The contraband tobacco issue—this sounds kind of strange—is a unique issue, but it's not. What I mean by that is that the profitability for contraband tobacco for organized crime groups in Canada is absolutely huge, and contraband tobacco is a Canadian problem. Ninety per cent of the contraband tobacco that we seize in our country is from Ontario, in most cases. It's not something that's coming into our harbours and it's hidden or something of that nature.
The organized crime groups that are engaged are Canadian organized crime groups for the most part. They're selling contraband tobacco in Canadian communities. This money that they make goes to fuel all kinds of crime, as we're talking about today. I understand these conversations so very well. I've lived these conversations for the last 20 years of my career. I'm not here to comment from a policing perspective on these issues, but they are all intertwined now with contraband tobacco.
From the last 10 years, I do not recall a single person whom we arrested or charged on contraband tobacco at a significant level being engaged with any sort of race-based group or from any sort of specific racial community. Ninety percent of them were white organized crime figureheads. That's who we're dealing with here.
My message on the contraband tobacco issue would be to please not just swipe it away with the rest of what Bill C-5 hopes to accomplish, which, for the record, I'm not against. However, this issue is unique from the perspective that organized crime is targeting contraband tobacco, pairing it with cocaine and fentanyl and all of the issues that we're talking about today, and using it to make millions of dollars to use themselves.