Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I too would like to tell you that I think what you're doing is extremely courageous. It is not difficult to understand that what you have gone through is extremely traumatic. I hope today you will find three sources of comfort.
First, I have been a member of Parliament since 1993 and I can tell you that in the past, the House has proven that it is quite easy to reach consensus on issues regarding organized crime. You should remember that a number of communities, in particular Montreal, which Mr. Petit was speaking about a few moments ago, have experienced a phenomenon similar to what is happening in B.C. at the moment. Some distinctions do have to be made, however. At the time, it was really a war against the Hells Angels and the Rockers. I understand that that was not so much the case for you. We agreed quite quickly that a new offence had to be created. So we added the offence of gangsterism to the Criminal Code, which was described as being five individuals who committed serious offences, punishable by more than two years' imprisonment, for the purpose of providing material or financial resources to an organization. The police explained to us that it was not a good idea to keep the number at five, so we reduced it to three. Since organized crime is evolving very quickly, we later broke the section down into three parts to facilitate indictments.
At the moment, we're all trying to understand the characteristics of organized crime in 2008. It is different from organized crime as it existed in 1995. We are very aware of what is going on in British Columbia, so much so that we decided we needed to go to B.C. as a committee. We will be doing that in April. We are looking for things that can be done to enable the police to lay charges.
I heard you speaking out against judges. I can understand your view on this, but, with all due respect, I do not think the solution lies in this area. In my opinion, the police must have the tools they need to lay charges and later we will see about their effectiveness.
I support the bill because of the offence punishable by a prison term of 25 years. When people have reached this level of responsibility in organized crime, they should not be eligible for parole for a long time. This is how we will destroy the networks. I think this works much better than minimum sentences or other types of measures. We need to give the police more tools to do their job.
You can count on us to work diligently and without partisanship. I think the trials you are going through at the moment will help us go further in our common struggle.
I thank you very much for your courage. You can count on us.