Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, witnesses.
This has all been very interesting. My colleague Dominic and I are from the east coast. We have a different set of problems there. We're very cognizant that on the west coast, particularly here in the Lower Mainland, you have some deepening issues.
I just want to get an understanding, perhaps from the local flavour, of how pervasive organized crime is in this area. On the beach this year, I read this book about organized crime. The story is that in B.C. you can find a home on a river, get your lawn landscaped, go to an Italian restaurant, call your date on a cell phone, and book tickets, all through businesses run by the Hells Angels, an organized crime group particularly predominant in the east end of Vancouver, according to this book. It is just a book, and I'm just a politician, but if it's that prevalent....
Recently the police were asking to have tools, through the Attorney General, to fight organized crime. We spend a lot of time talking about drugs. I know they're the currency of organized crime. I realize that, but I don't think we've spent enough time getting the flavour of organized crime here and figuring out what can be done about it.
You mentioned CLEU. Is it time to reinstitute an investigation unit like that?
Give us some hard deliverables that we can take back to the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and say what we can do nationally to get on this problem.
Professor Gordon, maybe you could start on that.