Public Safety committee  My name is Joe Oliver. I'm with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I'm director general of border integrity. Brenda Paine is with Health Canada; Steve Sloan is with the Canada Border Services Agency; Phil McLester is with the Canada Revenue Agency; and Pierre Bertrand is with t

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members. I am very pleased to have the opportunity today to speak to you with regard to the current trends in the Canadian contraband tobacco market and the RCMP's ongoing efforts to reduce this illicit trade. Equally important are the enhanced

Public Safety committee  In terms of the volume seized?

Public Safety committee  I don't have an estimated size of the overall market, but last year, in 2009, we seized 975,000 cartons of cigarettes. It's up slightly, 1%, from 2008.

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  No, I don't.

Public Safety committee  Actually, it was posted on the web on Friday. It was distributed and I believe everybody has a copy. It's a first report. In fact, the statistics and some of the detail are in here up to October 2009.

Public Safety committee  That's not a figure I'm familiar with.

Public Safety committee  No, this was essentially year one of execution. We are writing year two of execution now. And that will be the May 2009 issue, so it will take time to collect the data, formulate it into a report, have it edited, translated, and go through the approval process. It can take quite

Public Safety committee  Actually, if I could turn to some of my colleagues, I think there are some positive indications that the market may be in a state of change.

Public Safety committee  One point of clarification. I believe you indicated that there were 100 unlicensed factories. Our information indicates that it fluctuates constantly, and these could be small operations that could be mobile. But our indication and estimates are that there's about 50 in Canada. T

Public Safety committee  There are a number of questions that have to be answered first. Do we have the intelligence and the location of the manufacturing facility, and enough to obtain a warrant to execute that? Whenever we do a police operation, there are always officer safety and public safety consi

Public Safety committee  Not speaking of any individuals, there are always considerations when police operations take place in areas that are politically sensitive. You may be familiar with what happened last week. There was a marine enforcement operation that occurred in the Cornwall region on the St. L

Public Safety committee  I think the fact that we've disrupted 25 organized crime groups is a bit of an achievement.

Public Safety committee  As I mentioned, the RCMP is targeting organized crime groups that are involved in the manufacturing of tobacco products. We continue to do that. We continue to partner with aboriginal communities in trying to eliminate organized crime in those communities. I can turn to my coll