Drug and Organized Crime Prosecutions

The PPSC has primary responsibility for drug prosecutions.^{Note 21} It conducts a significant number of prosecutions, raising particular public concern due to the nature of the substance being trafficked as well as due to the involvement of organized crime.^{Note 22}

Background

Organized crime prosecutions

There are three criminal organization offences under the Criminal Code.^{Note 23} Such charges are not pursued in all cases involving organized criminal activity. The police and the Crown must conclude that, in the particular circumstances of the case, such charges will add sufficient value to justify the additional complexity they would impose on the investigation and prosecution.

Considerations

There are currently numerous major drug and organized crime prosecutions being conducted by the PPSC across the country.

Many drug prosecutions and most organized crime prosecutions are both large and complex:

• They generally involve the disclosure of voluminous materials to the defence. It is often a challenge for the police to gather and organize the fruits of the investigation and other peripheral disclosure materials, to provide them to the Crown in a timely way. It is also challenging for the police and Crown to work together to edit the disclosure materials to protect the identity of informers or other privileged information before disclosing them to the defence;
• Prosecutions often rely on wiretap evidence, undercover operations, and specialized investigative techniques, raising factual and legal issues that must be resolved to determine the admissibility of evidence. The pretrial motions on these issues may take considerably more time and effort to resolve than the actual trial on the merits of the prosecution’s case.

While high-complexity files represented only 2.68% of counsel’s drug caseload in 2018-2019, they took up 27.4% of the time dedicated to drug prosecutions.

In this environment, the integrity of prosecutions can be threatened by matters such as unreasonable delay, failure to disclose pertinent information in a timely way, police failures to follow complex rules governing the obtaining and implementation of wiretap authorizations, and by the incorrect use of other techniques for gathering evidence.

As a result, the PPSC works closely with police agencies to provide, where requested, advice on investigative techniques; to manage disclosure obligations in an efficient way throughout the course of investigations; and to manage the scope and complexity of prosecutions in a realistic manner that recognizes the practical limitations of the judicial system.

Cases will often be divided into smaller groups of accused and charges in order to ensure manageability. In addition, case management provisions of the Criminal Code can be used to permit, for example, the joint hearing of pretrial motions in related cases to maximize efficiency.