and trafficking. In fact, with our first Solicitor General, Mike Farnan, one of his first acts was to set up a task group on drug abuse. George Mammoliti, his parliamentary assistant, chaired it. I was on that committee, and wherever we travelled, from Kenora to Ottawa to Windsor, we heard about the problem of drug abuse and the need to treat it.
One of the first things I said yesterday at the beginning of the hearings was, yes, we do recognize that there is a substance abuse problem out there. In fact, that may be why some of our zealous members asked that this bill go to committee so that we could have hearings on it, because they were very concerned with substance abuse and trafficking.
But that's a very different issue from the issue of whether this is good legislation or not. Many of the tenant advocacy groups and other groups that came here yesterday were complaining bitterly that this bill only deals with tenants; it doesn't deal with property owners. Even those who came to support the bill critiqued it by saying it didn't go far enough because it should have covered criminal acts.
You mentioned the housing authorities. MTHA was one of the first housing authorities in the province to invoke an anti-drug strategy. They pursue those evictions very rigorously and they tell us they have a success rate of almost 100% with the drug traffickers.
Mr Ian Hood: Are you talking about MTHA?
Mr Winninger: MTHA and drug traffickers.
Mr Ian Hood: You will be hearing this afternoon from some of the board possibly who will give you another kind of understanding of what really is going on. I will say this to you, and I want to be right up front with you: There are virtually hundreds in Metro, thousands across the province. This is why it's so big and so profitable. If they don't have rental accommodation, they don't have access to it and you can shut it down, you can interdict at the most vulnerable part of trafficking, the ability to distribute.
Mr Winninger: The problem is, if you read the bill, all it says is that if someone is convicted of drug trafficking --
Mr Ian Hood: I know this.
Mr Winninger: -- the judge may order that their tenancy be terminated: not just for them, but for the family as well.
Mr Ian Hood: But it sends a clear -- go ahead.
Mr Winninger: But where does it send them? This is the last part of my question. It may send them to another housing authority. It may send them to another neighbourhood. It may, as one witness said yesterday who actually supported the bill in principle, Mr Verschuren, send them across the street. He had examples of that, where a tenant was evicted for a crime and then just moved across the street. Or the worst thing, to my mind, is that it will send them into the streets, where there will be no surveillance of them and no way to manage the problem. I ask you, is that a solution?
Mr Ian Hood: I'll tell you how long I have been involved in this. Remember George Ben? That's going back a lot of years. Vern Singer? This organization started back in 1965. In 1964 there were 11 cases in regard to trafficking in this province. In 1965 there were over 300 and it has never stopped.
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I sat here with George Ben and others way back in 1966 and 1967. We came and we presented legislation here and talked about the spread. At that time people turned around and said: "Look, we've got the police. We've got all these mechanisms. We're going to stop all this." I've seen it escalate from the point where it is an addiction problem to now where it's a chronic health dilemma.
I'll say this to you: There are no mechanisms right now that are perfect. This man has come forward and created a catalyst of discussion here where we can start to do something. A judge will have the means and understanding of the problem. He can make determinations based upon a new area of consideration that'll bring more pressure on.
But I say to you to incorporate the Health Protection and Promotion Act into the Landlord and Tenant Act in a way that can be utilized to close these places down, period. You have to trust somebody, and if you can't trust the chief medical officer of health, Richard Schabas, who asked you to do this two and a half years ago, then who are you going to trust?
Mr Winninger: Is there time to come back to this actual bill again?
Mr Ian Hood: I know the bill, I tell you.
Mr Winninger: Okay, you know the bill.
Mr Ian Hood: I've studied it. I understand there are some shortcomings.
Mr Winninger: Right, but are you also familiar with the flexibility that's built into the Landlord and Tenant Act?
Mr Ian Hood: Absolutely.
Mr Winninger: Judges can already make these kinds of orders.
Mr Ian Hood: I'll tell you this: You talk about the so-called precedents. A small landlord's intimidated. He isn't going to go to any court and say a guy's trafficking, because he's got to worry about his family. But a crown attorney who's making a determination certainly can. Absolutely.
I won't get into specifics, but there will be a man here who will be appearing this afternoon who has an executive assistant. He's right now trying to evict people who are involved in narcotics. He's going nuts, completely. I'm telling you, the seriousness that he has to go through, the threatening his family and the rest of it, is catastrophic. I'll be leaving here and I'll be going over to try to help him this afternoon.
But they threaten, intimidate. You have got to have a judge who can make a decision and you've got to make sure these people don't claim bankruptcy in a civil matter, because that's what they always do if somebody chases them. You've got to get the courts.
Mr Winninger: No one here is condoning drug dealing. In fact what many of the people suggested yesterday is that we need more community-based ways of dealing with drug dealers. Some of them gave examples of how they took initiatives, and I'm sure you have, to get crack dealers out of their neighbourhoods.
Mr Ian Hood: I've spent 28 years of my life dealing with it.
Mr Winninger: They said that this bill doesn't even deal with the symptoms, but even if it did, it certainly doesn't deal with the root causes. They said, "Why spend money on hearings like this on Bill 20 when you can put the money into prevention?" It makes perfect sense to me.
Mr Ian Hood: I can say to you that I have a great deal of sympathy for people caught up in addiction. I think there should be treatment centres and we can do everything we can to take these people away from the people who are not involved in addiction but are bringing the stuff in. I agree with you. I totally agree with what you're saying.
But I will say this to you: No matter what mechanisms have been out there, and we've advocated most of them, it doesn't work when there's intimidation, when the landlords have to pay out of their pocket to bring these people before the courts. In many cases they lose their units.
There are 140,000 small landlords out there who are getting ripped off right, left and centre. There are thousands of these places. I ask you people around this table to come together collectively, to use your collective thinking. If you don't like this bill, amend it so it has some power. But forget the bipartisan politics here.
Mr Winninger: Unfortunately, we also heard of many landlords who condone these activities on their premises.
Mr Ian Hood: Absolutely. There are numerous.
Mr Winninger: The bill does nothing to --
The Chair: Mr Winninger, we've run out of time.
Mr Callahan: I also applaud Mr Runciman for bringing the bill forward because it does allow us to address a lot of issues that really have to be addressed and perhaps are not being addressed through certain pieces of legislation that the government is introducing.
However, there are a whole host of problems with this bill. One of the specific ones is that the General Division court is the court that has jurisdiction. You probably know, if you know about the drug situation, there are very few of them that go up to the General Division court. Usually they're dealt with down in the provincial court. So you've got a problem there.
In addition to that, I'd like to take your argument a little further. I'm with you. I think the serious drug dealers, the people who are making the bucks at the expense of other people's lives, should be dealt with very seriously. But one of the problems we have in this province is the factor that our courts are so underfunded, understaffed, cases are backlogged endlessly. The people who are charged with drug offences, be it importing, apparently even importers get out now on bail. They roam the streets for years. Many of them reoffend and get rereleased simply because the backlog is so bad.
If a court decides that it can't give somebody who's in custody a trial within a reasonable period of time, it's going to let him back out on the street because it doesn't want to be bothered about it. One of the things this bill concerns me with is the factor that we're now creating one more task for the General Division court, which is already overloaded. It can't possibly deal with what it has.
I've suggested that this matter should be an enlargement of the Criminal Code, which now allows for a judge in sentencing to make compensation orders if someone is injured or if there is damage to property. They should have the power as well to say that this person convicted of this offence is not going to be allowed to return to that house.
The beauty of that is that the judge can determine that the innocent people, the family, the wife and kids, are not going to be thrown out, which might be the case if you go through the Landlord and Tenant Act. Under the Landlord and Tenant Act application, you in fact would find that the judge would make a carte blanche order of eviction and the kids and the wife who've done nothing get thrown out on the street. I don't think any of us here would agree with that and I think we said that at the outset.
But there are significant problems, and I really think it's a matter that should be dealt with through an amendment to the compensation provisions of the Criminal Code.
There was another fellow here before you this morning who was talking about damage to property. That's probably less significant. That's not something I think that you probably concern yourself about; you're more concerned about the drug aspect of it. But even there, in charges of deliberate damage to property, mischief charges are laid and the court has the power to make that order for compensation and it's filed in the civil court as a claim against that party. It saves having to go to court and wasting court time. It's already done.
As much as I believe that Mr Runciman's bill has given us an opportunity to discuss this, however we vote on this should not be construed by anybody as being in favour of drug traffickers or drug dealers. I think even the government is against that, although you sometimes wonder, the position it takes.
I'm the corrections critic. The position they take in terms of being able to identify people who have come into the correctional system with AIDS to me is outrageous. They talk about workplace safety. That used to be one of the clarion cries of Bob Mackenzie and others, and this is not being partisan; this is simply reflecting on the historical actions of these people. Yet for correctional officers, we can't pierce the corporate veil and find out whether or not these people are possibly a risk to the correctional officers. That to me is absolutely Looney Tunes.
Maybe it's necessary to maintain secrecy for people with AIDS outside of the system, but it seems to me that, once you're arrested, you lose some of your rights. Then you have to look at the rights of the people who've done nothing wrong at all, who are correctional officers, who are in fact being subjected every day to the possibility not of catching measles but of catching death or catching the secondary effects of it, because these people who have AIDS in the jails can give off TB or hepatitis.
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We did a hearing, I guess it was in public accounts, into the number of days that correctional officers take off because of sickness.
Interjection.
Mr Callahan: I'm commenting on what this gentleman has said.
I suggested the reason they take off so many days is they're under massive stress. I would be too if I had to go into my job every day and run the risk of winding up not with some simple disease but with something for which tragically there is no cure at the moment. I just find that this government's inactivity or inaction on that, and I'd say this if it was my own government, is unconscionable.
Mr Hood suggests that the section of the Health Protection and Promotion Act should include AIDS. Why not? When I was a kid growing up, if you got smallpox, which they didn't have a cure for at that time, the person from the health department came and slapped a thing on your door and quarantined you. That way we kept it narrowed down to who would get this death-dealing disease. Today we don't do that at all. They come through the correctional system, go back out on the street, and by a geometric progression you have increased the possibility that there will be far more people who will be stung by this tragic, tragic disease.
Hopefully, we'll find a cure for it, but in the meantime, I think it's totally irresponsible, not particularly for the people working in corrections but working in any area where they are in close contact with people who potentially have this disease. I think this government, if it doesn't do something about it, will in fact rue the day. You're as bad as the landlord situation where the drug dealer is in the apartment. If you don't get him out, he creates havoc and problems for his neighbours.
Mr Ian Hood: Exactly.
Mr Callahan: You're creating problems for your neighbours by allowing these people to get back out on the street and to infect other people. That to me is unconscionable.
Mr Ian Hood: Mr Callahan, you mentioned something about the families. I like to be able to speak from experience. If anyone's in a house who is trafficking, if the husband's doing it, you can be assured in 99% of the cases that the wife is there as well.
I'd also like to say something else. Drugs are all-consuming. Every cent that's available that can be brought to bear for that habit is there. The innocent are the ones who are the victims, the children, when you get into the physical, emotional and sexual abuse that goes hand in hand with these problems.
I can think of not too many homes, in fact none, where there's trafficking where the children are not substantially abused and shouldn't be there. They're starved, they're on high- starch diets, they eat macaroni three times a day, they're abused, people are coming down. The children should be in the care and control of people who can help them and care for them. If you have any sympathy, you have sympathy for the children who are exposed to this. This particular problem is catastrophic.
I'll tell you how serious it is. There are young ladies on Queen Street. If you walk up and down there in the middle of winter, they're freezing out there. They're out there using their bodies to get money to go back to these places in order to shoot up. That's how extreme it is, in subzero weather. They will go to any extent, commit any crime, do whatever is necessary.
Addiction is all-consuming. It is the worst illness I can see out there today, because it encompasses everything. It is affecting the budget here, it is affecting Correctional Services. There is nothing more devastating to a family than somebody who has to produce the moneys. The welfare cheque goes. In many cases they have three or four cheques coming in. In many cases they go ahead and utilize the OHIP cards in order to get drugs to sell. It is unbelievable.
You're right, Mr Callahan, about the recategorization of the virus from 22 to 35 and this government's refusal to do so. But I say to you, under section 13 of the Health Protection and Promotion Act, they can act now if they want to. I say that Mr Runciman has created a catalyst for us to make these discussions and come forward and get into these areas. I think subsection 13(4) of the Health Protection and Promotion Act should be incorporated in some manner into the Landlord and Tenant Act along with this bill. I'd like to thank him today because there are very few committees that will deal with this issue. It seems like it's dead down here.
I thank you for your time and I'd like to say in closing that I hope, if anything at all, you realize there are a lot of lives at stake here. We hope you will think about this and support this bill. You'll send a clear psychological message to these guys out there, along with the fact that you're not tolerating it. This is scaring the hell out of them. Otherwise they wouldn't have so many people down here. I know what's going on.
The Chair: Mr Hood, I thank you very much for taking the time to communicate your concerns to this committee.
PARKDALE COMMUNITY LEGAL SERVICES
Mr Raymond Kuszelewski: I hope to be brief in my presentation. It's basically in two parts. I've handed out written submissions which I won't go over in any great detail but which I will generally highlight in my presentation. I'd also like to make this oral presentation, which will give you an idea of the direction from which I come and the direction which I hope this committee takes with Bill 20.
By way of introduction, Parkdale Community Legal Services, where I've been a staff lawyer in the landlord and tenant group for six years now, deals and has dealt with primarily tenants for almost 25 years. We have a very good view of what it is to be a tenant in a variety of living accommodations, from traditional high-rise buildings through to illegal basement apartments through to unlicensed rooming houses. We see on a daily basis the kinds of situations which tenants find themselves in and the kinds of situations where tenants have to react to behaviours of landlords, whether they be legal or illegal.
We are quite happy with the Landlord and Tenant Act and we come to you today with the position that the Landlord and Tenant Act, as a complete code that deals with landlord and tenant relations and which was enacted in order to bring those relations up to an even keel so that both sides had rights and obligations, is the avenue through which the desired goal of Bill 20 should be addressed.
The reality on the streets for tenants is that illegal evictions take place routinely. The Metropolitan Toronto Police Force is not up to speed on even who is covered and who isn't covered under the act, so that illegal evictions quite often go unnoticed. There are constructive evictions, and it's something you ought to turn your minds to when you're dealing with Criminal Code matters. Bail conditions, parole conditions, sentencing conditions can all constructively evict somebody simply by saying, "Don't go back there." Those mechanisms are already in place. Those mechanisms are under the umbrella of the Criminal Code of Canada and they belong there.
Section 107 evictions, on the other hand, the ones that the Landlord and Tenant Act deals with, deal with evictions on a very low standard of proof. A landlord need only believe or have reasonable grounds to believe that a tenant is committing an illegal act and that triggers that eviction process, so that the process that Bill 20 hopes to introduce, which in my respectful submission is terribly flawed, is already in place.
I have appended to my written submissions a court case from as far back as 1988 which shows how novel it was that a then Ontario district court judge, now an Ontario Court (General Division) judge, can with his inherent powers of equity deal with the very situations that you are hearing about today without encroaching -- and I believe that's what's happening with Bill 20 -- upon the powers of the Parliament of Canada, which has enacted the Criminal Code of Canada and the Narcotic Control Act.
It's quite clear that the Conveyancing and Law of Property Act, a piece of provincial legislation, gives tenants the same rights of quiet enjoyment as the owners of property and landlords. The Landlord and Tenant Act is based on that principle that because you are a tenant does not mean that you should not have the same enjoyment of the property that you rent and that you use as your home as a person who can afford to own their own home or who can afford to rent you your home.
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The Landlord and Tenant Act is based on that principle of quiet enjoyment. If you look at the privacy section, section 107, which creates the various heads of eviction, the offence sections that tell you that it's improper to withhold vital services, you will very clearly see that what the act is directed towards is maintaining rights and obligations with respect
to the issue of quiet enjoyment. It is that basis upon which not simply drug traffickers or dealers or users but anyone who in the mind of the landlord is creating something akin to an illegal act can be evicted. One doesn't need an entirely new process.
If you look through the written submissions, again I'll just very briefly take you through the position that I take, which is that the Criminal Code has already created criminal offences and it is within the purview of the Criminal Code to draft punishment for those offences. What Bill 20 is attempting to do is draft punishment where punishment is already drafted and to enforce punishment that is not within the purview of the province but which is within the purview of the powers of the federal government.
It's clear. Section 6 talks about that. It tells you quite clearly that it's only federal enactments that can create offences and federal enactments that can create punishments. Obviously Bill 20 is only a provincial bill and can only deal with provincial offences.
The Criminal Code speaks of sentencing. It tells you again that in sentencing you can only look at the wide range of sentences that are able to be presented to the sentencing judge because the sentencing judge has to exercise discretion. Even if Bill 20 is enacted as it stands or at least its principle is enacted, whereby you can put forward an eviction as one part of the sentence, the discretion will still lie within the sentencing court to decide whether or not that is an appropriate sentence. So you haven't necessarily come any closer to the goal of a full eviction than you have at this present time, and again section 107 of the Landlord and Tenant Act doesn't give you that anyway.
Landlords always have civil remedies. It's clear in the Criminal Code. In terms of taking a landlord's application for an eviction to a sentencing judge, if you look at section 735 of the Criminal Code, it talks about victim impact statements at sentencing. Section 735 says clearly that only a person directly involved in a crime can give a victim impact statement. It's arguable that a landlord is not directly involved in the behaviour of somebody who is either trafficking or dealing in narcotics on his or her premises.
Again I fall back to the position that the Landlord and Tenant Act is the place where you should be, where if anything has to be done it can be done there, but because the burden of proof is so low, the standard of proof is so low, it's already in place. It only means that it ought to be used more often.
As the case that I have appended shows, it can be used in a novel way. The MTHA, the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority, has been historically the authority. The landlord who has consistently gone to court on these types of issues, if you were to read the half-dozen or dozen MTHA cases that have been reported in the various reporting services you would see how the courts have dealt with the standard of proof, and it is much lower than the one that you're submitting and that you're dealing with in Bill 20.
Very briefly, I'd like to go over the actual bill. It was only late yesterday afternoon that I received the amendments to Bill 20 but they don't change my particular position on it.
If we go very quickly through it, section 1 speaks of people convicted under sections 4 and 5 of the Narcotic Control Act. For acts that were committed in connection with premises, as a lawyer it is very difficult to state what "in connection with" means. The Landlord and Tenant Act, on the other hand, says quite clearly "in or about the premises." It's clear that it's meant to regulate the behaviour in or about the premises, and those terms have been defined in the court in dealing with section 107 of the Landlord and Tenant Act. The bill generally is very vague, but it is that kind of phraseology that makes it unworkable.
I wonder generally, with respect to Bill 20, who it is targeting, because one thing that the bill doesn't do is tell us who in fact is going to be the target of the applications. Is it simply the convicted person or does that mean that the entire family is going to be targeted? Does that mean that everybody associated with the premises is going to be targeted?
As well, and I'm sure that you've heard this from other people, because we're only targeting tenants, are we creating a head of discrimination because property owners are not the subject of the very same penalty that you're imposing?
Mr Jackson: Yes, they are. You know that, Ray. Come on. Search and seizure. You've got properties, transfers. There are laws.
Mr Kuszelewski: My point remains, though, that Bill 20 in and of itself is targeting a particular group of people --
Mr Jackson: I agree.
Mr Kuszelewski: -- over and above something that is already in existence for all people. In other words, the tenant trafficker is still subject to search and seizure, so that if he has a yacht docked at Ontario Place, it goes whether he's a tenant or whether he's a property owner. But in this particular case, he loses his home or his place to live. If that means his family loses its place to live, are we isolating? We're not even sure who we're particularly targeting.
Subsection 1(2), very quickly, the prosecutor may make a submission. What's the guarantee that they will make a submission, and whose discretion is it at? Is it at the discretion of the particular landlord? Is it at the discretion of the particular crown? Is it at the discretion of the police officer in charge of the particular case? Who makes that decision? It's not clear how the process would in fact take place. Again, my bottom line is that the bill is encroaching on parliamentary authority and it won't stand. But should it stand, there are particular logistical problems and legal problems with it.
Again, it becomes duplicitous when you get to section 4, because it then gives a landlord an opportunity to apply to the General Division for exactly the same thing you're giving the prosecutor discretion to apply for. So does that now create a system of double jeopardy, where the prosecutor may, might, may lose or the landlord still may, might, may lose, and then he can still go under the Landlord and Tenant Act to evict? How many kicks at the can do we get before we say, "Look, it's not working"? I think the process just isn't tight.
The other thing is that you may create a problem if, for instance, the prosecutor does make a submission and it is rejected. Are you estopped then, as a landlord, from taking the same process to another court to try to get the same remedy if a first court has already said, "No, you can't do it"? What about the landlord and tenant court at that time? If the landlord fails under Bill 20, can he still fall back to section 107 or is he estopped from falling back to section 107 to try yet again? It's unclear.
The appeal process: It's clear that under the Landlord and Tenant Act appeals are taken to Divisional Court, but in criminal convictions from the General Division you're going to the Court of Appeal and not the Divisional Court. It's clear as well that if you're dealing with summary convictions -- and I understand that perhaps you're not going to be dealing with summary convictions -- summary convictions then go to a summary conviction appeal court which is at the level of the General Division. But then again you have to go to the Court of Appeal if you wish to appeal those. So there are a number of avenues that seem not to have been explored in terms of just the legal process.
With the amendments, again, the simple criticisms that I made are still in effect. The amendments to the sections don't change the fact that there may still be three ways to terminate the tenancy, that it still may be duplicitous and certainly unclear as to who has the first right to do what and what the result means if it fails at the first instance and the second and the third.
Actually, the amendment to subsection 1(3) of the bill where "The application shall be heard immediately following conviction and sentencing," now creates yet a third tier. Is this a secondary sentencing, and what effect is that going to have if somebody challenges the fact that they are now being sentenced twice? If they've been sentenced under the Criminal Code and then you make an application to that very same court saying, "Now we want you to add on to the sentence," is that in and of itself not double jeopardy? So I think the amendment itself has created yet another tier.
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There certainly is difficulty with the fact that subsection (9) speaks to "this section prevailing over anything in the Landlord and Tenant Act." I understand that was to be amended as well, but I don't think that changes the criticism that we haven't taken away the fact that there still is section 107 and you'll have to somehow compare it to what Bill 20 is asking you to do and also compare it to what the Criminal Code has already got as a power of sentencing.
The basic position is that I think the Landlord and Tenant Act is the way to go if anybody wants to level criticisms. I have heard some of the remarks earlier. Yes, the courts are overworked. Unfortunately, yes, there is only one motions room being used in the General Division court for landlord and tenant matters, and there are some 30 or 35 every day. There is no doubt that there could be more funds put into that particular aspect of landlord and tenant relations, that is, the execution of the court issues.
But I think that is where it should lie. I think that if there are amendments to be made, that is the forum in which they should be made. To create yet another piece of legislation which will do nothing more than, as you can see, give lawyers something to talk about and criticize does not seem to be effective in dealing with what everyone does agree is a very real problem.
But what a great number of groups and individuals have for remedies are very different types of remedies. I know some of that has been brought out in the discussions. Do you take the hard line or do you take the soft line? Do you go for harm reduction or do you just go for cutting it off altogether?
Those are some of the discussions that take place even in landlord and tenant court when landlords make those types of applications. I think that's the forum where it ought to remain, and I ask you to take this into consideration.
Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): I appreciate your laying out very clearly that you have these problems with the bill, certainly that the punishment is already there and that this is federal jurisdiction.
What I want to ask you is, first of all, MTHA, you said, is fairly successful in dealing with this type of issue. You also mentioned that they have a lower burden of proof when they are going after an eviction. I think you're also aware even from listening this morning to the previous presenters that the public is very concerned, and I'm sure that's going to be a growing concern.
What would be your recommendations to us as the provincial level on how to deal with this in a more effective manner? You're saying that maybe legislation is not appropriate. How do we get at the problem?
Mr Kuszelewski: The discussions I have had with various social service agencies and housing providers is that they are taking a better look at having their own constituents come up with the resolution to the problem. Even MTHA and Cityhome and the other social service housing providers are doing exactly the same thing. They are allowing their own constituency to deal with a problem that they find onsite, and that seems to be a more workable solution because it allows for varying points of view to come and speak directly to the issues as they face those individuals.
Ms Harrington: Yesterday we had a woman from the Bathurst Quay area of non-profit housing, and she talked about that idea of it being a social problem and having co-ops deal with it within their own mandate. Do you think that is an adequate enough response, or should there be more laws involved?
Mr Kuszelewski: I have a personal opinion, but given that I work for an agency that probably deals with this on a broader scale, I also have the benefit of having heard probably from all sides as to what they see, certainly the position at the Addiction Research Foundation, for instance, that we ought to be dealing with it as a harm reduction as opposed to just cutting people off. We've seen health centres that say we ought to have methadone clinics as opposed to simply letting people deal with it as cut off cold turkey or just live off the street the best you can.
It seems that there are some answers out there, but as yet the discussion hasn't taken in all of the players. We have people who are in specific agencies and deal with specific groups of people who have very specific ideas of what they would like to do, but we haven't brought in residents' associations, we haven't brought in all the different tenants' associations, we haven't heard from the entire group of people as to how we should deal with the abuse of drugs, and we can take that to the abuse of alcohol and other abuses we're finding in society that are coming out at large.
But my bottom line seems to be quite clearly that we ought to be taking it to the constituents, as opposed to saying we as experts know this is the answer, because other tenants live with this and have to deal with it just as well. We're not simply talking about landlord-tenant relations. We're also talking about tenant-tenant relations and tenant-community relations and tenant-property owner relations.
There are a lot of relationships, and until we hear from all of those players, I don't think we're going to get a clear answer, but I think we have a clearer answer in so far as we must at least ask those people what their view is and how we ought to deal with it.
Ms Murdock: I'm glad that you state it, because I know I did not support Mr Runciman's second reading, and at the time most of my reasoning was based on the onus that was going to be put on the rest of the family. Since then, of course, once you get to look at it and digest it, the whole issue of the overlapping jurisdictions and the existing law as it is with a lesser standard and so on obviously legally comes into it.
But I just read the appended case, and that sort of addresses the whole issue of what Mr Callahan had asked earlier and some of the concerns of my own caucus colleagues in terms of family, in that, just quickly to summarize it, it's a housing situation where the son of a mother who was the tenant is accused on two occasions of trafficking. The mother doesn't know about the first one but does know about the second one. The daughter also lives with them. She's at university.
The judge finds basically that the mother, knowing about the second one, then was knowing that an illegal activity was occurring, and that the illegal activity was occurring on the streets of the unit, not in the property or what we consider property or on the premises. The judge considered that that was still part of the premises.
That, to me, would seem very strong to kick the mother out because her high-school-aged son is selling drugs. In this case the judge decided that, after being a tenant for 11 years and so on, with conditions that the son not live there etc, they allowed her to stay, as long as those conditions continued.
My concern here is that this is one case. You deal with this all the time. Is this the norm? Do judges make those kinds of considerations in your other case law?
Mr Kuszelewski: Again, MTHA's probably the best authority around because the volume is there. If you look at their particular group of cases, you can see how the courts deal with it, and because it's a public housing authority, the courts take a particular view of it as opposed to a private housing supplier.
But to answer your question, this is unique. This is a unique and novel decision. You probably wouldn't find another one like it. Some judges go to the extreme and say, "No, everybody's gone," but you can see how the judges can be convinced and that judges are convinced in fact that there are other novel remedies that can be taken, short of something that becomes a sentence in a criminal matter, because this is equity that we're dealing with. We're not dealing with black and white, burden of proof, standard of proof.
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Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): I'm trying to figure out your concern with the legislation, because I heard three different concerns that sounded potentially contradictory.
One was that under the Landlord and Tenant Act already there is an easier way of evicting somebody. I took that to mean from you, "Well, we've got to deal with these scoundrels, and if you allow this bill to pass, it will make it potentially more difficult to throw somebody out."
Then I heard you say that your concern is that this is a federal matter, so we're infringing on the federal one. The public don't have a lot of sympathy with those arguments. They just say, "I've got a problem. Stop your jurisdictional feuding, because you're just hiding behind that." Then the third one was that there may be some internal flaws in it.
Can I take it from your remarks that you think it is a big problem but you would prefer to deal with it through the Landlord and Tenant Act and not through this one?
Mr Kuszelewski: I don't know how big a problem it is. I agree with you that substance abuse is a problem in Toronto, Metropolitan Toronto and the province of Ontario. I do believe it ought to be dealt with under section 107, because that's the section of the piece of legislation that deals with landlord-tenant relations and intertenant relations.
Why I may have sounded contradictory is that lawyers like to talk in the alternative. My first position is this thing won't fly. My second position is if it flies, it's going to have a lot of problems and still may not fly. So my bottom line is always section 107 of the Landlord and Tenant Act.
Mr Phillips: I think your suggestion was, let the tenants work this problem out. That's what I interpreted --
Mr Kuszelewski: There's a great deal of movement in that direction.
Mr Phillips: Let me finish my remarks. In the communities I represent, that might be laughed at. Let's say you've got a four-unit building. Most people are frightened to death of somebody dealing in drugs, just because it's a fairly serious business. If I were to go to a community and say: "Why don't the four of you sit down and work this little matter out? I'm sure the four of you could have a little meeting, and you can persuade the drug dealer to come around." You seem to be in a different world than I am when you suggest that.
Mr Kuszelewski: You may have narrowed it down too far. One of the positions that I try to advance is that communities are bigger simply than the tenants in a particular apartment building. So to take your example, if there's drug dealing going on, it's affecting more than the four tenants in that building. If it's as great as you're suggesting, then that means there's a lot of traffic coming in and out of that building so that other neighbours are being bothered, other community members are being bothered. It becomes a community issue. It becomes an issue where maybe one goes to the community relations officer or the community liaison officer of the local division.
There are a lot of novel ways to deal with that particular type of problem. I'm suggesting those are out there and we ought to pursue them. But the bottom line still remains that if that particular landlord is having a problem in his building, with only four units, he still can just hand out a notice and immediately go to court and say: "This is what's going on. I've got pictures here of people walking in at 3 o'clock in the morning every night. Something's going on. Other neighbours are complaining about it." Mere suspicion is enough to trigger a section 107 eviction.
Mr Phillips: If I was a landlord and came to Parkdale, I assume you would take on my case?
Mr Kuszelewski: No. We deal only with low-income tenants. We deal with the low-income community as a whole. The one area of law that we deal with almost exclusively is tenant rights. There is a landlord self-help centre, which is a legal aid clinic for small landlords.
Mr Phillips: So Parkdale can't take on landlords?
Mr Kuszelewski: No. It would be a conflict for us given that we do everything in terms of tenant advocacy.
Mr Jackson: Ray, how many tenants in a year would your clinic assist? Just a number, approximately.
Mr Kuszelewski: I can tell you that we get 300 people a month coming through the clinic.
Mr Jackson: How many of those would be approaching you with the concern under the Landlord and Tenant Act that their right to enjoyment has been disrupted because they live next door to a crack house?
Mr Kuszelewski: Not so much next door to a crack house; possibly in the next apartment to a crack dealer.
Mr Jackson: I'm sorry, in the next unit. Thank you, yes. Would you get 2%, 10%, 1%? Approximately, just a rough sense.
Mr Kuszelewski: It wouldn't even be 1%, but I can tell you that most of the drug dealing happens in illegal rooming-houses. It's not something that seems to have filtered into the traditional high-rise. It's something that seems to be in units that the city of Toronto is already having problems with.
Mr Jackson: What do you advise those tenants? They are being victimized by the criminal activity in the adjoining unit.
Mr Kuszelewski: That's right.
Mr Jackson: What course of action, as a legal aid clinic advocating for those tenants, what do you say to that specific cohort?
Mr Kuszelewski: We advise them to take that problem to the landlord and have the landlord deal with it because in our view it's a landlord problem.
Mr Jackson: Do you advise them to go to the police?
Mr Kuszelewski: We don't particularly advise them to go to the police because we want to try to advise them as to what their remedy is, given that they're losing their quiet enjoyment.
Mr Jackson: You don't advise people when there are illegal activities to notify the police?
Mr Kuszelewski: Certainly we'll give them that option, if it's an illegal activity, but the one thing you have to understand is that if a person comes and says, "Look, there are people going in and out of this apartment at 3 o'clock in the morning," what am I supposed to say?
Mr Jackson: I understand. I appreciate the fact you may have inadvertently assisted the committee, although you may not have wished to. Many of the legal aid clinics that have come forward have blasted it, but you've actually come with some very constructive, insightful comments which will be in fact, if we can get legal counsel to amend them, helpful. I wanted to thank you for that.
I also wanted to thank you for hitting down the notion, which I've been trying to get across for two days, about how this is a not a victimless crime. It is deemed a victimless crime by virtue of the landlord and tenant relationship, but if you through your mandate or I through my interest in this bill, for those tenants who are victimized -- you'll realize that we are seeking some mechanism which is court-based to sensitize a judge to the impact of this criminal activity, that the presence of an individual is having a deleterious effect on the social fabric of that community.
You were present in the room to hear the concerns from tenants. I want you to know that nobody of that group of six people was here as a landlord. They were here as tenants saying, "We've lost a family member, there's been death, there's been AIDS, there have been other things."
The bill provides a second alternative to assisting in the process of an eviction, which is a form of removing this criminal activity and the persons responsible from their impact on other tenants, in particular low-income tenants. Victims' impact statements would be permissible under Mr Runciman's suggested approach, which can be amended, but under the pure approach of the Landlord and Tenant Act -- no, I'm sorry. Under the simple Criminal Code approach, which is to look at the crime against the state, there's no concern for the impact on the immediate community, which you say is where the solution should be.
Mr Kuszelewski: But that's why I say it lies with section 107 rather than with the Criminal Code.
Mr Jackson: Section 107 is the pressure, and the landlord becomes a victim the moment his rent is reduced because he's failed to convince a judge that there are criminal activities going on and he's unable to evict the tenant. Whether you say that it's an easier way to get a conviction or not, the only way the landlord becomes a victim is when he suffers an economic loss as a result of the court's failure to accept responsibility or to rule that the safety of those citizens in that complex should be upheld.
The Chair: One final comment from you, Mr Kuszelewski.
Mr Kuszelewski: But certainly, wouldn't a prudent landlord immediately move to remove the trouble from his building? The quickest removal will come under the Landlord and Tenant Act. You've heard from other people how long the criminal justice system takes in criminal matters. It may be a year, it may be two years.
Mr Jackson: Agreed, Ray, but you also heard that there is serious intimidation. These people are paying the rent. They're well organized.
Finally, Mr Chairman, only to get half the time that was allocated to your colleagues in the governing party --
The Chair: Don't do that, Mr Jackson, because if you do that, then you'll irritate the Chair.
Mr Jackson: Well, I don't --
The Chair: If you would allow me, on a previous speaker we allowed your caucus 10 minutes with the intervention of Mr Perruzza. I didn't say there, stop with your questions. If you will allow this balance to go on, we'll try to accommodate all sides.
Mr Jackson: I appreciate that. My final question --
The Chair: No, we've gone way out of time. I thank you very much, Mr Jackson. Mr Kuszelewski, we appreciate your presentation, your suggestions and your comments today.
The committee recessed from 1202 to 1411.
METROPOLITAN TORONTO POLICE CENTRAL DRUG INFORMATION UNIT
The Chair: I call the meeting to order. We invite the Metropolitan Toronto Police central drug information unit, Detective Sergeant Craig Hilborn. Welcome.
Mr Craig Hilborn: Good afternoon. I was just apprised of this request on Friday and, as such, a presentation addressing this is going to be remiss. What I can do for the committee, however, is touch on specific issues that we, as a law enforcement agency, run into, problems that arise not only with officers doing the investigations but problems that we run into with complainants and the citizens who are involved in primarily high-rise facilities within Metropolitan Toronto.
Crack cocaine is our number one drug out on the street. It supersedes any other drug that we're seizing, including marijuana. Our seizures were well over 2,500 just in crack alone -- I think the next one down was about 1,400 and some for marijuana -- so you can see that it is our number one drug on the street.
The distribution, unfortunately, of crack cocaine is all too often found in and around high-rise premises within Metropolitan Toronto. The problem that we run into as a law enforcement agency is trying to police a high-rise building. It's almost an effort in futility. We run into problems with security. It's hard to have an undercover officer go into a high-rise complex and maintain proper security on him. The policing of such premises is obviously very difficult.
What we are finding is that there are a lot of transients who are using various high-rise buildings for the distribution of narcotics or illicit drugs. Again, I refer to crack as being the prime source of our problems out there.
The connotation of the crack house that we see all too often out on the airwaves, especially down in the States, of small residential buildings that are boarded up, they've got barred doors and windows, we don't find very often in Toronto. Most of the crack houses are very transient and you'll find them for the most part in high-rise buildings.
It's not inconceivable to have two or three apartments in one complex that are involved in the same drug distribution network. You'll have one apartment that could be used for doing the actual contact, you could have the other apartment that actually makes the crack cocaine, and then you'll have the other that will strictly store the money. So it's conceivable that you can have three apartments that are involved in the one network involved in distributing this.
They are very transient in that the amount of coke required to make crack cocaine for that specific night's transactions is very small. Most crack dealers will use very small quantities of cocaine hydrochloride to make their crack and they'll make enough just for the distribution, so you don't have an illicit laboratory set up, you don't have glassware and chemicals and everything else.
The manufacturing of crack cocaine is so very easy and very basic. You do not have to have a special IQ to make it. It's very easily made. If you have cocaine hydrochloride, which is the powdered cocaine, crack is very easily made. It's very transient and that's why I would like to emphasize the fact that where we are finding a lot of the distribution of crack cocaine is in high-rises, again primarily because it's extremely hard to police, it's very easy for them to maintain security and basically they've got a wealth of prospective clients within that area and prospective associates that would help them out in the distribution of it.
I would think right now that if I was a tenant, I would be more concerned with the propensity for violence involved with the distribution, and again, I keep referring to crack because of the violence associated with it. A lot of the homicides that have taken place in Metropolitan Toronto are attributed to drug dealing and specifically crack cocaine.
Crack is a very addictive drug. Consequently, people who are hooked on it for all intents and purposes generally have a hard time maintaining employment. Thus, if they're going to afford the drug, they've got to come up with the money elsewhere and unfortunately that usually is through other criminal activity. That could be a purse snatch from a tenant in the same building. It could be a B&E into a tenant's apartment, even extortion. We get into prostitution, both male and female. The crime associated with crack not only tears down the community as a whole but the specific premises that are involved in the distribution of it.
Just touching on it briefly, I think there's a major problem and this is something that has come about recently. Crack cocaine is basically a new drug. It started to make a presence in Toronto in 1986 and it slowly increased until 1991 when it surpassed all the other drugs as far as seizures are concerned, and it's maintained that and it doesn't look like it's going to go away very easily.
Our concern is that we have a lot of young kids who are getting involved in it because of the initial cost to it. You have a lot of young users. Consequently, you're getting a lot of young people who are becoming very addicted to it. As I said, if you've got an addiction, then you've got to supply the addiction, and unfortunately, we have a lot of youth who are getting involved in other criminal activity as well.
I grabbed a couple of the morning reports that come across my desk from different drug squads. I grabbed two. One was from 4 District drug squad and it was a morning report for March 1. What had happened was that 4 District drug squad polices the Scarborough area. They were doing an undercover operation and they were working on this individual. He was working in the Scarborough area. They ended up executing a narcotics search warrant at 4400 Jane Street, at an apartment there, and they ended up finding not only crack on him when he was arrested, but they went back to the apartment and found a substantial amount of crack at that premises. At that time, his mother, who was age 40, was charged as well, jointly, with this offence.
The reason I'm pointing this out is that it shows you how transient this problem is, the fact that he's dealing his narcotics or crack in Scarborough, his residence is in one district, or North York, out on Jane Street, and his mother's involved as well.
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This type of legislation, if it was in place -- I know there are concerns about a member of the family being charged and why should the rest of the family pay the price -- would be an ideal situation. A bill like this would be effective in that you would be able to have the mother and son evicted from the premises, and totally justifiably.
Another incident was down in 5 District, in the Wellesley-Parliament area. There was again an undercover investigation involving crack. This report just came across my desk this morning, so this happened yesterday. They did the investigation and they went back to do a search warrant on the place when they wanted to arrest the accused, and when they went back there they found that the sheriff had already evicted them from the apartment.
I'm trying to give you an overview of some of the problems these drug dealers are causing. As I said, it really makes it extremely difficult to police. I would think the tenants would jump at the opportunity to try to purge problems within their premises by getting rid of people who are involved in the distribution of drugs, specifically, as I said, of crack cocaine, which is such a dangerous substance. We have numerous police officers who are assaulted, male and female, thrown down flights of stairs in high-rises, just trying to do proper policing there. So I would think that the tenants would welcome an opportunity to alleviate this problem.
I've been touching on crack cocaine. A drug that's raising its ugly head again is heroin. The distribution of heroin is escalating within Metropolitan Toronto. We're extremely concerned about that because of the addictive properties, the associated crime to support their habits. I can't see this problem going away readily. I think it's going to be a problem that we're going to have to live with and try to adjust to.
Cocaine and heroin are very addictive substances, especially cocaine in the crack form. For heroin, the purity levels that are out in the street right now are astronomical. I think the average that went through Health and Welfare labs analysed at 72%; the number of heroin deaths we're having in this city is basically attributable. As to the addictive properties, the problem that these two substances are causing, not only to law enforcement but to the citizens on the street, I think any type of legislation that would help to remove them from their premises or their presence would definitely be beneficial.
As I said, I was given very short notice on this. I apologize for not having proper handouts, but I thought I would be able to answer the committee's questions if it had anything specific in relation to the police and enforcement in that area.
Mr Callahan: A lot of guns found when dealing with crack cocaine?
Mr Hilborn: Yes, very much so.
Mr Callahan: Arsenals? Not just one or two guns.
Mr Hilborn: Quite often arsenals, yes. It's a sign of the times.
Mr Callahan: Some of the problems we have will have to be worked out by the committee when we go through clause-by-clause. What's the percentage of drug charges under sections 4 or 5 that are dealt with in the provincial court as opposed to going up to the General Division?
Mr Hilborn: I guess everybody's under certain restrictions, and the federal Department of Justice, which is responsible for doing the prosecutions, does its utmost to keep it down at the provincial level so that most charges would be dealt with down at the provincial level.
Mr Callahan: Can you give us, either anecdotally or factually, the percentage? Would it be 60% down there, 40% up in the General Division?
Mr Hilborn: I would hazard a guess that it would be much higher than that.
Mr Callahan: Much higher, so probably about 80%.
Mr Hilborn: Our courts wouldn't be able to handle that.
Mr Callahan: I guess 80% then in the provincial court and 20% up there. You realize that this bill, for constitutional reasons, the only time that it would be applicable, and there doesn't seem to be any way to solve that, would be if the matter was in the General Division.
Mr Hilborn: Yes, I was reading that.
Mr Callahan: We'd only be catching about 10% or 20%. That's a problem.
Mr Hilborn: Yes. Again, because of the cutbacks with the federal Department of Justice, the restrictions in the courts and everything else, they are trying to expedite drug trials and they're doing that by primarily keeping them down in the lower courts.
Mr Callahan: They proceed summarily and don't give the accused an option to take a trial.
Mr Hilborn: Exactly.
Mr Callahan: The other side of the coin too is that presently, as you are aware I'm sure, under the Criminal Code there is a provision where the sentencing judge can make an order for compensation for property that was destroyed or injuries that were sustained by a person who was a victim of crime.
Mr Hilborn: Yes.
Mr Callahan: It would seem to me, and I've suggested this, that perhaps the place this type of provision should be is by enlarging that provision to provide for eviction in the appropriate case. It serves a number of purposes. It gives the judge the opportunity to decide to kick one or all of the people out rather than just throwing everybody out on the sidewalk, people who may be innocent as well as the felon.
The other concern we have is a question of timing. As you're well aware, I guess in Metropolitan Toronto, what's the time frame between charging and the time the matter is dealt with, on an average?
Mr Hilborn: It's generally within a 60-day period.
Mr Callahan: Is that right?
Mr Hilborn: Yes. It has been expedited. There's been a lot of effort through the judicial system, both with the courts with the federal Department of Justice in relation to drug charges, even full disclosure has been a major area that has been addressed, and to expedite the courts, as I said because they are backlogged and they have been very, very slow. The Askov decision really turned everything about and put it in the proper direction.
Mr Callahan: How would this act assist the police in terms of locating and busting drug rings in apartments? Would it make any difference in that regard?
Mr Hilborn: This type of legislation, I would think, would follow the fact that we'd already located them. Where I would think it would be beneficial would be that it may not make certain premises susceptible to the distribution of drugs. As I mentioned at the outset, enforcement in any type of high-rise building is a headache. It's extremely dangerous. It's something that we prefer not to do, but unfortunately, Metropolitan Toronto is a high-rise municipality and we have a lot of apartment buildings that we have to police, and we do have problems with that.
Mr Runciman: Dealing with what Mr Callahan mentioned about only 10% or 20% in the General Division court, I'm assuming, and maybe it's an incorrect assumption, that those cases that do end up in the general division are the more serious types of cases. Would that be fair to say?
Mr Hilborn: That's right.
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Mr Runciman: Very serious people. Wouldn't it be helpful to the police, I would assume, if the crown were able to ask for an eviction of a dealer involved in two to three units? You talked about multiple units, which can't happen under the Landlord and Tenant Act, I might say. So the court could deal with someone who's in multiple units through this legislation, where they can't deal with it under the LTA.
Mr Hilborn: That's correct. As I said, referring to the distribution of crack, it's very transient and it just makes it easier for them to use various apartments in there. As I said, it can vary. The one apartment that's making the crack one specific night, the next night may be looking after the money. They're very smart and, as I said, it makes it extremely hard.
Mr Runciman: I just want to touch briefly -- we don't have an awful lot of time, which is regrettable -- on some of the testimony we've heard. We had a so-called tenants' representative here from the Bathurst Quay area who seemed to be primarily concerned about the police treatment of visible minorities and said that she wasn't aware of any serious problems with drugs in that area. I think it was 51 Division she mentioned. What's your experience in terms of drugs in 51 Division?
Mr Hilborn: You've got to be careful here.
Mr Runciman: Is it a serious problem, I guess, is what I'm saying?
Mr Hilborn: Yes, it is.
Mr Runciman: In apartments it's a serious problem?
Mr Hilborn: Yes, very much so.
Mr Runciman: Okay, that's fine.
Another response from some of these groups that purport to represent tenants -- and I suggest if they poll their tenants they won't support the positions we've heard through these last couple of days -- is that they've indicated in their view on the implementation of this legislation, dealing with people found guilty and responsible for selling drugs to many innocent people and purveyors of disease and crime etc, that passing this legislation would be cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of their rights.
I'm just wondering, as someone who works with people out on the front line and not only has to work with dealers but sees the fallout in terms of the victims and what the fallout is, what's your response to that kind of position?
Mr Hilborn: I'm really almost appalled at that type of attitude, because the Metropolitan Toronto Police work very, very closely with community groups. Community groups are coming to us for assistance. They're fed up with the distribution of drugs, the scourge that it's putting not only on to family members but to their community as a whole. It's common knowledge that's the problem arising in the school systems right now throughout Metropolitan Toronto. The community is basically fed up with drugs. I would think any type of legislation that would try to eradicate or remove the cancer from a facility that I'm living in would be extremely beneficial and would be welcomed.
Mr Runciman: Our last witness in the morning, from the Parkdale Community Legal Services, suggested that instead of doing this sort of thing we should be having community meetings of tenants and get the drug dealers into these meetings and convince them not to do it any more. Perhaps you could respond to that, but also tell the committee about the explosion that occurred in an apartment that fortunately didn't kill a lot of people but could have, and that sort of thing that's happening.
Mr Hilborn: As I mentioned earlier, I have a little bit of concern with the actual application point, subsection 1(1). I think it should be expanded to include the food and drug section, schedule G and schedule H, primarily because you can have somebody who's dealing large quantities of LSD out of an apartment and this legislation wouldn't cover it, because LSD is found in the Food and Drugs Act; methamphetamine or speed, there are numerous other drugs that are distributed out on the street that should fall within the parameters. Again, it would be under the trafficking and possession for the purpose, and not a possession charge.
I would think that if this was brought into place, it would be extremely beneficial to the occupants of the premises. I think they would welcome it. I don't know who was here representing them. Obviously they aren't attending the same meetings that we are, or the community groups that are requesting assistance from the police. I just don't understand it. I think that if you've got a healthy neighbourhood or facility, then you'd want to maintain that. If that means removing drug dealers, then I would think they would welcome that or should welcome it.
You have to understand that the Seized Property Management Act, which has been passed in Ottawa, can take a house, can take anything away from convicted drug dealers, so I don't see why legislation that is going to remove people upon conviction from a facility or an apartment building or something is really detrimental to other people.
Mr Winninger: Thank you for your presentation. You've certainly provided a lot of detail on the crack cocaine problem and the problem with drugs and drug trafficking in general.
I didn't hear any presenter yesterday or today, nor have I heard any members on this committee, in any way suggest that there is no problem or suggest in any way that we don't need to deal with it strictly. But what we do hear again and again through the presenters is that there are a lot of flaws in this particular bill.
Sweeping all those flaws aside -- one person suggested it was unconstitutional, unnecessary and unconscionable -- how does this in any way deal with the symptoms, let alone the root causes, of the problem?
We had Mr Henry Verschuren here yesterday speaking in support of the bill, from Greenwin Property Management, who said that when they evicted a tenant carrying on illegal acts, under the Landlord and Tenant Act, he resurfaced across the street at another apartment complex. People, we accept, have to live somewhere. If they're going to be dealing drugs, and they're evicted from one apartment, they'll either turn up in another apartment or turn up on the street.
I'm not quite sure, given that we have a lot of flexibility built into part IV of the Landlord and Tenant Act -- many examples have been given of drug traffickers who've been evicted under the Landlord and Tenant Act -- why we need this and what useful purpose it serves. Perhaps you can help me.
Mr Hilborn: I agree there's two problematic areas, the one being the fact that it would have to be done through the Divisional Court level, which would conceivably be a considerable length of time after the offence. Marry that up with the fact that a lot of the distributors, dealers -- again reverting back to crack because it's our most prominent problem -- most of the crack dealers, as I said, are very transient. It's not like they have to have a lot of money invested in their operation; quite the contrary.
In answer to your question, basically there are two areas where I can see there being a problem: the fact that it's something that can't be addressed right away. By the time it comes around to the divisional level, they may conceivably not even be living there anyway. They may have been forced to move out for other reasons or whatever.
Ms Harrington: I want to thank you for telling us the reality of what you face out there and how much you are doing to try to solve the problem. That's what this bill is trying to do, but I believe it is terribly flawed. The one aspect I would ask you to comment on, and which I spoke in the House on, is the discriminatory nature of this bill in that a person who is a home owner does not face eviction on trafficking charges or criminal charges, yet a tenant does.
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Mr Jackson: He just said they do.
Ms Harrington: If this legislation were to pass.
The Chair: The question was to Mr Hilborn.
Ms Harrington: Would you care to comment on that aspect of the bill?
Mr Hilborn: Yes. The area that I think has to be looked at is the fact that in a high-rise complex the drug dealing is taking place in stairwells and in the front lobbies, and you're having drive-by shootings, you're having assaults, you're having weapon offences that are happening in the elevators. This is something that is being brought on to the tenants of that specific apartment building; we'll use an apartment building as an example. One apartment can be bringing the cancer to that premise, and it could be in the form of drug dealers, people selling the drugs, people who are distributing, the violence involved with it, drug ripoffs.
As I mentioned earlier, you are running into people trying to support their habit. Quite often they'll be using kids who are in a high-rise complex as stakeouts while they do their drug transactions. I think it's quite a bit different than a private residence in the sense that it really affects a great deal more people.
The Chair: We've run out of time. We thank you for taking the time to make your presentation to us today.
Mr Runciman: On a point of order, Mr Chairman: It's not related to this witness but the issue that was just raised by the member. I don't know if Mr McNaught has indicated that he's circulated information related to the question Ms Harrington asked about the forfeiture provisions, where in fact there is legislation where in effect you can have your house seized upon conviction.
The Chair: Okay, thank you very much.
WHYY MEE FAMILY COUNSELLING FOUNDATION OF METROPOLITAN TORONTO
The Chair: We'll invite Whyy Mee Counselling Foundation of Metropolitan Toronto, youth-new Canadian court worker program, Ms Eugenia Pearson. Welcome.
Ms Eugenia Pearson: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for having me here today. Before I begin, I must apologize that in my submission I wrote about the government and I bypassed the fact that it's a private member's bill. I must also say that I just received the motion on the different sections, which I have not had enough time to peruse, but I think my presentation will address some of the concerns we have.
Whyy Mee was founded in 1982 from an academic, legal, medical, psychological, social and sociological perspective. The purpose of its foundation came from the realization that a large number of visible minority and new Canadians were suffering from frustration and stress stemming from the challenges of adjusting to a completely new society without the benefit of adequate support systems.
I think all of you have this report, and maybe it would be redundant if I just go over it, if it's permissible. But the problem we are having is not the fact that we do not recognize that there are problems in housing and that there are a number of issues around drugs on the street or in the home. In the job I do in the community, I have seen a number of situations where families have been terrorized, not only by the police but by members of the community. Some of these people are not guilty. Some of them do not know what their relatives are doing.
For that reason, I feel that Bill 20 needs a lot of consideration before we could think of it being a substitute for addressing the issue. We believe we need to have a proper community-based dialogue. When I say "community-based dialogue," I know about the aggressions that exist out there with people on drugs. But I feel that people who are working closely with these people and the families have a lot of input to give to the committees which have the ability to make changes. I feel our work should be mostly with government committees and with communities.
Many of the people who are victims of this type of drug abuse are vulnerable single mothers. Many of them are being terrorized by the drug users. Their children are being used, and even to the extent where many of them do know or suspect that there is an illegal act going on by a friend or a relative, they cannot do anything about it. These people need protection. They have to accept what is going on because their lives are at stake and their children's lives are at stake.
This is where we as community people or government officials ought to take these situations into consideration rather than having to displace families from their homes, when many of them have to go along with the problems surrounding them.
It goes back again to many of the families, elderly people, who do not have any idea of what is going on in their children's lives. I have to go back to the Young Offenders Act, where on the one hand children are given the authority to be their own people, because they are responsible for themselves, and on the other hand when there is a crime then the parents are being dragged into it and they have to take the responsibility. These are the sorts of things that we are concerned about. We have to make up our minds. We have to be precise as to who is responsible, and not the family as a whole.
I have many cases, but this case to me is one of the most outrageous cases: I had a mother with two children. She lived in a Metropolitan Toronto Housing complex. She knew nothing about what was going around her. She knew her community was infested with drugs but she had nothing to do with it. Based on the fact that she would not subject herself to be a mistress for a man, she was totally set up. Her apartment was in disrepair. Metro housing did not answer her request to have her home repaired until the policemen went in and terrorized the home and abused her that she had drugs. They never found anything in her house. What they found was a small amount of drugs under her step. That could be placed there by the user or anyone in that area, because her place was in disrepair.
She was arrested and Metro housing ordered eviction, which is the North York law by itself to evict someone: automatic eviction. This woman was terrorized and her children were scared. They had to take psychological counselling because of the treatment they sustained in the house. It is because of community intervention, which I orchestrated myself -- I brought the politician in the woman's area and we were able to prove that it was because of the disrepair in the housing that this woman had to go through all that pain -- Metro housing went ahead and did repairs immediately, to prove its point in evicting this woman.
I'm happy to say that to date this woman is still living in the complex because they repaired the place and she was found not guilty of the offence. This is the point that I'm trying to bring to the committee, that people are being victimized, and there are tenants who are doubly victimized because of who they are, where they are coming from or the location in which they live. We take the position that Bill 20 would serve injustice to many people of this nature.
I also am fully aware that it's a critical need to address the issue, because we have children in school and families that cannot cope with this type of issue. Children are dropping out of school because of the need for extra money and they are forced to do the trade because it's quick money for many of them, particularly people who are totally economically deprived. When they are economically deprived, the children see an easy way out because they are influenced by these users.
We feel that something has to be done, not by having a law to evict families, but that the users, if found guilty, should be placed into some treatment centre, at which time we feel that the families should be given some sort of monitoring services from the social service perspective, so that they can deal with all the indignities that surround them with the drug abuse.
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As I said earlier, I don't intend to get into too much of the information, because it's in front of you. I would entertain questions if you so wish. But I will touch on the level of the disempowered tenants. When I looked at disempowered tenants, we're talking about those non-residents who are coming in and infringing upon the life of people in their communities. You heard earlier from the police officer that many of these transactions are not done solely in the area in which the person lives. These are the sorts of things that we should take seriously.
When we're looking at disempowered tenants we also look at the factors, because during the course of eviction we see that many of these people are people who may be victimized by their neighbours, victimized by their own landlord, based on maybe standing up for their own rights. We have to be careful that whosoever is going to be treated, the family must not be a victim of that type of treatment.
This concludes my presentation at this point. I will draw your attention to the recommendations we have put forward. We recommend that Bill 20 be cancelled. The reason I said it should be cancelled is we need more time to think of something that is more conducive to our communities and to our own conscience, that some people will be victimized as well as some people will be guilty, and we have to be doubly sure that landlords will not abuse their power. We also do not want any sense of racial disharmony in our community. We need to deal with this problem without creating further disharmony and greater indignity to the individual.
We feel that community and government should work together to find suitable provisions if a person is to be treated for drug use. The drug user should be removed to a treatment centre and the family of the offender should remain in the building with assisted social services care where necessary.
If the offender is to rejoin the family unit after treatment, a timely and well-planned transition should be put in place to ensure that the offender is completely rehabilitated and the family is removed to a secure place for reunification where possible.
There should be a monitoring system for the family to avoid recidivism.
The government should encourage the services of community support, medicare, school programs, social services to assist in building a safe and secure community.
The government should consciously address the levels of deprivation and poverty among low-income families as a way of reducing these problems that often contribute to chronic drug-related incidents.
Finally, I would like to add to this that I hope the committee will take into consideration that although the law is the primary instrument of social justice, we should question to what extent the law is the proper instrument for such a policy where women are victims, children are abused and families with children and the elderly may suffer. We acknowledge that these are the views of one agency, but if our recommendations fail, we believe that tenants need to be well informed about the protection and rights they may have and the level of conformity which Bill 20 will bring.
I also will add the fact that we are deeply concerned that tenants will be moved from one area to the other. The problem will be shifted around, and if we don't have a proper solution, I don't think Bill 20 will do any justice at all regardless of its good intentions, because the user is going from place to place. You've heard it several times. We're only what we call shifting the buck from one place to the other.
This concludes my explanation.
Mr Jackson: I'd like clarification from Eugenia on what you mean by a legal offender, or am I reading that incorrectly? Is it someone who offends our legal system?
Ms Pearson: What page are you on?
Mr Jackson: The main objectives of your organization are "to provide support and counselling to legal offenders...." Do you mean people who have been charged and gone to court?
Ms Pearson: Yes. We deal with people who have been charged, before they enter the court, and after we do after-care with them.
Mr Jackson: I appreciate your sentiments in the context that you provide those advocacy services. I appreciate that a lot of our dialogue at this point has been on those people who have been victimized. That is perhaps fairly or unfairly a major focus for this committee. All three political parties have expressed that. I appreciate receiving your brief. Perhaps my colleague would like to comment.
Mr Runciman: I recognize the concerns you've mentioned here as well about families being evicted. Certainly that's not the intent of this legislation and I don't think that is indeed the case. I think we've talked about the discretion allowed the courts. But there are situations, and one was just outlined to us by the officer from the Metropolitan Toronto Police, where there are members of the family who are also involved in the distribution and sale of illicit drugs. This gives them the opportunity not simply to touch base and remove the one offender but a number of offenders. At the same time, it simply doesn't have to remove an innocent family.
You are an advocate for people in conflict with the law, so we understand where you're coming from in that respect. I'm just wondering about tenants who have to live in these buildings. Your concern seems to be primarily for the people you advocate for. I guess the bigger question is, do you not consider the people who have to live in these buildings side by side? Their kids have to see these dirty needles, they have to see the transactions, they have to see the guns, they have to see the violence. Do you not consider these people victims and that government should be doing something for them?
Ms Pearson: I did address that. We talked about people who see the situation as intolerable. I addressed that in our report.
Mr Runciman: But your concern seemed to be primarily around the offender.
Ms Pearson: No, not exactly. I'm sorry if that's the perception. I'm concerned about people who have to live with the intolerable situation. I'm concerned about the young people who have to see the dirty needles, as you have mentioned. What I am actually saying is that we have to apprehend the doers and have them properly treated, put them into a treatment place, because where are we going to put them? If we're taking them away, where are we putting them? We have to put them someplace. I don't believe in displacing people, because we are sending the problem to others.
Mr Runciman: We're not talking about users here; we're talking about dealers.
Ms Pearson: We're also dealing with the dealers.
Mr Runciman: The dealers into a treatment centre too?
Ms Pearson: We need to have these people apprehended and treated.
Mr Gary Malkowski (York East): Thank you for your presentation. It was interesting to hear your perspective. I hear your concern about Bill 20. It seems that you feel it will cause other problems and that it will not be helpful for the group that you're talking about, the innocent people who will be evicted from their apartments because of the actions of the drug dealers. Do you think there could be some kind of other solution to Bill 20 instead of Bill 20?
Ms Pearson: Yes. I think there should be a solution to this type of problem. We are not above reproach and I think we can deal with it rather than using a bill that could be applied unfairly. This is the unfair treatment I'm talking about. Whereas it will be very good for others who are very honest, I'm talking about people who are double-victimized. This can be seen as another way of abusing tenants who are helpless. I think we can deal with it. In my recommendation, I said we should sit and deal with it.
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Mr Malkowski: Do you think Bill 20 is more designed to help the drug dealers instead of the victims who are trying to look for safe places?
Ms Pearson: No. I wouldn't think it's beneficial to anyone at this point in time. People who are looking for a place to live -- I want to live freely myself, and others want to live freely too. I'm not saying that Bill 20 is as detrimental as it may sound. I'm saying that we have to find a solution in dealing with the users, the dealers and the people who are living in the areas. But how are we going to determine who is using the drugs, and how are we going to determine who should be evicted? That's what we're talking about, tenants over tenants and landlords over tenants. That's what we're talking about, the fairness that it will bring, the injustices.
Mr Phillips: On your recommendations, the comments I get from people in my community are that when they are faced with a drug dealer in their neighbourhood, somehow or other it seems to go on for a long while, that oftentimes it seems difficult to get it resolved and that some people in the community feel they have to live with it for far longer than they should, while the drug dealer, for whatever reason, seems to be able to get by for a long while.
One recommendation you have here, that the family of the offender should remain in the building, is interesting. People in my community would say: "I'm tired of pampering the drug dealers. We have scarce resources and we seem to be pandering to the crooks and not looking after the rest of us." As I say, with the exception of that one recommendation, your recommendations could be interpreted as being almost overly sympathetic to the drug dealers. Am I misinterpreting these recommendations?
Ms Pearson: I think so, because I'm in no way endorsing the drug users or the drug pushers or whatever name we want to give them. I'm talking about making provisions and dealing with the problems. We cannot sit back and allow these people to come and terrorize our young people and turn them into zombies before they even finish school. If there is a problem and we know that this person is pushing drugs, then we have to find a way to get that person treated for his behaviour. So I'm not endorsing anything; I'm saying that we should make an effort to apprehend that individual and have that person treated one way or the other.
Mr Phillips: If we did recommendations 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7 of yours, many people would say: "I'm trying to get services for a variety of things, and all of these resources are being applied to dealing with a convicted drug dealer. I just don't think that's fair." That's the response I would get, that we don't have that much money to provide other services and yet we're going to do all of these other things: remove to the treatment centre, timely and well-planned transitions, remove to a secure place, provide a whole bunch of other programs. I just wonder if we aren't running the risk of putting all of our money behind the drug dealer when we should be trying to allocate it in a different way.
Ms Pearson: But where are you going to put them? It's going to cost us anywhere they go. Where are we going to put these people? They've been evicted from across the street and they're living at the other section. Isn't it expensive? Where are we going to put them? The services are there. We have services in existence. These are not new services we're asking the government to create; these are services that are in existence. Bill 20 is saying this person is convicted, this person is found guilty. Are we going to remove him? What we are saying is to use the services that are available to us to deal with this issue and not have the family be victims of one person's behaviour or two people's behaviour.
The Chair: Okay, we ran out of time. We appreciate your coming today and sharing your views with us. Thank you very much.
METROPOLITAN TORONTO POLICE SERVICES BOARD
The Chair: Mr Gardner, are you prepared to begin?
Mr Norman Gardner: Yes, I'm prepared to come and talk and run. We're in a budget session, as you know, at council.
The Chair: Of course.
You may be familiar with the proceedings here. You have half an hour, and leave as much time as you can in your presentation for questions.
Mr Gardner: I think we'll have lots of time. I'd like to extend my appreciation to both you, Mr Chairman, and the committee for hearing me today. I'd like to also commend Mr Runciman for his initiative in attempting to deal with a very serious problem that exists here in Ontario, and in particular in Metropolitan Toronto.
People who are engaged in criminal activities, particularly those of a nomadic type, hardly ever use their own properties. It's far more beneficial for them to rent property, having the option of paying or not paying the rent, utilizing that property and sometimes wrecking it and forcing legitimate landlords who rented the property in good faith to suffer the consequences of having an undesirable element in the rental property who is not the initial person who had formulated a lease or an agreement with the landlord. In other words, you get a situation where somebody may have leased the property and brought somebody else into that unit and they're using that unit for anti-social behaviour or activities.
My understanding is that the proposed bill applies to a person convicted of an offence under the Narcotic Control Act committed in connection with the premises he or she occupies as a tenant.
This proposed bill would be more effective if it were to be extended to include all other criminal activities; that is, common gaming and bawdy houses and other criminal activities. By strengthening the proposed bill, it could also be used to forbid the common use of properties for criminal activities and purposes. It's my feeling that the wording of the bill should be "An Act to protect the Persons, Property and Rights of Tenants and Landlords and forbid the Common Use of Properties for Criminal Activities and Purposes." By making these changes, the intent of the proposed bill would not only encompass the protection of tenants and landlords, but would also address and curtail the elements which support and allow criminal activities to flourish and thrive.
In many cases, actions against tenants are being heard as landlord and tenant matters within the Ontario Court (General Division). Legal actions of a criminal nature and their decisions should supersede legal matters which are being heard as landlord and tenant matters. Cases could still be heard within the Ontario Court (General Division), with all avenues of appeal still remaining intact. But now the landlords would have the added benefit of having crown attorneys requesting to have tenancies terminated and writs of possession issued.
Under the Landlord and Tenant Act, if damages are caused, the only recourse for landlords is to seek restitution through civil procedures. When an award is made by the landlord and tenant courts to landlords, tenants are still able to evade payment by filing for bankruptcy. By allowing this bill to supersede the Landlord and Tenant Act, crown attorneys will be able to seek compensation and restitution for landlords and property owners for damages which have occurred as a result of the criminal activities taking place on their properties. By receiving a criminal conviction, protection by filing for bankruptcy then is not available.
We all get gut reactions. To some degree we've got a sense of what is natural justice and that natural justice is based somewhat on what we perceive as community standards and morals. My perception of community standards is that the vast majority of the public are really sick and tired of seeing victims of intimidation, harassment and physical abuse ignored and abandoned, and the perpetrators of this victimization getting away with their anti-social behaviour. We need to put some teeth into legislation to prevent tenants and landlords from violence and from financial harm. This problem that the proposed bill is meant to address certainly has a very broad impact.
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The people who live near some of the areas where a lot of these criminal activities take place, whether the premises are used as a crack house where people are taking drugs, IV or whatever, or as houses of prostitution, really are frightened and intimidated. You have to see some of these victims who are afraid to talk. If they're on MTHA properties, they have to get home by a certain hour because the lobbies are taken over by some of the people who frighten the hell out of them, excuse my language. They are extremely frightened and feel like they're locked in a prison. They are looking for someone to rescue them.
Certainly the same thing holds true with some people who rent properties out and don't take particular care about what the people they make the lease arrangements with are going to be using that property for. They may say: "I'll rent it out. I really don't care what they're going to use it for as long as they pay the rent." In some cases they pay the rent but they wind up creating a big problem for the people who live in that particular adjoining area and who feel intimidated, who feel frightened and don't get the kind of protection they should.
We all recognize that there is an accountability factor we have to deliver to society as a whole, and I think this bill is going to add some stability to neighbourhoods. It would be a step towards that accountability and would have a positive effect on our communities and our societies as a whole.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is my speech.
Mr Winninger: There are a couple of problems that come to mind as you speak, which have been repeated again and again by many of the presenters at these hearings over the past couple of days. First, aren't you really avoiding the problem by evicting drug traffickers from one residence and they move on to another residence or move on to ply their trade in the streets? How is this bill aiding anything?
Mr Gardner: I'll tell you something. If you lived next to these people, you wouldn't care where they were going to go as long as you got rid of them as your neighbour.
Mr Winninger: But you represent a whole community of people. How does it assist things when they move across the street or down the block or into another neighbourhood in your area?
Mr Gardner: You're absolutely right. It doesn't help, unless these people get it into their heads that this kind of activity is not going to be tolerated, that perhaps in these cases there are going to be charges against them and maybe some convictions levelled.
The big problem too is that we don't have an adequate way of dealing with people who have addiction problems. If we take a look at the number of people being treated today for addiction problems compared to the number of people who have addiction problems, it's really infinitesimal. You're absolutely correct in saying we've got to have some way of dealing with these people. We're going to have to find some way of making adequate resources available to make it compulsory that people who are charged and convicted get a reasonable amount of drug treatment therapy.
Mr Winninger: So you're talking treatment and prevention.
Mr Gardner: That's right. We're only talking about one aspect of the legislation.
Mr Winninger: But that's not in the bill.
Mr Gardner: That's not in the bill, but I just feel -- and I've seen some of these things happen. A few years ago the previous government deinstitutionalized a lot of people and --
Mr Callahan: We didn't do that. The Conservatives did that.
Mr Gardner: Well, somebody did.
Mr Jackson: They didn't correct it. Is that what you're saying?
Mr Gardner: It all sounded very good, but the only problem was that there was no adequate way of ensuring there would be some supervision of some of the people being let out of the institutions. We really needed a sort of big brother or family to undertake to look after these individuals, because when you get people with mental illness and they're not taking their medication properly, they cannot function in a normal manner.
What we've seen is a situation where some people are not accepted into the hostels in Metropolitan Toronto, and in Metro we've got about 55% or 60% of the hostel population of Ontario. We've got people you can't let in there because they don't take their medication and they have behavioural problems. There's so many things, just like the drug problems.
Mr Winninger: We're into a different area. I do have other questions, but I want to find out if any colleague had a hand up.
The Chair: No.
Mr Winninger: Okay. We already have a couple of vehicles in place that we heard about repeatedly yesterday. We have the Landlord and Tenant Act, which not only allow courts to evict the tenant based on the tenant's own illegal acts but also allows eviction orders when a tenant permits others to conduct illegal acts on the premises. We have criminal courts where judges can make compensatory orders to pay for the kind of property damage you described earlier.
I presume you've read the bill. I'm just trying to find out from you, as you speak with great support for the bill, what it offers society and people in neighbourhoods that they don't have already.
Mr Gardner: The easiest way for me to respond to that is that sometimes, just as you pointed out, you're dealing with things in isolation, and judges will deal with them in isolation. This bill, it seems to me, puts together a few of those things so when the judge is handling them, they have a little broader aspect of being able to deal with them than dealing with them on the individual basis of the existing legislation. I'm not a judge, but that's how I look at it.
Mr Callahan: I want to jump right into it, because I agree with you. There are people who are suffering from schizophrenia who are our street people of this country, because of the wacko Mental Health Act that lets them go in one door and out the other one, which I have to tell you was brought about during the days of the accord, when the Conservatives and the NDP --
Mr Jackson: That's a crock, and you know it.
Mr Callahan: -- refused to support provisions that would have helped these people.
Mr Jackson: That's misleading.
Mr Callahan: That's not misleading at all. That's fact.
Mr Jackson: That is absolutely misleading.
Mr Callahan: All right, you prove me wrong.
Mr Jackson: I can prove you wrong, because I sat on all those committees.
The Chair: Mr Jackson, we'll give you an opportunity to say that again when you're speaking.
Mr Callahan: In any event, to give you an example -- and I'm going to get political now -- of how shortsighted this government is, the fact is that I've been pushing and my colleagues have been pushing for a drug that is apparently the best thing they've got for schizophrenics now to be put back on the formulary so the street people can use it and perhaps stay capable of looking after themselves and eliminate a lot of these problems on the street. Well, the Minister of Health didn't even know what the drug was when I went and talked to her about it.
The government should start looking at the old attitude, like the mechanic, "You can pay me now or you can pay me later," and that's precisely what they're not doing. What they're trying to do is patch things, patchwork.
To go to Mr Runciman's bill, I gave him a fair bit of due for bringing this issue before this committee so we could discuss it, because there's no question there's a very important issue out there. It's law and order, it's the safety of our community, it's dealing with having to live next to a drug dealer who's got guns and everything else. But we have some problems with the bill which we've heard from people who have come before us.
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The first one is a jurisdictional problem. I made a pitch yesterday that we should get out of this jurisdictional mode in this country or we're going to wind up suffocating ourselves. In any event, it has to go to the Ontario Court (General Division) because of a case called Reference re Residential Tenancies Act. We don't have jurisdiction to set up the provincial court to deal with this so it goes to the General Division court.
We heard from Detective Sergeant Craig Hilborn this morning that only about 20% of the drug cases ever get to the General Division, and that's because of cutbacks too in the moneys available for prosecutions for drug cases. You're dealing with 20% -- granted, they would probably be the most serious because the crown would move them up to the General Division for that very reason -- but 20% that is the window of opportunity we're looking at in terms of trying to help people and protect them from these -- I can't think of a name for them, actually.
On the other side of the coin, we also have a court system that is totally underfunded. We have a court system that's so backlogged in Metropolitan Toronto that there are massive numbers of civil cases that can't be heard, and we're about to create a forum into which we're going to put one more possibility, one more statute.
You're a municipal councillor. I was one for 19 years. We used to pass bylaws, and I'd always say: "Why have we got another bylaw? We can't enforce the ones we've got." It's great politics, but in reality -- the perception is there that you're doing something, but you're just fooling the people. I don't believe in doing that. I believe that for politicians today, the watchword, the most important thing they can think of, is integrity, honesty. Don't fool the people any more. They've caught on to us.
You've made some comments here. Maybe we can salvage the bill and find some way of making it work, because the intent is good. I wouldn't want to live next door to a drug dealer, particularly crack cocaine. We heard from the same detective sergeant this morning that with crack cocaine, to guard your money and your crack cocaine and the rest of your goods, you've got to have an arsenal of weapons. I would imagine if we could take down the walls in this city, we'd probably find enough arms to carry on the Second World War: grenade launchers, machine guns, the whole bit. You'd know that from being on the police services board. I'm sure you've seen some of the busts they've made and the guns they've come up with.
It becomes somewhat ironic that we have all these jurisdictional niches, these little pigeonholes where you can't cross over to that one or that one, and only this court can hear this, or only that court can hear that. If we don't get out of that mentality, we're going to make New York City look like Disneyland in comparison to Toronto and the surrounding areas.
We've got to do something about it, so I applaud Mr Runciman for bringing the issue forward to allow us to debate it and try to get at the heart of it, but in looking at the bill and in listening to the deputations, there are an awful lot of these pigeonhole problems there. I don't know how you solve them. If somebody can tell me how to solve them, fine.
I suggested earlier that this should perhaps be an enlargement of the section of the Criminal Code that allows a judge to make a compensation order for damage to property or injury to persons and do it all at one time. But what that does -- I'm told you can get on for trial in 60 days here, while in Brampton it might be six months to a year. That means that person's out there on the street living in the accommodation for a year while they're waiting for this act to kick in, because it only takes place on conviction.
Mr Jackson: I'm enjoying the speech. I just want to make sure Mr Gardner has time.
Mr Callahan: Mr Gardner didn't want to respond anyway.
The Chair: Time has run out, but I'd like to give Mr Gardner an opportunity. Is there any comment you want to make to that?
Mr Gardner: Absolutely. I think we're all looking --
Interjection: That was a stream of consciousness.
The Chair: When did you read James Joyce? Sorry, Mr Gardner, please continue.
Mr Gardner: You're right. We all feel a little frustrated in dealing with things that we see are wrong in our society. The frustration among the public is, why don't we do something about it? I think one of the big failures has been within the judicial system itself, that what's coming out of there isn't perceived to be justice, as far as the victims are concerned.
I get a lot of calls from people: "Why don't police look into this case any further than they looked into it?" There are a lot of things the police are not going to look into any further because they're not going to lay charges because the crown has talked to them about it, and they don't feel that whatever evidence they've been able to gather is worth going any further with. So why should we waste, as you say, the valuable time in the court system? There are a lot of people who are victimized to some degree who are never going to get compensated.
I've been badgered by one person right now -- he's not one of my constituents but he sure seems to have zeroed in on me -- in trying to deal with someone who has been charged with welfare fraud. They took this senior citizen for somewhere in the neighbourhood of $4,000 to $5,000. He wants restitution but he's never going to get it, and I told him that. I could play the game of saying, "I'm going to pass this thing on," create a paper trail for him, but I told him it's not going to go any further because it's not worth, in many cases, the police resources to try to find enough evidence that would make a crown look at it as worthy of going to court, so it's abandoned. This is where the situation is. The people out there are frustrated. They're being hurt and they're looking for somebody to try to help them.
The way I see the bill -- and I'm not a lawyer; I'm busy enough doing all the things I have to do at my level of government -- it looked to me as if this bill wrapped a few things together that a judge at least could have at his disposal without dealing with things on an individual basis. If the legislators can find some way of helping this out and making it a little more practical, fine, and we'll look to you for your wisdom.
Mr Runciman: I'm heartened by Mr Callahan's comments that perhaps we can work together to achieve a resolution and address this. It's nice to hear that, but I'm not sure we're hearing that same kind of message from the government.
There are a couple of things I want to touch on briefly. In terms of the deinstitutionalization and the problems with the mental health area, no one suffers from that more than my constituency, having a forensic facility there and seeing people shoved out on the streets without proper resources in the community. In terms of the right to refuse treatment, that was an amendment brought in by Evelyn Gigantes during the accord period. Certainly I did not support it and spoke against it, and it's on the record. I simply want to say that there's a lot of responsibility spread around among all three parties in respect to what's happening in that regard.
Your comments about the MTHA were interesting when you were talking about lobbies taken over and people feeling like they're locked in prisons. In some of the deputations we've had from so-called tenant groups, people who purport to represent tenants -- which left the police officer here shaking his head earlier -- their primary concern seemed to be that eviction of a drug dealer represented cruel and unusual punishment. That's the approach we've heard from them.
The last individual this morning, from Parkdale Community Legal Services, was talking about MTHA in his testimony, indicating that it's not having any problems, that the Landlord and Tenant Act is working fine, thank you very much. What you're telling us, of course, and what the police officer was telling us earlier, when you feel like you're locked in a prison, that lobbies are taken over and people have to be in by certain hours or go through a drug network when they're coming into their own building -- what's really happening here? Is it what the fellow from Parkdale said, that it's working fine, there's no problem at MTHA, or is there a real problem, as you've suggested, that these buildings are being taken over?
Mr Gardner: In the last couple of weeks, we've seen some very good newspaper articles on security in the MTHA buildings. In fact, the recently hired head of security quit after two months. There seemed to be some conflict. This was given a great deal of media attention, by at least a couple of our major newspapers in Toronto. You'd have to conclude from that that if somebody told you there's no problem, they're trying to bury something under a rug.
There is a serious problem. The MTHA areas are the areas where more drugs are flaunted around and sold than perhaps anyplace else in Metropolitan Toronto. Either they're -- I hate to say it, but there's a tremendous amount of intimidation going on in those properties among those tenants, and there certainly would be a credibility gap, as far as I was concerned.
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I was involved in a situation at one time where there was some anti-drug activity taking place in an MTHA property, and I was invited in to help these people. What unfortunately happens is that some of the people involved in the drug activity infiltrate these organizations and wind up threatening, intimidating and even carrying out physical attacks on these people to stop their anti-drug activity. Anybody who's telling you it's not happening is really not telling you the truth or not telling you everything they should be telling you. It is not a happy situation.
Mr Runciman: This witness also suggested that tenant meetings where you could encourage these people to stop their illegal activities would be the answer.
One of the things these groups were talking about, though, was more police protection. I'm wondering how you feel about how the current government has dealt with encouraging your ability to extend community policing in Metro.
Mr Gardner: When I left, they were dealing with the police budget. Last year, the police budget was $560 million. Because of the 7.5% cut, which translates to $42 million, the social contract, which translates to $18 million-plus, the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force has been dictated to by the CAO's office at Metro to take a $60-million cut. Well, that is one big cut to take, and it's certainly going to affect the delivery of police services.
Our command staff have been very, very innovative in trying to deal with this problem. We've tried to put a situation into play where officers are told to go to court while they're on duty. The idea was to avoid overtime pay for going to court, but the problem now is that when the officer gets involved in a situation he's got to respond to, he's tied down with it so he can't get to court, can't give evidence against somebody he should be giving evidence against and in fact by not going to court is really obstructing justice. They're getting a bit of a condemnation because they're not showing up in court, but they're out on the street. If they're not out on the street and they're going to court, then obviously we don't have enough officers to respond to the kinds of problems we're getting. They're in a terrible catch-22 position today.
In terms of foot patrols, in the last three or four years we've put a lot of foot patrols out on the streets in terms of trying to implement community policing to a far greater degree. Last year, because of the stringent cuts undertaken by the senior command, they found they were going to have a surplus, so they came up with what we call Project 35, which was target policing. Target policing meant taking off-duty officers, putting them on for four hours at time and a half in those areas where we really needed to beef up, like the Parkdale area, for instance, which was rampant with a lot of drug use, a lot of prostitution etc.
Mr Runciman: Not according to our witness from Parkdale, I'll tell you.
Mr Gardner: Anyway, they beefed that up. Now when we're implementing our budget cuts of $60 million for 1994, the target policing people are off. We still have the foot patrols, but now the neighbourhoods feel that we've taken away the foot patrols. It's turned into a real terrible situation because we are going to have to cut the delivery of police services. That's basically it.
Police are society's "bouncers," and when you take that away, you're taking away a level of protection that the public needs. To keep up the deterrent factor of uniforms as we've had this attrition factor of over 300 officers in the last, say, year and a half or so with no hirings, we've taken people out of the detective divisions who are the investigators. These are the people who investigate and prepare the cases to go to court. So we are losing our investigators and we are losing the flexibility of being able to deal quickly and effectively with the criminal element. It's going to be much more difficult.
The Chair: Mr Gardner, we appreciate your taking the time from a Metro council meeting to come here today and share your views with us.
VANCE LATCHFORD
ANNE SMITH
FREDERICK HOOD
SANDRA GARDINER
Mr Vance Latchford: It's been quite an educational and thought-provoking opportunity to sit here today. I and my friends sitting with me first became intimately acquainted with Bill 20 at or about 8 o'clock yesterday morning, so if our presentation is in any way disjointed, that's the reason. Those of you who know me will know that normally I have reams of background and everything else. I don't have terribly much of that today.
There are a couple of components of the presentation. The first component is to lay out the legal parameters, then to establish the duty of care on the part of the crown, and third, but I think vastly more important, to reiterate the position from the tenants themselves directly about their experience of the problems and some thoughts from them about what appropriate remedies might be.
As a brief preamble to my own comments, the government knows I'm a publicly appointed member of the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority board of directors. I wish to make it clear to you that my comments are my own. They do not in any way necessarily reflect the views, the wishes or the desires of the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority board or indeed the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority itself.
As a public servant in that capacity, I have a duty to ensure that I find out what the problems are and take part in any initiative possible to attempt to effect a solution to those problems. Part of the exercising of my duty is to seek and take direction from the tenantry component of the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority. As well, I must also consider the views and the opinions of staff. So it's not a terribly easy job, but it's a job that needs to be done.
I'll move on quickly to the legal position. The legal position is that the problem of drugs, in Metropolitan Toronto in any event, is not only a legal problem in terms of drug dealing; it also represents a significant health problem. Many of the persons using illicit drugs contract the AIDS virus by virtue of being forced to use and reuse needles and share things around. The AIDS virus, as has been made known to your government four years ago by your own officer of health in the House, is a virus that needed to be upgraded to a virulent virus under section 35 of the Health Protection and Promotion Act, RSO 1980. I would argue that this is necessary because as the AIDS virus attacks the immune system, the AIDS virus precludes medical people from conducting tests for secondary illnesses such as tuberculosis, mononucleosis and other related group 4 airborne viruses which could potentially create a significant health problem, particularly where we've got concentrations of low-income persons such as to be found in social housing.
On to the duty-of-care point. The crown has a duty to act. The ministers of the crown are considered to be servants of the crown. The classification of the minister of the crown being a servant of the crown is to be found within the definitions of the Proceedings Against the Crown Act. The duty as it relates to tort liability or civil wrong liability is to be found in the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest (Ontario), 1993, I believe it is. Those materials are available to you in legal libraries.
I'd also draw your attention to the rule of the "reasonable person." The rule of the reasonable person is brought forth in a text by Fleming, The Law of Tort. The rule of the reasonable person simply states that people must exercise a duty of care when they are carrying out their business, they must look for the unforeseeable plaintiff, they must look for and be responsive to the needs of the people they are placed in charge of looking after. I would argue that the crown, the Queen in right of Ontario, has a significant obligation to look after the needs of Ontarians.
Moving on to another legal issue, it's the legal issue of the contract of the landlord and the tenant. The contract between the landlord and a tenant does not in any way contemplate the commission of an unlawful act or an anti-social act. Those acts are completely outside of and apart from the contract. Clearly, it is a breach of the contract between the tenant and the landlord. It's a civil matter. Bill 20 presents some problems, because if Bill 20 were to be used for the evicting of drug dealers or other persons involved in anti-social behaviour, it would simply slow the eviction process down.
I would refer members to a bill that I spoke to briefly a couple of minutes ago, the Health Protection and Promotion Act. Subsection 13(4) speaks to the authority of the medical officer of health to go into the shooting galleries, the drug dens, where it can be found that people are gathering for the purposes of shooting drugs, sharing needles and so on and so forth; where it can be suspected that there are potentially airborne viruses of the class described earlier, that the medical officer of health be instructed by your government to act so we can ensure that the health-related problems are dealt with forthwith.
Ms Anne Smith: I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to come here and speak on behalf of tenants. I'm quite disturbed at people coming here, in some of the deputations I've read and listened to, who speak of themselves as tenant advocates. I'm a little confused about what a tenant advocate is now.
In my opinion, a tenant advocate should be someone who's advocating for tenants who are living in absolutely horrendous conditions. I will say there was a time when maybe I thought somewhat like those people. In 1991 I was part of the eviction committee that landed the eviction policy from the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority board, and at that point intervention was of great interest to me. I really felt that people were indeed victims, but as I took the role of the chair for a brief period, I learned very quickly that that was not the case.
I am sure some of you are aware that the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority chairman's office has a hotline on which many calls come from the community and the victims of these drug dealers. I was told on many occasions that I had no right as a tenant to speak to the issue that people should be given fair treatment when dealers invade communities as they do. One part of the eviction policy I'd like to talk about is to ensure that tenants are free from those aspects of human behaviour which render life intolerable. When I look at that and at later on, when I became much softer in my comments in saying we had to help these people, indeed that's just what I had been doing: supporting those very people who are making the lives of tenants like myself and others intolerable.
But I also heard people speak today about the mentally ill. We as a landlord have to house the mentally ill and AIDS victims and many others. I hear on an almost daily basis from mentally ill people, and they tell me how victimized they are by these drug dealers, how many of them are beaten, many of them used to perpetrate the actions of the drug dealer. On the issue of the health proponent, the AIDS victim, when I've talked to people with AIDS in the community, they speak of the issue of the IV drug users contaminating them, who have no immune system, with diseases they already cannot fight off because they have the AIDS virus. There's a whole health aspect here too that really disturbs me a great deal.
Also, I've heard some advocates here in terms of the racial aspects, people feeling that minorities were being victimized. In fact, I had many calls on the hotline from minorities who felt they left their country, a total war zone, to come to another war zone when they moved into MTHA buildings; that they had to hide because of their lack of English and because these people also used them as victims and pawns, and in many of their dealings people got caught up.
I also have to speak about the legal clinics, some of the deputations I've heard today where the legal clinics suddenly are coming forward saying that the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority is successful in evicting people. I'm confused, because the legal clinics are the very people who tell me in my work on a daily basis that we are just not doing enough to evict the drug dealer. I would certainly use this information at a later date, to have these clinics come forward and tell me that they still think we're doing a good job, because that's certainly not the impression I had as a board member or as an advocate of tenants.
I've brought two tenants with me. I can actually claim that I have never been a victim -- wouldn't want to be a victim -- even though I have lived in MTHA housing, and I tell you that there are some really good people in MTHA housing who don't deserve to live in these conditions. Rather than hear from the supposed advocates, I think we should hear from the victims and the tenants themselves and come to some kind of agreement, as Mr Hood said this morning, an all-party agreement. The people who live in this situation are the people we should listen to, no one else, these very tenants I have here today. Thank you for your time.
Ms Sandra Gardiner: I am the president of a residents' association in my community. I find it astounding that no other sites except the one I live in has these problems, because my children are kept virtual prisoners. From the time they come home from school I don't allow them to go out, because I don't want them subjected to what's outside our door: handguns; watching drug dealers deal their wares; watching 10-year-old, 11-year-old boys being used and earning $5 or $10 a day to run the drugs for the dealers, to alert them when the police are coming; the harassment, the intimidation, being threatened that your windows will be shot out or your dog will be killed if anybody opens their mouth.
I can speak about the eviction policy. I'd like to know where that law is. The police task force went to the house beside me and removed weapons, handguns, drugs. Two of the people in the house were charged with forceable confinement. A female was assaulted, another female was sexually assaulted. They still live there. That happened two years ago. I went to my property manager and asked, "Why are they still living here?" "Well, the mother didn't have knowledge. Because she wasn't home at the time and didn't have knowledge, it was a loophole they got around." This is a family that has been problematic for the last 10 years they have lived there, but they're allowed to live there.
I don't believe my children should be raised like that. Four years I've lived in Metro housing, but this summer I'm going, because I live with a guilt trip every day I subject my children to this. I feel I've done them the greatest injustice by moving into social housing. When I hear these stories of people saying, "We have to keep it going," well, I'm going back out to the private sector, to what people in Metro housing call a normal life. That's where I came from and that's where I'm going back to.
I feel I'll have a lot more freedom for my children. They'll be able to go to school, they'll be able to walk, they'll be able to have a normal life. I'm talking about a 9-year-old and a 15-year-old. When my daughter's out after 10 o'clock at night, whenever she's on her way home and she is by herself, she's to call me and I meet her at the bus stop. To me, that's not normal. That's all I have to say.
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Mr Frederick Hood: I have a lot to say. Unfortunately, I probably won't have the time. I'd like to thank Mr Runciman for this report. The biggest thing we've heard around this table is that everybody's talking about it, criticizing what we can do and everything. Well, I'm a victim. My wife died in my arms because of a drug addict breaking into my home. My daughter was set afire after four days of being raped by four drug addicts in her own home, and I had to stand there and watch her burn. I couldn't catch her.
I want to talk about a lot of problems. I also am from Metro Drug Action, where I run a hotline for young children. It's word of mouth. I've never been supported by any government. I've done that now for 14 years. I have run across children nine years of age, 10 years of age, eight years of age -- I even know of a case of a baby who had the dope put in her diaper while the girl sold it.
I could go on for ever, but the most important thing -- I lived in a place that had seven crack houses in the immediate vicinity of five feet, surrounded. I lived a nightmare. I had my windows boarded up. The people next door to me had to move out because they were going to bomb my house. I heard a lot of people talking about how we get rid of them. When Norm Gardner was here and talked about the victim he knew about, well, that was me. My brother talked about my problem too. I've lived that nightmare.
I used to put them in jail faster than you could -- we saw helicopters coming over Alexander Park that lit up the entire project. You'd think it was daylight. We used to have big paddy wagons. They would pull them in, take them into 14 Division. While they were processing, they'd have a lawyer there, and they were right back out on the street selling. MTHA never evicted any of them. In fact, the crack houses are still there.
I'm going to tell you something. It is a very sorrowful thing to have to live around. One of my children lost an eye because the crack dealers used to throw their beer bottles and their syringes in front of my house. I couldn't let my children go out. At that particular time, they were four years old, six years old, eight years old, and a 15-year-old boy.
Do you know what it's like to see your grandchildren go out in front of your house and you can't leave them out there? They threaten to kidnap them, steal them. They took my daughter, as I said, and raped her for four days. She set herself afire. They had to go to the nut house. I've had custody of the children ever since. You don't know how frustrated I feel.
As I said, I run a drug line for young children; it's word of mouth. I get about 15 calls a week, sometimes more. I have another telephone beside that thing. I have two telephones, because I have to phone the police a lot of times. When you get a little nine-year-old or 10-year-old saying they want to kill themselves -- and you know where you find these children? I'm going to tell you where. MTHA.
These kids are runaways from all over Ontario. They end up in Toronto housing because they blend in, because everybody there is too scared to say anything. If you think these children run away and have safe hideaways -- no way. MTHA is the only place you can go. You can hide anybody you want in there, and that's a shame. There are a lot of good tenants in Ontario housing, a lot, but they are victimized, terrorized.
I heard this lady talking about tenants' associations. Do you know something? They infiltrate tenants' associations. They take control of the project. You don't dare say a word. Do you know how many times I've had steel grates going through my window? Steel grates missing me that much, and my children one day going up the stairs, right through a bay window. I've had phone calls. They told me if I didn't back off, my daughter was going to get it. She got it. She got raped four days in her own home, with her own children there.
And I hear this gentleman here say: "Well, what can we do? We evict them and -- " Look, I'm going to tell you something. Have any of you people watched your daughter burn? Have any of you people held your wife while she died in your hands? None of you. Let's not say, "We can't do this." I've heard more here about drug addicts getting protection than I've ever heard in my life. I don't hear anything about the victims.
This gentleman here brought a bill forward. At least I give him points for courage. He brought a God-damned bill forward.
The Chair: Mr Hood, we want to keep time for one question at least. There's about a minute and a half per caucus to ask you questions.
Mr Frederick Hood: I'll stop at that and you can ask me all kinds of other ones if you like.
Mr Runciman: I don't have a question, really. I just want to make a brief comment. I want to thank the witnesses for being here. They said they just heard about this at 8 am this morning.
Mr Frederick Hood: That's right.
Mr Runciman: I'm glad you heard about it, I really am, not simply because you're here essentially in support of what we're trying to do, but we've heard so much testimony, which the government members have been relying upon, which really has no credibility. I suspected it and questioned it at the outset. But you are people who have lived that life. You know what's going on.
Mr Latchford: All four of us. I didn't indicate that I'm a tenant as well.
Mr Runciman: Anne, I gather from your comments that you were briefly the chair of MTHA. You should have remained the chair, because you're a woman of courage, appearing here when we have these other people who say they're supposedly representing tenants. Someone from Parkdale says it's not a problem, but we hear it's a major problem. Someone from the Bathurst quay said there's no problem in 51 Division. It's an epidemic. They testified before us here, and they had no credibility whatsoever. They misled a standing committee of the Legislature, as far as I'm concerned, and I simply want to congratulate you for having the courage to be here today and bring forward the truth.
Mr Callahan: I'd like this to be outside my time. I want to ask research to look into an issue which will help me with this bill. I notice that subsection 1(2) ends with the words "an application to the sentencing court to terminate the tenancy." As we've heard, that puts us up in Ontario Court (General Division) because of the residential properties case; I don't have the exact name of that case here. Could you look into that and tell us if we could use the provincial court if we use terminology not to terminate the tenancy but to order that the person convicted not be permitted to return to the residence? In other words, it's a prohibition. It's done in bail orders all the time. I wonder if that wouldn't get us around the constitutional argument.
The Chair: Let me just ask the question. Do you think you can do that for tomorrow?
Mr Andrew McNaught: Yes.
Mr Callahan: I join with Mr Runciman. I find it incredible that we were told, first, that there was very little drug activity that went on, and, second, that there weren't many guns around, yet we heard from a police constable here from the drug enforcement office that that's totally wrong. And I know from personal experience. I spent 30 years practising criminal law, and I know what goes on with these matters.
Mr Frederick Hood: I've witnessed it myself, a machine gun sitting in a crack house. I can tell you about a lot of other things.
The Chair: Mr Hood, hold on, please. He's got about a minute left to make some comments or ask some questions.
Mr Callahan: You've told us about these things today, what's going on at Metro housing. Has this been told to the people who -- I hope I'm not talking to the people who are in power at Metro housing, but has this been told to them?
Mr Frederick Hood: Oh, yes. It was told to them on several occasions.
Mr Callahan: Have they reported this to the present government, that this is what's going on in these facilities?
Mr Frederick Hood: I have no idea whether they have or not, but I can tell you this much: They play politics with --
Mr Callahan: I haven't got much time. I'm going to ask this gentleman, who --
The Chair: Two of them are board members, actually.
Mr Callahan: Can you tell us whether a report has been rendered?
Mr Latchford: I'll defer to Anne Smith if she wishes to answer instead. There are reports that go to the board. The systems for gathering statistical information, it's been pointed out, are flawed, because the stats are totally dependent upon calls that go to the internal security force of the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority and do not include statistics from the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force. We need to make an effort to get the statistics from the police force so that the full extent of the problem can be documented.
Mr Callahan: That's not my question. My question is that there have been complaints to the board, and obviously we've heard them today, made by people who live in Metro housing. I want to know if the board has passed on those complaints to the provincial government.
Ms Smith: In my tenure as chair, I had a difficult time getting support for the resident aspect and the victim aspect. I will say to you that I hired the security director, whose tenure was very short, as you all know. I suggest that in that time he also had an aggressive attitude, much as I have, that things needed to be cleaned up, and as you can see, he's no longer there. Much as I am a board member for a varied number of reasons, I'm there to see that these kinds of things are brought forward to the provincial government, but I'm one person only, unfortunately. As you know, my term was very quick and down and dirty, simply because I asked too many questions.
Mr Callahan: Once you open your mouth, you're gone.
Mr Winninger: I have a couple of quick questions for Ms Smith. When were you acting chair of the MTHA?
Ms Smith: From April 1993 until December 1993.
Mr Winninger: During that time, did you have an opportunity to deal with the eviction policy and procedures guidelines of the Metro Toronto Housing Authority? I asked for them and they have been circulated around the committee. Are you familiar with those procedures?
Ms Smith: I helped design that policy.
Mr Winninger: So you're familiar with those procedures. It refers to illegal acts and actually gives examples of illegal acts: Illegal involvement with con trolled substances and narcotics and all related activity, including the use and/or possession of weapons, is viewed as an illegal act which will place a tenant in jeopardy. It goes on to describe more specifically the various duties of employees and the property manager and also urges that tenants report these incidents. Then attached at the end is a notice of termination that actually specifies not only trafficking in a narcotic, namely cocaine, but possession of a narcotic, namely cocaine. That's in the notice of termination.
We've heard some conflicting evidence. Actually, the information we're getting is that the MTHA pursues evictions vigorously, and that when it does it's had 100% success. Then we heard the representative earlier today from Parkdale legal services -- maybe you were here for that -- saying it's been his experience that the MTHA pursues these things most strongly. When I was chair of the London and Middlesex Housing Authority until the last election, we too were pursuing these kinds of evictions based on illegal substances.
Some may say it's never enough and that there's more of this kind of crime to be rooted out and dealt with, but I have to ask you, is the MTHA right now dealing seriously with allegations of trafficking or possession of drugs, and are you familiar with cases where the MTHA has successfully evicted on that ground?
Ms Smith: I wouldn't say there's a non-success rate. I think they do pursue it to the best of their ability. But I have to take my information from tenants. I take that very seriously. I believe the people living in that are going to tell me whether there is a success rate or not, and that's not what I hear. That's not what I heard on the hotline and that's not what I hear every day from tenants. Maybe staff are of the belief it's happening, but I hear a lot more on the other side to say we're not successful.
That's not to say it's not being pursued and that's not to say that efforts aren't made on the part of staff, but I think there's stronger legislation needed. Yes, there are flaws in this bill, but it is important that tenants be given some teeth, and this will give it to them, and the housing authority needs some teeth. We, as the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority landlord, have the biggest influx of this kind of behaviour. There's no comparison. You can talk about the private sector all you want, but the reality is they're there. We are the safe house. We can pursue all we want, but if we were to weigh the number of evictions as opposed to how many are still there, the pile would be terribly uneven.
The Chair: We have run out of time. We appreciate your coming today. It was very helpful. Thank you very much.
We'll proceed with clause-by-clause tomorrow. If you have amendments, give them to the clerk today or as early as you can tomorrow morning, by 8 or 8:30, 9 max.
The committee adjourned at 1604.