Mr. Chairman, at the moment the criminal law provides that in certain categories of crime, the court can seize and forfeit the proceeds of crime. Indeed, in some circumstances the court can make an order, even before conviction, that the property be tied up or suspended, that the accused person be deprived of its use or operation in the period pending trial.
We have taken over such things as ski chalets under the provisions of that law where it has been possible to prove that the proceeds of the crime can be traced into assets.
In Bill C-95 the ambit of the proceeds section have been extended so that they cover criminal organization offences as well as the offences to which they apply at present. However, we have done something else and this is the first time it has been done. We have extended the powers of the court to include the instrumentalities of crime. This has been under discussion for many years in Canadian law. It has never before been done.
This means that you can not only seize the money that is made from the crime or the property to which you turn it but you can also seize the property used for the purpose of committing the crime. If an organized crime syndicate is using boats to take contraband across the border, using trucks to drive explosives to the scene of the crime, using a building, especially fortified or modified, to facilitate the commission of a crime, then the court will be empowered to order the forfeiture of that property as an instrument of the crime as well as the proceeds which would be in keeping with the practice in Canada to date.
We believe this is going to give the authorities an important new tool to take from the criminal organizations those assets which they use to commit their crimes and to provide a way of shutting them down by depriving them of the very tools they need to carry on their nefarious trade.