Justice Committee on March 25th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

I call the meeting to order.

This is meeting five of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Today is Thursday, March 25, and we're continuing our study on organized crime in Canada. We're grateful that we have a number of witnesses before us.

We have two panels this afternoon. This panel will have three witnesses plus another one that will probably appear at about three o'clock.

I want to welcome James Dubro, Antonio Nicaso, as well as Margaret Beare.

I think you understand the process. Each of you has 10 minutes to present, and then we'll open the floor to questions from our committee members.

Perhaps Mr. Dubro would like to start.

[James Dubro, Writer and Filmmaker, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm sorry Michael Chettleburgh isn't here today, because he agrees with me on the position I am going to take about marijuana.

As Sergeant Tommy O'Brien, a wise old New York city street cop working organized crime, told me many years ago as we were walking along the streets of little Italy in New York to confront a mobster, “As long as people enjoy the services, and that is all it is, so long as people enjoy prostitution, untaxed cigarettes, after hours joints, gambling, as long as people enjoy that, there will always be Mafia people, criminals who will supply them. It's like anything else--if the general public wants it, they'll get it.” He chuckled when he said that--and that is very true today.

As an investigative journalist who has specialized in organized crime reporting for almost a lifetime, I have a different perspective from police and prosecutors who generally want more laws and easier arrests and convictions, or most politicians who usually desire a simplistic, nice-sounding, quick fix for political advantage to things that cannot be so easily fixed.

I've been looking at and documenting organized crime in Canada since 1974 for television documentaries, books, scores, and magazine articles, including the CBC Connections series from 1974 to 1979; a series called Mob Stories on the History Channel, where I was interviewed, along with Antonio; in the 1980s and 1990s, Mob rule: Inside the Canadian Mafia;Dragons of Crime: Asian Mobs in Canada; and three others, including one on organized crime during the 1920s prohibition in Canada.

I have been involved in many TV documentaries on people smuggling--one for A&E and one for the National Film Board and the CBC; a 10-part series on CityTV on Toronto organized crime groups; a CBC Witness documentary on cigarettes, guns, booze, and smuggling; a CBC Montreal documentary on the bike war in the 1990s; and many others. I am also the co-author of the definition articles of “organized crime” for all editions of the Canadian Encyclopedia.

The point here is that a lot of my life's work has been researching, looking at, and documenting organized crime in Canada and the various changing states of organized crime. Some of my sources I've met over the last 40 years--ex-hitmen, gangsters, con men, bikers, and mafioso--are still friends, as are some cops and some other mob sources. I see or call them and they call me frequently to chat, compare notes, and analyze the most recent organized crime developments. So I think I know of what I speak.

Since 1974, when I began work on Connections, and since 1985, when I published Mob rule: Inside the Canadian Mafia--the first book outside of Quebec on organized crime in Canada--we've come a long way in Canadian enforcement techniques and laws. Examples include the excellent anti-gang laws that were strengthened eight years ago, money-laundering legislation, and tougher, more rigorous immigration enforcement.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Mr. Dubro, I'm going to ask you to slow down a little. The interpreters are having trouble keeping up.

[James Dubro]

Oh, I'm sorry. I'd be happy to slow down.

Organized crime mobs have come a long way too. They have proliferated and grown immensely. This is sad but true, in spite of the jailing of the leadership of the Hells Angels and more recently Vancouver gangsters, after they got too cocky, violent, and out of hand by killing many, including some innocent people.

More than ever before, many more organized crime gangs are operating across Canada, though many are less structured and strictly hierarchical. That's very true here in Toronto, incidentally.

There is only one long-term solution, apart from continuing, intense, ongoing enforcement, like the anti-gang laws and tinkering with laws and sentencing, as much of the Conservative tough-on-crime legislative agenda proposes. Unfortunately, that does little to inhibit the growth of organized crime. It is time that we as a society, once and for all, deal seriously with the reality of the huge public demand for some of the major products and services of organized crime, most significantly marijuana, the number one money-maker for organized crime gangs across the country.

Ending the prohibition and making it legal and taxing it and taking the business away from the mobs, as we did in ending prohibition over 80 years ago, is what is required. I wrote a book on that about 20 years ago, about Rocco Perri and how mob bosses in Canada and the United States were created by the prohibition against alcohol, and that led to mob wars in both countries.

Pot prohibition is a colossal failure as a policy. Some of the big money, billions, that pot brings in can be used for education on recreational drug misuse. I say this as one who knows organized crime well and has seen it grow and grow as enforcement tries to keep up but cannot because of the demand.

We need to legalize some of the more profitable products and services upon which organized crime grows and thrives, starting with pot, and do that in the United States and Canada. The coming California referendum on pot, if passed, will get the ball rolling, as medical use of pot has already done in both countries. I know many “medical users” in Canada and the United States already.

More than ever, I now see the need to decriminalize many products and services of organized crime, from prostitution to gambling, and most drugs. Where mobs used to run booze and gambling, and thrive on it, now the government runs or controls most gambling and booze. Pot should and will follow; we cannot stop it.

This is an idea whose time has come. From the Fraser Institute study of almost a decade ago to billionaire entrepreneur George Soros, to ex-Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, to The Economist magazine--the special issue just a few months ago urging the very same thing--to Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, LEAP...I don't know whether you've had a speaker from LEAP here. Have you? You should. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, that is, former soldiers in the war on drugs in the United States and Canada, are now against the prohibition of drugs, from U.S. governors to U.S. and Canadian organized crime law enforcement officials, like ex-Mountie, coroner, and Vancouver mayor, Senator Larry Campbell. He would be an excellent witness, I would think. Larry Campbell--a very good guy.

Of course, to avoid the potential for gang wars in Canada for turf and U.S. routes, as in Mexico now and as in the 1920s prohibition period, we need to legalize and decriminalize in both countries at the same time. That's an extremely important point. We couldn't just legalize pot in this country. I think when it happens in California, that's when we'll have to move very fast. That's why you guys should be looking into it now before it happens in California. California is the largest state in the United States, and when it happens there, it's going to happen.

As for the idea floated by some, including members of Parliament, that one answer to the organized crime problem in this country is criminalizing a group by its name, for example the Hells Angels, it's wrong-headed on many counts. First, it wouldn't work. The Hells Angels would go underground, as it has already partially done in Quebec in the drug biz, where it's still fairly effectively importing and selling drugs. There's no lack of drugs on the streets of Montreal, I can tell you.

Second, it's a slippery slope. Why just the Hells Angels? Why not other organized crime gangs? Why just focus on organized crime with a name? Alas, many organized crime gangs, like many street gangs or Vietnamese gangs, are very fluid and adaptive and don't really have names, except for those given to them by journalists and cops.

Third, it would make civil rights martyrs out of the Hells Angels. It would be a public relations coup bonanza for such a sinister group. In the end, it is too simplistic to make it a crime to be a member of a named group. It is good only for cops who don't want to spend the time making real cases or using the anti-gang laws, and it is not good for our civil liberties in Canada. I might add that over many years of application it hasn't worked very well to eliminate the many mafias in Italy or the triads in Hong Kong, though one might argue that in Italy, at least, it has kept intense pressure on mafias. Antonio can answer on that one.

The time has come to do something nationally and internationally that really hurts organized crime groups operating in Canada. Ending the prohibition on pot is the first big step forward to that end. Rigorously enforcing the tough anti-gang laws will also help enormously. More federal government funding and vocal, visible support for the use of the anti-gang laws consistently and nationally is required. These laws have been used successfully against the Rock Machine, the Hells Angels, highly organized black street gangs in Toronto, ethnic organized crime gangs elsewhere, and the powerful Rizzuto Mafia family.

In my opinion, there is no need for new laws, just a need for strenuously enforcing existing ones and eliminating some very old out-of-date laws, such as the prohibition against certain widely used, hugely popular recreational drugs such as marijuana and possibly ecstasy. We need quality controls on this highly popular drug, as most users rarely know exactly what they're getting in a drug often manufactured in garages and basements.

Getting rid of drug prohibition, starting with pot, is the only real thing left to do that will almost certainly work to reduce the power, income, and membership of organized crime gangs. We must get at what fuels the growth and profits of the mobs. It's time to get at them where it hurts, and legalizing pot in North America will begin to do that. Of course, we can never eliminate organized crime in a society; we can only contain it and keep it on the ropes.

Today, as I was getting ready to come here and as we're having this meeting right now, there's a judge from New Jersey who is a commentator on the Fox television station, which is not a station I usually watch. As we're sitting here, he's giving a speech on his position to legalize marijuana on Fox television. This is what he said in Facebook this morning. He said:

Isn't it about time for the government to drop its Victorian facade and let folks do to their bodies in private whatever they wish....

The time has now come for the government to get out of our homes and leave us alone. Governments in America have been spending about $50 billion annually on drug enforcement and recreational drugs use increases every year. When will we learn that prohibition is a disaster?

That's how he ends his entry on Facebook this morning.

I think I made my 10 minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you so much.

We'll move on to Mr. Nicaso for ten minutes.

[Antonio Nicaso, Author and Journalist, As an Individual]

Mr. Chairman, honourable members of this committee, good afternoon.

The last time I addressed this committee was in 2001. I remember we asked ourselves this question: why is organized crime afraid of American laws and borders and not afraid of ours? Since 2001 nothing has changed. The situation is actually becoming worse.

According to the latest report of the Criminal Intelligence Service, most criminal markets appear highly resistant to long-term disruption, and in some cases they remain criminally active during incarceration. The same report listed hundreds of criminal organizations.

I used to call our country a Welcome Wagon for organized crime. The main problem lies with the definition of organized crime. We have criminal organizations that insulate themselves from risk, such as the Mafia and the 'Ndrangheta, which tend to be less visible and more difficult to link to criminal behaviour. They are more business oriented and have established links with politicians, business people, and professionals.

If you have the time to read the intelligence report prepared by the RCMP and the Montreal police about the Mafia in Quebec, you will find the names of important corporations, politicians, lawyers, and builders. From those reports, you will learn what the power of a criminal organization like the Mafia really is. Moreover, you will learn that they are more dangerous when they cannot be shocked.

The connections with decision-makers, business persons, politicians, and professionals are the backbone of criminal power. Nevertheless, this is an area that is off limits. How many investigations target the so-called grey area where politicians, criminals, professionals, and business people get together for various reasons? There are not many. This is the real target.

According to the Criminal Intelligence Service, the dividing line between illegality and legality is fine and can be redrawn with changes in regulations or legislation. As a result, some criminal groups undertake a series of enterprises that are on the margin of legitimacy or entirely legitimate. Some operate businesses that are primarily intended to facilitate criminal activities, while others offer legitimate trade but also facilitate illicit enterprises through, for example, laundering funds, income tax fraud, enabling fraud, or the illicit manipulation of stock markets. A criminal group may own or operate these businesses openly, conceal their dealings through nominees, or collude with, coerce, or deceive the owners or employees. These businesses can also enable criminal groups to distance themselves from criminal activity and provide an appearance of legitimacy. If this is the real issue, why do we stand idly by? Instead, and for obvious reasons, we continue to link organized crime only with violence and not with white collar crime.

Street gang activities often more directly have an impact on the general public than other organized crime groups, particularly as some gangs pose a threat to public safety through their high propensity for violence. We have a serious problem in Quebec, where many sectors of the economy are infiltrated by white collar criminals. We face increased violence on Montreal streets. Ninety percent of drug retailing is in the hands of street gangs and they are fighting for more turf to exert an influence over drug territory. They are not kids with guns. In Alberta police witnessed street gang members exchanging text messages while the alleged criminals were sitting at the same table. No words were exchanged during the meeting. They were using BlackBerry devices because they cannot be intercepted by police. This is only an example of the level of sophistication of our street gangs.

I hope this meeting will not be useless like the others. For many years, we as Canadians have remained like ostriches with our heads firmly planted in the sand. We have anti-gang legislation that we barely use outside of Quebec.

I remember when organized crime was identified as a priority, a government priority, both federally and provincially. They made only newspaper headlines and no action was taken. Whatever the reason, we are now faced with confronting criminal organizations that are immeasurably stronger and more sophisticated than they used to be. Some have retained superbly resourced dream teams of lawyers and chartered accountants, and a few are capable of successfully infiltrating law enforcement.

I'd like to quote Crown Attorney Stephen Sherriff. In a speech dated 2001, he said, “There is no point crying over spilt milk but we must realize that what started as spilt milk has turned into an oil spill.” Unfortunately, almost 10 years later, this is the current reality. It is a waste of time to debate how we got so far behind. The important thing is to not squander any more time. If we do not take action, we will have more bystanders at risk, more business people in the hands of criminals, and more narcotics on the streets.

I'd like to know, as a Canadian, if there is political will to fight organized crime. In the last 20 years, I've never had the sense that there is.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you very much.

We'll move on to Ms. Beare.

You have 10 minutes.

[Dr. Margaret Beare, Professor of Law and Sociology, York University, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

My name is Margaret Beare. I'm a professor at York University, where I served for 10 years as the director of the Nathanson Centre for the Study of Organized Crime and Corruption. The name of that centre has now been changed to the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security, but policing and organized crime is still a topic for that centre. Prior to that time, I worked for 13 years in what was then the Department of the Solicitor General of Canada and is now the Ministry of Public Security. I was the director of police policy and research.

Our panel has a bit of an advantage, in the sense that your committee has been meeting for quite a while and I've had an opportunity to go through some of the previous testimony that was given. A lot of it was given with passion and commitment, and I welcome this opportunity to add my own opinion, experience, and to a large extent my hope for change into the mix that somehow you have to make some kind of sense out of.

Running through the various presentations that have already been given, there was a call for a focus on root causes to combat organized crime. Obviously no one answer is going to be the answer that meets all kinds of organized crime, but I would like to focus just for a moment on the kinds that in fact do speak to root causes.

As you may know, yesterday there was a gang summit held here in Toronto, and the strong message was a need to look at membership, the need to look at and understand who are the members of these street groups or gangs, and in fact not to automatically assume that they are criminal gangs that should be slotted into the magic three: membership, criminal organization, and categorization.

There is agreement that to work effectively to reduce street violence from street gangs, the focus needs to be on jobs, literacy, social inclusion, and social services. This, however, appears to be political poison, accepted as mere rhetoric, backed up by an array of get tough legislation that you've all been hearing about. The list of get tough measures include the mandatory minimums, the criminal organization enhancement to police powers and sanctions, and the debate on the practicality of naming groups as being criminal organization entities.

Both James and Antonio addressed that issue to some extent, James emphasizing the networking, the fluid nature of a lot of organized crime groups, and Antonio emphasizing the grey area, the blurriness between political corruption, corruption of officials, influence peddling, and the “criminal element”.

What do you put under the umbrella of whatever name you want to assign to a group? The Hells Angels are a beautiful group because they have everything going for them: the jacket, the club, the name, the whatever. The organized crime groups that you would perhaps be better served to look at are the fluid groups that include the legitimate and illegitimate activities.

I just finished a study on women involved in organized crime. The international community appears to be concerned that women are moving into leadership roles. Other than anecdotal examples, I think we are safe from women for a while, although they do play a key role in some of the trafficking of persons through certain routes. Mainly these women are the same poor, jobless, abused, often illiterate, often single moms that we see in our domestic prisons, victims of abuse much more than abusers. We now see these women targeted with the mandatory minimums associated with drug trafficking, i.e., the drug mules. But when one analyzes the court cases, what you find is naive, duped, intimidated women mixed with—yes, of course—some women who knowingly choose to take upon themselves the most risky and the least profitable part of the trafficking network that leaves them most exposed, while somebody else who runs the operation possibly, but not necessarily, becomes rich.

I've also just finished a study on the enforcement of gambling. You probably would ask yourself how gambling relates to the issue we are looking at. In my mind, it speaks to justice policies that appear to be derived, at least to some extent, by flavour-of-the-month polling mechanisms.

While everyone acknowledges that illegal gambling is still a major source of profits for organized criminals--and even the recent killings in Montreal reveal some of the players who have been and are still involved in this enterprise--there is little political will to continue to fund street gambling enforcement. Far sexier is the international hype over money laundering, terrorist financing, and of course gangs and guns. Focusing on street-level traditional police work, rather than funnelling our precious resources perhaps too heavily into elite squads, might be a better response.

What is my point that links these three areas? What is needed is the political will on the part of committees such as yours--which is why I'm so pleased to be here speaking to you--to stand up to political masters. When Corrections Canada briefed the Prime Minister about the severe downside of mandatory minimum sentences in terms of the impact on prison populations, his response was that the hardest thing he had to deal with was getting the bureaucrats on board. Research, evidence, and the experience of the knowledgeable correctional research staff and the prison staff were irrelevant to him.

Standing up and saying everything we know, nationally and internationally, tells us that mandatory sentences do more harm than good; massive gang roundups that cannot be processed by either our legal aid systems or our courts must be a last resort to alternative measures in some of the most depressed areas of our cities; and the Gladue judgment tried to tell us, regarding the far excessive overrepresentation of aboriginals in our prisons, that equal justice is not equal when everyone does not start at the same point. Therefore justice must be flexible and wise, free from political ideology, and free to make brave, made-in-Canada social justice-focused responses.

I would like to add my voice to the choir that emphasizes that the current drug laws are not working, pure and simple. No matter what your view on marijuana is, what we are doing is not working. Save your resources for other drugs if you must, but decriminalization is the only reasoned response to marijuana.

I was a member of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police drug abuse committee for several years, and there was one magic year when the CACP drug committee voted to recommend decriminalization to the government. Alas, when the chiefs went back from the conference to their home departments, they apparently got whacked, because the formal decision changed. However, it was an indication that the police do see the folly of what the laws cause, and this most powerful policing organization almost had the courage to tell the government.

I thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

Our fourth witness isn't here yet so we'll go to questions.

Mr. LeBlanc, you have seven minutes.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the witnesses for interesting presentations and even some thought-provoking ideas on how we can attack a problem that I think we all agree is increasing and concerning.

There are two items I'm hoping you can elaborate on. Mr. Dubro and Mr. Nicaso passed over the issue of how organized crime recruits people. How does one become involved in a criminal gang? What are the typical ways in which they seek to add membership or expand their influence? I'm curious to hear your views on how they typically grow their membership, either formally or informally. In other words, how do they seek to add people under their influence who will participate in criminal activity?

Professor Beare, in your opening comments you referred to some of the root causes of why people participate in criminal gangs, or why criminal gangs become a problem in some communities. Perhaps you can expand on that. I'm interested in that.

We focus on the legislation and changing statutes. I sense that's a significant but certainly not all-encompassing solution. There are many other non-legislative means to help police and community groups, like giving tools to those involved in prosecuting, that can also have a big impact, and not simply changing the letter of the law. So I'd be curious to hear from you on that.

[James Dubro]

In terms of how people get into organized crime gangs, which I think was your first question, there are so many different ways. It depends on the group. As Antonio will tell you, in the Mafia it's almost generational, or family. It's that old cliché you see in The Sopranos on television or in The Godfather. Many people are born into the Mafia.

When you talk about street gangs and youth gangs--you have several people coming about that--they get into it for a lot of reasons. There are economic reasons, as Margaret referred to, and social reasons. There's deprivation.

But I would argue that one of the main reasons they get into it--and Margaret implied this, too--is that there's a lot of money to be made very quickly. All your friends want steroids or ecstasy or pot or whatever, so why not make a lot of money? I know younger people who are doing this in Toronto. I know some in Montreal who do it. They don't have any moral qualms about doing it. It's—

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

By “doing it” you mean supplying...?

[James Dubro]

Not necessarily getting into a gang, but—

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

You mean supplying the demand.

[James Dubro]

Yes, supplying drugs. Steroids are drugs. They're illegal. A lot of money is made on steroids and ecstasy, and, as I said earlier, God knows what's in them.

Anyway, in terms of youth gangs, I think a lot of people get in for a lot of reasons, but one of them is the profit motive. A lot of them graduate to larger organized crime gangs. As you get a little more sophisticated.... You see, for a lot of the youth gangs and younger gangs, the ones selling drugs on the street are one thing, but a lot of the early Mafia groups, let's say, and Asian crime groups, if you look at Asian crimes, started with extortion when they were younger, in their twenties.

Extortion doesn't get you very much money, but it gets you money, and you generally extort people from that community. It's going on right now with the Tamil Tigers. Other groups are extorting recent immigrants, I suspect, in the Somali community and others. It's a long pattern, and it goes back to the early Italian immigration in the 1920s. Most of the original Mafia groups were involved in extortion. But that doesn't make you money, so you move to more sophisticated things, like international crime and drug trafficking on a large scale, from heroin to cocaine and marijuana. I think the younger gang members get into where there's more money, so they get into the organized crime gangs.

Those are two ways they get in.

As for women, Margaret didn't mention this, but back in the 1920s and 1930s, there were women who ran the Mafia in Ontario, Bessie Perri and Annie Newman, so they're not exactly newcomers. Rocco Perri, who was the gang boss in charge of most of the bootleg booze coming from Canada into the United States, relied for all his decisions on them. Whether it was killing a customs officer or corrupting a customs officer, he relied on Bessie and on his women. He couldn't do it without his women.

Antonio wrote a book about this too. It's quite amazing, in fact, that women were in that role, and our history on this has never been told. We get all of our history from American television, so naturally the Canadian history isn't there, but there have been women in crime. As Bessie said to Rocco back in the teens, when prohibition was coming, “We'd better get into this, because there's a lot of money to be made.” They made a fortune: the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars today. She was draped in diamonds and they had a big mansion. Of course, she was murdered, so there is a moral to the story, and her murder is still unsolved 60 or 70 years later.

I've said enough.

Antonio, do you want to add anything?

[Antonio Nicaso]

I would like to focus more on the Mafia. I teach the history of the Mafia in an American college, at the military college, so I'm not familiar with the gangs or street gangs. I'm more familiar with the so-called traditional organized crime.

The Mafia is actually based on functional friendship, so there are no blood ties. What brings all those people together is a sense of belonging, but you have to consider that they're not looking for money; they're looking for power. That is the main goal. Looking for power means establishing connections with the people who are able to make decisions.

I will just give an example. There was the Zappia business that was involved in the Olympic Village scandal in Montreal. He was arrested recently in Italy because he was investing five billion euros in the construction of the bridge that will eventually connect Sicily to the mainland.

The 'Ndrangheta is another major criminal organization that operates in Canada. The structure is different, because 'Ndrangheta is the only criminal organization with a structure based on blood ties. A way to recruit members is through marriage. Sometimes it's from families who come from the same area. Other ways that are very important in Italian culture are to be the godfather of a child or to be the best man in a wedding. It's a way to protect themselves.

The 'Ndrangheta is now the most powerful criminal organization in the world, with ramifications worldwide because it's very difficult to infiltrate. It's very difficult to find informants within the 'Ndrangheta. Becoming an informant in the 'Ndrangheta means betraying your own blood. That is unacceptable. Even in Canada we have the same structure, the same type of organization. It's an organization based on blood ties.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you. We'll move on to Mr. Ménard.

Before we do, I notice that our fourth witness is here, Reverend Julius Tiangson. I'll give him his 10 minutes to present right now, and then we'll continue on with the questions, if that's acceptable.

[James Dubro]

Could I just add one thing? I just remembered that sometimes people are extorted into becoming gang members. It happens very much in Asian crime.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

Mr. Tiangson, you have 10 minutes.

[The Reverend Julius Tiangson, Executive Director, Gateway Centre for New Canadians]

My name is Julius Tiangson. I'm the executive director of the Gateway Centre for New Canadians. We are a settlement agency in Mississauga, and we primarily serve youth between the ages of 13 to 24.

I'll give you some brief background information about myself. I came to Canada in 1985 as a temporary foreign worker, actually. For about a year and a half, I was in a work exchange program, and I decided at that time that I liked Canada so much that I would immigrate.

I have worked with young people over the last 20 years, primarily among immigrant kids. They come under the live-in caregiver program and also under the permanent residency program--or the normal way, as many would call it. I've worked with families on the impact of some of the immigration policies that we have here in Canada with regard to family reunification and the impact of that with regard to children, youth, and their options for their lives here in Canada.

One of the things that I think we have not been really looking quite carefully into is the role of some of our immigration policies over the last couple of decades and the impact of those in terms of the options that children and young people--newcomers--have as they come and settle here in Canada. I have three observations.

The first observation is with regard to the immigration policy. I think when there is a policy in place that will prolong the reunification of family, there is definitely, from where I sit, an impact on the children and young people of those who came first when they settle here in Canada.

There have been studies out there, some of which are funded by Citizenship and Immigration Canada and by the social development program, in which there is a social impact on the lives of children and youth. There are consequences of that in terms of involvement in organized crime or street gangs. There are some important studies. Right now I cannot simply draw from them, but there are some good studies that have been done on this.

The second observation is that when the majority of the newcomers settle here in this country, their children and young people are, in a way, looking for places to belong, places they can identify themselves with, places where they can be participants and be involved in something that is productive.

Regardless of whether they're temporary foreign workers who have successfully gone through the point system and have become successful immigrants or those who have come through the regular route to immigration--regardless of their status--at the time of settlement, parents of these newcomers do have difficulty in their economic integration into this country, which leaves no other option for their children to actually participate in extra-curricular activities. This would prevent them from getting involved in street gangs.

The third observation, from where I sit, is the role of many organizations in the community, and the role of the provincial, federal, and municipal governments in ensuring that there are truly accessible places that need to be established in many centres in which our newcomers tend to settle. They are in the greater Toronto area, in Montreal, and in Vancouver, and now increasingly in cities like Edmonton and Calgary. These are large centres where, because of the economic opportunities, many of the newcomers and their families tend to settle.

The lack of accessibility, as well as a lack of programming done at the front end of settlement for children and youth, will definitely have the consequence at the back end, as I will call it, of many of the kids getting involved with the law.

We offer an alternative measure service or program in which young people have the alternative of serving their time for their conviction in our centre. What I have observed over the last three years of delivering this service is that a good 80% of newcomer kids who get involved and entangled with the law do so simply because they were in the wrong company, at the wrong time, in the wrong place, with the wrong people. When we begin to prod a little bit further, we find that the majority of them get involved simply because there is no alternative activity or there are no alternative places or stuff that is affordable for them and affordable for their parents.

So accessibility to this programming for newcomer children and youth is a critical component in ensuring that kids who are newcomers do not get involved in street gangs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you very much.

We'll resume the questions and move on to Monsieur Ménard for seven minutes.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Dr. Margaret Beare]

Could I respond?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

You'll get another chance. We're going to have a number of rounds here.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you.

Listening to you, I get the impression that the main sources of income of organized crime at the present time are drugs and specifically marijuana.

However, I would also like to hear you talk — because I understand that you all agree on this point — about other legal activities of criminal gangs, such as any involvement in construction projects or in unions, as we know happens in other countries? Are they involved in prostitution or even gambling, do they traffic human beings, and what would be the respective proportions?