Bill C-58 (Historical)

Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation)

An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service

This enactment imposes reporting duties on persons who provide an Internet service to the public if they are advised of an Internet address where child pornography may be available to the public or if they have reasonable grounds to believe that their Internet service is being or has been used to commit a child pornography offence. This enactment makes it an offence to fail to comply with the reporting duties.

Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation)

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

You did not vote against it.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

I did.

Public education is always part of the solution for all of our problems. When there are social problems, we have to look at them and understand them. Canada cannot pretend to be the creator of all good ideas; those ideas do come from other places. Other countries have done a lot of work on this, and yet the bill was so hastily put together that it actually is anemic in its approach to the issue of child protection. While it is okay to do what the bill proposes, and it will not harm things, I do not think the bill is going to help as much as people think it is.

We even have a question with regard to how we should police this and how we should make this happen. When we pass laws in this place, by and large, the federal police, the RCMP, will not be responsible for enforcing the laws we pass, but the provincial and regional police forces across the country. They are the ones. Ask them today. Ask them province-by-province, region-by-region, territory-by-territory, what is the shape of their budgets with regard to policing.

Why pass laws that we cannot enforce or whose potential we cannot actualize? If we cannot support the policing, is it there? Have we talked concurrently of a special fund being set up, or special task forces or special policing forces, because when one finds a “little nest”, that nest may be part of a whole colony. It is going to take time, but if we are serious about dealing with child protection in the context of child pornography, there has to be a strategy. The strategy should not be a matter of our tinkering with this and that. Then we cannot boast that we have the most comprehensive strategy and are the best in the world. It is misleading Canadians.

The previous member from the Bloc who spoke said that we have to make people aware. We all have to be part of the solution. We all have to be aware. We need the tools and the information, but here we are as parliamentarians and what we have is: a bill. Here is the bill. After one rips out all of the boilerplate pages that have nothing to do with the law, the document comes down to four items: Situations where there may be an offence by individuals or persons, and then there are the offences and the punishments for them.

For the first offence, an individual who has knowledge of but does not disclose that there is child pornography on a particular site can be fined not more than $1,000. When I read that, I thought we are not serious. We cannot be serious.

If we think that maybe the ISPs just did not realize what their legal obligation was, and that probably will be the case, that in itself is a reason for us to launch a major national public education and awareness campaign about this problem and about the tools we have and we should ask Canadians to be part of it. However, that is not in this bill.

Somebody decided that we ought to do this just because of what is happening in the world regarding domestic violence and crimes involving children and because we should get tough on crime. This is about punishing people after problems occur or after people get sick.

When I was elected to Parliament, the first committee I wanted to be on was the health committee. I remember that at the very first meeting I attended, officials appeared to give us the state of the union of the health care system in Canada. They told members of the committee that 75% of what we spend on health care deals with curing people after they have a problem, and 25% is spent on prevention. Their conclusion at the time was that the model of 25% prevention and 75% remediation after the problem occurs was not sustainable.

They built on it to say that the benefit of $1 spent on prevention was worth three times more than the benefit of $1 spent on cures and remediation. In other words, the value of prevention has a multiplier effect in terms of good and better outcomes. The same principle applies to criminal justice.

It is not good enough to say that if people do the crime, they will do the time, that we will throw people in jail and throw away the key because they are bad people. If we could reduce the number of people who are in jail or who have to be fined, that would be a good outcome.

We know statistics bear that out for things like conditional sentencing. They say that people who qualify for conditional sentencing, house arrest or whatever actually have a lower recidivism rate than do those who have to serve all of their time in jail. That is not just my opinion. Those are the facts, that there is lower recidivism if fewer people go to jail and more get conditional sentencing or early parole.

It makes some sense, but we do not make sense when we come forward with bills that are so narrow. They are almost political documents as opposed to justice documents. This is a political advertisement.

We will support the bill, but why not come forward with notes and information for members of Parliament so they can discuss it and make recommendations to the House, so that when the committee receives this bill it will be able to address some of the items that we addressed? That is what we should be doing at second reading, telling the committee what we are concerned about and asking it to look at our concerns. It has the opportunity to do it. I know the members on the justice committee will look at it.

We have to stop bringing bills forward that are not our best work. They could be much better. I hope that hon. members will get engaged, start debating this bill, and instruct the committee on the kinds of approaches we should take to make this legislation better, and, further, recommend to the House that there are other areas in which we should consider bringing forward legislation for the protection of children.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his contribution to this debate, which I listened to with some interest. I have a couple of questions.

He talked about the faint hope clause. I am not sure there is a clear nexus or relation between that and the bill under consideration, but he spoke in favour of the faint hope clause and, by definition, against what happened yesterday when the House voted at third reading to abolish it. I am curious as to why he did not vote against Bill C-36 yesterday if he felt so strongly.

With respect to his rhetorical question as to why a child under five could be the subject of sexual abuse, which is a very good question, I am curious as to his thoughts respecting this government's universal child care plan, a plan that provides families with support to make choices and to provide balance between work and home thus allowing parents to be more interactive in the raising of their children.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, we should not be talking about the faint hope clause. The issue was that there was a feeling that we had to punish rather than prevent.

With regard to the faint hope clause, I gave the example that four out of the six women who were abused and who murdered their husbands, after going through the very rigorous process, were able to apply for early parole.

I voted in favour of the motion to strike out everything in the bill and refer it back to committee. That was my vote, to negative the bill. That was a clear vote. I voted to scrap the bill and throw it back to committee.

With regard to the universal benefit, it is not universal in the same sense because $1,200 a year is not enough for a family to be able to afford to put one child into child care for more than about three or four weeks.

I would suggest to the member that it is a very weak argument in regard to child protection issues.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for his comments. Yesterday when the minister was introducing the bill, she said that $42.1 million over five years was being provided to law enforcement as more resources to deal with the problem.

When I asked her whether that was new money or not, she said that she did not know and she was going to get back to me. I guess that just points to what the member for Mississauga South has said, that the bill has been rushed, the notes are not available, and the government has not done the research it should have.

For example, earlier on today I asked one of the members from the government side whether or not they had done any research as to best practices in other jurisdictions. That is a logical thing to do. Clearly, the government has not been doing that in some other cases, for instance when it followed the California prison system, which has been a total failure for 20 years. The government does not really have a history of checking around the world for best practices.

Yesterday the member for the Liberal Party very clearly pointed out that in Sweden they block child porn. In Germany they block access to the sites. That takes care of the problems.

This bill is only going to take us partway. It is a bill that we are going to support and it should be supported. The horse is out of the barn here, and the way to deal with the problem is to look at what works in other countries.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think the member is quite right.

First of all, this was not the best effort of the government, quite frankly. It has not thought it through carefully. It has not taken the opportunity to look at ways in which we can have legislation that is going to deal with the incidents.

For some odd reason, the government seems to think that if we have a tough enough penalty out there, that is going to be a deterrent. That does not work. Bad criminals simply do not respond. They do not think about what the penalty is under the Criminal Code, and then decide whether or not they are going to do the crime. That is not the case.

With regard to the question about the money, the member is quite right. If the government has a bill and is prepared, then it has anticipated the questions and it will have the answers.

When Bill C-36 was before committee, the government did not even have an answer about how many people actually applied under section 745. Why is it that the government does not get it? It does not understand that if it is serious about legislation, it better bring forward the facts and the information, put it all on the table and let it stand on its merit. That would be good legislation.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member will recall, and I will not because I was not here, that in November 2005, in the last days of the last Liberal government, there were changes to the Criminal Code, which broadened the definition of child pornography. The changes included more offences out there, which was a good thing, and mandatory minimum sentences were introduced for this crime. That was four years ago.

The hon. member has been sitting in Parliament with me for four years while we have heard train after train of the Conservative government's crime agenda come in and out of the station so often. Why does he think the Conservatives have forgotten this very important aspect?

We know from Cybertip.ca, and everybody in the House also admits, that because of the burgeoning distribution through the Internet, this is a very quickly growing crime. Why did the Conservatives wait four years to do something about it? Why have they not moved the minimum mandatory sentences, and they seem to love minimum mandatories, for simply making pornography to one year and for possession of pornography to 45 days? Why have they not attacked those in a bill like this rather than going after the Internet providers in a private, out of the Criminal Code bill, and why did they keep the defences? There are defences to making child pornography. Why did the Conservatives not take those out of the code?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

I could not say it better, Madam Speaker.

I ask why we have this bill and why now. Why is it so weak? Is it just another facade? Is there any commitment to the issue of child protection? We can use all the words we want to say that we really care about that, but I bet I could pick a half-dozen people out of this place, get together as a committee, look at best practices around the world, get the facts, hold some public hearings and come up with a draft piece of legislation for the government to consider. I would love that opportunity, because I think that members in this place who were not muzzled and were not forced to follow linear thinking on criminal justice issues, members who were free to openly discuss and deal with these things would come up with much better legislation.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Madam Speaker, I have listened to both the speech and the questions and answers. The hon. member talked about prevention at length. Prevention comes through the health transfers, the social service transfers, which of course we have increased every year compared to what the Liberals did when they were actually in power, because it is the provincial governments that are dealing with a whole host of issues in that area.

There are a number of things that I have done in my own riding in terms of prevention, which the federal government has funded. We are not talking about prevention here. We know prevention is important. We are talking about protecting children. Instead of ambling into many areas, this is an important bill, and if the member could clearly speak to the importance of the bill in protecting children, I would really appreciate it.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member has to admit that fining someone $1,000, as the penalty for a first offence, for having pornography on their website that is available for distribution is an anemic punishment.

The member has to admit that this has nothing to do with protection; it has to do with punishment. Somehow the member thinks that the bill and its anemic response to the problem will reduce the incidence. It will not. That is the difference in the Conservatives' thinking on criminal justice issues. They think it will provide some sort of prevention or deterrence. That is just not the case.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to this bill today, Bill C-58.

It is our second day of debate and I would expect that we will be moving this bill to committee in very short order because it seems to me that all of the parties are onside.

There are certainly some criticisms as to the government's role, how it promulgated the legislation, and how it presented the legislation in the House, because as the member for Mississauga South has just said, there has been no legislative summary, no briefing notes, no nothing. As a matter of fact, the first we heard of it was from CTV's 24-hour news coverage from Monday morning on and we never got a copy of the bill until yesterday.

Nevertheless, it is a bill that is going to be supported and hopefully will be improved in committee. Certainly, when the minister announced it yesterday, she said that $42.1 million would be provided over five years to provide law enforcement more resources, so I asked her about that because it seemed to me that that had to be the focus.

We have a very effective law enforcement system in this country. As a matter of fact, the police tend to be the ones who do catch the guilty people, up to this point anyway. Our concern is that they do have proper resources, so I really wanted to know whether this was another $42 million on top of what they are already getting or simply previously announced money that they were dealing with, and she was not aware.

As the member for Mississauga South said, one would think that on a basic information piece like this, the government would have that answer available.

Best practices is another area that we should always look at when looking at legislation. I have made the argument that while the Conservatives claim to be tough on crime, we on this side of the House want to be smart on crime. We are prepared and we have examples where jurisdictions have used best practices, have looked around the world and picked examples of where a certain action worked, and simply adopted that, as opposed to the Conservatives who simply rely upon old, outmoded crime initiatives from Ronald Reagan's days in California, which have proven not to work.

They seem to be very still in their ideological approach to government. I know that it is dissipating over time. They are moving slowly but surely to the middle, and I think we are going to see more of that in the future.

I want to give a brief history of this problem, how it developed in regard to dealing with the web.

It was not until 1995 that email became prevalent. It had been used in universities for a few years before that, but email became prevalent right around 1995 and the web started after that, but at that point, most people still had monochrome screens. The frame rate was very low. It started at 15 frames a second and then they got it up to 30 frames a second.

I recall the Rolling Stones, just about the time they were appearing in Winnipeg a number of years ago, claiming to be the very first rock band to put one of their songs on the web. I looked at it and it was very slow. People here will remember when the first webcams came out. People were trying to talk to their relatives in other parts of the world and the voice did not match with the picture, and the picture was very choppy.

There was a period there where this really was not a problem. In fact, bandwidth became a problem around the mid-nineties.

Once again, to make this system work successfully they had to get faster speeds and they had to have better bandwidth. The ISPs had to do that in order to be able to transfer the material that we are talking about right now.

As other members have alluded to, we have had a virtual explosion of child pornography on the web just in the last five years. Once again, clearly the horse is out of the barn. As usual, the government is in a reactive position. Governments rarely lead. They usually are found to be following. In Canada, over the last few years, we have had a lot of instability with a change of government and an election every two years, starting back from scratch again on legislation and a fairly substantial slowdown.

The development of peer-to-peer computing was mentioned yesterday. That was a very big development that basically exploded overnight. We have all heard of Napster. It is out of business right now, but that was basically the beginning of peer-to-peer computing and making file sharing easy.

Therefore, logically when the technology developed the way it did and as fast as it did over time, it was just common sense that organized crime would be getting involved in the system. The police forces are aware that it is not only child pornography but it is also organized gambling rings who set up their servers outside of U.S. jurisdiction because they did not want to be prosecuted and put in jail by United States laws. Clearly, laws have had some effect.

There was a Bloc member yesterday who pointed to the bill and was touting the fact that these offences are going to slow these people down. However, as mentioned by the member for Mississauga South today and others, the fact of the matter is the penalities are not that large at all considering the money that is involved.

When we are dealing with organized crime and drug dealers, fines of $100,000 are probably just part of the cost of doing business for these people. These are not particularly strong fines in any sense.

We have the organized crime syndicates involved, so a system of penalties, fines and imprisonment and so on will deter some people for sure, but I think at the end of the day, if we pass this legislation and we find after a couple of years, and hopefully we will monitor its results, that the legislation is not working and the fines are not high enough, we will have to increase them. If we find that child pornography is still be produced at an increasing rate, then we are going to have to look at something more drastic.

I asked one of the government members of the government today whether the government had looked at best practices in other jurisdictions and the member said no, that he was not aware that the government had looked at other jurisdictions at all. Yet, yesterday the member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe was very clear in his presentation on the bill when he pointed out that there are other jurisdictions that have taken action and have dealt with the problem. These are his words and his claims. I would assume that he is correct in making these assessments and it should be easy to check. For example, the member drew our attention to Brazil where he said that the ISPs in Brazil have to follow a set of ethical rules that govern what they accept on their sites

He mentioned Sweden. It had a policy of blocking child porn. He mentioned Germany and the European Union as the best examples. Once again, he said that Germany was blocking access to the sites.

So, who are we trying kid here? If the answer is to simply block the sites, and if it works in Germany, then why are we getting ourselves tied up in knots here, spending huge amounts of money on police forces, $42 million over five years? That is probably on top of what we are already spending. Police forces are doing great work, and there is no doubt about it, to basically play a hide-and-seek game with these perpetrators over the Internet.

To me, a far more decisive, a far more effective, certainly cost effective, way of dealing with this would be to simply block the sites completely, and it is being done. I do not know what the rules are in Cuba, but I believe there is no Internet porn there either. It is certainly technically possible.

I know members may not agree with that and that is fine. The fact of the matter is, when the United States set up its penalties, people simply went offshore. To get around the American penalties, they simply took the path of least resistance and moved to a country that does not have penalties, that does not have these laws.

Another member, yesterday, pointed out that Canada is very high up in terms of not only sales of child pornography but also the production of it. This country is either number two or number three in not only the production but the distribution, the selling and the possession of child porn. So, it is certainly a major problem in this country and it is certainly growing.

Another fact to mention is that local computer repair depots have been reporting child pornography on laptops and computers brought in for repair. Recently, the customs people have been finding it on laptops. They have been checking laptops routinely for the last three or four years now at airports and customs sites, especially when people come from Thailand and places whether there is a lot of sex tourism. This is just basically, I think, making a small dent in the problem. As a matter of fact, the statistic I picked up on in the conversations over the last couple of days is that Canada is second in the world for hosting these sites.

In September 2008, the federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for justice agreed that Canada's response to child pornography could be enhanced by federal legislation requiring any agency whose services could be used to facilitate the commission of online pornography offences to report suspected material.

I know this was an initiative of the provinces, and I do give the provinces top marks. Yesterday we had a couple of Liberal speakers pontificating about how it was their party who started the ball rolling in this whole area and how the irresponsible Conservatives in government did not do anything for four years, and here we are today. That is fine for parties to pick their own little victories here and there, and try to embarrass the other side.

However, there has been activity at both the federal level and the provincial level over the years. My home province of Manitoba is one of three provinces that has rules stating that all people must report child pornography. I believe Nova Scotia and Ontario also have laws in place right now. Manitoba was an early mover in this area.

The Government of Canada's proposed legislation would enhance Canada's capacity to better protect children against sexual exploitation by making it mandatory for those who supply an Internet service to the public to report online child pornography. This legislation would help safeguard children by improving law enforcement's ability to detect offences and reduce the availability of child pornography on the Internet. This is a requirement in the bill but providers would not be obligated to search for it. If they happen to notice it, then they are obligated to report it.

There also is a 21 day rule in the bill but I do not know if that is a long enough timeframe. I am looking at a lawyer here in the House who could probably tell me whether that would be long enough or not. However, when the bill goes to committee it might look at making that a longer period of time because 21 days might be too short.

Under the proposed legislation, suppliers of Internet services to the public would be required to report to a designated agency tips that they might receive regarding websites where child pornography may be available to the public. They are required to notify police and safeguard evidence if they believe that a child pornography offence has been committed using their Internet service.

I am told that the well-known large ISPs are fairly cooperative in this area and that it is the smaller ISPs that are evidently less inclined to want to report, so they are the ones that will need to be given a bit of extra attention.

The legislation was carefully tailored to achieve its objectives while minimizing the impact on privacy. We will want to deal with that issue at committee because members of our caucus are concerned about that aspect.

Suppliers of Internet services would not be required to send personal subscriber information under this bill and that would be helpful as well.

Failure to comply with the duties under the bill would constitute an offence punishable by graduated fines of up to $1,000 for the first offence. The member for Mississauga South, among others, has taken exception to that as being too low. We might be looking at making an improvement there in committee, maybe a higher limit.

The bill also indicates that for a second offence the penalty would be $5,000 and for subsequent offences the possibility of a fine up to $10,000 or six months imprisonment, or both for sole proprietorships.

If it is a corporation, I would suspect there may be some sort of organized crime involved in it, but I may be wrong in that. However, if a corporation fails to comply with its duties under this act, the graduated fine fee would be $10,000, $50,000 and $100,000. Once again, I do not have a comment about whether that is a high amount or a low amount but it seems to be awfully low. If a criminal organization is producing child pornography and making a huge amount of money, although I have no idea how much money it would make on something like this, but $10,000 might be nothing more than the cost of doing business.

Again I find that I am short of time and once again only about halfway through my comments. I am used to those 40 minute speech slots that we had in Manitoba for many years. It is a hard habit to break. As a matter of fact, in the House of Commons just 30 years ago members had longer periods for their speeches. However, I do like the current time allotment as well.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think my hon. colleague was right when he said that when we think about the Internet, pornography and child pornography, all of us in the House agree that it is an odious thing that happens to young children and we need to put a stop to it.

I would like him to articulate a little further about how we should address the issue to ensure it ends and that we protect our children, which, in the end, is what we really want to do. Clearly, the bill is lacking in some areas where it perhaps needs to be stiffened and could be helped out.

The hon. member started out to explain jurisdictions in the world that are making progress on this very heinous crime that is perpetrated on our young. I was hopeful that he could perhaps take some more time. I know he indicated that in other legislatures in this country members gets a little more time and perhaps, through my question, he could take some more time to explain to us what other countries are doing and how effective they are in ensuring these crimes are not perpetuated against children.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, from what I have been able to glean from the comments of pretty much all of the speakers on this side, no one is super critical of this bill. We are all saying that we will support it, but we just do not think it is tough enough to deal with the problem.

This probably would have been the measure to take five or six years ago when the problem was not as big as it is now. I think the member for Mississauga South was right. We should be looking at the best practices we can find. There may be others. We mentioned that Sweden simply blocks the porn sites and that Brazil has set up ethical rules.

If we do not want to follow Sweden's example and block the sites, then maybe we should look at Brazil where the ISPs have ethical rules set up that somehow must restrict access to them. We are told that Germany has the best system where it blocks access to the sites completely. To me, that would grind it to a halt, at least as far as our jurisdiction is concerned.

I was not born yesterday. I know the criminal elements will try to find a way around it. Maybe they will move their servers to some other country and then at a certain point we would need to chase down the perpetrators somewhere else. However, the bill covers the whole range. It covers production and possession.

Once again, I am saying that we need this bill because it is important. The provinces want it and they agreed to it. It is all part of a package.

I know the member for Mississauga South thinks we should have a complete package and add even more things into it, even beyond the scope of the bill. I do not think we need to look at that right now, but in terms of this bill, I think the government should seriously look at other possible alternatives that it can throw into this as a package and move along together with this bill.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Madam Speaker, at the beginning of my colleague's speech he talked about some of the questions he had asked the minister about resourcing. He asked some other members whether they had done this or done that when it comes to resource allocation, new moneys and old moneys, but he could not get a response because they were not sure.

This leaves one to question. If the bill is so seriously needed, one would think that they would want to resource it appropriately so that we can act on it. We need to not only get this done, we need to resource those law enforcement agencies.

As my colleague pointed out, we can go after and get ethical rules around ISPs, perhaps following the examples of Brazil and Germany in doing that, but what happens if there is a criminal element? We need the resources and a police function that will attack that. Some of the police agencies across this country have said that they are underfunded and under-resourced. They do not have the people because of the resource part of it to get the job done that they need to do to curtail this heinous sort of crime. All of us in the House agree that child porn is heinous and that we need to stop it.

What does my colleague think the government should do when it comes to resourcing? If it slides toward the criminal element and away from the legitimate providers, how will they be resourced and how should they tackle that particular crime group that would want to do those sorts of things?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I would draw back to the original speech by the minister in the House when she said that $41.1 million over five years would be provided to law enforcement to give more resources. Properly resourcing the police force is something that we on this side of the House are particularly interested in because the police are the ones who will be dealing with the problem.

I think the bill was hastily drawn together. The government basically lurches back and forth like a ship in a sea. One day it is doing one thing and another day it is doing something else. The bill starts to be reported on CTV News on Monday morning. Every half hour it is being reported on and Parliament does not have a copy of it. We have no notes to go on. When the minister does make the statement and I ask her about the $41 million of resourcing for the police, she has no idea whether that is new money, old money, enough money or what it will do. Surely members who are going to speak on the issue would be well briefed, would have notes and would have answers to possible questions.

Even today, when I asked the member for Leeds—Grenville, who made a very well informed speech, for best practices, he could not tell me whether they had even looked at any other best practices.

I worked on bill 31 in Manitoba, which, at the time, was the electronic commerce legislation, the most comprehensive of its kind in Canada about 10 years ago. We used a uniform law template to put that legislation together. We cannot just make things up as we go along. There is always some sort of basis upon which we start when drafting legislation.

We know the Conservatives must have looked at other jurisdictions. I would be shocked if they had not. I just want to know who they looked at and why they rejected, for example, Germany. If they did look at the rules in Germany, I want to know why they decided not to follow the German example. If they looked at Brazil, I want to know why they decided its system was not what they liked. If they looked at the Swedish example, I want to know why they decided its system was not what they wanted.

The member talked about organized crime. We tend to think that people involved in child pornography are average people. I am sure thousands of them are, but given the amount of money that is involved in this business there has to be the long tail of organized crime. If we do not know that, we had better start looking. If we talk to police forces that deal with organized crime they will tell us that, certainly those in my home city of Winnipeg,

I want the focus of the criminal justice system to be on chasing the Mr. Bigs. We keep chasing the little guy at the bottom of the totem pole who gets nailed for a little bit of cocaine or distribution, but the reality is that it is the guys at the top who are making the big money. Those are the guys wearing the suits. As a matter of fact, most of them do not even own motorcycles in Winnipeg and they live in fancy houses in the suburbs. That is the kind of criminal that I want to see us focus on. I think we will see that some of them are involved in this area as well.