Justice Committee on April 30th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

I call this meeting to order.

Thank you, all of you, for coming.

As you know, as a justice committee, we decided to conduct a review of organized crime across Canada. It's supposed to be a comprehensive review, and it's going well beyond the number of days we'd allotted for it. We're drawing on information we're getting from witnesses across Canada. You're just one of many panels we'll be speaking to, hopefully reflecting a diversity of views.

The way we normally proceed is to have you make a presentation of five minutes. There will be room later on for questions from the committee members. If you can keep an eye on me from time to time as you're speaking, whether you're answering questions or giving your presentation, I'll let you know when you're close to the end and when I'd like to have you wind up, because we want to be fair to all the people who want to ask questions, as we have a pretty full agenda.

Without further ado, John Shavluk, would you like to start, please? The floor is yours.

[John Shavluk, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP)]

First off, I'd like to thank the justice committee for even allowing me to be here. I wasn't here this morning, so if I'm out of line in my presentation, I would just like to explain a couple of things while this is going on.

Obviously, none of you may know me, but the history involves...and I'll just put it in point form. I was a real estate developer/broker/builder in Saskatoon in the eighties and the nineties, and I spoke up for some of my tenants at the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties. Unbeknownst to me, I ended up being framed for having 8 grams of cannabis and was denied access to my children and was jailed for two years. My entire world was torn away and my business was bankrupted.

I had run for city council in Saskatoon. When I was freed from jail, as soon as I could I left Saskatchewan, and I wanted to leave the country because I was so ashamed. I'm an ex-military veteran, an ex-bank manager, and an ex-Canada Revenue Agency department head. I was appalled that this could happen in this country.

The police officer involved was charged for.... There was a 1992 rape case dealing with children in Martensville, Saskatchewan. He was the police officer who caused my demise. And where I came from in Saskatchewan, racism still runs rampant.

To make a long story shorter, I ended up in B.C., where I met a woman who basically nursed me back to health, because I still didn't know exactly what had happened. I'm being very point blank here. I lost 43 apartment blocks, houses, a night club, and a restaurant over something I did not do, because of a tenant who had broken into 70 homes in the city and bought 8 grams of cannabis from a fellow whose dad owned the CTV station. So the Saskatoon police.... There's a court record I can give you that proves everything I'm saying.

In 2000, a fellow you might have heard of, by the name of Marc Emery, put an ad in The Georgia Straight and organized a bunch of like-minded people to get together and start fighting. By then I had figured out what had happened to me and who did it. For example, I was a millionaire, so I didn't qualify for legal aid. Two days before my jury trial, a lawyer phoned me and said he was representing me and had done me a favour and dropped my jury trial for a nice lenient judge. Well, I didn't see my children for two years and lost everything. As far as I'm concerned, I lost my life that day because I could not get a job in this country.

Kids can beat an addiction, people, but they cannot beat a conviction. The first time I ever saw cocaine in my life was in jail.

The Hells Angels are sending a little message to you people, because when they broke into my marina and threatened my family and threatened to cut my head off, they prayed that the Conservative government would put in place mandatory minimum sentences and put people in jail, because they recruit 90% of their members from jail.

Now the abuse and the threats that I've taken over the years—and it's been 18 years.... I've been in every provincial election since. I'm running against Mr. Wally Oppal right now in Delta South. I'm the Green Party candidate, by the way, who was let go three days before the last federal election for so-called anti-Semitic comments.

I go to trial in the Supreme Court of B.C. starting January 4. I will prove that the blogger who sent this attack out to the Global media family has two friends attached to his website. One of them owns a Conservative blogging site and the other one is Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister. This goes to trial on January 4, 2010. You can't phone the police when you're attacked by the Prime Minister or somebody connected to him.

The day I was described as an anti-Semite, my wife ran out screaming and crying because she has been through the shakedowns by the police, when they came with psych nurses, threatening to make me disappear. But her computer started to type in Polish and mine started to type backwards, and nobody touched a thing. They're both melted down, and technicians asked if I was attacked by the FBI.

I live under personal threat by the Hells Angels or bikers or criminal elements, who sure as heck don't want me to be successful in stopping you from jailing Canadian citizens' children for a harmless, benign plant. I just came from a national Green Party convention, where I met people who were so-called cured from cancer by hemp oil, because something ate their tumours.

I pleaded with my mother and my best friend a year before that to try it, because I knew of it. They both died of cancer but could not get beyond the fact that, “The law is the law, John, and if they had wanted us to do it, we would.”

I should mention, with Joe sitting here, that Jack Layton took it upon himself. We canvassed all the leaders for the NDP, and every one of them was going to legalize cannabis or stop this craziness. Well, I spent four years working my butt off for him. He kept telling me to get grassroots support. You can check the record—North Delta got the first one. We ended up with 6 for cannabis, 200 to the drug war. They met us on the way there, asking me to go home. They said they were too afraid to touch the issue because of votes.

I implore all of you—you all must have friends or somebody who's touched these drugs. If you put them in jail for mandatory minimum sentences, you ruin their lives forever and you give the best recruits you can to these criminals, who threaten to take my life if I succeed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

Mr. Tousaw.

[Kirk Tousaw, Board Member, Chair, Drug Policy Committee, BC Civil Liberties Association]

Thank you for allowing the association to present its remarks. I should point out that the association doesn't have an official position on organized crime writ large, so my remarks today are predominantly my own. However, I think they come with some significant support from the association.

I want to talk about a tale of three different eras, and I'll preface this with three key points to explain why my remarks are going to focus predominantly on the issue of drug prohibition and its linkage with organized crime. My first point is that the primary funding source for organized crime is the illicit drug market. You've probably already heard this today, as I see you had a number of law enforcement witnesses earlier. You don't have to take my word for it. The 2008 CISC report on organized crime makes it abundantly clear that this is where they get the bulk of their money.

The second point, also from the CISC 2008 annual report, is that law enforcement activity, including the disruption and dismantling of specific organized crime groups, is neither a permanent solution to the problem nor an effective long-term strategy. This is because, as the report says, the impact of law enforcement successes

...tends to be short term as it creates temporary voids into which market expansion occurs or creates opportunities for well-situated criminal groups. In general, criminal markets are highly resistant to long-term disruption as they continue to exist in response to meeting consumer demand.

The third point is that, as recent events in the lower mainland have made clear to all of us who live there, as well as everybody else across Canada, organized criminal groups use tactics to control the drug markets that disrupt the social fabric of our communities, that cause the loss of innocent lives, and that create chaos on our streets.

With those three key points in mind, I'll talk very briefly about the three eras that I described. The first era is national alcohol prohibition in the United States, a measure designed to reduce drunkenness and crime. This noble experiment of the twenties and thirties did exactly the opposite. Serious crime increased markedly. Alcohol became more available and more dangerous. There was adulterated moonshine. The potency of alcoholic products increased, because of a move from beer and wine to hard liquor, which was more easily smuggled and concealed. The unintended negative consequences of prohibition ultimately became the major impetus for its repeal. The result of repealing prohibition in the United States was an almost immediate and significant decrease in serious crimes such as assault and, in particular, homicide. These decreases can be explained only in relation to the repeal of alcohol prohibition.

The second era I want to talk about is the rise of the cocaine cartels. This era begins in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when a confluence of events occurs: a rise in popularity of powdered cocaine; the invention of crack cocaine as a means of delivering powdered cocaine to less affluent markets in cheaper and easier-to-acquire formats; and the renewal of the Richard Nixon drug war by Ronald Reagan. This confluence of events led to the rise of massive cocaine cartels, originating predominantly in South America. Everyone has heard of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel. Pablo Escobar was killed by Colombian police in 1993, and that marked the end of that second era. This was celebrated as a major victory by drug enforcement agents across the world—principally in Washington, D.C., but everywhere else as well. Pablo Escobar's death in Colombia marked the 16th major cartel that had been disrupted or dismantled in the previous three years. Either the leaders had been killed or they had been extradited to face charges, mainly in the United States. Escobar, at the time of his death, was a billionaire many times over. It was felt that this was a turning point in the war against the cocaine cartels, and in fact it was. Tragically, however, the turn was for the worse.

In the wake of the disruption of the cocaine cartels, cocaine became cheaper and more pure. Where a few cartels had once dominated, dozens sprang up to replace them, using violence to secure turf and distribution lines. As the CISC report makes clear, diversification of the smuggling routes has meant that in West Africa the very nationhood of some countries is being threatened by the continued international trade in illicit substances.

Domestically, gang wars continue unabated throughout all of North America.

I have the wind-up signal, so I'll very briefly mention the third era, and it's a short story because the third era begins right around now. The third era is the road ahead for Canada and the international community. There are two paths we can take. There's the path of the failed policies of the past that will result in more bloodshed, more violence, more death, more disruption of our social fabric, and more risk to our communities and our children. Or there's another path, and it's a path that will take a tremendous amount of courage and a tremendous amount of leadership. It's the path that was followed in the United States when alcohol prohibition was repealed and the good that this brought. It's the path that involves the repeal of drug prohibition. It is not a magic solution. It will not end the problem with organized crime in this country, but it will deal a significant blow, and I urge you to think long and hard about taking that road instead of the failed road of the past.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

I will move on to Mani Amar. You have five minutes.

[Mani Amar, Filmmaker, As an Individual]

Committee and guests, my name is Mani Amar. I'm an independent filmmaker, writer, and activist based out of Vancouver, B.C. I've been invited here today to share my views on the state of organized crime and to offer suggestions in order that--

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Mani, you can read much more slowly; that way the interpreters will be able to catch what you're saying.

[Mani Amar]

I only have five minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

That's okay.

[Mani Amar]

I've been invited here today to share my views on the state of organized crime and to offer suggestions in order for the committee to make recommendations in a report to the House of Commons.

I believe my invitation was based on the film I have recently released, A Warrior's Religion. It is a documentary film in which I attempt to discover the root precursors of why so many South Asians have been heavily involved in organized crime in metro Vancouver during the last 19 years. I hope that my experience garnered in the production of the film, along with my ongoing research on this issue, can help provide insight in terms of shedding light on this dark situation.

Youth and our educational system. In today's society, more so than ever before, there exists a very heavy influence of materialism. Our youth are literally programmed by advertisements and popular media that their progression of success is measured by the ruler of wealth. This phenomenon is not unique to only Canada. It is slowly but surely becoming a global phenomenon.

When youth are taught directly or indirectly by their own families and friends in every direction they look that they are not cool because they lack the newest electronic gadget or the brand name pair of shoes, you are hindering the self-confident growth of that child. Where there's a lack of self-confidence, there is a very dangerous void, a void that is preyed upon by older youth. This void is exceptional in its fertility for growing misguided morals and ethics.

One of the most common recruitment measures put into practice by youth on youth is bullying. Bullying is a tried and tested and proven-to-work technique. Imagine an impressionable youth--and remember that all youth are impressionable--being ridiculed for not having those cool items I mentioned before. Every day he comes to school to be picked on, made fun of, teased to the point of tears and beyond, and secluded from the group that decides what the norm is. Ladies and gentlemen, we now have an at-risk youth. This boy will one day be told by some other boys that he does not need to fear bullying or being ridiculed if he joins their group. Ladies and gentlemen, we now have an alliance. That at-risk youth now has learned that he is protected when he has the strength of his friends with him. Though these childhood alliances may or may not last to the point of becoming criminal, the at-risk youth's subconscious has now been ingrained with a feeling of protection and the feeling of power when they possess these types of alliances.

This is one example of how youth can become at risk. There are many paths that can lead a child to this point. Whether it be society's stress on materialism, the lack of proper parenting, the lack of attention at school or what have you, the fact is that we are creating more at-risk youth than ever before.

Moving forward with an example, what if there was awareness of this bait strategy? What if we could teach our youth from an early age in our schools that these are bait strategies that other children could use on them? Perhaps a young boy will make a positive choice by saying no to joining a group. Perhaps his saying no will create a benchmark for the boy to rebuild the self-confidence he lacks.

Everyone is well aware of the four pillars of action: awareness, prevention, intervention, and enforcement. In my humble opinion, I believe there is much more focus on the latter two pillars, intervention and enforcement, than on the two pillars that we should be focusing on, awareness and prevention.

Focusing resources on these two pillars can drastically reduce the recruitment pool of at-risk youth. Awareness is having knowledge, conscience, being cognizant, informed, alert, and mindful. Prevention is effectual hindrance. Intervention is interruption, obstruction. Enforcement is to compel observance of or obedience to. Ladies and gentlemen, which of these pillars sounds like the easier task?

Prevention. As the youth being bullied is at risk, so is the bully. The void that exists in the bullied youth is the same void that the bully himself encompasses. However, his void is mostly likely engulfed with fear and insecurities--fear and insecurities that are alleviated by a showcase of power.

Bullying is an issue that is taking place in our schools, just as it did when we were all growing up. However, the means to complete the bullying is no longer just physical. Another phenomenon of cyber bullying has come into prominence. Now the bullied youth has less chance of escape and the bullies have another tool to accomplish their goals.

I believe the ratio of teachers to students, which has grown stagnant over the last 20 years, needs to vastly decrease. It is not a feasible task for a teacher, essentially a third parent, to provide the attention required for a youth when they are to be mindful of the average of 30 students per classroom. That bully who is in desperate need of attention, who's crying out for help subconsciously and in their actions, will most likely not receive the attention required to help them get to the correct path once again.

I'll move on to intervention. It seems as though we have become comfortable to the point where we only take action after the youth takes their first footsteps on a one-way path. For us to intervene, there has to be a situation taking place that needs intervening, situations such as youth violence, gang violence, the drug trade, and drug abuse, among many others. Decisions are made; life choices are accepted. These youths will find it very hard to come back, and we will find it very hard to bring them back. They will be moving faster on a downward slide in their life.

I was going to go through the other four pillars, but the whole synopsis of my statement is that we are propelling gangs to exist and to do the drug trade. The number one incentive for gangs to exist in B.C. is due to the marijuana trade. If we cannot perpetuate them and perhaps legalize, regulate, and even tax the marijuana trade, we can strengthen our own economy and limit the amount of gangs getting involved.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Tony Helary. You have five minutes.

[Tony Helary, As an Individual]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Pardon me if I'm somewhat nervous. This is my first time before the committee.

My name is Anthony Helary. I was born in eastern Canada and now live in the lower mainland; however, between then and now, most of my life has been spent in federal prison, for a wide variety of crimes, many of which I'm not very proud of.

I've been in prison in all regions in Canada--Dorchester, Millhaven, Collins Bay, Warkworth, Prince Albert, Kent, and Matsqui. I am here today to share with the committee some of my experiences. Today my goal in life is to have no more victims. I am doing this through my church and my spiritual beliefs. Today I do what I can to help the homeless and prisoners with addictions, one person at a time.

I have a house in Abbotsford with four men in recovery who had been living on the street, one of them in a cardboard box under a bridge. That is not, however, why I would like to share some of my experiences and knowledge of the federal prison system. CSC is a failing corporation. I believe this is because their hands are tied, between the Charter of Rights and the mission statement. The ball is in the prisoner's court.

Gangs are becoming rampant in prison: the prairies have the native gangs; the Angels and the Rock Machine are in Quebec; the Aryan Brotherhood and white power gangs are in eastern Canada. B.C. has any number of gangs, including the Angels. The federal system is a recruiting area for many gangs, especially inmates who are doing five years or less. The major problem I see in CSC is they are unable to move gang members to other regions where they would have less power and very little influence in the general area. Just as it is on the street, fear is what they use in prison, in both places, and violence is a means of dealing with issues.

There's so much corruption in the CSC that it's easy to get whatever you want, from cellphones to drugs. In the seventies it was the Palmers, and now it is any number of gangs. Unless some changes are made, the gangs will continue to do their activities inside prison walls with little interference.

I predict that in the near future prison gangs will be--if not are--the biggest problem in the CSC today. Drugs are control and drugs are power. Money is the motivator and staff are only human. I have recruited staff in the prison system. I basically controlled two prison gangs in Prince Albert for about five years, and I controlled them with the use of drugs and the getting of drugs in the institution, because I knew how, and it was usually through manipulation and fear. I'm not proud of the things I've done, but there is a big need to stop the activities that are happening today in the prison system.

Putting the Bacon brothers in prison here is doing nothing to stop their activities, or any of the Angels--Mom Boucher in Quebec or any of the gang members. It does little to put them behind prison walls. If you put them here in Matsqui or Kent, they still have the power, the power of fear in the community. As long as they have that power, the staff just lay dormant to do anything about it, for fear.... Until we let loose on some of the laws with regard to the mission statement, with regard to transfers of inmates from one region to another--because the mission statement talks about family and goes on and on in that regard--it's going to keep going, and it's sad.

Anyway, that's my take on that.

As far as decriminalization of marijuana is concerned, I totally disagree. I've seen it and I've done it; I've manipulated people by saying “here's some pot”, and the next thing I had them using harder drugs. I've especially preyed on white-collar criminals in the system. They come in and are basically green, but within a matter of months they're owing me their shirt. That's the way it is.

I think there should be a revamping of or a committee to study the prison system in Canada, because it's getting worse and worse. These criminals are getting back out. The result of them getting back out is that they're just back into the gangs. I really think that communities should be more involved, churches especially, with the integration of inmates and offenders. That's the way I see it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you very much.

We'll move now to Marco Mendicino.

Welcome. You have five minutes as well.

[Marco Mendicino, Acting President, Association of Justice Counsel]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and I want to thank all the members of the committee for allowing me this opportunity to speak.

I represent the Association of Justice Counsel. The AJC is made up of two families, as some of you may know. There are the Department of Justice lawyers, who essentially make up the civil litigators of the federal department, and then you have the Public Prosecution Service lawyers, who make up the federal crowns, and it is really their role that is the context in which I make the following remarks with respect to guns and gangs.

The real victims of guns and gangs are people. I think that goes without saying. They're the real victims of the terror that is within the framework of the gangs and the way in which they work, and it is the drugs that fuel the work of these gangs. Federal prosecutors serve as the last line of defence against the social chaos that is created by these gangs and the havoc they would otherwise seek to mete out in society. For these reasons, our work matters.

So what is the work we do? Well, we prosecute an array of offences under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. We also prosecute an array of offences under the Criminal Code. We carry out organized crime prosecutions, and often enough, both Criminal Code charges and CDSA charges, or controlled drugs and substances charges, are married up under rather significant, rather complex trials and proceedings. So that is essentially what our role is.

Now we're confronted with a number of challenges as a result of the complexity of the litigation, which has evolved over time, and some of you have become aware of that in reading about these cases in the papers. So what are the major issues federal prosecutors are confronted with as the level of litigation becomes more complex? Well, we have issues that deal with drawing the right line on what is the reasonable expectation of privacy. We have issues that deal with wiretap laws and the extent to which wiretaps may be authorized in the absence of judicial authorization when carried out in exigent circumstances. And perhaps more than anything else, we also are confronted with incredible disclosure issues.

I would imagine that many of you are aware of the watershed decision of Stinchcombe, and as a result of Stinchcombe, disclosure has become what is, in essence, the biggest impediment to carrying out an efficient and speedy trial. So as the offences become more complex and the evidentiary rules that are incorporated into those proceedings become more complex, our abilities to carry out our disclosure obligations are proportionately challenging, or the challenge to mete out those obligations is becoming proportionately challenging.

That is the essence of the work we do, but it's not just about prosecuting these cases. There's also a victim side to this, and often enough when thinking about drug crimes, which again are the fuel for many of these guns and gangs, there's an assumption made that they're victimless crimes. But that's not true at all. The people who are the victims of these crimes are the ones who have themselves lost their lives to drugs, and once the prosecution is carried out, it's up to the federal prosecutor to reach into the toolkit of our sentencing provisions to arrive at what is a fair sentence. So when we're actually trying to determine what is a fair and fit sentence in the circumstances, we have to balance the various objectives. And in cases involving guns and gangs, intuitively, the federal prosecutor will look at denunciation, will look at separating the offender from society, but at the same time, we also want to bear in mind the need to rehabilitate.

So these are the challenges we have moving forward.

There have been proposals that have been advanced, including mandatory minimums. There are various disparate social science data about whether or not mandatory minimums will be effective in the long run. I think at this stage it would be premature to rule that out of the sentencing toolkit.

That's the essence of the challenges we face as federal prosecutors. What I would simply say in closing is that it is important to remember that federal prosecutors also play a critical role in the overall scheme of combatting guns and gangs and drugs.

We thank you very much for your time this afternoon.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

You're very welcome, and thank you.

I realize that most of you, certainly the first four, ran out of time in terms of presenting. I think you'll get an opportunity to expand on your thoughts as the questions come along.

You also have an opportunity to provide us with written presentations, whether you have them with you right now or whether you want to expand those. You can deliver them to the clerk. She'll get them translated. Hopefully you can get them translated, but if you don't have the chance, deliver them anyway. Then we'll circulate them to our members.

[John Shavluk]

As long as I can speak again—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

If there are questions coming to you, and I would guess there may be, you can.

[John Shavluk]

Otherwise, I can't say anything?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

We have such limited time. We also have another—

[John Shavluk]

All I need is one minute.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

That's okay. It applies to everybody.

We're going to start over here. Who's going to go first?

Mr. LeBlanc, you have seven minutes.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Thank you to all of you for your comments. I have two very brief questions, and then my colleague, Joyce Murray, may want to follow up.

My first question is for Mr. Mendicino. I'm a great admirer of the work of many of your colleagues. Some of my friends, people who had been to law school with me in New Brunswick, for example, are now federal prosecutors in Atlantic Canada.

One of the things I hear a lot about is the difficulty of recruiting and retaining prosecutors, which can lead to difficulty in prosecuting large cases, whether they're drug cases or organized crime cases. I appreciate that in different jurisdictions across the country there are different pressures, but I'm wondering if nationally you have any insight with respect to the ability to recruit high-quality prosecutors and then retain them in the federal prosecution service. That's a very precise question.

I have a second question for Mr. Helary. The Dorchester Penitentiary is in my riding in New Brunswick. I've visited it a number of times, including two weeks ago. Much of what you said, in terms of the control of gangs within the institutions, I've heard from others, either inmates or people who work there. I'm wondering what specific suggestions you would have. You talked about a review of prisons, but perhaps after Mr. Mendicino's answer you could give us your suggestions on how to help reduce the negative pressure that we see in some prisons.

[Marco Mendicino]

Thank you very much for the question. The short answer is that we have an incredible problem both recruiting and retaining talent, and that problem has been particularly acute over the last three years.

Historically the federal government was either number one or number two on pay scales, and as a result of that we were able to attract and retain a high quality of talent. Over the last several years, we've fallen behind. If you take a look at where the federal government stands on the national scale as compared to some of the provinces, we rank probably seventh or eighth, certainly behind some of the major provinces, including Ontario and British Columbia.

The result is that you have a red-circling of federal government salaries. What happens is after a short period of time, after federal prosecutors have amassed a certain amount of talent, they simply walk across the street and work for our provincial counterparts at salaries that could be as much as 40% to 60% higher.

Now, I don't have to tell you that should be a source of major concern to every member on this committee, because what it means is that the number one lawyers who are representing the federal government's interests are bleeding; they're going away. I want to emphasize that that's an important component to the overall strategy of warding back guns and gangs, because federal prosecutors do play an extremely meaningful role in that.

I hope I've answered your question.

[Tony Helary]

The number one way that I think would give a lot of leeway to CSC would be to revamp the grievance system to close holes in the involuntary transfer system. If an inmate is involuntarily transferred from one region to another, or from one prison to another, he has a grievance process. It has three levels, and he can use that to get back to the region he was in. The mission statement with CSC is to keep families united as much as possible.

With that in mind, more times than not, if an inmate appeals the decision, he's sent back to the region. You have to close that hole. You have to be able to give CSC more power to transfer inmates, especially gang members. I think the ghost chain they had number of years ago....They'd have high-profile inmates. Ray Palmer was one. I'm not sure if most of you remember him. Ray, Donnie, and Dougie were the Palmer brothers, and they were involved in mafia activities here in Vancouver. They were put on the ghost chain, so to speak. They would be transferred from one region to the next region to the next region. They wouldn't give them enough time to set up shop, so to speak. They wouldn't give them enough time to get settled in. They'd maybe spend a year or two in the area and then they were gone. They couldn't get enough time to acquire whatever needs they had.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

Joyce.