The reason I said that the anti-gang legislation made it easier for us to get wiretaps in criminal organization investigations is that prior to 1997, the general rule, which still applies to all other cases, is that before you can get authorization to do wiretapping, you have to prove that the police officers in their investigation have exhausted all the other investigative possibilities. What the 1997 legislation did was that it said you don't have to exhaust all other investigative possibilities when you're investigating organized crime.
In that sense, that was one criteria we had to meet before that we didn't have to meet starting in 1997. So that has been very useful in terms of our requests for authorizations to do wiretapping. However, I understand why Mr. Bélanger says it hasn't become easy, because it's still a very lengthy process.
One other improvement with the 1997 legislation, which Mr. Bélanger did mention, is that it's possible to get authorizations for a longer period of time. Before 1997, the general rule applied, and that is that you had a maximum of sixty days where you could do wiretaps. After that you had to get judicial renewal of your authorization. The 1997 legislation allowed us to get an authorization right from the start to do wiretapping for 12 months, which is very appropriate, because these investigations that we do in criminal organization investigations, they tend to be very lengthy—as I said, from 12 to 24 months.
So it is better, I would say, than it was before 1997, and it is easier, but it's still a lot of work. I know that people like Maître Bélanger spend a lot of time preparing those wiretap requests.