I greatly appreciated your presentation Mr. Boyd, although I would like to have an exchange with you about three subjects. You know that our Committee has undertaken a study on organized crime. When we talk about organized crime, we are never far removed from the issue of drugs.
Could you repeat the statistics? You seemed to say that there has been a kind of cut-off between the period before 1967 and the period after 1967. If I understood correctly, you said that 1,000 people were charged before 1967 and 10,000 thereafter. I would like you to elaborate on how the prohibition strategy has been a failure and how we are going in a very questionable direction with Bill C-15. All sorts of scenarios have been put forward in our Committee.
I am going to ask you my three questions all at once so I will not need to talk any more. I would like to know your opinion and that of your colleagues on the following idea. Our Committee could recommend establishing a list of criminal organizations, but this would be circumscribed within a framework. For example, you know that despite the fact that three courts of law have declared the Hells Angels to be a criminal organization under sections 467.11, 467.12 and 467.13 of the Criminal Code, every time members of the Hells Angels are brought to trial, the Crown must start all over again and prove that this is a criminal organization.
So we are playing around with the idea of having a list that would say, after a court adjudication, that this organization has the status of a criminal organization. Do you believe something like that could be useful in combatting organized crime?
If I have some time left, I would like to get back to the infiltration by organized crime of the legal economy, because I believe it will be the challenge of the next five years. So I would like to hear your opinion on these matters.