Justice committee  I feel very strongly about a couple of things. I realize this is a legislative committee, and I guess my recommendation to you would be to curb the pure focus on legislation, or at least to take into account what are likely going to be the unanticipated consequences for it. The

Justice committee  It might end up with more than marijuana, but I was not advocating legalization. Decriminalization of marijuana is what we need right now.

Justice committee  It is possibly a first step. Again, there is research that looks at decriminalization of heroin in terms of the fact that there isn't an increase in the population of users. Someone said that we need more research, and I did want to comment--

Justice committee  I want to address that, because, yes, in Toronto the criminal organization legislation has been used against those gangs, and I want to reply specifically in terms of another impact that has. You've got Malvern, where 64 people were rounded up. That's fine and dandy. It's a stre

Justice committee  I was speaking specifically about the gang problem and I suppose in terms of your question about recruitment. I'm hoping there is a proceeding or a transcript from the summit that I wasn't able to attend yesterday, because it had a number of ex-gang members talking very fluentl

Justice committee  The argument in my mind is not one of drawing the line, but the sense that what we're doing now doesn't work. What we're doing now leads to all kinds of police corruption, corruption of officials, and a whole lot of money for.... One of the questions that was asked was how organi

Justice committee  'm advocating that if we are in fact focusing on the kind of activity that puts dirty money into the hands of criminals, that would at least be an area to maintain. Again, just as I was writing in trying to do this research, the joint force gambling operation in British Columbi

Justice committee  I have not read that report, but what it seems to refer to is what we know. When you take out a monopoly, which perhaps drug enforcement would do, you're opening it up to competitors, which then increases the amount of violence until whoever is there is once again able to regain

Justice committee  Perhaps Antonio knows more. Maybe it has to do with what the level of violence was beforehand.

Justice committee  I'm wondering if it's more organized in that jurisdiction, in the sense that an organization was in fact taken out or impacted. When we look at drug trafficking and criminal activity in Canada, sometimes we make it sound as if it's one or two organizations and that all the procee

Justice committee  One of the things that's so difficult about the conversation is that every one of those criminal operations or enterprises brings in quite different factors. I'm not certain that you can say today that drugs are the big money-maker. Possibly they are the priority money-maker for

Justice committee  Could I respond?

Justice committee  Thank you very much. My name is Margaret Beare. I'm a professor at York University, where I served for 10 years as the director of the Nathanson Centre for the Study of Organized Crime and Corruption. The name of that centre has now been changed to the Nathanson Centre on Trans