New Brunswick police officers could soon have new powers to make life more difficult for outlaw motorcycle gangs in the province.
The Holt government recently introduced an amendment to the Liquor Control Act to give officers the power to eject suspected gang members and their associates from licensed establishments and ticket them.
Officers would need to have reasonable grounds to believe the person was indeed a gang member or an associate in order to first ask them to leave an establishment, and if they didn’t comply, eject them.
New Brunswick’s police chiefs requested this additional power as part of ongoing efforts to “disrupt the activities of motorcycle gangs,” according to Public Safety Minister Robert Gauvin, who introduced the bill at the end of March.
Both Progressive Conservative and Green MLAs showed support for the proposed new tool during a legislative committee hearing on the bill Thursday night.
Outlaw motorcycle gangs have become a “real problem” in New Brunswick, the gateway to Atlantic Canada, according to Progressive Conservative MLA Kris Austin.
A combination of enforcement action and “pestering (the gangs) out of business” – which the proposed legislation, if enacted, would help do – will keep gang members moving out of New Brunswick, said Austin, a former public safety minister in the Higgs government.
“The more we enforce on one hand and pester on the other, the safer we’ll make our streets,” Austin said.
More than 600 organized crime groups were identified and assessed last year by Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, which coordinates and shares intelligence data among police forces in the country.
It’s not clear from a summary of the agency’s annual organized crime report how many of those groups operated in New Brunswick last year, but the agency found that 45 per cent of organized crime groups – which are primarily based in Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec – “operate beyond their base provinces.”
“We have a big problem with organized crime – not just motorcycle gangs, but street gangs, probably some mafia operations here,” said Green party Leader David Coon, who added he'd like to see further measures taken to address the broader issue of organized crime in the province.
Gauvin told the committee that a new taskforce on sexual violence and human trafficking will be unveiled in the coming months.
Both Austin and Coon did zero in on one potential problem with the Liberals’ bill – the risk of an innocent person being tied to a gang member simply by associating with them.
In order for an officer to determine if a person is a gang member or an associate, they will have to consider, according to the proposed amendment, whether the person was present at the time of unlawful gang behaviour and is believed to have participated in it, whether the person uses a “name, word, sign, symbol, logo or other representation” associated with a gang, whether the person simply admits to being a gang member or an associate, “whether the person receives benefits from the gang”; and “whether the person frequently associates with a member of the gang or an associate of the gang.”
“The potential issue here – and I’m just flagging it – is that (the bill) doesn’t put any boundaries around ‘a person who frequently associates with a member of a gang,’ so that could extend to close family members who frequently associate with this person,” Coon said.
Gauvin said he doesn’t believe that was the intention of the bill as proposed by New Brunswick's police chiefs in line with similar legislation in Manitoba and Alberta.
“There needs to be reasonable grounds,” Gauvin said. “Our police don’t have time to run after grandmothers of gang members.”
A small amendment was made Thursday night at the request of the Progressive Conservatives before the bill was approved by the legislative committee.
That amendment struck out an antiquated section of the Liquor Control Act that opened the door to licensees being fined for allowing “profane or vulgar language” in their premises.
