I would say that the link is tenuous, because we don't exactly understand the empirical linkages, and that this is an area that deserves much more attention by government, especially with respect to research, because it is an area that is very difficult to research and so requires heavy sunk costs.
We know, for instance, that contraband cigarettes have been linked to everywhere from eastern Europe through to ISIS, and in the United States, for Hezbollah fundraising. I detail those in the report and also have some articles on that particular issue. However, it's not exactly clear what those linkages are, because it seems that the fundraising and organized crime elements operate fairly independently from the actual terrorist elements and that the networks themselves look somewhat different.
I think it suggests the challenge of our needing to make sure we recognize that what we do on the organized crime enforcement side has concrete implications for public safety and national security. I might point the committee to the Cornwall regional task force, for instance, which was established in 1990, and 25 years later we're still here.
We need to be asking some hard questions about why it is that we pour money into task forces when, for instance, in the end they don't seem to be able to get us the sort of payoff we need. Is it an institutional issue, a legislative issue, a sociological issue, or do we simply have the strategy wrong?
I think there is a lot more we can do, both within Canada and in terms of international capacity building, on organized crime that will help public safety in general and in fighting terrorist financing in particular.