Justice committee  I have looked at Bill C-46, yes.

Justice committee  From reading it, in my opinion it addresses those concerns. As with all legislation, it's the functionality behind it in communication between, say, police and their service providers that may show us the challenges, but in terms of legislation I couldn't find anything to enhance

Justice committee  There are 109 identified organized crime groups. I believe that's for the Atlantic region.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  They aren't spread equally. The majority are in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Justice committee  From a regional perspective, I would say that of all the drugs seized in the Atlantic region, probably 70% to 75% of it is marijuana; 10% to 15% would be cocaine or crack cocaine; the remainder would be a combination of prescription pills and other drugs such as heroin, but those

Justice committee  I wouldn't say that legalizing marijuana would reduce the amount of work and effort that police agencies put into organized crime. I'll use the analogy that tobacco is legal, yet tobacco is a huge contraband item that organized crime groups manipulate to generate revenue. It's no

Justice committee  Fighting organized crime is so wide in scope that to give specific suggestions is almost impossible in terms of a policing perspective. I think we need to find ways to support policing in terms of integrated approaches, and potentially integrated funding methodologies to support

Justice committee  Within the RCMP, our human resource areas are looking to the idea of career streaming and career opportunities. As in most police services, a lot of our employees come in at the lower rank level or pay level and then work their way up. Then they tend to hit a glass ceiling, espec

Justice committee  The RCMP is responsible for the federal witness protection program. It is robust. It's being used in every province in Canada. The complexity and the cost of running the program is enormous. To put a cost on an individual witness is almost impossible, because it depends on whethe

Justice committee  The laws in the United States, in terms of fighting organized crime, are different in certain areas. There would have to be an examination of the specific laws in terms of how they deal with organized crime, based on the laws they have and based on the laws we have. However, I th

Justice committee  Absolutely. As I mentioned in my opening comments, it's not just a matter for law enforcement, but for governments at all levels. We need to have representation there to understand the complexities of technology. On your question about funding, I would say that we would best lea

Justice committee  It varies, but commonly it's a payment of money.

Justice committee  To answer your question, generally, yes, we need to be in parallel with organized crime or ahead of the curve in terms of technology. The problem for law enforcement is that the process we have to go through to get the court's authorization to actually intercept the technology i

Justice committee  Not specifically to identify gangs from the United States. We have had organized crime files that have reached into the states to individuals, but not specifically to any identified gang.